Habit Archives - Page 14 of 19

Inside Week 1 of What Do You Want?

May 8, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

This is a guest post by Jean S., who is sharing her experience of participating the 6-week What Do You Want? course. More posts by Jean will follow, on consecutive Thursdays, as she gives us her perspective on the rest of the sessions.

Nila's Mama (Left) Preforms with a Barbershop ... — Barbershop Quartet (Photo credit: Lea LSF)

I used to think there was something wrong with me because there are things I really, truly want and need to do before I die, and yet I haven’t gone after them, or even half-satisfied the need. In the first meeting of the What Do You Want? course, I learned that it isn’t a flaw in me. It’s System 1, the unconscious, doing its job, what it knows how to do, which is maintaining the status quo. That’s a biggie. As Joycelyn said, “The unconscious keeps you alive, but isn’t interested in enlivening you.”

There are always worksheets which we complete in class, and if not done in class would be harder to do on my own at home. We learn and expand our own thinking as we take turns sharing our thoughts and writing, which we could not do at home, alone. By writing in class, we are sure to get it done, or at least get the process started.

We are never asked to share things that we are not ready to, although sort of by the nature of this work, we end up sharing a lot and finding we have a strong, mutually supportive group.

The main assignment for this week was to fill out one 5″ x 8″ card per day, dedicated to completing the sentence that starts: “What I really want is…” I have gotten past criticizing my every entry. I hear when it starts to sound like a “what I don’t want is…” list. My entries can range from little things that have been bugging me in my environment, such as “What I really want is a new, hand-held shower head,” to somewhat more elusive goals such as “to be clear as much as possible about how to behave so as to be my best self.”

I don’t pay attention to whether it makes sense to put something on this list. I just keep writing. Day after day, many of the same things come up and this tells me they must really be important enough to me to do something about.

Then there are little surprises, like “What I really want is to sing in a Barbershop Quartet.”

The class is provocative, as Joycelyn has many ways to shift our thinking and our understanding about the way we work. This is a great investigation, and I see how exposing it all to light will help us make a difference in our “status quo,” even if we sometimes drag our feet in the process.

Focus: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

May 5, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

A distraction is something that keeps us from giving 100% of our attention to what we’re doing or attempting to do right now. By diverting our attention, it dims our focus. Being distracted isn’t the same as choosing to take a break. Allowing ourselves to be distracted is rarely a conscious choice.

The path to anywhere is booby-trapped with an unrelenting blitzkrieg of tempting distractions so magnificent and horrible—and insistent—they may even invade our dreams.

These distractions tempt us because they include:

things we’re naturally interested in
things we’re convinced we need to know (every single thing there is to know) about
things we have to be on top of or take care of
things we suddenly remember we forgot to do
things that are simply so compelling we can’t not be distracted by them
things that take our minds off whatever we’re doing that we don’t want to be doing
things that seem better (more interesting, easier, or maybe just newer) than whatever we’re doing now

The internet is a major—and obvious—source of distraction, but it’s a piker compared to the source of distraction inside our own heads.

Attention is notoriously difficult to keep focused. One reason is that conscious attention requires, well, consciousness, and conscious (System 2) attention is a limited resource that can’t be easily or quickly renewed. It definitely can’t be renewed on command. If we squander it early in the day, we may not have enough left for another task that requires it later on. And squander it we do, on all kinds of things that are not worth actually thinking about.

When it comes to maintaining focus on a long-term goal—keeping our eyes on a distant prize—we often trip ourselves up at the outset by not accounting for the inevitable flagging of conscious attention. All evidence to the contrary, we’re convinced we will maintain the same level of enthusiasm and focus through the entire extent of a project that we had at the beginning of it. We count on our interest and enthusiasm to carry us through. It can’t and it won’t.

The sane thing to do, then, would be to assume that our interest, enthusiasm, and attention are going to flag and to create a plan that doesn’t rely solely on will power, self-discipline, enthusiasm, interest, or anything else that comes and goes.

If you want to use your brain to help maintain your focus, one thing you can do is set up checkpoints along the path to monitor your progress and to reward yourself for your achievements. The hits of dopamine your brain releases when you reward yourself will not only make you feel good, they will also activate emotional and learning circuits to increase the likelihood you will remember what you did and will want to do it again. As you get closer to reaching your goal, your brain will actually increase the amount of dopamine it releases each time you pass another checkpoint.

Achieving a distant goal—which could mean two months, two years, or two decades from now—requires detailed planning in order to get your brain to get with the program. Imagining the outcome—so you know what you’re aiming for—is important. But if you don’t identify all the steps it will take to get to the finish line and claim the prize, your brain will not be on board. Your brain, in fact, will be looking to board any passing train it catches sight of, and it will be taking you right along with it.

[NOTE: This post is the third in a series. See also When the Going Gets Grueling and Fortitude: Don’t Leave Home Without It.]

That’s What I Did: The “Done” List

May 1, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

When I came across an article by Janet Choi on the 99U website titled, “The Art of the Done List: Harnessing the Power of Progress,” I was intrigued enough to read the entire piece. And then I was intrigued enough to try it.

The Done List is a proactive response to the relentless, slave-driver aspect of the To Do List. You know how you rarely finish all the items on your To Do List? The same is true for the rest of us. Then at the end of the day we’re disappointed in how little we accomplished. That’s because we measure our accomplishments by how many things we crossed off the To Do List, not by how many things we actually got done.

The idea is extremely simple. Based on The Busy Person’s Guide to the Done List:

When you do anything you consider useful, however small a win it may be, write it down on your done list. (Or wait until the end of the day to write down your list.)
At the end of the day, look at your list. Reflect on and celebrate all the things you got done!
Review regularly—in the mornings to kickstart your day, every week, month, or year, or simply whenever you’d like a little boost or look back.

What worked for me was to write things down shortly after I finished them and to exclude—for the most part, anyway—non work-related items. After just a few days, I noticed two things. First, I was actually somewhat more motivated to get the minor and annoying things on my To Do List done and crossed off. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was just an effect of paying attention in a different way. Second, I was surprised at how many things—large, small, and in-between—I do each day that aren’t on my To Do List but that contribute to my goals.

The biggest surprise from this experiment was this: the written evidence suggests I don’t waste as much time as I thought I did. The Done List has already given me a clearer picture not only of what I do all day but of the kinds of things that need to be done. If I don’t take into consideration some of the necessary tasks or activities I have to complete or involve myself in, I won’t schedule time for them. Which I wasn’t.

You can find a download link to The Busy Person’s Guide to the Done List at the bottom of the 99U article. It’s very thorough at 40 pages long and the authors of the book cite a number of sources to back up their assertions, including research by Dan Ariely, Antonio Damasio, and Ray Baumeister.

But all you really need are the three steps listed above. If you decide to try this, I’d like to know how it works for you.

Mindfulness vs. Habits: Game On?

April 3, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

According to the respective press they receive, habits are bad, and mindfulness is good. We ought to be as mindful as we can, as much of the time as we can, and do what we do as thoughtfully and mindfully as possible. This is a nice idea, but it doesn’t actually jibe with the way the brain works—or with the world in which most of us live.

Mindfulness, the conscious direction of attention or awareness, is a generally a positive thing. Certainly, most of us could use more mindfulness in our lives. Mindfulness training helps us pay attention to our own thoughts, feelings, and experience without judgment. It helps us focus on the present moment, on what we are taking in through our senses.

A few of the benefits claimed for mindfulness are:

Decreased stress levels
Decreased ruminative thinking
Decreased cell damage
Bolstering of the immune system
Increased longevity
Improved concentration

This is unquestionably great stuff.

However, when it comes to habits, mindfulness both helps and harms. It is beneficial in terms of helping us focus our attention on our behavior, specifically on those habits we want to start or change. Since habitual behavior, by its nature, is unconscious, in order to change it, we have to become conscious of it.

On the other hand, being too mindful—yes, apparently there are scientific measures for this—can get in the way of forming new habits, both bad and good. The formation of habits involves implicit learning, learning that is not consciously acquired. We have to let the unconscious part of our brain do its thing if we want to create and strengthen good habits. Too much mindfulness can impede that process.

In two studies of adult participants presented at the 2013 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, people who scored high on a gauge of mindfulness (and were less distracted) performed poorly on sequenced learning tasks, which involve implicit learning—in this case, pattern detection. People who scored low on the gauge of mindfulness (and were more distracted) had quicker reaction times and performed much better on the same tests.

The very fact of paying too much attention or being too aware of stimuli coming up in these tests might actually inhibit implicit learning. That suggests that mindfulness may help prevent formation of automatic habits—which is done through implicit learning—because a mindful person is aware of what they are doing. –Chelsea Stillman

This sounds like good news for dealing with bad habits. The problem is that when we think of habits, those are the only ones we tend to think of: the ones we wish we didn’t have. But habits are a device the brain uses to conserve precious energy. In general, habits are not only useful, they’re essential. In fact, the more good habits we create, the more conscious attention we have available for other mental activity, such as mindfulness.

So, no, habits are not always bad. And yes, you can have too much of a good thing, in this case mindfulness.

The Forward “Why?”

March 31, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

why-is-the-new-because — (Photo credit: screenpunk)

After years, probably decades, of dismissing why? questions as irrelevant and pointless—especially in regard to human behavior—I’ve finally found a use for them!

The problem with why? questions is that we almost always ask them in the wrong direction. We ask them backward instead of forward.

We ask why something that happened happened the way it did. We ask why people are the way they are or behave the way they behave. We ask why we are the way we are. We’re looking for explanations, rationales, reasons, or maybe even excuses. But those questions can’t really be answered, at least not with any degree of certainty. We simply don’t have, and never will have, all the information. We don’t even have all the information about what’s going on right this second, let alone anything that happened in the past.

The other problem with asking why? about what already happened is that it involves spending a lot of time looking backward. Our heads get stuck in the past searching back there for answers to questions about our present or even our future. All we can expect to come up with is a facsimile of an answer and not even a reasonable one.

Asking “Why?” forward instead of backward, however, is actually useful. More than that, it can be revelatory.

Is there something you want to do or someplace you want to go? Why?
Is there a decision you’re trying to make? Why are you considering it?
Is there a goal you’re working toward? Why?
Is there a habit you’re trying to start? Why?
Is there a change you’re thinking about making? Why?
Is there something you want to get or have? Why?

The list goes on.

Don’t stop with asking why? just once. If you keep asking why? repeatedly, you’ll eventually get to the last answer. Then you’ll know something you may not have known before. You’ll get closer to the heart of what’s at stake. You’ll be in a better position to decide what to do.

The backward why? is just a habit of thought. It can’t take us anywhere new. It has no surprises. The forward why? is where all the action is. It can dissolve limits and barriers. It can open up our world.

When you do anything you consider useful, however small a win it may be, write it down on your done list. (Or wait until the end of the day to write down your list.)

At the end of the day, look at your list. Reflect on and celebrate all the things you got done!

Review regularly—in the mornings to kickstart your day, every week, month, or year, or simply whenever you’d like a little boost or look back.

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