Author: alearningaday

There’s one approach to building habits that I call “the elevator approach.” In this approach, you’re on the ground floor when you start. You paint the picture of where you want to go – e.g., I don’t exercise today – but, this year, I expect to exercise five times per week. That goal might be the equivalent of the 5th floor on your exercise habit building.

Then, with a flourish, you press the elevator to come and get you.

The other approach is the “stairs approach.” You simply take a first step – i.e., you go from exercise zero times per week to once. It might just be a ten minute workout. But it is better than nothing. Then, you increase the quantity or frequency or quality, and so on.

For instance, this is how I’ve changed my workouts in the past 4 years.

2020: Time to become aware of how little I’ve been taking care of myself – get an Apple Watch. Then attempt to just close the 3 rings. But with COVID and two young kids, I barely manage this.

2021: Close my rings significantly more often. My exercise ring is closed by walking outdoors on most days. I manage an occasional morning run.

2022: I want closing rings to be a habit most weekdays. I also want to substitute 15 mins of an outdoor walk with an Apple Fitness+ workout. This happens roughly half the time.

2023: I get a virtual personal trainer on Future. For half the year, I manage to do a 15 min workout nearly every weekday. After reading Outlive, I add a 10 min run for some regular Zone 2 + VO2 max training. Also begin to bring back an hour of soccer every week.

2024: Convert to 2 days per week personal training with ~1 hour workouts. For the remaining weekdays, doing a mix of running and Fitness+ workouts.

It’s still early in 2024. But I know that I’ve walked up a few more stairs vs. 2023. And I’ll continue to climb up more stairs as time passes.

That’s the secret about building habits – that there is likely no secret elevator that is going to take us where we want to go.

We love stories about people who manage to make the elevator approach work for them. That’s no different from loving the stories of people who made hundreds of million dollars in one go.

It might work for a few – but it is likely not the strategy you want to bank on. As a rule, we’re better off assuming it won’t work for us.

So, skip the elevator and take the stairs – both in our approach to habits and in our daily lives.

So much of growing up is learning it is perfectly okay to say – “That’s a great choice for you. It just doesn’t work for me*.”

Different people, different values, different trade-offs.

Not wrong, just different.

*Obvious exceptions around sleep and exercise apply.

“Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.”

The actions we choose today sows the seeds for the actions we’ll automatically begin taking when we face trials in the future. Don’t make exceptions for extenuating circumstances… because life is a series of extenuating circumstances.

Learning happens fastest when there are real consequences.

The alternative catalyst is surprise.

The true test of learning is behavior change. When there are real consequences, we are forced to change behavior.

And, in the absence of those consequences, surprise makes us pause and rethink how we do what we do… which, in turn, increases the probability of behavior change.

The simplest way out of being stuck in ruts created by our day to day – play longer term games.

An idea I think about from time to time is how our appreciation for any given skill or experience inevitably transcends to a spiritual experience.

Writing, for example, after all these years, is a spiritual experience. I can say the same for many things I’m passionate about.

A good friend framed it beautifully when he shared – as our passion, skill, and appreciation for a topic goes up, we inevitably move from understanding the science, appreciating the art, and then experiencing its spiritual nature.

It resonated.

One of the few guarantees in this life is that every up will be followed by a down. And vice versa.

We never know when we’ve hit the crest of the up-wave or the bottom of the down wave. But, as sure as we are that the sun will rise tomorrow, we know enough to know that the opposite will come.

It is an appropriately sobering thought on the up and an encouraging one on the down.

It is that understanding that helps us build equanimity and gives us the greatest gift of them all – perspective.

And where perspective resides, wisdom follows.

When I first added a quick run in the morning to my routine, I used to go out with 3 layers, a beanie, and a bandana. Mid-way through the run, I’d have to carry my jacket and the beanie as it’d get far too warm.

I’ve learnt from those experiences. I step out now and embrace the chill for a few minutes knowing that I’ll be feeling warm soon. And if I really wanted to feel warm sooner, I could.

Every morning, this experience reminds me of an idea I call “internal weather.” The external weather may be near freezing – but my internal weather feels different. By the time I run up that second hill, I’m sure I could even get down to my inner layer and be just fine.

An amazing contrast.

Of course, the external weather matters. But it is amazing how much I’m in control of my response to it.

It is a beautiful daily reminder of the insight around being proactive. It is easy to be overly focused on reacting to the external weather. There’s always a problem thrown at us – the economy, that skeptic, that person who doesn’t like us, that result that didn’t go our way, and so on.

But we always have the dials – typically turned with intentional effort – to change our internal weather.

A couple folks wrote in about day before yesterday’s note on appealing to logic. They acknowledged that the first step is to figure out if logic is even an option.

Marge, however, posed the next question – what happens when we realize we’re dealing with emotions? What levers was I referring to when I said “Use the right levers, we must”?

First up, I think the important step is differentiating a problem that can be solved with logic vs. emotions. Too often, we waste time trying to logic our way out of a decision that is emotional.

Next, once we realize it is all about the emotions, the next step is to understand the fear and incentives* involved.

Only then will we understand the way out.

*I think fear and incentives are the most powerful forces in the world.

“I only start counting sit ups once it begins to hurt.” | Muhammad Ali

I think of this every time I try to go easy on a workout.

The pain shows us the way – in our workouts and in our life.