While in the throngs of a global pandemic with barriers erected preventing you from ‘choice’, it can feel like so much is out of your control. Personally, I deal with this through over-eating and hours of youtube - I’m not proud of it. Being removed from the normal rhythm of my life, I’ve found that my routines vary dramatically week-to-week let alone month-to-month. Each time our lockdown instructions change I find it more difficult to maintain consistency with the good habits in my life. I feel the allure of bad, numbing habits kicking-in.
December last year (a lifetime + a half ago in COVID terms), I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. I say read, but really I listened to the audiobook. So in order to empower myself (and maybe you?) to regain some semblance of control, I thought I would share a few tips about how to make good habits and break bad habits.
Sidenote: James Clear has more steps than the ones I’ve included below. #nonspon but, If you find these tips helpful or are interested in learning more about this stuff then I really recommend ordering a physical copy.
How to Make a Good Habit:
1.Make it Obvious
a.Use Habit Stacking
For some reason in iso, I’ve found that I’m drinking less water - it’s basically just coffee (trying to really embrace those Melbourne roots despite only being able to travel 5km within Frankston). That being said, It probably would be a good idea to be more hydrated. One strategy is habit stacking: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” So I would choose some habit/activity to pair with drinking water. For example, I could say every time I open the fridge, I have to drink a glass of water. You don’t have to be too rigid on the rules, but at least creating a cue to remind you of your habit will increase the likelihood of you creating a good habit.
b.Create Cues.
James Clear talks a lot about cues - which are external stimuli that prompt you to do something. As I’ll discuss further in ‘make it invisible’ an example of a cue is a notification leading you to check Instagram.
It’s possible to optimise this idea and make it work for you. If you’re wanting to start running (aka one of the only reasons not to wear a mask outside), you could set out your exercise clothes, set an alarm to remind you when to go, and put your shoes by the door. Setting up these things the night before will remind you to factor running into your day. You want your environment to work with you not against you. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible.
2.Make it Easy
a.Prime the environment.
If you’re like me, then you may find yourself becoming UberEats’s best customer during iso. Often I have no energy to cook once I’m actually hungry - at that point, I only want to eat something that’s easy… and what’s easier than just ordering? The first step of making a habit easy is to Prime the Environment. If you want to get in the habit of eating all the food in your fridge so that you’re not throwing it out after you’ve eaten uber eats 5 nights in a row, then the best thing to do is go ahead and meal prep. This means getting the food ready to just heat up and eat - overall reducing the friction to healthy eating by already having the food ready to go. This may even mean cutting up fruit so that you reach for that rather than eating more of a chocolate bar. (Definitely not inspired by real-life events.)
b.Use the Two-Minute Rule.
You can do most things for two-minute; even the most gruelling tasks. The two-minute rule downscales all of your could-be-habits and makes them less intimidating. If you’re finding your house has become more like a pigsty rather than a home, then tidying can feel like a huge obstacle. Even just setting yourself a goal of cleaning dishes for two minutes and then being allowed to stop makes the task more approachable. You’ll probably find that when you start tidying, you’ll be happy to continue with it; however, the two-minute rule means you give yourself permission to stop, ultimately reducing the size of the hurdle for getting started.
How to Break a Bad Habit:
1.Make it Invisible
a.Reduce exposure.
Let me set the scene: Your alarm goes off. You roll over to it turn off ‘Africa by Toto’ and notice notifications from Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger (yeah I’m popular don’t worry about it *sarcasm*) You then click on your Instagram notification and after checking it you just start scrolling, maybe you pop over to the discover page when suddenly you’ve been in awake for an hour but haven’t left your bed yet. Yeah, same bro.
The idea is to reduce your exposure to this cue. You may be able to do this by logging out of your accounts so that you don’t get notifications for it until you actively want to engage with the notifications.
My personal favourite exposure reduction strategy is parenting your phone. It’s inspired by how parents put their kids to bed before they go to sleep and wake up before their kids wake up. What this means for your phone is turning it off (or just turning off wifi/data, putting on plane mode) before you go to bed and only turning those things back on after you are ready. This reduces exposure to your cues (notifications leading to wasting time on apps) so that you can wait to engage with them until you’ve had a chance to get your morning going.
2.Make it Difficult
a.Increase Friction.
I often find that I get distracted by my phone while I need to be doing schoolwork (obviously my phone is a big problem for me) - It’s often because checking your phone takes less friction than trying to learn a concept or write an assignment. Just by putting my phone in a different room, and setting up my work in a separate location - I’ve automatically increased the steps (mentally and literally) to checking my phone, thus increasing the friction. In order to use my phone, I have to get up and walk into the other room to check it. Increasing friction means increasing the number of steps between you and your bad habits.
The overall idea of creating good habits and breaking bad habits is to make incremental steps to alter these. None of your current habits were built in a day. By approaching the goals you have this way, you’re more likely to make sustainable changes. If you’re interested in learning more about habit building and destruction then check out Atomic Habits: http://www.robinsonsbooks.com.au/details.cgi?ITEMNO=9781847941831 (Robinson’s link to support local businesses, But also student life: BigW has it for $25.)
Kate is the 2020 Monsu Peninsula Education Officer & is studying a Bachelor of Nursing & Midwifery.