It's 7 p.m., and I’m completely drained. I’ve spent the entire day locked in negotiations—with myself—about writing this very piece. I kept debating questions like, "Should I write in the morning or evening?" "How long should I spend writing?" "Do I even know what I want to say, so why start today?" “Maybe I should wait until after I've finished all my work and chores, so I won’t be interrupted. And what if I don’t get past 200 words today?” etc. etc.
So, here I am: the day’s almost over and I’m completely wiped out.
Every time I go through a round of self-negotiation, my respect for diplomats hashing out world peace deepens further. Can you imagine how exhausting their jobs must be?
Negotiating is hard work. I’m convinced we’d all be calmer, more present, much more productive and a lot more fun to be around, if we could learn to stop negotiating with ourselves all the time. And here’s the irony: self-negotiation is almost always tied to self-improvement.
Self-Improvement's annoying relative: Self-Negotiation
The truth is, the things that require the most self-negotiation are usually tied to personal growth. When tasks involve other people—like our kids who need to be picked up from school, or the boss needing us to finish a report—we rarely find ourselves negotiating. Our sense of responsibility ensures we get to our child, or our bosses know how to chase us down.
But when it comes to matters of self-improvement, all bets are off. Sure, we might beat ourselves up again for not following through on what we intended to do, but just as quickly, we move on—because, really, what’s the rush? So what if our "new and improved version 2.0" shows up tomorrow, next month, or next birth?
The Holy Grail
Behavioral psychologists, though, aren’t putting up with our cop-outs. It’s almost like they’re more excited about our Version 2.0 than we are. According to them, there are ways to hit pause (or, if we’re lucky, stop) those endless mental debates we have with ourselves—especially about tasks we claim we want to do but can’t seem to find the motivation for. They promise a way to the holy grail. Their suggested solution to the endless cycles of self-negotiation is to Create Habits.
Create Habits
The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth to flossing. Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living.
Great thinkers throughout history have recognized the power of habits:
- Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Warren Buffett: "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."
- Charles Duhigg: "Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort."
The primary reason habits work wonders is because they eliminate Decision Fatigue.
Habits eliminate Decision Fatigue
Roy F. Baumeister, a psychologist who pioneered research on decision fatigue, said, “The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually, it looks for shortcuts.”
As John Tierney explains,
Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, [or] buy junk food at the supermarket.
The solution to the endless self-negotiation is almost ridiculously simple: Instead of wondering over and over again, if and when you should do something, create a routine to simply do the task at a set time, or for a set duration at regular intervals. Make it a habit. Create a routine.
Daily routines
Routines eliminate decision fatigue. Every choice we make drains a little bit of our mental energy. By the time we reach the end of the day, it becomes harder to make thoughtful decisions. But when we establish routines, we conserve that mental energy by automating repetitive tasks.
The little things we do every day compound over time to create significant change.
Want to transform your life? Start with a small habit—wake up 15 minutes earlier, take a longer walk, or opt for a healthier snack. Over time, these small actions lay the foundation for meaningful and lasting change.
The second step after building a habit is to find a way to track our progress.
2. Track Habits
Habits are the mechanisms that streamline our lives. The purpose of a habit is to eliminate self-negotiation and end those constant internal debates: "Should I do this?," “When?”, “How?”
But we can’t simply rely on willpower and/or motivation to keep us going. They tend to be fickle friends, often ditching us the times we need them the most. The surest way to ensure we stick to habits is by finding ways to track them.
I have already said a lot on the subject of habit streaks and how to track habits. Here’s the key: the point is not about completing the habit in its most ideal form. Instead, aim to keep the momentum going especially when life throws obstacles our way.
The Power of Habit Streaks
Habit streaks—repeating a task consistently over a long period—are game changers. Let’s say you want to become more informed, so you commit to reading for 30 minutes every day. It doesn’t matter if you’re tired, busy, or it’s raining outside—you find those 30 minutes daily.
Over time, the streak becomes automatic. Reading every day won’t feel like an effort anymore and will become as natural as eating or sleeping.
That’s the beauty of habits. Somewhere along the way, the action we struggle to commit to becomes second nature. And with it come the rewards.
If you repeated what you did today 365 more times will you be where you want to be next year? Kevin Kelly.
3. Reward Yourself
The only time I have an abundance of motivation is when I need to do something completely unrelated to what I should actually be doing.
True self-improvement requires us to get outside our comfort zones—let’s be honest, none of us wants to stay there for long. It is therefore in our interest, to keep the habit-building journey as enjoyable as possible.
This is where another behavioral economics hack can come in—temptation bundling.
Temptation bundling is the practice of pairing a task we enjoy (like listening to a favorite podcast) with a task we ought to do but might otherwise avoid (like exercising). Research shows that bundling the two can make habit-building easier and more enjoyable.
Finally
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Mark Twain
Arnold Schwarzenegger offers some simple yet powerful advice on forming habits: when it comes to weight training, he says, the goal is to automate your schedule so you know exactly when you’ll exercise—whether you’re preparing for a competition or just trying to look better in a swimsuit. You treat it like brushing your teeth—you just do it, no questions asked.
That’s how you make lifting weights a habit. That’s how you make ANYTHING a habit.