Creating a Habit Recipe
In his book Effortless, Greg McKeown discusses the idea that sometimes we focus too much on how we’re going to get through the hard parts of something, when instead we should be asking the question, how can I make the hard parts easier? A lot of difficult tasks are not enjoyable until you finish and have that satisfied feeling of completion. Unfortunately, it can be quite a while before you feel that. If we want to reduce that lag time, we just need to pair it with something fun. This concept is known as the cognitive ease principle, or the principle of least effort. Social dynamics today glorify working hard but maybe our goals don’t need to be so hard. Maybe they could even be fun.
Greg (I’ve been listening to his voice on audible for a few weeks now, so I feel like we’re on a first name basis) shares his example of returning home from vacation and needing to make a lot of phone calls. This is a task he was dreading but instead of just trying to get through it, he decided to make all the calls from the Hot Tub. He didn’t change anything about the calls he was making, he just added on a fun location and suddenly his dreary task became something he didn’t want to stop.
The Hot Tub story was a response to a one time unpleasant task - but what if we want to start doing something unpleasant everyday because we know it’s good for us, like exercise or reading? In the area of habits, Greg refers to B.J. Fog, founder of the behavior design lab at Stanford University who suggests “to create a new habit we simply need to look for something we already do, and then attach a new behavior to it.” He calls this concept a Habit Recipe. Essentially, he is saying to first identify a habit you already do; we’ll call it X. Then, identify something you want to start doing; we’ll call that Y. Your recipe will then be after X I will do Y. Or maybe it’s during X, I will do Y.
Before you try to set strict guidelines for yourself and cut out everything good in your life to make space for your new habits, think about how you might be able to pair up some instead. This may be pairing up something not fun (exercise) with something you enjoy (watching tv). Or maybe it’s pairing up two not-so-fun things. While I love the feeling I get after I exercise, I do not love doing it. It’s the same with reading or listening to podcasts. I never actually want to start so I avoid it at all costs. But when I pair these two activities up, it somehow becomes more enjoyable because I feel like I’m cheating the system by getting both done at once. It’s the habit recipe that works for me. What works for you?
Let’s not get through life. Let’s enjoy it.
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