Let me show you how I build habits.
In the previous letter, I wrote about how setting a target for quantity forced me to have bad ideas that eventually led to good ideas.
However, there was a powerful lever inside National Novel Writer’s Month (NanoWriMo) that was hidden.
And that lever is: habit building.
In this letter, I’ll show you how I build my habits using NaNoWriMo as an example.
Note: I wasn’t as big a habits geek back then as I am now but the example will probably make things concrete.
I was initially going to break this up into 2 issues but it felt like it interrupted the flow too much. If you like these longer pieces, please let me know!
Now then, here are the steps I take to build robust habits:
1. What’s the goal?
I’ve tried creating habits in a vacuum before.
They usually fail.
However, sometimes it’s worse: I build irrelevant habits that actually stick.
Without a goal to direct my habit-building efforts, I’m like a car constantly spinning it’s wheels.
It’s a bunch of consistent effort being lost to the ether.
So, I first think about a goal and how I’m going to measure progress towards it.
For example: I want to write 50,000 words by the end of the month.
Progress is easy to measure here: if the word count is going up by 1,666 or more words per day, I’m on track.
2. Make it small
The above goal demands that I write 1,666 words per day.
That’s a significant amount of daily writing.
If I wanted to make this habit really strong, I’d probably start out with a smaller target.
Something I can’t say no to.
I make myself an offer I can’t refuse; perhaps something like 100 words per day.
And then build it up from there.
It’s a bit like the pouring out bad ideas analogy from the previous letter: I need to allow myself to have bad ideas to make way for the good ones later.
In the same way, I need to allow myself to have small wins so I can have big ones later.
3. Link it to an everyday trigger
While doing NaNoWriMo in 2011, I generally wrote after coming home from work.
I’d get through the door, drop my bag, open my laptop and start hacking away.
That sequence built momentum in the same way that putting toothpaste on a toothbrush habitually propels the toothbrush into my mouth.
The tricky thing about this is that I worked only Monday – Friday.
So, on Saturday and Sunday, it took more of an effort to get started because I didn’t have the same everyday triggers to launch me into writing.
As an aside, this is an issue I see in many creative projects: it’s often not a lack of time but rather a lack of structure in which the creativity can thrive.
So, a better way may have been to link writing to something I do seven days a week: finishing dinner or washing up the dishes.
4. Premortem
Before starting setting out to achieve a goal, I like to think about what could go wrong.
For example: if I have a stressful day at work, I may not feel like writing in the evening.
To counter this, perhaps writing in the morning would make the habit more resilient.
I could either wake up a bit earlier. Or, if I have flexible work hours, I could start working a bit later to accommodate the morning writing session.
5. Find the others
Have you felt the urge to push yourself harder when training with a friend?
The same applies when creating new behaviours.
In NaNoWriMo, I knew there were so many people across Australia taking on this challenge.
I was additionally lucky to have a friend I worked with also doing the challenge so we could talk about our word counts, how emotionally taxing the challenge was, and cheer each other on.
Finding other people to share a challenge with can make the challenge more enjoyable.
And, last, but probably one of the most important pieces of habit building:
6. Treat yourself
Finally, for all of my hard work, I made sure to reward myself.
Here’s an important distinction when it comes to rewarding ourselves: extrinsic vs intrinsic rewards.
The satisfaction of blitzing through a hard part of the story is a form of intrinsic reward. That is, it’s motivation that is drawn from the activity itself.
Rewarding myself with a session of video games after meeting my word count is a form of extrinsic reward. That is, the incentive of video games is separate from the act of writing.
In the early stages, extrinsic rewards may be needed to jump start progress. However, relying too much on extrinsic rewards may lead to the intrinsic joy of the activity being overshadowed.
As a result, the activity may start getting done just for the extrinsic reward (see the overjustification effect for more details).
It’s important to strike a good balance between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and finding that balance has been the subject of many research papers.
I tend to find the balance by starting with extrinsic rewards that are easy to get (e.g. if I meet 100 words, I get to play 30 minutes of video games) and then ramping up the difficulty as I get comfortable (e.g. if I meet 1,000 words, I get to play 30 minutes of video games).
Phew. Well done on getting this far.
This is a cut-down summary of my Habitlings habit-building course. If you’d like a more in-depth exploration of habit building, please get in touch.
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