Good morning,
There is a lot of terrible advice out there regarding the best way to create a new habit. It should come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that I have my own lard to contribute to this saturated field.
So...ready? OK, reader - for me, the best way to get a new habit going is to borrow the rider tactic from mediocre (or is it pronounced politically savvy) lawmakers.
Now, reader, a 'rider' is what the politicians call a provision in a bill that has little connection to the subject matter of the bill. In most cases, the larger bill is sure to pass while the 'rider' is sure to fail on its own. Therefore, attaching the rider to a larger bill is sometimes the only tactic available to get the provisions detailed within the 'rider' to pass. Thus, by including the new item as part of the existing bill, the lawmakers increases the odds of the 'rider' making its way into law.
I've used the 'principle' behind this idea to start new habits. Instead of trying to initiate a new concept entirely on its own, I attach the new concept to an existing routine or task. This way, I shift the risk of the new habit failing in its early stages to the risk of the already successful routine failing to continue on.
A good example is how I started reading my 'daily reminders' (1). The idea was to have a list of things I would read each morning before I started the workday. The reminders would serve to ground my thinking and allow me to start each day fresh without the distractions of the outside world coming in to throw me off balance.
There was only one problem - I forgot to read these on an almost daily basis. I tried many different methods to change my habit: I kept the reminders in an email draft, I printed them out and put them into my most frequently used folder, I even tried taping them to the wall next to my mouse. These changes would work for a couple of days but my mind would soon remember to forget.
Finally, I figured out the trick. Each morning, I turned on the screen by pressing the small button on the bottom right-hand corner of the monitor. I never failed to do this (unless I was not using the computer that day, which was the case on precisely zero days out of my near fifteen hundred workdays). One day, I realized that if I could somehow make reading the reminders part of the process of turning on the monitor, I would never forget to read these again.
The next day, I taped the reminders onto my monitor so a piece of the paper covered the button. In order to turn on the screen, I had to first lift the reminders. The process of doing this reminded me to read them.
I think this is a pretty easy philosophy to implement. Most people already do a form of it by task-batching laundry, grocery shopping, or household cleaning. Anyone who goes out to 'run errands' does this in a way as well. The key is to minimize the cost of getting started by finding the right set of coattails to ride.
Signed,
The Business Bro
Footnotes / an example
0. Sometimes, these footnotes are like 'riders', just irrelevant quips that would make no sense as their own post yet are not so trivial to derail the point of the original piece...
Editor's note: reintegrating The Business Bro into TOA is yet another example of the rider concept in action.
1. The current set of daily reminders...
Daily reminders- be bigger than you feel...
-> Wake up, decide if I’m tired, then look at the clock...
-> Don’t engage on irrelevant POSITIONS- find common INTERESTS
-> Feedback is about what you did, not who you are; listen to verbs, ignore nouns
-> Nothing good happens after 10pm
-> Nothing is worth doing on the computer within two hours of bedtime…
-> Most urges go away in fifteen minutes
-> No one cares- coach your team
-> Choose courage over comfort
-> Label negative thoughts
-> Be who you needed when you were younger
-> Self talk means ‘I will, I will…’ / for bball: ‘flick, stick’
-> An artist must make time for the long periods of solitude
-Be a good steward to your gifts
-Protect your time
-Feed your inner life
-Avoid too much noise
-Read good books
-Have good sentences in your ears
-Be by yourself as often as you can
-Walk
-Take the phone off the hook
-Work regular hours
