We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
– John Dryden
Years ago a friend told me a story from when he worked at a big box gym: He regularly saw an older gentlemen training at a certain time of the morning. One day the guy showed up at his usual time, sat on a bench for a minute, and then got up and left the gym.
The next time my friend saw the guy, he asked what had happened.
The guy told him that exercise was important to him, so he had built the habit of going to the gym on his regularly scheduled training days no matter how he felt. That day he hadn’t been feeling well, so he showed up at the gym to reinforce his habit but went back home when he was sure that training wasn’t the best thing for him.
Now on one hand, we’d probably agree that showing up at the gym to just turn around and go home may not have been the most efficient use of this guy’s time.
I’ve written in the past about using floors and ceilings or, similarly, three different protocols for promoting consistency in our actions. Had this gentleman applied either idea, he could have saved time, gotten extra rest, and reinforced his commitment to exercise by doing, for example, a set of five push-ups in his bedroom.
But on the other hand, I totally commend the guy for doing what he thought was best to reinforce his identity as someone who values exercise. And I also want to briefly discuss one other concept that the guy used, knowingly or otherwise, to reinforce his habit of showing up regardless of how he felt: reducing the variability of his actions.
(By the way, this is also a great concept to apply when working to build a habit in the first place.)
If you’re wondering how I can say that the guy reduced the variability of his actions when he didn’t exercise after arriving at the gym, we’ll have to back up a single step. He reduced the variability not by skipping the exercise but by going to the gym at the time that he always went to the gym!
In other words, he took action at the specific time of the day when he always took that action.
Obviously the specific details of the action varied — in a way, he implemented a sort of floor/Paying the Price protocol — but the fact that he took some action was the key to reinforcing the habit. (Remember that time of day was one of five habit-triggering cues that I mentioned in last week’s tip about overcoming a snacking habit.)
Now I’m not suggesting that you always have to exercise at a specific time of the day. Maybe your work schedule, child’s sports schedule, or some other factor makes such a task infeasible.
I’m also not suggesting that this anonymous gym-goer guy would have destroyed his exercise-valuing identity had he instead waited until later in the day to see if he felt good enough to go to the gym and actually lift something. In that case, he’d still have been reinforcing his values.
What I am saying is that breaking the normal habit loop I mentioned last week is a slippery slope when we’re intentionally trying to build or reinforce a specific habit and that the inverse is also true: when we consistently adhere to the specific cue that triggers the routine (i.e. habit) that we want to build—that is, when we reduce the variability of taking action—we reinforce that specific habit.
It’s a simple but important concept. Because again: We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
Putting it into practice
What’s the number one habit that you think would improve your life if you started doing it regularly?
Do you know the cue(s) that prompt you to take that action?
If you feel so inclined, answer both questions, set a “floor” action, and then commit to taking action every time you’re prompted by the cue.
Speaking from both past and recent personal experience, you might be surprised by how quickly you can form a new habit (not to mention the progress you’ll experience because of it) when you reduce the variability of your behavior.