Daily Habits

Every once in a while, a writer will come across something called "writer's block." This is a mental state in which the words just can't be squeezed out onto the paper, and no matter how hard they try, they can't think of what they want to write. It's like trying to extract water from a stone. People with this condition can go months without writing, to the extent that writing becomes something they don't even do.

But in most of these cases, writer's block can be overcome quite simply by aiming to write 750 words of nonsense every day. Note that this is a drastically different aim than a writer would traditionally have.

Normally, words don't flow because they are too precious; some writers feel that every word, comma, and phrase makes a huge impact. Thus, the pressure to be great builds the longer they are withheld, and at this point, it starts to sound like we're back in that cycle of laziness, doesn't it? A writer may hold the belief that each word written needs to be literary gold, and then the avoidance begins.

But if you set the expectation that most of what you write will be junk, suddenly you'll be free to start typing because it simply doesn't matter. Junk will always junk, so there's no need to be precious or careful about it. All it takes is an excuse to start typing, and suddenly you far exceed the 750-word goal you set.

When we talk about habits, we are talking about default behaviors that help you reach your intentions. Here, the 750-word goal conditions your brain into a writing mentality so that you're not just sitting around waiting for inspiration to come. You're making it a daily practice so that writing becomes easier.

The best reinforcers you can provide yourself to maintain self-discipline and self-control are good habits. Unfortunately, we can start to go wayward when we aren't tied to any sort of guiding principle. A habit helps because it anchors you and removes off the cuff decision-making from the equation. The less responsibility you put on your sense of doing the right thing, the better off you will be. This chapter looks at some of the principles and strategies in developing helpful self-discipline habits.

Make a Formula

Something that damages self-discipline is when you look at it purely as "I need to get off my butt." Obviously, that goes without saying, but it's not something that is helpful if you don't actually get off your butt immediately. If you stay planted, what then? You had better have some more weapons in your arsenal against laziness.

Similar to the cycle of laziness we discussed in an earlier chapter, we should seek to better understand what goes into our lack of self-discipline. Instead of a cycle, this time we turn to a formula to comprehend the different forces at play. A formula can sometimes be more helpful because it can tell you exactly what elements are involved and what you need to change. A recipe can tell you just how many eggs and how much flour to put in a cake; a formula here can do the same thing for your self-discipline. Sometimes you might realize that you are setting yourself up for failure by neglecting the eggs entirely, or trying to bake the cake in a rice cooker. You may not need to change much, just re-direct your efforts to what is important.

Formula-making happens in much the same way a scientist or mathematician goes about their work with a series of set procedures and methods to test their theories and solve problems. And just like scientists, you can manipulate and play with the quantities of each variable to achieve the effect that you want.

The only difference between scientific formulae and the one I'm talking about is that you're not using hard data, numbers, or mathematic standards to build the elements of your formula - instead, you're substituting your values, qualities, and external factors for numbers and functions. The concept is to replace the individual variables of something like E = mc2 with more abstract, technically incalculable parts of your experience - things like motivation and beliefs and relationships between the two. You then incorporate this formula and base your decisions and actions around it, making adjustments or tweaks to the formula as you go until it's as right for you as possible.

The following is a helpful and fairly straightforward formula to explain my approach and beliefs about self-discipline:

SD = (PeM + PoB) - (dc + ds)

Spelled out a bit more:

Self-discipline = (personal motivation + positive benefits) ? (discomfort + distractions)

This formula represents my concept of self-discipline (SD) and the individual elements that comprise it. The measure of self-discipline is the difference between positive forces and negative forces. As long as the sum on the right side turns out positive, then you will have self-discipline. If not, then it's time to pay attention to each of the variables to find out why it's not positive. The positives are represented as (PeM + PoB), and the negatives are (dc + ds).

Personal motivation (PeM): This is why you care about something, why it's important to you, and what purpose will it serve? How satisfied and fulfilled will it make you? What does eating healthier represent to you? This is an internal quantity.

Positive benefits/impact of action (PoB): What good will come from a certain action or operation? What gains will it result in, as tangibly as you can describe? Ideally there is both a short- and long-term component to this. What physical changes can you expect from eating healthier? This is a more external quantity, though it can also be internal.

Mental or physical discomfort (dc): What kinds of physical or mental fatigue, pain, fear, trouble, or excuse-making are causing you to resist action? What will you lose by acting, and what negatives will you necessarily have to experience? How much physical discomfort of hunger and mental discomfort of restriction will you have to suffer? How well will you be able to deal with them? At the end of all of this, how will your mental and physical states of being fare - realistically and without forecasting doom?

Distractions (ds): What unconscious or unintended diversions or hindrances might cause your attention to stray from the work you need to do? How many birthdays or parties will you have to endure in your quest to eat healthy? What concrete factors threaten to come between your intentions and actions?

Self-discipline ends up being the value of motives and positive results, minus the trouble and distractions that could thwart one from action. Putting this formula into action, the goal is to manipulate the positive forces so they'll outweigh the negatives, making for positive or better self-discipline. Along the way, you might realize that you've been neglecting one or two factors, heavily skewing the formula out of your favor.

SD = (PeM+PoB) ? (dc + ds). Let's put that formula in action to provide inspiration for a habit of self-discipline that one might want to develop: quitting smoking.

Personal motivation (PeM). These are internal reasons that make one think quitting smoking is a good idea - why are they making that decision? They may have noticed they're short of breath or coughing a lot. Maybe one of their parents died from lung cancer as a result of lifelong smoking. They may want to be more physically active and want to make it as easy on themselves as they can. Or perhaps they're feeling like pariahs for being a smoker - peer pressure in this case would be a positive motivator. Numeric value: 8/10

Positive benefits (PoB). The attainment of all those goals in "personal motivation" would be a big benefit. It can take as little as a year for a long-time smoker's lungs to get back to normal. They'd also save a lot of money, not have a bunch of clothes that smell like smoke, be less self-conscious around non-smoking friends, feel less guilty, and feel a sense of pride after beating the addiction. Numeric value: 5/10

You would think that there are fairly compelling arguments for quitting. But what about the negative portion of the formula?

Mental/physical discomfort (dc). Someone quitting smoking might feel the pangs of physical withdrawal and be subject to cravings for a while. This is probably an understatement - they'll feel intense longing and perhaps even pain. They will probably fixate on smoking more than is healthy and feel incomplete without a cigarette. They may also feel that they have lost their method of stress relief. Don't underestimate these. Numeric value: 9/10

Potential distractions (ds). These would be anything that temporarily takes one's mind off the task of quitting smoking, making them forget about it enough to justify or allow themselves to falter. This could be a social situation where there's a lot of smokers or a stressful situation that might spur them to soothe themselves with a cigarette - anything that draws them away from being able to refuse to smoke. Numeric value: 4/10

The goal in this particular equation, then, is to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives. Try as much as possible to place a numeric value on each factor and manipulate the balance so that the positives overpower the negatives. The harder the data one uses, the easier it will be to "rank" each factor, though it is not always possible to quantify feelings and emotions.

For example, in our quitting-smoking example, the smoker could figure out how much money they'd be saving - maybe they've worked out that they spend between $250 and $300 a month on tobacco. Or they could calculate the health benefits: the amount of time they might spend getting more physical exercise or by how much their blood pressure, breathing rate, or daily walking steps might improve. And they should be fearless and honest about the negatives: how much weight might they gain? How strongly will the triggers be felt, on a scale of 1 to 10?

If they can assign a numeric value to all the aspects of their experience, they'll have a way to track their progress and manage their expectations. And again, the goal is to make the positive results more "valuable" or higher than the negatives. If they aren't, then they need to manipulate the equation to make sure they are by finding more motivators or benefits or by decreasing the negative values in some way.

The SD = (PeM+PoB) ? (dc + ds) formula can cover most instances in which you want to institute change. But a formula that is more tailored to your specific circumstances will work even better. You might have different elements that are more relevant to you than motivation, benefits, discomfort, or distractions - or you might want to be more specific about certain factors. Here's an example.

Time. Scheduling is a huge priority for many of us. You may want to factor in the expected amount of time you'll need to devote to working on your situation. How much can you truly allot to your goal?

Expense. For some efforts you might have to spend a little cash. In the smoking example, you might have to fork over some money for nicotine gum for a little while. But you'd also save some money from not buying cigarettes. You can also include opportunity costs here as an expense on time.

Emotional improvement. Although feelings are hard to quantify a lot of the time, if you're keenly in touch with your emotional status you might be able to ascribe values to your good and bad feelings. Is the anxiety that quitting smoking produces more value than the increased energy or relief you might feel? Perhaps you only want to focus on one specific benefit and nothing else matters at the moment.

The possibilities for what criteria you use for your own formula are endless. You have a lot of room to be creative about the factors that influence you the most. Figure out how strongly each of them relates to your own personality and beliefs and assign them a numeric value to see what you need to eliminate, increase, or otherwise manipulate.

With all your options, you may come up with a complicated formula with dozens of variables. That might be good for analysis, but not in practice. The fewer moving parts there are to your formula, the more manageable it is - after all, both the cycle of laziness and this formula show that it's not so complex.