The Anatomy of a Habit

Or- What Wouldn't You Do For A Klondike bar?

Think: I’m thinking about habits, and ice cream dipped in chocolate.

Last time I mentioned that there are four components to a habit: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.

Here’s a real-life example: Each evening after dinner I try to knock out an hour or so of writing then, sometime around 7-7:30, I head into the living room to sit down on the couch and watch an hour of mindless television before I start getting ready for bed.

As soon as my butt hits the couch (CUE), I want to get up and get something to eat (CRAVING). The fact that I am not hungry is irrelevant, I want to eat.

I may get up, wander into the kitchen (RESPONSE) and find a Klondike bar that I don’t have to do anything for (REWARD).

If I want to change this habit, I can attack any of the four components:

Cue- I could stay at my desk until bedtime (but I don’t want to do that.) Or, I could try sitting in a different seat (tried it, doesn’t work.)

Craving- If I want to stop eating Klondike bars, I can not buy Klondike bars. If they aren’t in the house, I can’t eat them, and no, I won’t crave one badly enough to go out and buy it at 7:30 pm. The trouble here is that I could seek a substitute for the Klondike. Frostbitten ice cream, cookies, or chips will all suffice. One idea is to make a more healthy snack easy and readily available.

Response- I can refuse to get up and get a snack. This might work, but the fact that this craving comes at the end of the day makes it especially insidious.  Willpower is like a muscle in many ways. Its strength is finite. Once the daily allotment has been used up it can be difficult to marshal reserves to fight off the craving.

This is where process comes in. By linking or stacking habits we can develop processes that guide us through the day with less friction. Think of process as habit grease. If we can move smoothly through the day, we can marshal our reserves of willpower and will have more remaining at the end of the day.

We can also work to strengthen our willpower or mental toughness, but that is a topic for another day.

Habit grease is my second favorite grease right behind elbow grease.

Reward- Despite what you might think, the Klondike is not the reward (or at least it didn’t start out that way.) The reward is the satisfaction of the craving. And each time I satisfy that craving with a Klondike, I further solidify my association of the cue with the craving and the establishment of the Klondike as the only way to satisfy it.

The key isn’t to stop the habit, but to replace it with a better one. The best way to do this is to make good habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying while making bad habits invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.

To solve The Case of the Klondike Craving, I decided to preempt the cue. After I finish writing for the evening, and before I sit down on the couch, I put the tea kettle on and prep a mug of Chamomile tea which will help me sleep (good habit). While the water heats, I straighten my desk and make sure I have everything ready for the morning (good habit).

This is habit stacking. Making the response for one good habit the cue for another good habit.

When I finally sit down with my mug of tea I am contented, and I don’t wind up with melted chocolate all over my fingers.

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Read: The power of habit by Charles Duhigg

Duhigg defines a habit as “a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing, often every day.”

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Write:

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is about writer’s block.

What is it? Do I get it? Why does it happen? How do I get rid of it?

Good questions all. I don’t like the idea of a ‘block’. That makes it seem too solid, formidable, and unmoving. I prefer Steven Pressfield’s term, resistance. He explains it as:

“Resistance can not be seen, touched, heard, or smelled, but it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. it is a repelling force. It is negative, its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

Viewed this way, it is not an inanimate force to be overcome, but an active, malevolent enemy, hell-bent on throwing monkey wrenches in our works and stuffing flies into our ointment.

To put an actual name to this enemy we can look to the wise words of the classic comic strip character Pogo who uttered, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

There are several reasons that we might sabotage ourselves.

• Sometimes we may not know enough about the topic. We haven’t done the homework and Resistance is pushing back. The solution here is to simply do the work. Prepare, and give your writing the respect it deserves.

• Often, if the topic is personal; you might not be ready to write about it. A lot of veterans I have worked with find themselves in this situation. Sometimes the solution is to come at the topic from another direction. Instead of non-fiction, try fiction or poetry. Or, just as you would in combat, don’t attack the strong point, find an area where your defenses are weaker, and work your way into the topic.

• Most often, however, the culprit is simply that we expect the muse to be waiting patiently by our desk ready to pour her blessing over our head at our whimsey.

It has been my experience that the muse requires sacrifice and that sacrifice is sitting in the chair consistently, (build the habit). Show her you are serious and she will come.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Writing is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it.

It may help to know that even Homer begins the Oddessey with an invocation to the Muse:

Speak, Memory –
Of the cunning hero
The wanderer, blown off course time and again
After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights.
Speak
Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped,
The suffering deep in his heart at sea
As he struggled to survive and bring his men home
But could not save them, hard as he tried –
The fools – destroyed by their own recklessness
When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,
And that god snuffed out their day of return
Of these things,
Speak, Immortal One,
And tell the tale once more in our time.

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Repeat: Great thoughts from those who said it best

"Good choices create opportunities. Good habits make the most of them." ~ James Clear

Some people mistake grit for sheer persistence - charging up the same hill again and again. But that's not quite what I mean by the word 'grit.' You want to minimize friction and find the most effective, most efficient way forward. You might actually have more grit if you treat your energy as a precious commodity. ~ Reid Hoffman

Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to quit the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you. ~ Travis Bradberry

​"Consistency before intensity. Start small and become the kind of person who shows up every day. Build a new identity. Then increase the intensity." ~ James Clear

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Thanks for reading Think. Read. Write. Repeat.

If you enjoyed it, please recommend it to a friend.