Massive Action Requires a ‘Tight’ Routine
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by James Rick
WHY DO HABITS FORM?
Habits preserve conscious processing power. Scientists have concluded the conscious mind is capable of processing up to around 2,000 bits (e.g. 2,000 characters) of information a second whereas the subconscious is capable of processing 4,000,000,000 bits of information a second. What these studies exemplify is that conscious brain power is a limited resource. Therefore, the brain must allocate repetitive information to the subconscious so the conscious can filter new information.
WHEN DOES A ROUTINE BECOME A HABIT
A routine becomes a habit when it has been turned over the subconscious. The subconscious takes over acts that have been performed repeatedly by the conscious as a way of preserving this limited resource. Scientists have observed that habits generally take about 30 days to form.
It’s important to note that chemical dependencies also play a role in how fast a habit can form and how hard they are to break. Addictive substances like nicotine, caffeine or heroine are external, meaning generated from outside of your body but addictions to substances can also form internal chemicals such as dopamine or adrenaline which are released during intense experiences like skydiving or sex can also play a role in what I call ‘habit change resistance’. Habits linked to addictive chemicals will require a greater level of commitment.
CONSCIOUS EFFORT IN HABIT FORMATION
The task is to be aware of habits before they form; this is when habits are easiest to create or change. After a habit has already been formed it becomes far more difficult to change. You must first identify the habit (by observing repetitive behaviors that you can’t fully explain) and then consciously work to replace wasteful habits. The longer a habit has been running the more conscious effort it may require to replace.
ARE YOUR BEHAVIORS PRODUCING DESIRABLE RESULTS?
Study your current behaviors – how many of them would you say are habitual? Now for the big question – ARE YOUR HABITS PRODUCING DESIRABLE RESULTS? In many cases because the habits formed during early childhood and adolescence little thought (conscious effort) was given to the habit formation process. This is like a child choosing the most important programming for its life operating system. As an older, wiser individual does it not make sense to go back and evaluate the choices you might have made as a child?
HOW DO HABITS APPLY TO TAKING MASSIVE ACTION?
For many years I wondered what it would really look like to take massive action to produce results. It sounds great ‘massive action’ – but what does it mean? I read all kinds of books on time management. I spent countless hours creating to-do lists, schedules, time logging and using life management software programs. What I have realized is that the answer is not a system ‘out there’ so much as it is ‘in here’ – in the brain, in the subconscious.
What I was trying to do was exceed my 2,000 bit processing limit consciously when all I really needed to do was decide very clearly on the actions I wanted to take on a regular basis that would eventually be picked up by the subconscious. These actions are what I call ‘evolutionary’ actions (even though the actions are generally the same, their content evolves over time) – like planning, meditation, reading or writing. There are a few ‘maintenance’ actions that should also be built into the routine like eating healthy and exercising. Once you carefully choose the actions you want to perform over and over again – you just have to exert enough conscious effort to get over the habit formation hurdle.
If you take the meager 2,000 bits of conscious processing power you have on a daily basis and you work like a little each day at sculpting a routine, you will eventually turn the task of ‘massive action’ over to your subconscious. When an action is taken over by the subconscious, in theory your power to perform that action goes from an army of 2,000 to an army of 4,000,000,000. Imagine if you turn the wrong action over to the army – uh oh is right!
And remember an action applies to doing, feeling and thinking. So if you want to produce more desirable doing behaviors, or more desirable feeling emotions or more desirable thoughts – you must begin today to re-shape the habits that form your life. So I leave you with a step by step plan for habit reformation.
STEP BY STEP HABIT REFORMATION
Step 1: Identify behaviors, emotions or thoughts you no longer wish to perform. If this is your first time doing this exercise – begin with physical behaviors, they are the easiest to notice.
Step 2: Before you attempt to eliminate the behavior – ask yourself what value are you honoring when you perform this behavior? (Assumption: All behaviors, emotions and thoughts must serve you in some way.) Your brain must be honoring some value system in order to perform the behavior. Sometimes simply becoming aware of the underlying value of unwanted behaviors can liberate you from those behaviors because you can still honor the value if it’s important– you’ll simply choose a more serving behavior to do so.
Step 3: Decide on the values you want to give the highest priority to.
Step 4: Decide on the actions you associate with your higher values.
Step 5: Begin designing a daily routine that will incorporate the new actions in your every day life. (This action is going to become a habit soon!)
Step 6: Notice if it’s working or not and make the necessary changes to your routine.
EXAMPLE:
Here’s an example of how these steps would work:
1) I no longer want to smoke. (I don’t smoke by the way :), this is just a simple example)
2) Smoking relaxes me. I honor my value of relaxation or PEACE. (Now I’ve clearly identified the value smoking honors – I can see the absurdity of smoking. There are other, healthier ways of meeting my need for peace or relaxation such as meditation or deep breathing.)
3) For now, I value HEALTH over PEACE. (I am now telling myself that I’m willing to sacrifice a little peace to be healthy. This clarity will help me when I’m craving the PEACE a cigarette brings. This is an important stage in the habit reformation process – because all behaviors honor some value, you have to temporarily sacrifice that value and replace it with something you value even more. It’s usually the sacrifice of a value WITHOUT a clear replacement that causes unwanted behaviors to continue. Imagine how difficult it would be to try to stop smoking when smoking is the only behavior that honors PEACE. If you weren’t aware of the fact that smoking honors PEACE, you wouldn’t have come up with a replacement behavior that also offers PEACE, so you’d be making a sacrifice with no clear benefit or replacement for your value system – which makes the change nearly impossible. In short, a sacrifice can only occur when you have clearly given another value higher priority or you’re honoring the same value with a replacement behavior.)
4) The actions I associate with my higher value HEALTH, would be eating healthy, exercising and NOT smoking – (but remember because smoking honors PEACE, I can increase my chances of NOT smoking only by replacing smoking with a behavior that also honors PEACE. Again, if I simply try to NOT do something – there is a big hole in my value system – my brain will automatically ask the question - how will I achieve my peace? If I do not have a HEALTHY replacement option, in a time of weakness I might sacrifice HEALTH to meet my need for PEACE.)
5) Now I need to simply add healthy eating, exercise and meditation (or whatever your replacement activity for smoking might be) to my daily plan. To make sure I’m eating healthy I could plan WHERE I’m going to eat, or WHAT I’m going to eat. To make sure I am going to exercise I can plan WHERE I’m going to exercise, or WHAT exercise I’m going to do or WHO I should invite to exercise with me. To make sure that I honor my need for PEACE before I even feel the need to smoke – I will proactively plan my replacement activity – in this case meditation or deep breathing anytime I feel like I need to relax.
6) I might suddenly realize that smoking honors more than just my value for PEACE, (and I might find this out after I give in for other reasons) instead of getting frustrated – it just means that maybe I just need to investigate a little further. If I was honoring HEALTH and I was feeling PEACE, yet I still needed a cigarette – aside from the obvious chemical addiction, what could I possibly value more than HEALTH or PEACE that I felt the cigarette gave me in that moment? Ah ha, maybe I felt like the cigarette gave me CONTROL over how I was feeling. So even though my body is going through withdrawal, the reason why I wasn’t strong enough to deal with those withdrawals is because I wanted an immediate solution for CONTROL. Now I can use this new discovery in steps 1 through 5 to possibly succeed the next time.
Can you see how this step by step approach is so much better than trying to STOP an unwanted behavior without understanding the underlying mechanisms that cause that behavior in the first place?
A CLEAR PERSPECTIVE
Can you imagine just trying to stop smoking and then starting again and stopping and starting again – without a clear idea on why you start or why you’re stopping? It’s like blindly slashing your way through a jungle. You might make it to the other side- you might also fall into a canyon and die. Why take the chance when you can survey the land from your helicopter above? This is the clarity you’ll have when you begin to link behaviors to your value system. You can move with precision and make the decisions that have nothing to do with how ‘strong’ of a person you are and everything to do with your value system – the root of human motivation and behavior; the epicenter of habit creation and reformation.
2 Responses to “Massive Action Requires a ‘Tight’ Routine”
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August 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Think RAM vs. Hard Drive.
Very insightful - one of the best blogs yet for me. Maybe because of timing or it may just be a great topic at any point in time. Recognizing that we do have some control over guiding our subconcious and harnessing such a valuable and dominating resource in our mind is incredible.
I would love to see some more/varied examples in some of the blogs though. I really enjoy reading them as they come and if you could make them come to life more with a variety of examples that would be awesome!
I’ll put in my two cents since I’ve made a request ;-).
I’ve recently started training Muay Thai (Thai Boxing). In the beginning I’ve been nearly overwhelmed with the different stances, punches, kicks, elbows, blocks, etc. and all the technique that is necessary with all of them.
One of the most basic examples is whenever you swing with one hand you should be protecting your face with the other. Makes sense right? Jab with the left - Cover face with your right. Then Cross Punch with the right - Cover face with the left.
It can be daunting to try and remember to bring your hand back to your face for cover in the midst of all the other tiny but crucial techniques.
But now I realize that if I can focus on this one aspect (covering the face at all times) for long enough with my conscious mind, to the point where my subconscious can take over, I will be able to free up that much more conscious space to work on the other ares!
In short, simply recognizing that we do have a limited concious capacity and more space in our subconscious is helpful. If we can train ourselves to make habits out of necessary actions and save our conscious space - I think that’d help us all.
Your hard drive holds a heckofalot more than your RAM!
August 29th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Hi Jacob,
I like the RAM vs. Hard Drive metaphor. And you also gave a great example. Anyone who has tried a new sport knows how hard it is to remember the many instructions even if they are simple. Driving a car for the first time, golfing, etc. There’s so much to remember that the conscious mind can go into overwhelm. But over time as the conscious delegates more and more of these actions to the subconscious - you can simply step up and perform.
Another excellent example of this is in the Olympics. Olympians have rehearsed and prepared so much that if they actually become self-conscious (more conscious) during a performance this can actually hinder their ability to perform. So be aware that this will happen to - any time you begin to re-evaluate an old behavior you’ll be a bit self-conscious about it for a while. Do what you need to improve it and then let it go back into the subconscious flow of things again.
I had this experience before I got into a relationship. I was very fluid in social situations with the opposite sex. Then I got into a relationship and due to the nature of the relationship I became more conscious of my social interactions, mostly because I didn’t want to flirt too much or cross the line in terms of acceptable behavior when in a relationship. So my automatic behavior became more conscious in my effort to change it. I became less flirty and more invested in my relationship. Then the relationship ended and I had to switch gears again - becoming socially awkward for a while again.
The main thing when trying something new, or analyzing existing behaviors that used to be automatic - don’t get let the uncomfortable feeling of self-consciousness stop you from improving on the behavior. It only takes a little time before the awkwardness gives way to a fluid performance.