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[EA#7] When Habits Fail, Just do This

2024-08-04

So… what to do when those habits fail?

Let’s rewind a bit first. My personal system I’ve been so proud of just fell apart like the Roman empire.

I swore to myself this would not happen this summer. But like I mentioned last week, Finns take these holidays seriously. And it seems to be pretty contagious. It’s hard to stick to your routines when there’s a surplus of calories around you, tons of interesting things to do, and kids to take care of.

(By the way, as a sidebar I must mention I never thought about the Roman empire before folks online told me men always think about it. Super interesting how our brains work in this sense…)

Anyways. I’m happy. Quality time with kids. Nature. Food. Family.

But not going to lie: I’m starting to get not-so-little anxious with deadlines getting closer, day by day. And thanks to my daily routines falling apart, well…yeah, the dreaded last-minute grind is a tangible threat in the near future.

But wait!

This wasn’t supposed to happen!

The Habit Industry has Failed us

Yup. We’ve all read the books.

Atomic Habits to the rescue! Rewire your brain! Just tap into the Power of Habit!

Not so fast.

I mean, these books are great. I’m not saying they’re not. I love them and they contain a ton of useful ideas.

But.

They’re not the solution.

Or, when’s the last time you heard a doctor recommend a morbidly obese patient to grab a habit book instead of weight loss surgery? Or, to any patient for that matter?

The books alone do nothing. Plus even more than anything else, they’re great masterpieces in copywriting. They’re sources of endless motivational quotes that dance on your tongue and spread in social media like wildfire.

Time for a Lil Dose of Honesty

We all need tactics that fit our lives. Let’s be crystal clear here: What we often call habits are in reality just routines that we stick to. Habits, on the other hand, are neurologically wired. Think about it: You don’t miss a day of brushing your teeth, do you? You’ll feel super weird if you skip it.

It just comes to you like magic.

Writing academic prose? Yeah. Happy to skip a day, week or even a month if it’s just possible! No weird feelings. Unless of course there’s a deadline coming.

So it’s the deadline and not your wiring causing the anxiety.

And you know what? That’s okay. Things being what they are is always okay.

A Little bit of Fun Goes a long Way

So how to get things done when you’re off-routine? Like, for example, when you’re on a long holiday and it’s tough to stick to them.

Make if fun.

Combine work in one way or another into something that you enjoy.

A few days ago, once I realised I just cannot get myself to “stop, sit, think and write” on this holiday, I started to attach my thinking and writing tasks to something fun. In my case, that fun for me is daily walks in the awwsum Finnish nature.

Seriously, I’ll add a pic below, it’s amazing here. Obviously I’m biased this way as I was born here, so in your smart head you should now replace the pic below with your natural ideal habitat:

So, to make progress in my intellectual work — writing stuff that matters — here’s what I do (and you can do too):

  1. Walk and listen to a related book or in most cases a YouTube video until I’m almost back home
  2. When almost back home, I open AudioPen and start ranting, without any worries about structure or the use of correct words. This is a “brain dump” of everything that is in the intersection of what I’m working on (in this case a funding proposal on hybrid work) and whatever I learned when listening just a bit earlier
  3. When home, I give the AudioPen transcript to ChatGPT to just grab the main important topics and ideas. All you need to do here is just instruct it the way you want: If you want actionable ideas, tell it to extract those. If you want to capture problems around your topic, just tell it.

And then dump the bullet points into whatever I’m working on.

Oh, and related to the last point, I think people overthink their prompts. These tools (ChatGPT and friends) are getting great understanding your intention. And if they get your instructions wrong… so what? Just tell them to redo it. With humans, errors like this get expensive and are time-consuming. With our future robot overlords, you lose like 30 seconds. So don’t worry too much.

This process helps me “do at least something” every day, while having a great time. Walking without any gadgets is, of course, better for you, but this is work. But it doesn’t feel like work.

And this is a great way to reduce a lot of that anxiety about future deadlines.

To put it in a more general format:

  • Consume while doing fun light exercise
  • Let AI capture your brain dump
  • Use AI to derive key points

It’s one of those win-win situations that I always look for: You have fun while working while exercising. And speaking of exercise…

Focus on the Routines that Matter

Let me share with you something nasty:

If your daily routine looks like this and you enjoy it, great. I’m happy for you! Pinky-swear.

And as long as you don’t require others to follow your crazy schedule, you’re probably a stellar hire.

But I could never.

Not on a daily basis.

I grind when I have to, no problemo Sir. But I don’t think academia has to, or can, operate on daily requirements like that.

Most people need space for thinking. Downtime is critical for cognitive function. And if you’re paid for 7.25 hours of work per day (or whatever it is for you), that’s what should be required.

In the schedule above that was proudly posted by some professor as an example of “what work should look like”, I fail to understand how the two routines that really matter can work:

  • Rest
  • Exercise

Rest well. Move your body well. Never skip these two.

Fail to do either of these on a daily basis, and the first thing that suffers is your focus. Then your intellectual output. Finally, you will suffer, both mentally and physically.

Prioritise those two and build the rest of your day around them, ideally figuring out ways to make at least some of it fun!

About the author 

Simo Hosio  -  Simo is an award-winning scientist, Academy Research Fellow, research group leader, professor, and digital builder. This site exists to empower people to build passion projects that support professional growth and make money.

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