Habits

Are you having problems with gaming too much? Unable to stop yourself from drinking soda?
Struggling with a puppy kicking addiction? Here are 3 science-backed ways to break those
habits:

1) Wean yourself off

A habit forms by taking an action repeatedly. The pathway of connected neurons involved in
that action gets coated in a substance called myelin.

More myelin means the action takes less time and less energy. Your brain has a preference for
actions that take less time, less energy, AND less conscious thought.

So, your brain prefers continuing its habits rather than trying something new. That's why
working to change yourself is so uncomfortable - you're literally going against the wiring of
your brain.

I tell you this to illustrate an important fact about habit change:

You can't just decide to stop a habit and be done with it. The pathway is still there. Your brain
still subconsciously wants to take that action.

A few years ago (while I was in college), I had a habit of playing League of Legends every day
after class. Even if I had homework or studying to do, I'd get on and play for a few hours.

When I realized it was hurting my grades, I decided to break the habit by quitting completely.
When I came home the next day, I tried doing homework instead of getting on League. Simple,
right? Wrong.

My brain was not happy. I felt uncomfortable. I felt a sense of something being "wrong". My
brain was confused! Why wasn't I doing the thing it expected me to do?

Because I was so uncomfortable, I wasn't able to focus on the schoolwork I needed to do. So,
after an hour of this, I wound up giving in to my urge to play League, and got on. Meanwhile I
beat myself up for my inability to be strong and break my habit.

I did manage to successfully break my habit of playing League a while later. I accomplished this
by weaning myself off over the course of three weeks. For the first week, I played for only two
hours. The second week, one hour. The third week, zero.

Tapering myself off gradually like this made breaking my bad habit much easier on my brain.
I've used this same strategy to help me break other habits, including those involving caffeine,
alcohol, and food.

2) Replace the habit with a new (better) habit

As I just explained, quitting a habit suddenly won't end well. If you try, you'll either be unable
to stop yourself, or you'll be uncomfortable until the neural connection fades away (which
takes a long time).

If breaking your habit is an urgent matter and you need to break it quickly, try replacing the
habit with a new habit.

Habits start with a "cue". When I was in college, sitting at my desk after a long day of class was
my cue to play League of Legends.

Take a moment to think about a bad habit you want to break. What's the cue for that bad
habit?

Next, come up with a better habit you want to build. Then, start taking the action of the better
habit INSTEAD of the action of the bad habit each time the cue happens.

The first few times you do this, it'll take conscious effort. It'll feel uncomfortable. That's natural
- there's nothing wrong with you, it's just how the brain works.

As you push through, your brain will associate the cue more with the better habit, and
associate the cue less with the bad habit.

That association is why this strategy works far better than the "cold turkey" strategy. With this
method, you're still going from the cue to an action, rather than going from a cue to no action.

3) Tell others you're going to break the habit

I often talk about the power of the consistency principle. It says we're subconsciously
motivated to act consistently with things we say.

So, another way you can start breaking a bad habit is by telling other people that you're going
to break the habit. Tell a friend, tell your mom, tell your Twitter followers - it doesn't matter
how you do it, just tell someone.

If you don't know who to tell, tell me! Send me a message on Discord telling me a habit you
want to break. I dare you.

The consistency principle also works with the things you say to yourself. That's
why realistic affirmations can be powerful - when you say something to yourself, whether it's
positive or negative, you're driven to act consistently with what you said.
If I had told my friends I was working on breaking my habit of playing League of Legends every
day, it would've been much easier to break that habit.

I would've been subconsciously motivated to act consistently and do what I said I'd do. I
would've harnessed the power of the consistency principle.

The Best Helpful Habits to Build

Now that you know how to break/replace your harmful habits, here are a few of the best
helpful habits to start building:

I've consulted with dozens of entrepreneurs to help them optimize their performance. Here
are the 5 most performance enhancing habits you can build:

Habit #1: Setting Goals

Setting goals is the first step toward achieving anything worthwhile in life and business. Why?
Well, let's say you're going on vacation. Are you going to hop in your car and start driving in a
random direction? No. You're going to think about the places you want to go and pick one of
them. My ideal vacation involves a beach and/or a big city (if you were wondering).

Picking a destination lets you start figuring out how to get to the destination. It also lets you
see if you're making progress toward the destination or not. You may feel like you're a
passenger in life, but the truth is, you're the one driving. If you're going in the wrong direction,
it's up to you to turn the vehicle around!

It's important to get as clear as possible about where you want to go (what you want to
achieve). I want to build a business is a starting point for a goal, but it can be clearer. How do
you increase clarity? By asking yourself questions such as:

 what is my target monthly revenue?

 what kind of products and/or services do I want to sell?

 how do I want to be delivering those products and/or services?

 what kind of presence (if any) do I want to have on social media?

 what specific people/groups/businesses are my dream clients/customers/partners?

More clarity means less internal resistance, less wasted time, and more revenue.
Habit #2: Getting Organized

If you're like most people, you feel like you're drowning in a sea of to-dos. You can't thrive
because it's all you can do to survive. You're waking up stressed and going to bed stressed. You
can't focus when you try to work and you can't relax when you try to rest.

One of the biggest reasons why you can't focus or relax is because there's so much noise in
your head. Where does the noise come from? Keeping track of everything only in your head.
This fills up your working memory, which can't hold very many things at one time. When your
working memory starts getting full, your mental performance plummets exponentially.

What can you do? Start getting organized. Here's the three-step system I teach my clients:

First: Do a brain dump. Grab a pen and paper. Write down everything on your mind. Positive,
negative, and neutral. Business, personal, and everything else. Have-to-dos, want-to-dos, and
ideas. Write it all down. Why? Because the more you get out of your head, the less you'll have
bouncing around in your head.

Next: Organize what you wrote into categories. I have three categories - business, personal,
and other. You can start there, but if you have more than one business or project, you may
want to add extra categories. Then, pick out 1 to 3 priorities from each category. This leads
nicely into Habit #3 (which happens to be the third step in the three-step system).

Habit #3: Managing Time

Your time is the most valuable resource in the universe. Being more intentional about how you
invest your time will help you get better returns on your investments. We manage money with
a budget and we should also manage time with a schedule. If you're not already using a
calendar app like Google Calendar, I recommend you start using one today.

Continuing on with step three of the three-step system: Start blocking out time on your
calendar for the things you picked out as priorities. You can either block time for a specific
thing or a specific category of things. That depends on how you work best.

How long should your blocks be? A popular starting point is the Pomodoro method - working
for 25 minutes and then taking a 5 minute break. Productivity research has found the sweet
spot to be between 50:10 and 75:15. If that range is too much for you at first, you can work
your way up to it! As you can see, these numbers lend themselves nicely to round total blocks
of 30, 60, or 90 minutes.
Your breaks are kind of "baked in" to these blocks, so you don't have to add them to your
calendar. Taking regular breaks is a key part of sustaining optimal performance. Don't forget to
take them!

Note: I give a detailed walkthrough of this system in my productivity training here.

Habit #4: Meditating

One of the best ways to do more work each day is to do nothing for a few minutes each day.
Wait, how does that work?

Meditation is one of the most powerful habits you can build. It's also one of the simplest -
you're literally doing nothing. Why is it so powerful? Because meditating every day causes
physical changes in your brain. The part of your brain involved in the fear response becomes
less active. Also, the part of your brain involved in attention, impulse control, and long-term
planning becomes more active.

How does the fear response play into performance? Because when we're procrastinating, what
we're usually doing is avoiding a task. It could be because we're afraid we'll fail at it. It could
also be because the task is uncertain. Uncertainty is extremely threatening to us, thus evoking
our fear response. A less active amygdala leads to less procrastination and more performance.

You know those times where you know you should do some work, but you find yourself doing
something else anyway? Meditation helps reduce the frequency of that happening.

To start meditating, all you do is:

• sit down somewhere quiet

• set a timer for 2 to 15 minutes

• close your eyes

• start breathing slowly through your nose

• focus on the feeling of your breath passing through your nose

• do this until the timer goes off

You can also try using a guided meditation app like Headspace, Calm, or Waking Up to help
you. These apps have recordings you listen to while meditating - they guide you through your
meditation sessions. Think of them as training wheels for your new meditation habit.

Habit #5: Sleeping

Sleep is almost always the first thing I work on with a new client. See, most people aren't
getting anywhere close to the 8 hours of sleep they need each night. Why? Because as I
mentioned in the intro to Habit #2, they can't relax (or sleep) due to all the noise in their head.
If you can't sleep well at night, you can't work well during the day. Sleep deprivation causes a
long list of short-term and long-term problems, including:

∙ brain fog

∙ irritability

∙ mood swings

∙ low motivation

∙ difficulty learning

∙ poor impulse control

∙ sadness and depression

Here's one way you can start sleeping better: Turn off your screens and stop working at least
30 minutes before bed. This nightly routine is what my clients know as dark mode.

The blue light from screens suppresses the production of melatonin (the hormone that helps
you fall asleep). If you're staring at a screen late at night, enough melatonin won't be
produced, so you'll have a hard time falling asleep when you finally crawl into bed. Turning off
your screens earlier lets your brain produce melatonin so you can fall asleep easier.

Plus, your brain needs time to go from work mode to rest/sleep mode. Stopping work earlier
also helps you fall asleep earlier. So, during your screens off period, do things that don't take
much mental or physical effort. This includes:

∙ meal prep

∙ journaling

∙ meditation

∙ stretching or yoga
∙ hot shower or bath

∙ reading fiction or biographies

One of the most powerful habits I get my coaching clients to start doing is journaling. But not
the “dear diary” way of journaling - a way called brain dumping.

Brain dumping is simple. All you do is grab a pen and paper, then write down everything on
your mind. Good, bad, neutral. Business, personal, or otherwise. Write it all down.

You'll likely fill a page (or more) with a chaotic mess of to-dos, thoughts, and questions about
where you are now and where you want to go.

I recommend brain dumping at least once a day, but you can do it more than once a day if
you’d like! It’s a tool you can use any time you feel stressed, overwhelmed, or otherwise
emotional.

I also recommend having a dedicated notebook for brain dumping. Many of my clients like
reading back over previous brain dumps. This lets them see the progress they’ve made over
the past weeks and months.

You may be wondering… why do I have people do this? Here are 3 benefits of brain dumping:

1) It clears your mind

If you’re like most people, you feel like you’re drowning in a sea of to-dos. It’s hard to keep
track of everything. It’s almost impossible to work or rest because you have so much on your
mind.

You’re overwhelmed and underachieving.

Writing down everything on your mind helps clear your mind. Then, you can do what you need
to be doing right now - whether that’s focused work or needed rest. Many things to one thing.

Tip: Try doing brain dumping shortly before you go to bed. You’ll find it’s much easier to get
to sleep.

2) It leads to new ideas

Imagine a time when you were talking to another person about a problem you were having. As
you were explaining your situation, a solution popped into your head! The other person didn’t
even have to say anything helpful!
Communicating something causes your brain to think about that something in different
ways. This increases the chance of your brain coming up with new ideas/solutions for the
problem.

When you’re writing something down, you’re communicating it to your paper. So as you write,
you’ll find yourself having new ideas.

3) It lets you bring order to chaos

Once you’ve transferred the chaos in your head onto your page, you can start ordering the
chaos. Rewrite what you wrote further down the page or on the next page.

This time, organize things into categories:

- business(es)
- work
- school
- health
- relationships
- and so on

After you’ve done this, you can then go through each category and think about which items
are the most important… and which items aren’t important at all.

Before brain dumping, you might have 20 things bouncing around your head. After brain
dumping, you might only have 2 or 3 - and you’ll be better able to focus on those and find
solutions for them.