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The Force of Habit
By matt | July 26, 2006
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If you go and do some google research on habits, you’ll find a number of models that try to explain the psychology behind a change-of-habit and the steps a person goes through to accomplish it. One that showed up repeatedly had five steps:
- Precontemplation: you, before you start to change
- Contemplation: you are aware of an opportunity to change, but aren’t pursuing it actively.
- Preparation: you want to change and are planning how to do it
- Action: you are changing
- Maintenance: you’ve changed, but need to spend energy not to backslide
All of this makes sense in a theoretical way. The problem, I think, is that it approaches habit change in a very ‘positive’ way when in reality all changes require trade-off and loss. Let me explain…
Let’s say that I want to improve my health by exercising. I can go through the steps to prepare (research exercise on the web, ask friends, get info from the gym), take action (sign up at the gym, buy clothes, start going), and maintain (track progress, find a work-out buddy, etc). What’s not clear is what I need to lose in order to gain the new habit.
Of course, if I’m focusing on losing a habit, like smoking, my focus is entirely upon what is being lost. But when I’m focusing on starting a new habit, like exercise, my focus is upon what is being gained (a new exercise program, more muscle, etc).
The Force of Habit
Paradoxically, I think the thing that held me back most often was the postive appreciation of what I’m going to gain without fully understanding what I’m going to lose…
When I silenced my home, I suddenly found myself without habits I’d owned for many years. Eating dinner while watching/reading the news is an example. Checking email and chatting via instant messenger is another. There were holes in my routine that I needed to fill.
And so, by removing the distracting things in my home, I found it very easy to establish new habits. Unknowlingly, I broke (lost) old habits before trying to start new ones. Thus, unlike the many times in the last two years that I tried and failed to start exercising regularly, this time I was able to start without any problems because I’d unwittingly broken the old ones first.
Obviously, this says something about how much I valued and used things like an Internet connection, the web, television and so on. What I find/found unavoidably interesting and distracting another person might find boring. I understand that.
But this provided me with a valuable lesson, if accidentally. From now on, when I decide I want to establish a new habit, my goal will be to understand the sacrifices first. If I could go back, I would have approached my earlier, failed attempts to exercise by understanding where I would find the time and what I most easily rationalized as ‘more important’ than exercise. I’d work first to lose habits that stopped me from my real goal and then begin to establish the new in it’s place.
Topics: philosophy |
July 27th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Valuable lesson. We have finite resources at our disposal. Most often, when discussing habits, this resource is time. Therefore, to lose a habit, often the best way is to pick up a new one.
I just wish I could find something to barter when consider my goal to stop smoking.
What benefit is there?
- Health? Even my great age of thirty-something, I am relatively young. Death is statistically far away.
- Ability to achieve more in exercise? I already ran 20 miles a week. Did century bicycle rides. How much more of this boredom can I take? (and don’t talk to me about improved times, I’m the least competitive person, ever.)
- No disgusting smell? I guess there is that.
Wine in hand, I wish for something else…
July 28th, 2006 at 7:00 am
Seems like TV and the Intarweb are particularly pernicious habits, as both have the potential to expand to fill whatever time is available—moreso, I think, than other habits.
When I decided a few years back to keep my calbe modem but drop cable TV, I found myself with vastly more time available for other activities. It was not that I had spent so much time watching shows I was actually interested. Rather, most of the time spent in front of the TV involved clicking around in the hopes that something might come on that I would be interested id. In other words, watching the news while eating dinner becomes a three hour marathon.
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:08 am
Bob, Must comment I’m the worst with trying to change habits. I have started going to the gym to get ACTIVE after sitting at a computer all day for years. I pray I can keep it up. When you were 20, could you imagine how it would be when you’re 30? Now you’re 30, can you imagine how it would be to be 50 and have tubes coming out of every orifice? I lost my sweet Dad and brother to cancer at 49 and 48. Take a walk through any cancer ward, that will be all the motivation you will every need. It stopped me dead cold from smoking when I was 21. Think of all the people who love you (hopefully there are some), and how they would hate to watch you wither away. Hope this helps with the motivation. I am trying to do the same by thinking about how my excess FAT is clogging up my arteries and heart….I’m sick of thinking about it and have to ACT!! I just wish my husband would help or do so too (sigh) but that’s a whole other story called DENIAL. Well I wish you the best good luck, I’ll pray for you. Pete I know what you mean by being mesmerized by the plug in drug. I’m fighting that too…a good walk and conversation is much better. I miss my dog so much she was my walk buddy….good luck…