Lesson 11
Congratulations! Youâve reached the final lesson of 30 Days to Better Habits. Today is âhabit graduation.â
I use the term habit graduation for two reasons. Not only because you are graduating from the course and finishing what you set out to do, but also because in this lesson we will discuss how to graduate and advance from your small, initial habit to larger and more impressive habits over time.
Whenever I tell people about my approach to habits and behavior change, one of the first questions I receive is: Am I supposed to stick with a small habit forever? It makes sense to start with something tiny, but how do I know when to scale up?
These are important questions for anyone committed to continuous improvement, and Iâd like to close the course by offering a few useful ways to think about answering them.
When you start out building a new habit, itâs exciting in the beginning because itâs new. When things are new, itâs novel and interesting. Over time, however, habits become routine. They become learned and the outcomes become expected. Once you know what to expect, habits tend to be less interesting. Sometimes they even become boring. This can be one of the first signals that itâs time to graduate your habit to the next level. You scale up when what was previously challenging is now the new normal.
When your old habit becomes boring, you know itâs time to move on. However, this can be a potential pitfall because, once people get bored, they start looking for something new to do: a new solution, a better approach, a different program. Pretty soon, you jump to one habit to the next, or one program to the next and you never spend enough time focusing on one thing long enough to get results. The key is once you get bored, you stick with the same habit, but find a new detail to master or get interested in.
Some examples:
Youâve been writing 100 words per day and youâve done that for 3 months now and itâs no longer interesting. Rather than using this as evidence that you should jump to podcasting or video or YouTube, you find a new detail to obsess over related to writing. Perhaps you try to master writing better opening sentences. This renewed focus on a small portion of the process allows you to stick with the habit of writing but find something interesting in the habit.
The second thing you can do is to stick with the same habit, but scale up the intensity or volume. For example, perhaps you began a walking habit by putting on your walking shoes and going outside for two minutes each day. After a few weeks, this routine may be so easy that it feels boring to you. At this stage, you can scale up to walking for five minutes or 10 minutes. In this case, the potential pitfall is jumping from a small version of your habit to something massive. Even as you graduate from one level to another, you want to be careful to maintain small, incremental improvements. Just because youâve mastered the art of showing up, doesnât mean you should jump straight to the finish line.
This is the perfect time to continue walking along the habit shaping path from âvery easyâ to âvery hard.â
Start by mastering the first two minutes of the smallest version of the behavior, then advance to an intermediate step and repeat the process. Mastering each stage before moving on to the next level. Eventually, youâll end up with the habit you had originally hoped to build despite starting so small.
Habit graduation will always be a personal choice and require some level of guess work. One of the metrics I like to keep in mind is choosing a new level that is exciting enough that Iâm no longer bored, but easy enough that I know Iâll be able to do it 98% of the time.
At this stage, you simply repeat the process youâve already followed: Scale up to the next level, master this portion of the behavior, make it the new normal, and then repeat. If at any time you do fall off course or you feel like itâs all you can do just to show up, return to your original two-minute version.
Finally, Iâd like to share a theory of motivation that you can keep in mind as you continue to advance and expand your habits. I refer to this theory as the âgoldilocks rule.â It can be a useful philosophy to keep in mind when considering how big of a jump you should take when you scale your habits up.
The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak levels of motivation when working on tasks of just manageable difficulty. Not too hard, not too easy, just right. This is precisely the region where habits remain motivating and exciting. Working on challenges of just manageable difficulty is a good way to keep things interesting.
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One way to know that youâre in the goldilocks zone and staying on the edge of your ability is that youâre winning enough to feel successful and failing enough to feel challenged. The key aspect to focus on here as youâre trying to expand is winning enough to feel successful. If at any point, you expand your habit to a degree where you are no longer succeeding consistently, you know you have surpassed the goldilocks zone and you should scale back down to something easier. You need just enough âwinningâ to experience satisfaction and just enough âwantingâ to experience desire.
Here are some examples:
Once youâve mastered lacing up your running shoes and stepping out the door, graduate to walking around the block each day. Once thatâs easy, scale up again.
Once youâve mastered putting all the dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, include another simple cleaning task â like washing a dish right after you use it instead of letting them pile up in the sink. Once thatâs easy, scale up to include another task.
Once youâve mastered saving $1 per week, graduate to saving $5 or $10. Continue to scale up until you âfeelâ it, then back off a touch.
Staying on the edge of your potential is more art than science. Nudge yourself a little, so youâre no longer bored, but not so much that youâre failing each time.