Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (23 page)

Many people report that they want to “feel less stressed.” But “stress” is a vague word, and because it doesn't pinpoint any concrete problems, it doesn't suggest any solutions. When I say “I'm stressed out,” I blur the connection between the way I
act
and the way I
feel
. So, instead of saying “I'm stressed,” I press myself to identify exactly what's bothering me. “I work at home, so I feel as though I should be working all the time.” “I'm working with someone who drains my energy.” “I want us to have fun family adventures, but we all need a lot of downtime at home, too.” “I can't decide what opportunities to pursue.” “My laptop isn't syncing properly with my desktop.” “I get flustered when both my daughters talk at me at the same time.” “I feel awkward in this social situation.” Once I've spelled out the problem in words, the greater clarity usually helps me to spot a solution.

Besides clarity of values, another kind of clarity supports habit formation:
clarity of
action.
The more specific I am about what action to take, the more likely I am to form a habit. A habit to “be more mindful,” for instance, is too vague to be a habit, but “have a moment of gratitude every time I walk into my apartment building” or “take a photo of something interesting every day” are concrete actions that can become habits.

Clarity of action is often a problem with medicine. Studies suggest that up to 55 percent of adults don't take their medicines as prescribed, and
several of the top reasons for this failure
reflect a lack of clarity: if people wonder “Why should I bother to take these pills, anyway?” or “When am I supposed to take those pills?” or “Did I take my pills today?” they're less likely to take them. That's why some of the old familiar pill bottles have been replaced by blister packs with compartments clearly labeled with the day of the week.

To achieve greater clarity in my actions, I often invoke a “bright-line rule,” a useful concept from law. A bright-line rule is a clearly defined rule or standard that eliminates any need for interpretation or decision making; for example, observing the Sabbath, or using
The
New York Times Manual of Style and Usage
to decide grammar questions, or never buying bottled water, or answering every email within twenty-four hours, or calling home every Sunday night are bright-line rules.

One familiar bright-line rule is the habit of making purchases only from a prepared list as a way to eliminate impulse shopping. A reader explained, “I shop from a list, not only for groceries, but for clothing and cosmetics as well. This is not only to save money, but to avoid clutter.”

I already adhere to many bright-lines rules. I never use that instrument of torture, the snooze alarm. Eleanor and I leave for school at exactly 7:50 every morning. Jamie and I disagree about one bright-line rule: I think that once you decide to go to an event, you go; Jamie has a more fluid view (I'm an Upholder; he's a Questioner).

People have their own idiosyncratic bright-line habits. I met a guy who told me that he was “vegetarian before dinner.” A friend told me, “When I got married, I decided to say yes to sex whenever possible because our relationship would be better with more sex.”

Another friend told me, “My habit is never to have more than
three
. Of whatever. Three beers, three TV shows.”

“How did you come up with this?” I asked. “Why three?”

“I don't remember,” she said. “I've followed this rule for as long as I can remember. What's scary is how faithfully I followed it as a kid.” Unconventional, but effective.

As an underbuyer, I very much dislike buying new clothes, and when I do have new things, I have to fight the impulse to “save” them, to keep them crisp and unused by continuing to wear my shabby clothes. I decided to make a bright-line habit of throwing away anything that had a hole.

To my surprise, this habit turned out to be an utter failure. I simply
cannot
throw something away simply because it has a hole. I'd coach myself, “This is my new habit! Come on, into the trash with that sock!” But I couldn't do it. Bright-lines rules work only if we follow them.

One morning, as I was walking home after dropping Eleanor off at school, I had one of those rare moments of reflection when I step back from my daily concerns to take a more sweeping view of my actions. I was pouring energy into changing my habits, yet when I asked myself, “What change would add more happiness to my life?” none of my habits addressed an issue at the top of my list: I wanted to see my sister more often.

The problem, I realized, was that I didn't have a time dedicated to Elizabeth. I see my parents frequently because I've set aside specific times to visit, at Christmas and in August. No decisions, no planning—just pick the dates and buy the plane tickets. I see my parents at other times as well, but I
always
see them at those times.

Elizabeth and I didn't have this kind of standing plan. Every other year we overlap in Kansas City for Christmas, and occasionally I go to Los Angeles for work, but that wasn't enough. Our plans never crystallized. When would we do it? Where would we go? Which family would travel? Too many decisions. No clarity, no action.

Having identified the problem, I considered possible solutions. Elizabeth's and Adam's work schedules as TV writers are highly unpredictable; summer is a very busy season for them; they have a young child. My family was on a much more predictable schedule. I came up with a proposal, and I called Elizabeth to discuss it.

“Listen,” I said, “I really wish we could get our two families together more often. I think we should have a standing plan, where we get together once a year.”

“That would be great, but when?”

“This is what I've figured out. You and Adam don't have much control of your schedule, so we plan for Presidents' Weekend, because that's a three-day weekend, and Eliza and Eleanor actually get four days. It may turn out that you have to work, but you'd have as good a chance then as with any other three-day weekend. We pick some great hotel within driving distance from L.A., so you don't have to buy airplane tickets. That way, if you have to cancel at the last minute, you won't lose a ton of money, and you won't spend much time making arrangements. Even if you three can't make it, the four of us will come anyway, and we'll have fun either way. So it's simple, with no stress if you have to cancel.”

“But that means you guys have to fly all the way out here.”

“Now that Eliza and Eleanor are older, it's not a big deal. It's a lot easier for us to travel than for you. And we'll enjoy California.”

“And we do this every year?”

“If it works, we can stick to it. No decisions. Easy is more important than fabulous.”

Elizabeth and Adam both thought this sounded like a great idea, so I bought a
guide to southern California
, we picked the Santa Barbara area as our destination, and we made our reservations. Flash forward: Elizabeth had to cancel because of work, then at the last minute, her schedule changed again, and she, Adam, and Jack were able to come. It worked perfectly.

After that, I realized that I could tie other yearly habits to trigger dates like Presidents' Weekend. For instance, Labor Day now triggers me to schedule the family flu vaccine. St. Patrick's Day triggers me to review finances with Jamie (green). A friend and I share the same birthday, and each year, we have lunch to celebrate; I almost never see her otherwise, but knowing that I'll see her once a year helps maintain our friendship.

Trigger dates also save me from feeling guilty. Because I won't worry about holiday shopping until after Thanksgiving, I don't feel guilty about not shopping earlier. Clarity.

Around this time, I called Elizabeth for an update on the treadmill desk. It had made her life better than before, to a gratifyingly dramatic degree.

“I love it!' she said. “I've walked almost two hundred miles.”

“That's amazing.”

“I've figured out it's really a key to controlling my blood sugar. When I was on jury duty and on vacation, my blood sugar went way up, even though I was eating the same way. Now I know that I have to exercise.”

“How much do you walk each day?”

“It depends on what's happening at work. If we have notes calls, I get lots of treadmill time. Some days, I walk more than seven miles. Plus work is more satisfying when I'm getting exercise accomplished at the same time. There's something about the treadmill that makes you feel, ‘I'm up for this challenge! I'm striding toward success!' Instead of feeling like I'm under an avalanche, I feel in control.”

“And it's easy to get yourself to do it?”

“Once it's your desk, it's your desk. It's not a hard habit to keep.”

One regrets the loss
even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.

—Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of Dorian Gray

J
ust as I'd been slow to grasp the importance of the Strategy of Clarity, I'd been studying habits a long time before I began to appreciate the importance of
identity
. My idea of “this is the kind of person I am” is so bound up in my habits and actions that it's hard for me to see. But eventually, I realized that my sense of identity makes it easier or harder to change a habit.

My friend Maria helped me understand the power of identity.

I knew Maria because her son had been in Eliza's kindergarten class. She had a cheerful energy and an air of mischief that made me want to get to know her better—and in fact, a few years later, we started working together to make the videos for my blog. One day, after we'd finished making the latest set of videos, we started talking about habits. Purely by coincidence, of course.

“Any habits that you'd like to change?” I proposed. “Want to be a habits guinea pig for my notions?”

“As a matter of fact, I'd like to cut back on my drinking,” Maria said. “I enjoy drinking, especially wine, but I pay the next day. Even if I've just had a glass of wine or two, I don't feel great. Also, normally I have crystal-clear recollections of conversations, but when I drink, it's hazier. Last week I had a great conversation with my brother at dinner, and we were really connecting—but when I try to remember exactly what we both said, I can't. Plus,” she added, “I have this feeling that if I nailed this down, other things would be easier—exercise, food, things like that.”

“True,” I said.

As an Abstainer, I felt obligated to point out the Abstainer option, but Maria wasn't interested.

“No.” She shook her head. “I don't want to give up alcohol. The thing is, I'm Italian, I love great food and wine, I want to enjoy myself. And I think people expect it of me. I have a friend who says, ‘Are you having a glass of wine? Okay, I will, too.' People expect that I'll always be tons of fun.”

“You are
always
tons of fun!” I said. “You
know
you are.”

“Yes,” she admitted with a laugh. “I am tons of fun.”

“Also, people will probably hardly notice how much you're drinking—unless they're using you to pace themselves, like ‘Oh, Maria's having another glass of wine, so I can too.' Research shows that
people eat and drink more or less
depending on what the people around them do. And you want to do what's right for
you
.”

“I do love to have a great time,” she said, “but all that drinking isn't making me feel good.”

“So you need to figure out how much and when you want to drink.”

After considering different scenarios, Maria decided on the habits she wanted to adopt. She wouldn't drink wine with dinner at home; for an ordinary dinner at a restaurant with friends, she'd limit herself to one glass of wine; for special celebrations, she'd allow herself several glasses. Maria and I emailed back and forth about her attempts to form a new habit, and at first I mostly focused on Maria's rules for herself—
when
and
how much
she'd drink. (We Upholders always want to know the rules.) We also discussed whether she could come up with a substitute drink—something festive but nonalcoholic. Maria invented a “family drink” of sparkling water with pomegranate juice and lime to drink with her husband, Tom, who was also trying to cut down. I loved the idea of a family drink for the end-of-day drink ritual.

Over time, however, it became clear that for Maria, her
sense of
identity
was a far more significant obstacle than sticking to the rules. Even though Maria had highlighted this issue during our very first conversation, I hadn't realized its significance. Her identity as an Italian, as someone who loves good meals, as the “fun one,” was her real challenge.

From: Maria

I feel like I am denying my personality … an Italian enjoying cooking and wine. I don't miss the taste, I do miss the celebratory feeling and the relaxation that accompanies a glass of wine. However, I do feel better not having that random drink or two on week nights at home. Last night I had to convince Tom not to open a bottle of wine because I knew I would want one! He agreed. I do have satisfaction that I am in control.

Identity exerts a powerful force over our habits. When I told a friend about my low-carb eating, she shook her head and said, “That would never work for me. I don't want to be the fussy one, the one who says, ‘I don't eat this' or ‘I don't do that.' ”

“You could make exceptions, like if you're a guest at someone's house.”

“Is that what you do?”

“No,” I acknowledged, “I stick to it. I don't care if people think I'm fussy, I
am
fussy. Also,” I added, “I worried about my weight for so many years, it's worth it to me to be fussy, not to have to worry about it anymore.”

“Not me, I'm ‘the girl who eats anything.' ”

“It's only a problem if that non-fussy identity conflicts with something else—like eating in a different way. It's not hard for me, because I get a big kick out of telling people, ‘I'm one of those low-carb fanatics you read about.' ”

Now that I'd identified it, I began to see the role of identity in many habit-related situations. “My husband and I desperately need to go to bed earlier,” a friend told me. “We stay up too late, and we have to get up early because of the baby. We're exhausted, we keep saying we're going to go to bed earlier, and we never do.”

“What's your routine?”

“At about eleven, we go into the kitchen, have some nuts or cheese or something, and talk.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yes,” she said. Then she added what sounded like the key to the issue: “We know we should be responsible parents and go to sleep. But we're holding on to this last piece of our adult lives, before the baby. It just feels so …
domesticated
to go bed before midnight. Even though we really need the sleep.”

The fact is, changing a habit is much more challenging if that new habit means altering or losing an aspect of ourselves. I regret the loss of even the most trivial identity-defining habits. For instance, for years I didn't own a purse. I liked being “the kind of woman who doesn't own a purse,” and I delayed buying a purse, even though in many situations carrying a purse would have been far more convenient than lugging my backpack around. Relinquishing this part of myself caused me a pang, even though it was such a tiny part of my identity.

Research shows that we tend to believe what we hear ourselves say, and the way we describe ourselves influences our view of our identity, and from there, our habits. If I say, “I'm lazy,” “I can't resist a sale,” “I'll try anything once,” “I never start work until the last minute,” or “I'm lucky,” those ideas become part of my identity, which in turn influences my actions.

Often, too, we can describe the same attribute in either positive or negative terms, which can help us shape the habits we want: Am I conscientious or rigid? Spontaneous or impulsive? Gourmet or glutton? Fun-loving or slacker? Artistic or disorganized? Energetic or restless?

For years, I thought of myself as someone who “hates exercise,” but at some point, I realized that I hated
sports—
I'm spectacularly uncoordinated, I don't like games, and I don't find competition fun. But I don't mind
exercise
—running, cardio machines, weight training. Thinking of myself as someone who “enjoys exercise” allowed me to change the way I viewed my nature, and that helped me to become a regular exerciser. In one study,
one group of registered voters was asked
, “How important is it to you to vote?” while another group was asked “How important is it to you to be a voter?” The second group was more likely to vote in the next election, because voting had been cast as an expression of identity—“This is the kind of person I am”—not just a task to be done.

It can be thrilling to add a new element to our identity. I loved becoming “a New Yorker,” “a parent,” “a blogger,” “a driver,” and “a happiness expert.” Novelist
Haruki Murakami, an avid long-distance runner
, wrote about this process: “[Running an ultra-marathon] should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view of your life, its colors and shape, should be transformed. More or less, for better or for worse, this happened to me, and I was transformed.” Identity can help us live up to our own values: “I'm not someone who wastes time at work,” “I'm no shirker,” “If I say I'll show up, I show up.”

Of course, it's important to follow through on the habits that relate to our sense of identity, as opposed to letting the identity substitute for the habits. Watching CNBC doesn't mean I'm making smart choices with my retirement account. Wearing running shoes isn't the same as running. Buying vegetables isn't the same as eating vegetables. Reading
Outside
magazine doesn't mean I go camping. Writing about happiness won't make me happier unless I stick to my happiness resolutions. I had dinner with a friend who told me, “I've stopped eating sugar, but that chocolate mousse looks so delicious that I'm going to break my rules.”

“When did you give up sugar?” I asked.

“Last week,” he said. He'd only gone without sugar for a few days, but in his mind, he was now a person who “never ate sugar.”

Sometimes, telling others about a decision to alter an aspect of our identity can help us stick to our habits. Maria used the Strategy of Distinctions to realize that she does better when she makes public resolutions.

From: Maria

I was at a meeting and two people drank red wine, and two didn't, I being one of them. Of course when I said no, there was a big “oh why not?”

I actually wanted to explain what I'm doing, and I also felt I had to, to prevent myself from changing my mind and deciding to have a glass after all. Once I made a statement about it I felt I couldn't go back. Explaining reinforced the decision to say no.

Sometimes we adopt a habit to signal the identity we want others to see. Artist David Salle told reporter Janet Malcolm, “
I had to train myself
not to arrive exactly on the dot. It was absurd and unseemly to be so punctual. It was particularly unseemly for an artist to be so punctual.” (Less absurd, I wanted to ask, than for an artist to be deliberately unpunctual to live up to other people's notions of how an artist should behave?) Or we may adopt a habit to signal an identity we
wish
we had. A friend told me: “I drank a little and smoked a little pot in high school—not because I wanted to, but because it was the quickest way to signal, ‘I'm fun! I'm not a goody-goody!' Even though really I was.”

Companies and institutions can change our habits—for better and for worse—by persuading us to link certain habits to identities to which we aspire.
In their invaluable book
Made to Stick
, Chip and Dan Heath describe how an antilittering campaign successfully changed the littering habits of Texans, after messages such as “Please Don't Litter” and “Pitch In” failed with the target demographic (the typical litterer was a man, between the ages of 18 and 35, drove a pickup, and liked sports and country music). For the campaign, famous Texans such as George Foreman, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Willie Nelson, and various sports figures made TV spots with the message “Don't mess with Texas.” The campaign convinced viewers that a
true Texan
—a proud, loyal, tough, virile Texan—doesn't litter. During the campaign's first five years, visible roadside litter dropped 72 percent. Our habits reflect our identity.

From what I've observed, the Strategy of Identity is particularly helpful for Rebels. Rebels generally have a tough time accepting the constraints imposed by habits, but because they place great value on being true to themselves, they embrace a habit if they view it as an aspect of their identity.

For instance, a Rebel might want to be a respected leader. The identity of “leader” might help him to choose to keep habits—such as showing up on time or going to unnecessary meetings—that would otherwise chafe. He will
choose
to behave this way.

A Rebel wrote on my blog: “For me, the most important characteristic of a Rebel is the freedom to be authentic to the person I am at this moment. My desires and needs shift, and I want the autonomy to pursue that. But I also have a strong sense of self—certain values and characteristics that define who I am and that don't change. For example, I've always defined myself as a great mother. I wasn't going to be the kind of mom that I had—I was going to be a dedicated mom who shows love. And I do.” Another Rebel noted, “If a habit is part of who I am, then that habit isn't a chain holding me to the ground, it's permitting me to be authentic to myself.”

We can get locked into identities that aren't good for us: “a workaholic,” “a perfectionist,” “a Southerner,” “the responsible one.” As part of the Strategies of the Four Tendencies and Distinctions, I'd worked to identify different personality categories to which I belonged, but those kinds of labels should help me understand myself more deeply, not limit my sense of identity. Someone wrote on my site, “Food and eating used to play a big part in my identity, until I realized that my baking and being a ‘baker' was resulting in being overweight. So I had to let that identity go.” A Rebel friend clearly loves the idea of herself as the hard-partying fun girl, and when I overheard someone jokingly tell her, “You're not an adult,” she repeated with delight, “No, I'm no adult!” She likes the identity of being a non-adult, but that identity could become a problem. Anyone who identifies with the idea of youth—as a wunderkind, as a prodigy, as a Young Turk, as an ingenue—will eventually be forced out.