"Everything is training."
— Rob
The Neurosis of Long Term Habit Change
Just had a smart conversation yesterday about this. It's been something I've been thinking on for a while.
There's a bit of a problem with long term habit change. If you're working on something that takes a while to achieve, you spend a lot of time falling short of your target and aware of it.
So, let's say you were currently drinking a lot of soda, and you want to quit.
You start replacing soda with other drinks, trying to order different things at restaurants, buy other things, turn friends and family down when they offer you a soda, get a bottled water instead of a coke at the movie theater with popcorn, etc, etc, etc.
Sometimes you go to a barbecue or a cheap lunch with pizza, and the only drink is soda. You try to just have nothing those times.
There's lots of opportunities to drink soda. If you were a big soda drinker, a gradual scaling-down of soda-drinking might take six months.
For that whole six months, there's going to be some neurosis and pressure. You're going to be aware of falling short every time you have a soda. It's likely you'll feel some disappointment or neurosis every time you cave and have a soda when you didn't plan to.
Then, one day, you'e scaled down almost all the way, and then you quit entirely. BAM! You're no longer a soda drinker.
How long do you celebrate? I'm going to guess… less than two weeks.
And I think that's a huge problem with long term habit change. Six months of hard work, of being constantly aware of falling short, of the disappointment and neurosis from false starts and mistakes, and then… less than two weeks of feeling good about it, before on to the next thing.
Yes, you get all the health benefits. But you don't necessarily get rewarding feelings anywhere near the pressure and neurosis and disappointment while working on it.
I'm gradually becoming more aware of this. I don't have a perfect solution to it, but I think celebrating more often is a part of the puzzle.
Celebrate small wins, have a little moment of satisfaction when your consumption of soda (or whatever) improves a little bit, reflect on the wins and the changes, celebrate a little longer and bigger when you have large wins.
Also, perhaps less neurosis and disappointment when falling short? I'm not sure it's necessary… perhaps it can act like a spur in your side to some extent, but maybe it'd be possible to just adjust without feeling bad? Saying something like, "Ok, I fell short. Time to get back on track" without the neurosis?
I'm reminded again of that Tomas Schelling quote from Choice and Consequences:
Some people who run for exercise discover that the fear of quitting—not the fear of running painfully, but of quitting—becomes so severe that they are tempted to quit to get rid of the fear. Once they've run the course the mental agony is gone and the physical agony bearable; so they sometimes treat themselves at the end to a little extra when, anxiety gone and nothing at stake, they can at last run for the fun of it.
Perhaps long term habit change is like that, to some extent. The neurosis and battling might be more difficult than the habit change itself.
Perhaps we can correct course without the neurosis, and celebrate more often? I don't know, I need to think on this more.
I've been theorizing on this.
For most people, their emotions move in cycles. It's not always so predictable as the image, but there's going up and going down.
During normal life, you do normal life stuff.
But I think the lows and highs call for different approaches.
When things are great, get as much as you can out of it. This always seems like it'll last forever while it's happening, but it never does. Double down, triple down. If business is ridiculously good lately, pour the time in to max out the current opportunities before they (likely) fade away. Bank cash, etc.
The same goes for creativity. When you're having a highly creative day, run it out as much as you can. Resist the temptation to say, "Well, that's enough" and just go chill out or whatever. Max inspired time is rare. Milk that cow when you're max inspired.
During bad times, re-double on fundamentals and try to avoid doing anything stupid. Fundamentals keeps you from hitting the vicious downward spiral. Super basic stuff. Decent sleep schedule, eat well, drink enough water, time in nature, time socializing with people you like. If things start getting hairy, really knuckle down on the most very basic stuff. That helps fight off the downward spiral.
And then try not to do anything stupid. Don't spend a lot of money or make irreversible decisions if your judgment is faulty. Just keep gearing down on fundamentals.
When you're low creatively, this is a great time to do tedious consolidation. Clean the kitchen, clean all your gear up, clean up the files on your computer, get taxes and licenses or whatever filed and renewed, deal with bureaucracy and nonsense—this will free up your time to milk the cow more when you're max creative.
Okay, this is my new plan. Normal life during normal times. Milk the cow as much as possible when things are unusually great. Fundamentals and trying to avoid being stupid when things are bad.
If You Have Too Many Goals You're Not Doing, Read This
So, your goal—anyone's goal—is basically to get the most success you can as quickly as you can in the way most suitable/enjoyable to you, right?
I ask because that's pretty obvious, you probably want to do that. But you've got a lot of goals, and some of them are quite big and significant.
What I've found is trying to change 10 things at once—and have big changes that'll take years to complete—is not the the best way to get the most success as quickly as possible in the most suitable/enjoyable way.
Rather, I look to have a 70% success rate on a weekly basis. So I set some goals each week and try to execute on them. If I succeed above 70% (do everything perfectly) I add something new or increase difficulty the next week.
If I fall short—only doing 1 out of 5 that week—I scale back to what's most important, and try to succeed at 70% the next week.
I've found trying to improve 30 things at once is a great formula for falling off a cliff and getting nothing done.
70% success rate. So pick, like, 2-5 things. Set some objectives with them. Try to succeed at 3-4 out of 5 in a given week. If you're succeeding higher than that, increase difficulty or add more, especially once your goals are stable/habitual/almost-automatic.
If you're below that, SUBTRACT SOME STUFF AND FOCUS ON THE MOST IMPORTANT.
I don't know, maybe other people work differently, but I think 70% is a good number. It means you're always stretching and not too comfortable, but you're also succeeding more often than failing. It's been the best rough spot I've seen for a mix of constant improvement and motivation. 100% success rate can lead to complacency or setting goals too low, get too far below 50% and it hoses motivation.
So yeah. You want to wake up at a set time, do a morning routine, etc? Aim for 70%. If you're hitting a 0% success rate, then scale back to something easier.
Paradoxically, it actually takes more discipline to do this, to really drill down and focus on something and actually do it, instead of having a big list of stuff you're not actually doing.
Try it out. Aim for 70%. Adjust accordingly after you play with it, everyone's ideal targets will probably be a little different.
The Seven Questions That Bust a Productivity Slump
For productivity slumps, focus on re-gearing the fundamentals. It's almost always the following things -
How's your eating?
Are you drinking enough water?
How's your sleep schedule?
Are you deciding the most important things to do for the next day before going to sleep?
Are you reviewing and working on the most important things right away the next day?
Also think about if you've gotten fitness time, full relaxation/disengagement, and time in nature lately.
If you do those seven things—eat well, drink water, sleep on schedule, plan tomorrow before sleeping, start on what's most important, exercise, fully relax regularly, and get some time in nature—that almost guarantees busting out of a slump. If you're in a slump, you're almost certainly not doing one of those.
Review, change the ones that are out of line, and you'll break out—and feel great in the process.
I eat pretty well and take pretty good care of myself. But it's taken quite a while to get here—before 2006, I had a pretty standard American diet. Lots of pizza, junk food, fast food, liquor, soda, sweets, etc. I smoked cigarettes, cigars, sheesha, and other kinds of tobacco.
Since then I've refined my diet and I eat pretty well. I have more energy, feel better, look better, and God willing, I'll live a lot longer as a result. It's a gradual process though, and I'm still improving. There's a few things I use to do it:
First, I'm all about incremental improvement—I think trying to crash change your diet is unlikely to work unless you have immense amounts of willpower and self-discipline. If you do have these Herculean amounts of will and discipline, you know who you are and don't need my advice. If you're more mortal, then you'll want to pick one or two things to be refining in your diet at a time.
Second, there's two ways I quit food or habits I don't like—"hard quitting" (cold turkey) and "soft quitting" (gradually reduce my consumption and eventually eliminate it). I pick which of these routes to go based on how convenient it is to quit something outright and if there's any detox process. If there's detox (like there was with nicotine), I think it's better to just get it over with once instead of constantly feeling deprived as your body re-adjusts to its new biochemical levels. The most successful method for quitting smoking is cold turkey, isn't it? Something like 80% of successful attempts to quit smoking are cold turkey? I don't have the statistics on hand, but that's the general idea. Quitting something like sugar, bad oils, or excess salt might be easier to do incrementally, since you need to replace the consumption with something else.
Which brings us to third point—I actively introduce new good behaviors before and during the time I quit something. Now, I don't know if the following is a good strategy, but it's what I did—when I started cutting down the sweets I ate, I increased my consumption of the kinds of salty foods I already ate: Chips, french fries, nuts, etc. Later I cut the salt content back. I don't know if that's a good habit, but it's worked okay for me. I also try to actively introduce fruits and vegetables before I quit something—it's hard to go from no fiber food that's highly processed to stimulate you immediately to fruits and vegetables. Fruit tastes bland compared to ice cream. So I introduce fruits and vegetables first, get comfortable with them, then increase my consumption of them as I decrease or eliminate bad consumption.
Fourth: I learn along but am very skeptical of new scientific findings until cross-tested and largely verified. I've spent a lot of time learning about nutrition and biochemistry, and I'm starting to get a feel for what's right and what's wrong. Take alcohol, for instance—bad science studies conclude that drinking a glass of wine a day is good for your health. Nonsense. Liquor wrecks havoc on your body, really really bad. Any small heart gains are offset by the hell liquor wrecks on your kidneys, liver, and blood. Besides, there's lots of ways to make your heart work, like just doing 15 minutes of quick exercise. So why is this "wine is good for you" utter nonsense spread? Because wine is drunk by successful people, in prosperous countries, and by people who also appreciate life and relax. But that doesn't mean the wine itself is good for you—the health gains from being successful, living somewhere prosperous, and taking time to relax and enjoy life. If you did a study taking two groups of very similar people who don't drink and introduced wine to half of them, they'd almost certainly be less healthy and have lower longevity as a result. Studies that survey consumption and health miss the point—wine correlates with long life, but it almost certainly doesn't make you live longer.
Refining my diet:
In late 2005/early 2006, I started actively introducing good foods into my diet: Plain oatmeal, tuna, and eggs were the big three.
2006 I made the big push—I "hard quit" (cold turkey, never consume again) alcohol, soda, all recreational drugs, cigarettes, caffeine, and pork.
My diet was pretty stable at that point for a while. I made gradual refinements around the edges—introducing more beans, eggs, chicken, and good protein. I started eating oatmeal almost every single morning, and quit eating sugary breakfast cereal.
In 2008 I'd done some research, and it seems like caffeine is good for metabolism. I re-introduced caffeine to my diet, primarily coffee, tea, and energy drinks. Eventually I became kind of skeptical of what they put in energy drinks and dropped those. I quit cigars in 2008, making sheesha the last kind of tobacco I smoked (and rarely, at that).
In 2009 I stopped eating mammals—I think eating lower on the food chain is smarter. Honestly, it's not for ethical reasons—I'd go deer hunting or bear hunting, I'd just sell or donate the meat afterwards. As much as I loved steak, I figure there's no health reason to ever eat steak instead of chicken or fish. Lower caloric density, more protein, easier on digestion. Some people point out the joy/taste aspect—for me, I don't care so much about that. If as a result of no tobacco, liquor, drugs, pork, beef, sugar I get less short term pleasure, but I live 2-5 years of good quality life, that's such an incredibly easy trade. Two years is 700+ days of seeing sunrises and sunsets, reading books, writing, doing science, following the new technology (I think some marvelously amazing technology is coming out going forwards), giving advice to my kids, playing with my grandkids, playing with my great-grandkids, making new friends, staying in touch with old friends… who would trade those experiences for some consumption? And I mean, c'mon, a good piece of chicken is pretty delicious. We're not talking about suffering here, we're talking about replacing a good steak with a good piece of chicken. There's so many ways to prepare chicken, turkey, tuna, salmon, swordfish, crab—I eat pretty well.
I quit sheesha in 2009 as well, meaning no tobacco at all. This is following a couple conversations with friends—sure, it's cleaner and probably the best way to smoke tobacco, but it's still not so great.
In 2010 I've been making incremental improvements. I've been soft quitting sweets and sugary drinks. This is harder than it sounds, people offer you cookies to be kind, or I order an iced tea in a foreign country and they serve one with sugar. It's tricky. I'm comfortable drinking 100% fruit and vegetable juice, which has some of the bad effects of a sugar rush followed by crash, but at least offers some nutrients in return. So that's an option.
I've been trying to find the best way to eat good quick food quickly. One of the defining things of good food to put in your body is that it has reasonably high fiber, but high fiber foods usually take a while to prepare which is a hassle. I prefer tuna on brown rice, but that's not always readily available when traveling. I'm okay with tuna on brown bread, but I'll always prefer rice to bread if it's an option.
What are some universally useful skills?
Almost anything important you'd want to do, you'll need to work with other people to some extent. Getting better at communicating is always good. Writing, negotiating, speaking. Conflict resolution. Whatever you'd call what's described in "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Some basic understanding of sales. All useful.
Next up, I'd like to put forward the idea that numbers are either your friend or your enemy, and there is no middle ground. Being able to do basic arithmetic fast is underrated—it has a ton of value. It's easy to train up—before you get a bill or check from somewhere, try to figure out roughly in your head how much it should be. See if it matches the bill. This helps you get your mind around opportunities and costs pretty quickly and helps you check to make sure things aren't going wrong.
Probability and statistics have a ton of value in them. I learned by studying advanced baseball statistics and I enjoyed that, but there's probably other ways. Variance is super important to understand. Getting your mind around how random can be really, really random is important.
Being able to do percents, and percents of percents has a lot of value.
Basic financial accounting has a lot of value to anyone—it also helps you get your mind around numbers.
After that, execution and get-stuff-done skills are important. This could be individual stuff like building good habits, keeping a clean environment, and training yourself how to focus. Defining a scope and your goals/objectives with anything you're doing. Some of the basic formal or informal project management stuff helps.
Underrated in this category are things that you have to do a lot of—things like typing fast, knowing how to set the agenda for a meeting or phone call so you cover everything quickly, and how to handle email without it ruining your life.
Health, obviously. Yeah, there's a ton of contradictions all the time, but it's still worth learning a little about your anatomy, the basic systems of your body, and how they wear out and fail over time (or don't, and keep working well). Nutrition. Exercise. Basic info about cardiovascular systems. Learn something about addictiveness—tolerance building, chemical addiction vs. psychological addiction, toxicity, etc.
I'd also encourage you to work towards clear thinking—rationality in the vein that Eliezer Yudkowsky writes about at LessWrong is important. It's worth spending some time to learn about how language works and how your mind works.
That's just off the top of my head—I'm sure I missed a number of important ones.