To Change Your Habits, First Change Your Daily Routine.
Many of us have had to put together a new daily routine now that we are working from home, raising children from home, working and raising children from home, or just … um … staying at home .
We are also now at a stage where parts of these new routines have started to turn into habits , which means it is time to ask ourselves if we are happy with our new habits or if we need to do the work of creating a new type of habits. routine.
Why? Because, as behavioral design expert Nir Eyal explains, the most unpleasant parts of our daily routine become our habits. When we voluntarily or accidentally enter a new routine, some aspects of the routine seem somewhat flexible, while others quickly become fixed – and these are the parts that become habitual behaviors.
Eyal summarizes the psychological difference between habits and daily routines on The Next Web :
Imagine that you are about to wash your hands, but the water supply suddenly stops. If you have a habit, giving up this behavior will feel odd and even uncomfortable. … It will take you days, if not weeks, to get rid of this habit.
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[If] a habit causes discomfort when we don’t do it, the opposite is true with our daily activities. This is where people get stuck in confusing habits and routines. They expect a routine to be as easy as a habit, while the only thing that is easy to do with a daily routine is how easy it is to give it up. It’s easy to forget that you’re not doing a difficult task, such as doing the laundry or writing in a journal, because this behavior is not a habit, it’s a chore that takes effort.
Of course, not all habits are as beneficial as washing your hands (20 seconds while playing “Happy Birthday,” or a similar tune of your choice). You probably have all sorts of routine habits that you don’t even know are ingrained – like checking social media every time you pick up the phone – and breaking out of those unintended cycles of habit will be as uncomfortable as going to bed. sleeping without brushing your teeth or leaving the bathroom without washing your hands.
But since we already feel a little uncomfortable and at ease in many aspects of our lives, this may be the perfect time to ask yourself what habits you would like to adopt, drop, or change. I just put dumbbells on my desk, for example, in the hope that I can go from “when you need a break from work, find another part of the Internet to look” to “when you need a break from work.” work, squat and flex the biceps. “
And yes, it will be difficult to remember that I need to get up, step away from the table and grab the dumbbells instead of choosing the convenient and familiar way of opening another browser tab. First, anyway. After all, I wish the weight habit was comfortable, automatic, and expected, like brushing your teeth before bed or a cup of coffee in the morning – and that only happens when the behavior shifts from routine to habit.
Until then, I’ll have to consciously think about remembering my dumbbells every time; I will also have to make a conscious decision to do the exercises every time. If the behavior turns out to be beneficial enough to stay the same, then I would form a new habit – and you can do the same if you go through a similar process for the parts of your routine that you would like to change.