Developing Habits

[Namednoname]

Just been thinking about this lately.. In your opinion, when trying to develop a new habit, how do you feel whilst doing it? Do you feel under pressure when trying to make these changes?

If you have successfully developed a new habit ( That you actually wanted ) How did you do it? How long did it take? And do you still think about it daily, or is it autonomous?

Personally, I seem to have easy times creating new habits which I don't really think about and don't put any effort into..

Conversely, the more I think about doing something to try and form a habit, the harder I find it.

Sounds dumb but I find it hard not to focus on the habit I'm trying to form, It's almost as if I don't trust myself to lose focus in case I slip up.

And the more I think about it, the harder It gets, I feel pressured and edgy..

Just wondering what peoples thoughts are on this

Trying to coerce myself into effortlessly forming/dropping habits and trying to figure out a way I can make it work for me..

[Oogiem]

Interesting that you bring this up now.

I'm participating in an on-line book club and we are reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. He talks about the habit loop of trigger, routine and reward as what is needed to develop a habit. It's fascinating. He also talks about the fact that it's almost impossible to get rid of a habit, the brain paths for it are already set but you can change the routine in the middle. So if you are trying to stop smoking and the trigger is feeling anxious, and the reward is calm after you finish your cigarette you can try to replace the routine of lighting up with something else. IOW keep the trigger and reward the same, just change the routine.

I'm only up to Chapter 5 but I've already gotten a bunch of ideas on how to modify habits i have now, change the ones I don't like and enhance the ones I do.

You might take a look at the book and some of his on-line stuff. It's really interesting.

[Rebel Pilot Gar]

I usually have trouble making habits that directly contradict old, "bad" habits that I've had for a while.

For example, the current habit I'm trying to break is junk food consumption. It's easy to avoid sweets at work because I didn't have a habit of visiting every candy jar or vending machine at a certain time each day. The problem is resisting dessert after dinner. Since I was accustomed to grabbing something sweet, it takes more effort to resist.

Physical bad habits - like poor form, are also hard to rewire. For fencing, which is very "side" oriented, I've found that correcting poor form is easier if you teach yourself to do the move correctly with the non-dominant hand. Something about making you think more since it feels awkward, which helps you focus on using the correct form when you switch back to dominant side.

Hope that made sense... felt like I rambled a bit.

[Oogiem]

I usually have trouble making habits that directly contradict old, "bad" habits that I've had for a while.

According to what I've been reading the issue is to take the trigger of wanting something sweet, after dinner, figure out what the reward you get by eating it is and then try to find something else that will provide the same reward.

For me changing my habit routines is a slow process, I start with a tiny piece then when it's settled try changing one more piece of the routine.

[bchurchill]

I recently discovered a few things that help me:

- make the habit a recurring task in Remember the Milk (e.g. "take your multivitamin every morning at 7:30am")

- design the habit properly: Stanford Professor BJ Fogg has this down to a science (literally): Tiny Habits

[Skip66]

Oogiem, what book club are you in? I just starting reading the power of habit myself, just finished chapter 5 last night.

It's been a fascinating read. Looking forward to finishing it. It would be interesting to be a part of a discussion group.

[Skip66]

Garjan, I get what you say about doing something that is awkward to get you to think about it. About a year ago, I came across an article on lifehacker showing how to tie your shoes without needing to double knot. Basically it was opposite of what I was doing. I had to conpletely focus on it Took me a little while, but it has completely stuck now

[cracked_belle]

The Art of Manliness put out a great article on "Unlocking the Science of Habits".

[Caffae]

I've read The Power of Habit too!  I found this :  http://charlesduhigg.com/how-habits-work/ which is just his site but seems pretty good