Don’t Let Boredom Get in the Way of Your Goals
We all know how great it is to start a new habit. Today we will be one of those who wake up early! Gathers lunch before work! Goes to the gym!
We also know how interesting it is to experience things that take us away from our daily routine. We go to bed today! A colleague advised me to try a new pizzeria! The weather is too bad to get to the gym, so we can stay at home and watch Netflix instead!
Of course, there is nothing wrong with skipping the gym from time to time. (Rest days are just as important as training days.) However, when your habits are at that tricky stage, where they are no longer new but not quite common, it is very important that you stick to them.
Personal finance author Emily Guy Birken explains why:
The problem is that deliberately creating a new good habit means reacting emotionally to it. For example, you might feel proud of yourself when you get into the habit of collecting meals every day. Look at yourself, you are developing a new habit of saving money! You can puff up your breasts with pride by counting how much you save on each homemade sandwich.
But this emotional reaction will not be as strong on the 17th day. This is because the habit-building process also dulls your emotional response to the habit. In other words, when the habit takes over, you will get bored because this is no longer news.
There is a reason this happens on Day 17 and not on Day 70. At this point, you get used to your habits – this means you no longer get the emotional boost that comes with trying something new – but they still do. they didn’t. become a part of who you are.
In other words: you are not really the person who collects lunch every day; you are the person who has been trying to put together lunch for two weeks. You can also try this new pizza place because your lunch-gathering habit is not yet ingrained so you can experience and appreciate the long-term benefits (saving money, eating more nutritious foods, etc.).
I’ve done a great job of optimizing my habits and routines, but I still fall into the trap of boredom. The new habit must become part of my personality before it takes hold; if it’s just something I’m testing, it’s easy for me to decide to do something else.
With that in mind, here’s what worked for me and what didn’t.
Stripes
Many people practice stripes: every day they follow a new habit and try to extend the stripe as long as possible. When you sign up for a habit tracking app, it will likely focus on getting you to track bands – and that will probably remind you that Jerry Seinfeld once said something that the secret to his success is so as not to break the chain. “
Stripes work for a lot of people, but not for me. There are too many variables in life for me to say, “I will always go to bed at the same time every night,” and so on.
Instead, I try to stick to all my basic habits for five days out of seven. It gives me the opportunity to accept that invitation to a pizzeria or skip the gym on a very wet day without feeling guilty about ruining my lane.
Accountability
A typical habit / diet / exercise supplement will also include some kind of social component to encourage both a competitive spirit and a sense of responsibility. For example, you will be motivated to complete a workout so you can tell your friends and increase your ranking.
I don’t care about competition – the only person I’m playing against is myself, but I do care about accountability. LOT.
This means that if I do something like “tell Lifehacker I’ll only buy one candy a week from the candy store across from my apartment,” I will keep my word. (And I have, if you were wondering.)
In the end, I put it on the Internet, which means it must be true.
Break records
The great thing about lifting weights is that they get heavier. This means that I can still get this “new experience” even though I have been doing weightlifting for over a year now. It’s enough to get me back to the gym several times a week – and maybe it will be enough to keep you going, too. How many books have you read this year? How much money did you save by packing these lunches?
Be thrilled with every record you break, and you’ll have a better chance of breaking the next.
Awards
Some people reward themselves after successfully completing their new habit for a period of time.
This doesn’t work for me in part because my habits include things like “stick to your $ 2,500 monthly budget” and “buy only one candy a week,” so rewarding yourself for this behavior by buying a treat doesn’t make sense.
It is also not worth the idea of rewarding yourself for “going to bed on time” by “allowing yourself to stay up late.” (Or rewarding myself for “going to bed on time” by “allowing myself to buy a second candy.”)
If you can create a reward structure that doesn’t contradict your existing habit, that’s good for you. I have yet to find one that works for me, although I told myself that the reward for doing all of these habits would be to feel well rested , be able to put more money into my investments, and so on.
In other words, the reward is that I feel happier in my life .
Another reward, as I mentioned earlier, is making these habits part of my long-term identity. For example, I am a person who has been doing yoga for over ten years. It’s not even a habit at this point; it’s just what I do every morning, even when I’m sick or on vacation.
This is what you want to come to with your habits – and for that you need to go through the habitual boredom phase and see your habit from Day 1 to Day 17, Day 70 to Day 700 and beyond.