We are definitely creatures of habit, and I have started to realize that it is the habits that I am unaware of that are hurting me or perhaps even worse. I am going to call the collection of habits that we are unaware of, the familiar self. The danger here is that we feel the most comfortable, the most relaxed when we allow ourselves to fall back into a pattern of ourselves. Sometimes this is a secret thing. This is an interesting psychosis.
Just an example, one of my comfortable familiar self habits might be to sit and watch a particular genre of shows on some streaming channel. I will refer to this jokingly with others from time to time, but it is not something that I will actually come out and admit. The reason that I am tired today is that I spent 6 hours last night watching crime dramas on Netflix is not something I am going to let people know the next morning as I am sluggishly trying to make my way through the day.
As I have incorporated new habits into my life, I have had to squeeze them into an already intense schedule. However, this has caused me to take a real hard look at the old familiar self. When I get back to hotel rooms after travelling, I am still tempted to sit, do nothing, and mindlessly watch a show for example but now I have to fit the new habit in. In the last year there have been hundreds of times when I have begrudgingly done those last pushups, or laced up the shoes because I did not have time to run in the morning. The new habits have had to replace the familiar and this is really uncomfortable.
We have all heard this before. For the heavy tobacco user this is almost annoying when people say this. They say the secret is to replace your craving for tobacco with something else. The reason they say this is that the old familiar self gets used to taking a moment to smoke that cigarette, as a way to transition between activities. That can become so comfortable, that it is really hard to even conceive of how sunflower seeds could compare. The point is the same, replacing the old and familiar bad habits that you might not even recognize, with new and good ones is going to be a challenge.
Even after 424 days of doing this, I still find myself from time to time gravitating toward old habits. I have this tendency, when stressed, to cope by eating sugary snacks. I am not even hungry, which is the weird thing. I have this compulsive habit of eating a bad snack as a way of trying to get my way through the stress. The problem is that it never helps, it actually only makes it much worse. You can replace that with almost anything. I have noticed this tendency with alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, sugar, you name it. The use of a stimulant, or mood altering activity to cope with whatever is going on is a habit that we build overtime and before too long we do not even realize that it is a habit and that it is consuming a massive amount of time.
I remember reviewing the concept of “quadrant thinking” with someone that I knew well. I could see that they were spending a massive amount of time playing video games. It was obvious to everyone around him. Yet when I talked about removing quadrant 4 (activities that are meaningless, not productive) this person claimed with absolute confidence that they just did not have any Quadrant 4 activities in their life. I was in disbelief. In defense this person, justified the “small” amount of video game playing as a stress relief system and prioritized that as Quadrant 2 (the most important, but not urgent activities in your life)! Sorry dude, I know you are going to read this. When your xbox profile has all 49 achievements plus the 12 hidden ones for the 2019 version of Metro Exodus – you have a problem.
Where we spend our excess time, is where our heart is. You may think you do not have any excess time, but I doubt that. Look carefully at that old familiar self and you may start to see some habits that are so ingrained that they consume time without you even knowing about it. This was true for me, and still is. Before I started some of these new habits that I have formed, I would have told you that I did not have the time. Funny thing is that I found the time, and I do not even notice a reduction in the amount of time I am spending on required activities during the day. The time comes from little things as well. As you add the good, productive habits you will be forced to give up some of the familiar self habits that just suck up your time. FYI – One of the big ones for me was reading and processing every email I got. Somehow I thought that was productive. My old familiar self thought that I had to read and decide what to do with every item of communication sent my way. True, some people get frustrated with me for not responding to something. However, in the scheme of the day, I would much rather spend that 2 – 3 hours on more productive activities. Yes. You got that right. 3 hours. That was how much time I was spending a day, reading and responding to email. Including weekends. That is over 1000 hours a year. I measured this, and it is hard to believe, but it is true.
Very hard for me to deal with. My old familiar self had a definition of productivity and getting things done that was just complete crap. David Allen can take his GTD methodology and shove it! I now refuse to process everything. I am only going to process what is important to me, my ambitions, my future self and the people I have decided to help today. My old self is still screaming – NO!!!! You are going to miss something! You are going to piss someone off! People are going to think that you are not productive! My heart is no longer into organizing and responding to crap…sorry. I do not mean to be offensive. I do take the time (a very short, prescribed amount of time) to focus on communication sent my way. I will deal with and think about how to respond to important requests – maybe miss a few – but seriously our lives are being inundated with mounds and mounds of stuff to deal with. How can one human possibly be productive with all this input!? The secret – stop caring about it – and care about what is really important.
Reality is that I lost a lot of weight by reducing the amount of time I spend reading email. When I wake up in the morning, I try to resist the urge to even look at the phone (I fail on that many times). I try to avoid using the quiet moments to fill the void with looking at my email. When I am at my desk between calls, I do not fill that time with staring at outlook hoping that something exciting will pop into my inbox suddenly. I do not hit send/receive repeatedly even though I know that outlook/exchange/365 has an auto-delivery feature now and has had that for 10 years.
Whatever your old familiar self is doing, stop the madness. Identify these time sucks and really think about the daily habits that you can replace them with. Slowly at first, but you know you have got somewhere when that old comfortable time has been replaced with a healthy, productive and rewarding activity.
Guy Reams (424)
365 Alumni
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