Happy autumn, everyone! As I write this, it’s a rainy 54 degrees outside, thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ian passing through. It seems like yesterday that we were sweltering away at 95º and humid in the unrelenting summer sun. Paraphrasing Papa Hemingway, the change of seasons seems to happen “two ways: gradually, then suddenly.”
This weekend is the start of October, which means we’re in Q4, the final quarter of the year. It’s also my birthday month, and I often think of my birthday as kind of my own personal New Year’s — a good time to check in on goals and if necessary, recommit.
This year, it’s most necessary. While I’ve managed to stick with some of my resolutions — like doing Dr. Ben’s SMaRT workout twice each week, and posting in this blog sorta-weekly — in other areas I’ve found bad habits slipping in here and there. (Who among us can resist forever the siren call of Jeni’s Splendid Creams?)
So I find myself, on this dreary Sunday, going back to James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits. I wrote about this one several years ago, and though I haven’t mentioned it lately, his ideas have stuck with me all along.
atomic truth bombs
One of my favorite Clear-isms is that “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Put another way, the person standing on the Olympic podium and the person watching on TV at home may have started out in the same place — dreaming of becoming an Olympic champion. The difference between the two is not the goal that they set, but the things they did each day in order to make that goal a reality.
Given this truth, we might naturally be tempted to create some heavy-duty resolutions, like working out every day for 90 minutes, come hell or high water. Go big or go home, as they say. But according to Clear, that’s exactly the wrong approach. The problem with “go big or go home” is that most of us will end up going home. Instead, Clear tells the story of someone who built an exercise habit by doing just the opposite:
“One member of our community, Mitch, set a rule for himself where he couldn't stay in the gym for more than 5 minutes at the beginning. He had to go every day, but he wasn't allowed to stay for 6 minutes. He was focused on building the habit of not missing workouts. After doing that for a month or two, he had established a routine of going to the gym and he started to focus on doing more difficult workouts. Today, Mitch is over 100 pounds lighter. (Which, to be fair, is not just the result of exercise, but also diet and lifestyle changes.)”
By making a habit small — atomic, even — we make it more approachable. This gives us the foundation on which we can build bigger habits as we go.
get your streak on
Since reading Clear’s book, I’ve done a pretty good job this year of shrinking my habits. Practice guitar for 5 minutes a day. Do one yoga stretch each morning. Things like that. But there’s something that still eludes me: consistency.
When it comes to consistency, perfectionism is a fickle frenemy. For example, the meditation app that I use, 10% Happier, has a cool tracking feature that gives instant feedback after each meditation session. At a glance, I can see that I’ve meditated a total of 868 days and logged a total of 21,843 minutes of mindfulness since downloading it a few years ago (though, to be fair, I was sleeping for much of that time). It also keeps track of my current “streak,” or how many days in a row I meditate.
Metaphysical humble-bragging aside, streaks can be a tremendously motivational tool. Jerry Seinfeld gets credit for his “Don’t Break the Chain” method, which leverages the power of the streak to get you to keep coming back to the task at hand day after day.
But this, I find, is a double-edged sword. Although I do get motivated by wanting to keep a streak alive, (even if it means meditating for just a few minutes), inevitably something comes up, a day slips by, and the streak is broken. Once this happens, I often find I’m subject to the “Oh hell,” effect. A day becomes two, becomes a week, and I tell myself I’ll get back to it when the spirit moves me.
embracing imperfection
This is true of all the habits I try to establish, from writing to meal-tracking to exercise. So this month, I’m going to try to embrace the imperfect with a new goal: go 20 for 31.
I’d love to Be Like Mitch and hit the gym every day for the next 31 days. But let’s be honest, stuff happens. Meetings run long, colds get caught. I need a little wiggle room. 20 out of the 31 days? That sounds doable. That’s five days per week, with a few days to spare.
20 days of visits to the gym — even if it’s just to sit on a mat and stretch for a few minutes. 20 days of meditation — even if it’s just one minute of deep breathing. 20 days of tracking my meals. And so on. It’s far from perfect (in fact, if we were in the classroom, it’d be a solid D), but it’s a lot more than I’ve been doing, and maybe that’s the happy medium.
I’ve even come up with a tracking tool of my own: a simple grid, with dates from 10/1 - 31 across the top, and the activities listed down the side. Each time I practice the activity, I add a number (1, 2, 3…) to the box on the grid.
The hope is that seeing the numbers add up will motivate me. I’ll keep you posted as the month progresses. In the meantime, feel free to share in the comments what you want do for 20 days this month, and we can keep each other accountable!