Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (22 page)

“You could track it on a map! Like, ‘We've walked to San Francisco.' So satisfying.”

“Yes. Already I feel very righteous, seeing the numbers mount up. Plus it makes work much better. Our notes call with the studio about the script lasted forty minutes, and I walked the whole time. And on top of that I told Sarah that I thought we'd snack less if we were on the treadmill.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “People are sensitive to the slightest bit of inconvenience. Having to get off the treadmill makes it that much harder to run to the kitchen. How do you feel?”

“My legs definitely got tired, but I think I'll adjust. The most important thing, though, is whether it will help lower my A1C level. For me, it's
all
about the blood sugar.”

After some time passed, I checked in with Elizabeth again. She'd instantly embraced the habit of the treadmill desk, and was logging about five miles daily. She still didn't know exactly how it was affecting the all-important A1C level, because this test had to be done in her doctor's office.

“Last time, my A1C level was terrible,” Elizabeth told me, “and bringing that number down is the most important thing for me. If the treadmill desk deals with that, it's a game changer. Especially for people who have type 2 diabetes. I'm surprised people aren't
issued
treadmill desks, because compared to the cost of medicine and doctor visits, they're a bargain. Or I'd think that Google-type companies would offer them to their employees. Plus it helps with stress. When things blew up at work, I reacted better than I would have otherwise, and when I leave work, I know that no matter what else did or didn't happen, I've walked five miles.”

Until Elizabeth got the treadmill desk, she hadn't been able to make a habit of exercise. Now that she could use the Strategy of Pairing—bolstered by the Strategies of Convenience, Monitoring, and Foundation—the habit had kicked in hard.

Also, Elizabeth is an Obliger. She told me, “I've realized that it's easier for me to exercise when it feels like obligation to my diabetes.”

Once again, I saw that when people frame their habits in the way that makes the most sense to them, they succeed better. It would never occur to me to characterize exercise as “an obligation to diabetes,” but I could immediately see why that formation resonated with her.

Because of her health issues, getting more exercise was a truly significant habit for Elizabeth, and I was thrilled that I'd helped her to form that habit, but sometimes it struck me that my preoccupation with the subject of habits was … petty. Was it ridiculous to devote so much time to thinking about how to eat better, or sleep more, or clear out my to-do list faster?

Life was too solemn, too splendid to be frittered away in such trivial concerns. But while concentrating on my habits might seem small-minded, in the end, mastering those habits would allow me to put these questions out of my mind, to transcend them. I could turn all my attention to worthier matters, and yet be assured of the solidity of the architecture of my everyday life.

These small, everyday actions had their own value; the pressure of my daily habits would mold my future. These habits were little things on their own, but their combined weight was massive. I thought again of one of my favorite lines from Samuel Johnson: “It is by studying little things, that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.”

A
s the saying goes, I'm unique, just like everyone else. While we can learn about ourselves by looking in a mirror—as in the “Self-Knowledge” section—we also learn about ourselves by considering ourselves in comparison to others. This section encompasses the Strategies of Clarity, Identity, and Other People, which, by placing us in the context of other people, illuminate our individual values, interests, and temperament. And when we understand ourselves better, we can do a better job of shaping our habits.

People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply: by the lives they lead.

—James Baldwin,
No Name in the Street

O
ne of the great puzzles of habit is the fact that some habits form too easily, while others don't seem to stick. Why? There are many answers, but sometimes, I realized, the problem is a lack of
clarity
. I feel ambivalent: I want to do something, but I also don't want to do it; or I want one thing, but I also want something that conflicts with it; or everyone seems to agree that some habit is important, but it's not important to me.

It took me a long time to grasp the importance of the Strategy of Clarity; I'm always eager to focus on the concrete, and “clarity” seemed somewhat abstract. But it turns out that clarity is an extremely important element of habits, and extremely practical, too.

Two kinds of clarity support habit formation:
clarity of values
and
clarity of action
. The clearer I am about what I value, and what action I expect from myself—not what other people value, or expect from me—the more likely I am to stick to my habits.

Research suggests that when we have conflicting goals, we don't manage ourselves well. We become anxious and paralyzed, and we often end up doing nothing. When I reflected on the habits that I'd struggled with over the years, I realized how often my hesitation and backsliding were due to the lack of
clarity.
Should I use free time on school-day mornings to work on my emails or to read aloud to Eleanor? Should I work every Saturday afternoon, or should I devote that time to leisure? Should I encourage Eliza to do her homework in the kitchen, in the company of the family, or should she study in her room, away from noise and distractions? I feel ambivalent, and my uncertainty about these competing claims depletes my energy. Like Buridan's Ass, the donkey that starves because it can't decide between two bales of hay, I become paralyzed by indecision.

As I talked to people about habits and happiness, certain pairs of conflicting values kept cropping up:

As these pairs illustrate, often when we experience a lack of clarity, it's because two important vales conflict. They're
both
important, so we agonize about which value to honor in the habits we pursue.

When I face values that seem to conflict, I first remind myself first to consider whether this conflict might be a false choice. Can I choose both?

A mother in Eleanor's class told me, “I couldn't go to my exercise class because my son wanted me to read to him.” She seemed pleased with herself, and I imagine she thought, “I'm willing to sacrifice my own desires to be attentive to my son.” (I suspect that she's an Obliger.)

Though I gave a noncommittal response, to me that seemed like a false choice. I wanted to say, “Being a good parent is a very high value, but what value should be served in
that particular situation
? Maybe you can exercise
and
read to your son, by reading to him during a non-exercise time.”

When we push ourselves to get clarity, when we identify the problem, sometimes we spot new solutions. I heard about a couple who went to marriage counseling because they were fighting constantly about chores, and whether a clean house or ample leisure time was more important. They kept arguing—until they decided to quit marriage counseling and spend the money on a weekly cleaning service. A friend loves taking long bike rides on the weekends, but he also wants to spend time with his family. For a long time, whatever he did with his day, he wished he'd done something else. When he pushed himself to state plainly the nature of the conflict, he saw a solution. On Saturdays and Sundays, he gets up at 5:00 a.m., rides for six hours, and spends the rest of the day at home.

It's easier to stick to a habit when we see, with clarity, the connection between the habit and the value it serves. I make my bed, because I know that the habit makes me feel calmer. I give my daughters hello and good-bye kisses, because that habit makes me feel more loving.

It's probably true that the worldly values of pleasure, vanity, and fastidiousness are just as persuasive as higher values. I bet more people brush their teeth to prevent bad breath than to prevent cavities. A fitness trainer told me, “Men tend to come in because they want to improve a skill, like their tennis game, or regain something they've lost, like being able to walk up stairs without puffing. Women want to look better. Everyone adds health justifications later.”

When it's not apparent that a habit has value, people are less likely to follow it. People often stop taking their medication when they don't see an obvious connection between the medicine and their condition—as sometimes happens with people taking medication for high blood pressure. Although I'd always vaguely intended to get the flu vaccine as a family, we never did until Elizabeth learned that her diabetes might have been triggered by a bad case of the flu. A few days of the flu? Flu vaccines didn't seem worth the bother. Risk of diabetes? We get the vaccine every year.

Clarity is one reason that the Strategy of Scheduling is so helpful. It's important to have time to write; to have time with my family; to read. Instead of spending my day in a chaos of warring priorities, and feeling as though whatever I do I'm leaving important things undone, I can use the clarity of Scheduling to guarantee that I have time and energy to devote to each activity that matters.

Clarity also helps shine a spotlight on aspects of ourselves that we may wish to conceal. We should pay special attention to any habit that we try to
hide
. The desire to prevent family or coworkers from acting as witnesses—from seeing what's on the computer screen or knowing how much time or money we're spending on a habit—is a clue that in some way, our actions don't reflect our values. One reader wrote, “I go on secret shopping sprees, and hide the bags in the storage room. I don't want anyone to know what I spent.”

One way to attack a hidden bad habit—secret smoking, secret shopping, secret monitoring of an ex-sweetheart on Facebook—is to force it out into public view. We may choose to give up the habit if we can't keep it secret. Or we may be reassured to realize that others share our habit. One reader wrote, “My secret habit was watching the Hallmark Channel. I confessed, laughing but embarrassed, to a friend, and she said, ‘Me, too!' ”

True, we might hide a habit for other reasons. A reader posted: “I'm a closet writer. Whenever anyone asks me what I've been up to, I never tell them that writing a novel is occupying half my time. I somehow feel dishonest, but there's something about telling people I'm writing that makes me feel overly exposed.” Many people keep secret blogs.

We should also pay special attention to anything we feel compelled to
explain
. Paradoxically, unnecessary self-justification can be a feature ofdenial. Once I found myself telling Jamie about the many reasons that I hadn't gotten any work done that day—though he didn't care how much or how little work I'd completed. When I stopped talking, I realized that my desire to explain myself to him stemmed from a need to hide something from myself. I didn't want to admit that I'd violated my work habits.

A friend told me a poignant story. “I got in line at the grocery store,” he recounted, “and I realized that I knew the woman ahead of me. She didn't notice me, and before I could say anything, she started a conversation with the cashier. She pointed to the food she was buying—really junky food, like chips, frozen blintzes, cookies—and said, ‘My kids make me buy all this stuff, they love it.' But she doesn't have any kids! She doesn't even have a
cat
. I felt so bad about overhearing it that I switched lines.”

In Tory Johnson's memoir
The Shift
, she writes, “
From the day I got my driver's license
, I developed a habit of pigging out at drive-throughs. When I rolled up alone to the window, I would pretend I was ordering for a few people by saying out loud, ‘What was it they wanted?' As if the clerk at the window cared.”

Clarity requires us to acknowledge what we're doing.

Clarity of values also makes it possible to identify
red-herring habits
. A red-herring habit is a habit that we loudly claim to want to adopt, when we don't actually intend to do so. Often, red-herring habits reflect other people's values or priorities. “I'm going to start cooking every night.” “I'm going to quit buying lottery tickets.” Like tomorrow logic, red-herring habits are dangerous, because they allow us to fool ourselves about our actual intentions.

As an Upholder who takes all announced aims very seriously—perhaps too seriously—I get concerned when I suspect that I'm hearing someone declare a red-herring habit.

I became aware of red-herring habits when I sat next to a man at a dinner party. “I'm going to start exercising,” he said in an unconvincing tone, “I really need to.”

“Why
don't
you exercise?” I asked gingerly.

“I don't have time, and I travel so much. Also my knee bothers me.”

“It sounds like maybe you don't really want to exercise.”

“Oh, I have to,” he answered. “Periodically my wife and kids try to get me started. I'm going to start soon.”

I understood. He didn't want to exercise, but he was using a red-herring habit to pretend—to his family and himself—that he was going to start exercising. One of these days. Ironically, if my dinner partner had said, “My family is pressuring me, but I have no intention of exercising,” the act of acknowledging his choice, and its consequences, might have led him to decide that he
did
want to exercise. By repeating a red herring, he avoided admitting his true intention, which allowed him to deny what he was doing.

A friend used the Strategy of Clarity to avoid this trap. “I know it would be good to exercise,” she told me, “but I have two kids, I work full-time, and if I tried to exercise, it would be one more thing to worry about. When my kids are older, I'll deal with it.”

“Great!” I said.

She looked relieved but also suspicious. “I thought you would try to convince me.”

“To me, it seems better to say, ‘At this point, I'm not going to worry about exercising' than to keep saying ‘I should exercise' but then never do it. Either way, you're not exercising, but because you have clarity about what you're doing, you feel in control. And you won't drain yourself feeling bad about it.” Also, I predict, her feeling of self-control will help her do better if she does decide to start exercising, because she won't tell herself, “I've been trying and failing for years to do this.”

What red-herring habits do I have? I should entertain more. My mother loves to entertain, and does it beautifully. I keep telling myself, “I will entertain!” But then I don't. I keep saying, “I should put my dishes in the dishwasher instead of the sink.” But I just put my dishes in the sink.

Some red-herring habits I've already abandoned: “I'm going to make my daughters write thank-you notes.” “I'm going to read a poem every night.” I'm going to keep a record of everything I read on Goodreads.” “I'm going to use my good china.” Someday, I vow, I will use my good china. But in the meantime, it's
such a relief
to give up this and other red-herring habits.

People in the Four Tendencies show different patterns with red-herring habits. Upholders form fairly few red-herring habits, because they tend to take expectations very seriously, and act on them unless they're clearly optional (like reading a poem every night). Questioners sometimes espouse red-herring habits when they're not actually convinced that the proposed habit is sufficiently justified to deserve follow-through. Obligers claim red-herring habits when they feel the pressure of others' expectations, but with no framework of accountability to push them into action. Rebels have no trouble saying, “Nope, I'm not going to do that,” so red-herring habits don't trouble them much.

By providing clarity—or not—our words can make it easier or harder to keep a habit.
People who use language that emphasizes
that they're acting by their own choice and exercising control (“I don't,” “I choose to,” “I'm going to,” or “I don't want to”) stick to their habits better than people who use language that undermines their self-efficacy (“I can't,” “I'm not allowed to,” or “I'm supposed to”). There's a real difference between “I don't” and “I can't.”

The very words we choose to characterize our habits can make them seem more or less appealing. “Engagement time” sounds more interesting than “email time”; “playing the piano” sounds more fun than “practicing the piano”; and what sounds more attractive, a “personal retreat day” or a “catch-up day” or a “ditch day” or a “mandatory vacation day”? (People of different Tendencies would choose different terms.) Would a person rather “take a dance class” or “exercise”? Some people like the word “quit,” as in “I've quit sugar”; some are put off by its overtones of addiction. A woman told me, “I try not to use the words ‘forever' and ‘never,' but I like the word ‘permanent.' ”