Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (9 page)

The early-morning approach won't work for Owls of course—children and work usually force them to wake up too early already. They may do better if they schedule habits later in the day. However, even Larks sometimes overlook the possibilities of early morning. I sent a friend an email:

From: Gretchen

I'm thinking about something you said. You said you were a real morning person—as a child, you volunteered to be an altar boy for the early morning Mass, because you liked to be up early.

Now you wake up at 8:30.

In my gentle habits bully way, I would propose that you try getting up earlier, to take advantage of morning time—to go to the gym, read, write your books, walk in the park with your dogs, whatever. As a morning person I think you would love it.

I recognize that this is unsolicited meddling of course!

He responded:

From: Michael

So I'm 9 days or so into my getting-up-earlier habit. Picking something pleasurable is transformative. I've been reading for pleasure (also sometimes taking early am walks and cooking breakfast, and using my light therapy device). I never realized before how my prior efforts to wake up early were all basically variations on the “get cracking at work” theme.

It's all about the motivation to get up. I realize that often I woke up early, but would go back to bed because I didn't feel like working. Now sometimes I just get up.

I'd been meditating faithfully, when one morning, while on a business trip, I woke up in the dark, quiet hotel room—at 4:20 a.m., because of the time change—and thought, “I'm traveling. Maybe I should skip meditating.”

Then I realized how ludicrous this excuse was. I was alone, and I needed only five minutes, yet my mind had seized on “I'm traveling” as an excuse to skip my habit. “I always meditate as soon as I get up, no excuses,” I told myself. “I'm sticking to my meditation practice.” (Everything sounds more high-minded when described as a “practice”: the practice of meditation, the practice of writing, the practice of gardening.)

Consistency, repetition,
no decision
—this was the way to develop the ease of a true habit. In fact, I knew, the habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself. On any particular morning, it was more important to try to meditate than actually to meditate.

At the same time, I realized that for some habits,
mostly
was good enough. I enjoyed my new habit of taking a daily photo, and I loved being in closer contact with my sister, but after a reasonable trial period, I decided that I didn't need to push myself to keep those habits every single day.
Mostly
was good enough to keep those habits strong, and to accomplish the aim of the habit.

While Scheduling helps prod me to do things that I'm reluctant to do, it also helps me to do things I
do
want to do. Counterintuitively, I often find it harder to make myself do something that I
enjoy
than something that I
don't enjoy
. And I'm not alone. A reader posted: “My ‘thing' is song-writing on the piano. But a lot of days, I will do everything else before I sit down to compose.” A friend told me, “It may seem weird to schedule sex, but that's what works for me and my husband.” For some of us, it takes discipline to take pleasure.

One day Eleanor showed me a copy of her daily school schedule. She's an imaginative and orderly child, with a desk loaded with journals, eyeglasses cases, and office supplies ranging from a quill pen to a defunct wireless phone, and she loves her schedule. Her second-grade schedule included many elements that I want for my own day: snack, physical education, DEAR (“Drop Everything and Read”), and my favorite entry,
Choice Time
. Seeing “Choice Time” was a reminder that for people like me, leisure must be entered on the schedule as its own activity; it's not something I get only when I have nothing else to do. Because I
always
have something else to do.

Having fun is important, if only because it's easier to demand more of ourselves when we're giving more to ourselves. According to procrastination expert Neil Fiore, people who schedule playtime are more likely to tackle unappealing projects than people who never let themselves enjoy guilt-free fun until after their work is finished. Scheduling can solve this problem. For instance, in
The Artist's Way
, her influential book about cultivating creativity, Julia Cameron suggests scheduling an “
artist's date
,” that is, taking a few hours each week to “nurture your creative consciousness,” with activities such as visiting an art gallery, checking out a junk store, exploring a new neighborhood, or going for a walk.

Inspired by Choice Time to set aside time for leisure, I decided that each day I would observe “Quitting Time.” Now, after Quitting Time, I don't check my email, read or write anything on social media, or do original writing. It's nice to push back from my computer or hang up the phone, and think, “It's Quitting Time. Time to goof off.” Every day is different, however, so I don't set a standard quitting time; it's an unfixed habit that varies from day to day. I decide “when,” but not “whether.”

I wanted some habits, like meditation, to happen daily, but for other habits, once a week was enough. For fun, I'd proposed family “Game Time,” when on weekend afternoons we'd all play a game and drink hot cocoa. But after a few weeks of Game Time, I remembered something important about myself:
I don't like games
.

“What would everyone think of alternating weeks of Game Time with Reading Time?” I asked.

“Would we still drink hot cocoa?” asked Eleanor. Eleanor loves hot cocoa.

“Of course!”

“Okay,” she answered, and everyone agreed.

I remind myself: Just because something is fun for
other people
doesn't mean it's fun for
me
—and it's a lot easier to stick to a habit that I honestly enjoy.

I also wanted to use weekly Scheduling to tackle the long list of small, mildly unpleasant tasks that I kept putting off. These tasks weren't urgent (which was the reason they didn't get done), but because they weighed on my mind, they sapped my energy. I decided that once a week, for one hour, I'd work on these chores. While we often overestimate what we can accomplish in the short term (in one afternoon, in one week), we often underestimate what we can accomplish over the long term if we work consistently. A friend wrote a well-regarded novel by sticking to a habit of writing for just four hours a week—every Saturday, he and his wife gave each other a half day free—over the course of several years. As novelist Anthony Trollope observed, “
A small daily task
, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

I enjoy inventing labels and new vocabulary, and I considered calling this my “To-Do List Time.” Then I remembered that because of the “fluency heuristic,” an idea seems more valuable if it's easier to say or think. An idea expressed in rhyme seems more convincing than the same idea paraphrased in a non-rhyme, which is why “Haste makes waste” is more compelling than “Haste fosters error.” I decided to name my new habit “Power Hour.”

First, I made a running list of the tasks I wanted to complete. That was almost fun; I get a weird satisfaction from adding items to my to-do list. I didn't add any task with a deadline, such as planning my talk for a conference or buying plane tickets (for some reason, I loathe buying plane tickets), because I knew these tasks would get done anyway. And I didn't allow myself to use Power Hour for recurring tasks, like paying bills or answering emails. Power Hour was only for those one-time tasks that I kept postponing. Something that can be done at
any time
is often done at
no time
. I wrote:

Replace my broken office chair

Make a photo album of our vacation

Use up store credits

Donate books to Housing Works

Round up and recycle batteries and devices

For my first Power Hour, I tackled our long-neglected shredder. We'd never had a shredder, then finally I bought one, which broke right away, so I bought a replacement—and it had been sitting in a corner for months. I hadn't been able to face reading the directions or figuring out how to plug it into the inaccessible wall socket, and in the meantime, I'd accumulated a gigantic pile of mail to be shredded. The unused shredder bugged me, the pile of shred-worthy mail bugged me, and the trivial matter of shredding was taking up way too much room in my head.

“Power Hour!” I thought grimly, that first Saturday afternoon. I sat down with the shredder, figured out how to plug it in, and voilà—it was working. Not so bad.

“Hey, Eliza, want to do some shredding?” I yelled over my shoulder.

“Yes!” She came running. “I love shredding!”

Scheduling can also be used to
restrict
the time spent on an activity. A friend with a packed calendar uses the restriction angle of Scheduling to manage her work week. “I tell my assistant to try to limit calls, meetings, and lunches to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I need Monday to gear up for my week, and Friday to process it.” A friend from college allowed herself to daydream about her latest crush for only fifteen minutes a night. I know someone who eats fast food twice a week, which means he's not eating fast food five times a week.

When I saw a photograph of
Johnny Cash's to-do list
in the newspaper, I saw that he'd used the Strategy of Scheduling, too. On a sheet printed with the words “Things To Do Today!” he wrote:

Not smoke

Kiss June

Not kiss anyone else

Cough

Pee

Eat

Not eat too much

Worry

Go see Mama

Practice piano

Johnny Cash used Scheduling to “Worry.” Although scheduling time to worry sounds odd, it's a proven strategy for reducing anxiety. Instead of worrying continually, a person saves the worry until the appointed time, and then worries until the time is up. When I wanted to try to write a magazine piece around the publication of
Happier at Home,
I was worrying well before it was time to write it. I decided, “Don't worry about writing it until the last day of the month”—and I didn't.

The Strategy of Scheduling is a powerful weapon against procrastination. Because of
tomorrow logic
, we tend to feel confident that we'll be productive and virtuous—
tomorrow
. (The word “procrastinate” comes from
cras
, the Latin word for “tomorrow.”) In one study, when
subjects made a shopping list
for what they'd eat in a week, more chose a healthy snack instead of an unhealthy snack; when asked what they'd choose now, more people chose the unhealthy over the healthy snack. As St. Augustine famously prayed, “
Grant me chastity and continency
, only not yet.”
Tomorrow.

Around this time, Elizabeth and I managed to get our two families to Kansas City for a brief visit with our parents. I'd been thinking about how Scheduling could help procrastinators, and I realized I had another potential subject for my experiments. When I'd started my research, I'd convinced Elizabeth to be one of my habits recruits; now I turned my sights on her husband, Adam. Like my sister, Adam is a brilliant TV writer, and like many writers, he sometimes battles with procrastination. Procrastinators can't make themselves work—often, ironically, because they're so anxious about work that they have to distract themselves from it—but they can't enjoy free time, either, because they know they
should
be working. A regular work schedule can help procrastinators because progress and engagement relieve their anxiety.

“Adam, how would you like for me to suggest some habits for you?” I proposed. “Like I'm doing for Elizabeth. You can follow them or not.”

“Sure,” said Adam, sounding game. I worried that I was taking advantage of his easygoing nature. Elizabeth knew what she was getting herself into, but Adam might not. He grew up outside Los Angeles and has the relaxed outlook associated with California—combined with a very dry sense of humor. I remember one night when he and Elizabeth came to visit Kansas City just after they'd got engaged, and we were all going to dinner with some family friends. Jamie asked my mother, “What should Adam and I wear tonight?”

“It's very casual,” she said. “Khakis and loafers would be fine.”

“I'm from California,” Adam remarked to me. “Wearing khakis and loafers is like wearing an ascot.”

I, on the other hand, have a tendency to be a little …
tightly wound.
I vowed not to drive Adam nuts, and I showed great restraint—at least in my own mind—by not immediately launching into a long disquisition about habits. But I did give him a short pep talk about the Strategy of Scheduling.

“Scheduling reduces pressure,” I told him. “If you write every day, no one day's work is particularly important. And when you're working, you're working, and when you're not working, you're off duty. Without scheduling, it's easy to spend the whole day worrying about working, so you're not working but not relaxing either.”

“I know the feeling,” he said.

I suggested that he write from 11:00-1:00 every weekday. During that time, he was to write or
do nothing
. No email; no calls; no research; no clearing off a desk; no hanging out with Jack, my adorable, three-year-old, train-obsessed nephew. Write, or stare out the window.

“Remember,” I added, “working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination. You want to use your writing time for writing only.
Nothing else
, including no other kinds of work.”

I'd grasped this principle by accident. In my home office, I do work such as responding to comments on my blog, posting to Twitter or LinkedIn, checking Facebook, or answering emails. But when I want to do original writing—my most intellectually demanding work—I go to the library or to a coffee shop, where I don't connect to the Internet. This habit protects me from the pull of email, theweb, and household tasks and forces me to do nothing but write. I decide, “I'll stay in the library for two hours,” and then I'm stuck. I end up writing just to pass the time.