How smart people maintain discipline without rigidity

For several months now, Beck has been following a great routine of making creative salads for work lunches. This routine was amazing and life-changing. She discovers many new options and looks forward to eating, which makes her feel competent and in control.

She then contracts a respiratory virus and loses her sense of taste. There’s no point in making a fancy salad that she won’t enjoy, so she decides to eat a salad. can We will have soup for lunch until she feels better.

By the time her sense of taste and energy return, the familiar routine of making salads feels strangely scary. She is struggling to get back on track. She can’t understand it.

Why good habits need reentry points

Beck’s experience is not unique. We get into a groove out of habit, but something throws it off and we find it hard to get back on track. This happens not because of waning interest or interest, but also when the disruption is out of our control. motivation.

This pattern is more the norm than the exception, so you should plan for it by designing your reentry points.

The reentry point should be the least intimidating location. non-tiring version About the habits you want to get back on track with.

To ease back into salad making, Beck decided to make her favorite salad every day for a week. She hasn’t made it in months, but she loves it so much that she knows she’ll want to eat it every day for a while. It seems much easier than making a bunch of new salads.

Example of reentry point

Re-entry points are personal. They lower the barrier for you. Here are some possibilities.

• I no longer have the habit of cleaning the kitchen before going to bed. The re-entry point is to set a timer to clean for 10 minutes and accept the cleaning level you have achieved.
• My record of continuous use of language learning apps has been discontinued. The key to re-introduction is to learn one new word from a favorite category (for example, food) every day for a week and put it into a sentence.
• I no longer have the habit of laying out my work clothes every night. For the next week, I’m going to line up my shoes every night.
• Let’s say you break your habit of reading a chapter of a book before bed and instead play solitaire on your phone. The re-entry point is to take a cookbook off your bookshelf and flip through it in bed for a few minutes. It can be viewed without actually reading it.
• To minimize waste, I used to plan dinner before going grocery shopping, but last time I skipped it. My re-entry point is the default menu plan and associated shopping list I create for those weeks when I don’t have the energy to create a bespoke menu.
• I know it’s important to read aloud to young children, but I’ve been skipping reading aloud for a week. The re-entry point is a book that we both like, mostly books that we just count and point at, but don’t really need to read.

bigger ideas

The specific strategies discussed here are very simple, but they speak to some larger ideas.

First, the big myth is that if you’re consistent at something, you’ll get better at it and it’ll get easier and easier to maintain it. In fact, we repeatedly rebuild our habits. It doesn’t mean that once you make it, it’s over.

Secondly, many people regulate themselves in the following ways: rigidity. We stay disciplined by being strict: maintaining and setting habits boundary linecutting back on luxuries that you find difficult to moderate.

This approach has many advantages. it’s usually facilitate discipline.

However, we cannot regulate ourselves in this way alone. I need more strings on my bow. I don’t want to be that person who never takes time off to maintain an exercise routine, even when I’m sick.

That’s a problem if that’s all there is to it. stay consistent Anything that has behavior is a habit element. it doesn’t help resilient habit. Situations like Beck’s, and all the examples listed here, are opportunities to make your habits richer and more resilient.

Tips and pitfalls

• If you’ve read this far, you may have realized that some of your habits already have reentry points, even if you’ve never thought about it that way. Identify them now.
• When you take a break, you may want to evolve your habits. This is not a failure. Ask yourself, “Do I want to continue this habit until I’m 90?” If the answer is no, then you need to evolve that habit at some point, and that point is probably now. To avoid abandoning the habit on a whim, try sticking with the evolved version of the habit for a period of time (perhaps 2-3 months). We will re-evaluate at that point.
• pay Note Until after a few days of slacking off, the urge to do the routine fades. For example, if you normally go to the gym three times a week, and you miss one session, you may notice that you miss the gym and have an increased urge to go. However, if you don’t go for a whole week, your desire to go will start to fade. Recognizing your patterns allows you to plan for the possibility that you may need to rekindle the urge to do the routine.

Rebuilding creates resilience

Sometimes when we think that We need stricter discipline.What we really need is more flexibility. Creating a habit reentry point isn’t about starting over, it’s also about simply doing a scaled-down version of your habit. It’s about knowing yourself well enough to identify the non-intimidating entry points you personally need to get back on track.

Successful self-improvement is built on one of the most important forms of knowledge: self-knowledge. It requires not only knowing the theoretical principles of successful habits, but also creating smart, flexible, and personalized applications that work in the real world.