1: What’s the difference between waking up early and being an early riser?
Or, eating a healthy meal and being a healthy eater?
What about getting some work done and being a productive person?
Waking up early, eating a healthy meal, and getting some work done are good things. Certainly.
These are things you do.
Describing yourself as an early riser, a healthy eater, or a productive person shifts focus from actions to identity.
Your identity is shaped by the things you do consistently over time.
Habits—both good and bad—add up to create our identity.
“If you want to improve yourself permanently,” Tynan writes in Superhuman by Habit, “you must develop more old habits, which is done by creating new habits and sticking with them until they mature into old habits.
“You know that a habit has crossed that threshold,” he says, “when it becomes something that you subconsciously do, rather than something you must consciously think about doing.”
Last weekend, we explored willpower, noting its limitations. The best use of willpower is building good habits.
“Each new habit strains your willpower, which means that there is a limited number of new habits that you can have at any given time,” Tynan observes.
The good news? “Old habits, being automatic and subconscious, can be unlimited,” he explains. “So, the ultimate process for self-improvement is to add as many new positive habits as possible, working diligently to convert them to old habits and make room for more new habits.”
2: How do you realize your potential? It starts by thinking long term. Very long term.
“Smoking a single cigarette really isn’t very bad for your health,” Tynan notes, “but smoking thousands of them per year adds up and turns smoking into one of the nastier habits you could have.”
Doing something once isn’t a big deal. The problems begin when it’s repeated over and over again.
It’s the same with positive habits: “Drinking green tea once won’t have any impact on your health,” he observes, “but drinking a few cups every day for years will actually make you a healthier person. . .
“The benefit of a habit isn’t the magnitude of each individual action you take, but the cumulative impact it will have on your life in the long term.”
You want to take a long-term perspective. Think years or decades.
“It’s through that lens that you must evaluate which habits to pick up, which to drop, and which are worth fighting for when the going gets tough.”
3: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about. Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations.
At the end of each week, we’re exploring the ideas from Tynan’s book Superhuman by Habit. We will begin with several weeks on the mechanics of building habits. What I like most about this book, however, are his suggestions for specific habits, which we will eventually cover.
The key to creating a new habit is consistency, Tynan explains.
“Your results will be commensurate with the consistency with which you execute your habits, not with the magnitude of their one-time impact,” he notes.
“Just as it would be better to make 5% interest per year on your financial investments for the rest of your life than 50% interest for one year,” he says, “it’s better to maintain a modest life-long habit than to start an extreme habit that can’t be sustained for a single year.”
With this in mind, how do you turn this truth into an actionable insight?
First, when it comes to new habits, start small.
“Instead of saying that you will eat a perfect diet for the rest of your life, resolve to cut sugar down by fifty percent,” he shares.
“Rather than say you will run every single day, agree to jog home from the train station every day instead of walk, and do one long run every week.”
Second, “you should be very scared to fail to execute a habit, even once,” Tynan notes. “By failing to execute, potentially you’re not just losing a minor bit of progress, but rather threatening the cumulative benefits you’ve accrued by establishing a habit.”
The bottom line: “This is a huge deal and should not be treated lightly.”
Remember: Make your new habits (1) easy to do, and (2) never miss doing them.
It’s easy to come up with excuses for not doing something we don’t feel like doing. The key is to challenge yourself.
“Whenever you are going to skip executing a habit,” he suggests, “force yourself to consciously admit that you’re skipping, and articulate why you’re skipping.”
If you say to yourself, “Okay, I’m not going to meditate tonight because I’m just too tired,” you may likely then challenge yourself by saying, “Even though I am tired, maybe I can just get through it.”
More next week!
__________________________
Reflection: What habits am I practicing consistently enough that they are becoming part of my identity? Are those habits moving me toward the person I want to become or away from it?
Action: Choose one small habit that aligns with the identity I want to build and commit to doing it every day this week. Focus on consistency, not intensity.
What did you think of this post?
