Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (17 page)

A friend explained how a colleague used the Strategy of Safeguards. “This older manager told me, ‘Lots of people at this company have affairs, and I've seen lots of marriages break up as a result.' He'd kept his own marriage strong by following five habits, and he told me I should follow them, too.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“Never flirt, even as a joke. Never have more than one drink with people from work. Never confide details from my personal life to people from work, and don't allow them to confide in me. Never allow myself to have a ‘special friend' at work. Unless it's an unmistakably professional context, don't meet alone with a colleague or client. Like if a client calls with tickets for the U.S. Open, never go in a twosome.”

I don't completely agree with all these suggested habits, but they're worth considering as possible safeguards. People often assume, “I would never have an affair”—that it's just a matter of good character and solid values. But in practice, temptation can sometimes arise over a long period of time and look quite different from what we expect. Slowly, a relationship changes. Or by contrast, a stressful or intense moment creates a sudden energy that, in the right environment, leads to an affair. If-then planning and habits can act as safeguards.

One thorny challenge within the Strategy of Safeguards is figuring out a way to allow ourselves to break a good habit occasionally, without losing the good habit altogether. After all, sometimes we
do
want to break a habit—to take advantage of a rare opportunity, say, or to celebrate. A very effective safeguard for that situation is the
planned exception
, which protects us again impulsive decisions. We're adults, we make the rules for ourselves, and we can mindfully choose to make an exception to a usual habit by planning that exception in advance. I generally work a full day, but on any day when I hand in a draft of a book, I spend the rest of the day reading in bed.

Say a person wants to learn Spanish, and to make progress as rapidly as possible, has created a habit of studying Spanish for an hour every morning. Then he goes on vacation, and he might think, when he wakes up on that first morning in a new hotel, “I'm supposed to study, but I'm on vacation, so I deserve a break.” This kind of spur-of-the-moment decision to break a habit shows a lack of self-control—and we dislike feeling out of control of ourselves. By contrast, he could decide, in advance, “When I'm on vacation, I'm not going to study Spanish, then I'll start again as soon as I'm home.” Very consciously, ahead of time, he makes a mindful exception, so that he's in control.

A planned exception works best when it's made for something
memorable
. A year from now, the Spanish student will think, “Oh, I remember all the fun I had on that great vacation.” That's one reason consumption snobbery is a good strategy; it means we make exceptions only for the most worthwhile indulgences. A good test of a planned exception is “How will I feel about the exception
later
? Will I think, ‘I'm so happy that I broke my usual habit to take advantage of that opportunity,' or ‘Well, looking back on it, I wish I'd made a different choice'?”

Exceptions also work best when they're limited, or when they have a built-in cutoff point. Skip the gym to have extra time to prepare for the annual retreat, not the weekly staff meeting. Make an exception for Christmas Day, not the Christmas season—Christmas is a holi
day
, after all. I saw this approach's effectiveness when Elizabeth told me, “We're having Thanksgiving dinner with Adam's family this year, and I've decided that I'm going to eat stuffing. Stuffing makes me feel like I'm really
partaking
of the holiday.”

“Great,” I said. “First, you've decided in advance to make an exception, so you feel in control. Second, stuffing is a symbol for Thanksgiving, so you're not depriving yourself of the quintessential Thanksgiving experience—and it's very helpful to avoid feeling deprived. Third, stuffing is self-limiting. How often can you eat stuffing? It's not an exception that will become a habit.”

An impressive solution.

The Strategy of Safeguards requires us to take a very realistic—perhaps even fatalistic—look at ourselves. But while acknowledging the likelihood of temptation and failure may seem like a defeatist approach, it helps us identify, avoid, and surmount our likely stumbling blocks.

So convenient a thing is it to be a
reasonable creature
, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

—Benjamin Franklin,
Autobiography

I
t's human nature: we seek loopholes. Even when we're deeply committed to a good habit, even when we
enjoy
that habit, we're often seeking possible justifications to excuse ourselves from it … just this once. With a little ingenuity, there's a loophole for every occasion.

A loophole is an argument for why we should be excused from following a good habit. We aren't mindfully planning the exception in advance, or acknowledging that we're making an exception; we're finding a loophole—usually on the spur of the moment—that lets us off the hook.

Loopholes often flit through our minds, almost below the level of consciousness. If we recognize them, we can judge them and stop kidding ourselves. It's when we deceive ourselves that our bad habits tyrannize us most.

Of the Four Tendencies, Obligers struggle most often against the temptations of loopholes. Rebels don't makes excuses to justify doing what they want; Upholders and Questioners feel a greater pressure from their own inner expectations to resist loopholes. Obligers act when they're held externally accountable, so they look for loopholes to excuse them from that accountability. Nevertheless, no matter what our Tendency, loopholes can prove quite enticing, so in order to identify them more readily and help myself guard against them, I made a list of the ten major categories.

Moral Licensing Loophole:
In moral licensing, we give ourselves permission to do something “bad” (eat potato chips, bust the budget) because we've been “good.” We reason that we've earned it or deserve it.

I've been losing weight steadily on this diet, so it will be okay for me to cut a few corners.

I've been so good about meditating, I deserve a day off.

I've done so many Christmas errands, I deserve to buy a little something for myself.

I'm much better about this than I used to be.

I saved so much by not buying
____
that I can buy
____
.

After all the work I've done today, I've earned a nice glass of wine.

In a popular, yet counterproductive, example of moral licensing, people use exercise to justify splurging on food or drink. “I went running today, so I've earned a few beers.” The fact is, exercise doesn't help with weight loss; weight loss is driven by changes in diet.

Sometimes we don't even
wait
to earn or deserve something “bad”; we argue that we're entitled to be “bad” now because we plan to be “good” in the future. That variation of the Moral Licensing Loophole is …

Tomorrow Loophole:
As part of my investigation of First Steps, I'd identified “tomorrow logic.”
Now
doesn't matter, because we're going to follow good habits tomorrow. And, as Little Orphan Annie famously observed, tomorrow is always a day away.

I'll be really frugal in January, so it doesn't matter if I blow the budget in December.

I can spend the day hanging out with friends because starting tomorrow, I'm going to buckle down, which means I'm definitely on track to finish my paper on time.

It doesn't matter what I eat now, because I'm starting a diet tomorrow. (Research shows that
people who plan to start dieting tomorrow
tend to overeat today.)

There's no point in tidying up because this weekend I'm doing a thorough spring cleaning.

I travel all the time for work, but I'll see more of my children during the summer.

My boss complains that I'm always late, but starting Monday, I'm always going to be on time.

A reader commented, “I use the tomorrow loophole to make some very bad, often life-altering spending habits out of line with my true philosophy on money. I love to start over on a new day/week/year, and I will overindulge because I want to ‘get it all out of the way today' before starting fresh and doing things properly tomorrow.” Another reader wrote: “At work, I act as if tomorrow is a magical day when everything will go smoothly, and I'll have loads of free time. So I tell myself I'll start tomorrow.”

Some people even fool themselves into thinking that extreme indulgence
today
will give them more self-control
tomorrow
. One reader posted, “I even go so far as to try to have a real blowout today, to get to the point of sickening myself, so that I will not be tempted by the bad food/behavior tomorrow—thus helping my tomorrow self to be better. It doesn't make sense, now that I write it down.” Spending an entire day watching TV doesn't make a person feel less like watching TV, or more like working, the next morning.

False Choice Loophole:
This is the loophole-seeking strategy I most often invoke. I pose two activities in opposition, as though I have to make an either/or decision, when in fact, the two aren't necessarily in conflict. Here are some of my own false choices:

I haven't been exercising. Too busy writing.

I don't have time to edit my draft, I've got too many emails to answer.

If I go to sleep earlier, I won't have any time to myself.

I'm so busy, I'll make those appointments once things calm down.

I can't make the bed or put clothes in the hamper, I have to arrive on time.

A reader posted on my blog: “Dieting doesn't actually reflect one of my core values, it can't. I firmly believe that life is too short, that we need to make the most of it—and for me, that means going out, seeing friends, exploring new countries, new places, new tastes—and that doesn't sit well with long term, slow, steady weight loss. If The Boyfriend shouts up the stairs ‘pub'—as he does quite frequently—I'm not going to say ‘oooh, I can't, I need to eat lettuce tonight.' Sorry, but if I get knocked down by a bus tomorrow I'm not going to remember the lettuce as my head spins, but I will remember having fun chats and laughing with himself.” She contrasts two choices—embracing life to the fullest and staying home to eat lettuce—but are these the only two alternatives?

Another reader commented, “I use the False Choice loophole all the time at work. I make to-do lists with some items that are easy and fun, and some that are way too ambitious, then I do the easy, fun things because ‘I have to do them, they're on my list,' but then I don't have time for the hard things. This results in procrastination on the large or unpleasant tasks under the guise of being productive.”

Lack of Control Loophole:
Weirdly, we often have an illusion of control over things we can't control—“If I spend a lot of time worrying, the plane is less likely to crash,” “If I play my lucky numbers, I'll win the lottery eventually”—but deny control over things we can control (“If my cell phone buzzes, I have to check it”). We argue that circumstances force us to break a habit, but often, we have more control than we admit.

“When I work in my favorite coffee shop,” a friend told me, “I absolutely have to get a muffin. Their muffins are so good, I can't resist, but I really don't want to eat them.”

“Why don't you work in a different coffee shop?” I asked.

“Oh, but that's my favorite coffee shop,” she said earnestly.

“Right,” I said. “Because you always have one of those delicious muffins when you go there.”

“That's not why I go,” she said. Then she laughed. “Well, now that you mention it, maybe it is.”

Although we can't control every aspect of a situation, we usually can control it more than we tell ourselves.

I travel all the time.

It's too hot. It's too cold. It's too rainy.

I have an injury.

I'd had a few beers.

These chips have been specially engineered by the food industry to be irresistible.

My kids take up all my time.

I've never been able to resist this.

I started without realizing what I was doing.

With everything going on right now, I can't be expected to stick to a good habit. (There's a great running gag in the movie
Airplane
, in which the air-traffic control supervisor remarks, as he lights up a cigarette, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.” Later, as he takes a drink, he adds, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.” Then later, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines” and “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.”)

The Lack of Control Loophole is closely tied to another popular loophole …

Arranging to Fail Loophole:
It's odd. Instead of fleeing temptation, we often plan to succumb. In what Professors Lee Beach and G. Alan Marlatt dubbed “
apparently irrelevant decisions
,” we make a chain of seemingly harmless decisions that allow us covertly to engineer the very circumstances that we'll find irresistible.

I've long been obsessed by author J. M. Barrie's
strange, brilliant skeleton of a book
,
The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island
, about three boys who set sail to seek the adventure of being capsized. I'm particularly haunted by its first line, “We set out to be wrecked”; to fail was the very purpose of their undertaking.

I'll just check my email quickly before I go to the meeting, and then make this one call … oh no, it's so late, there's no point in going to the meeting now.

I drove across town to that gourmet grocery store to buy broccoli, and I ended up buying their special cheesecake. Who could resist?

I'll buy some scotch to have in the house in case someone stops by.

My husband and I love to go on “all-inclusive” cruise vacations, and I can't resist the all-you-can-eat food.

I'll play a video game for fifteen minutes before I start working. Okay, another fifteen minutes.

I'm going to lie on the sofa so I can brainstorm ideas in comfort.

A friend told me, “I know a guy in L.A. who has some trouble with gambling. The last time I saw him, he said, ‘I just lost a ton of money in Vegas.' I said, ‘I thought you weren't supposed to go there anymore.' He said, ‘I'm not, but I didn't go there to gamble.' I asked, ‘So why were you there?' He said, ‘I bought a new car, and I wanted to take it for a test drive.' He was absolutely serious.”

We set out to be wrecked.

“This Doesn't Count” Loophole:
We tell ourselves that for some reason, this circumstance doesn't “count.” I lived in a group house after college, and my housemate's boyfriend one day said to me, in a patronizing tone, “Boy, I wish I had as much free time as you do, to read for pleasure.” He practically lived with us, so I saw how he spent his time, and I answered, “But you have lots of free time, you watch a ton of sports on television.” He said, “Oh, that doesn't count.” But everything counts.

I'm on vacation.

It's holiday season. (On average, people gain one pound during the winter holidays, and most don't ever lose it; overweight people tend to gain more.)

What are weekends for?

I'm sick.

These are just the leftovers from my son's plate.

This is a one-time thing. (Samuel Johnson observed, “
Those faults which we cannot conceal
from our own notice, are considered, however frequent, not as habitual corruptions, or settled practices, but as casual failures, and single lapses.”)

I ordered it for both of us, which means you're eating half, even if I eat the whole thing.

I've totally given up drinking. Except on the weekends and when I'm out with friends.

I'm about to exercise, so this will burn right off.

I don't even want this.

This period of my life is so stressful that I can't be expected to do anything except focus on my deadline/case on trial/relative in the hospital.

This loophole is an occupational hazard for my sister Elizabeth. For a TV writer, shooting a pilot is thrilling, but it's also extraordinarily stressful. She's been through this several times, and she told me, “The temptation when shooting a pilot is to say, ‘Nothing else matters. We're shooting a pilot, this is completely separate from real life, it doesn't count.' ”

“Everything counts,” I said with a sigh.

We can always mindfully decide to make an exception, but there are no freebies, no going off the grid, no get-out-of-jail-free cards, nothing that stays in Vegas.

Questionable Assumption Loophole:
We make assumptions that influence our habits—often, not for the better—and many of those assumptions become less convincing under close scrutiny. A reader posted a good example: “I set up weird mental blocks around my time. For instance, if it's 9 a.m. and I have an appointment at 11 a.m., I'll think ‘Oh, I have to go somewhere in two hours, so I can't really start anything serious' and then end up wasting my whole morning waiting for one thing to happen.”

Our assumptions sound reasonable … but are they?

This is taking too long, I should be done already.

I can't start working until my office is clean.

I'm too busy to take the stairs. It's faster to wait in this long elevator line.

All creative people are messy.

I've already showered, so I can't work out.

We might need this someday.

I'm so far behind, there's no point in doing anything to catch up.

I need to get good value from this all-you-can-eat buffet.

My instructor will be angry with me because I've missed so many times.

I've been working out, so those extra pounds I've gained must be muscle.

This will help me concentrate.