S3 Ep02 - Building Sustainable Habits

Welcome to the Zen Habits podcast, where we dive into how to work with uncertainty, resistance, and fear around our meaningful work. This is for anyone who wants to create an impact in the world and cares deeply enough to do the work. I'm your host, Leo Babauta, creator of the Zen Habits blog.

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Okay, my friends. In this episode, we are going to talk about building sustainable habits that will support your productivity, support the meaningful work, the meaningful projects, and the impact you'd like to have in the world.

So, we're not talking about habits in general like, "Oh, how do I wake up early?" Although that might be one of them. "How do I eat more vegetables or, you know, go for walks more?" We're not just talking about habits. We're talking about sustainable habits that will actually create the impact that you'd like to have.

Productivity is a very vague word, and in this season of the Zen of Productivity, we are using it as an umbrella to talk about a lot of things. But in general, what we're talking about is productivity as finding a way to show up for the meaningful work that we want to do, to have the impact we want to have.

And so, productivity is like, "How do I actually, you know, work through my task list or my project list so that I can actually have this impact? How do I face my resistance and focus and not get distracted? How do I work with commitment, accountability, goals, and intentions?"—which we talked about last week.

How do I do all of these things so that I can have the result that I want? Not just so that I can churn out more, not just so that I can feel like a better person by not being lazy.

That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about having an impact in the world that you want to have. I want to put this course out into the world, this podcast out into the world, so that it can have a positive impact. I want to do this thing for my children, my team, so that they can have better lives and things will be easier for them.

I want to do this project out in the community so that it can improve the lives of my neighbors. I want to do this thing for my family so that, you know, they can have a good life.

So that's what productivity is—actually being effective and showing up and facing all of our stuff so that we can have a meaningful impact. We can achieve the goals not just to check off lists but to have a meaningful impact.

And so, what we're talking about today is how do we build sustainable habits that will help create that?

It's not just about, you know, to-do lists and calendars and all of that stuff, although we will talk about that later in the season—we're going to talk about that in the next episode, I believe. But today, we're talking about how to actually build sustainable habits that support that.

So, let's talk about habits as they relate to productivity, and then we'll talk about how to build and maintain sustainable habits. I’ve worked with habits for, you know, nearly 20 years now. I’ve taught habits, I’ve written books on habits, taught courses, and worked with coaching clients on habits.

So I know a ton about changing habits. I’ve changed so many of my own. So, we're gonna talk about how to build and maintain sustainable productivity habits but also how to use mindfulness to reinforce positive habits.

And then I'm going to talk about something that's really underrated when it comes to habits, which is the practice of simply coming back to the habit when you've dropped it.

Okay, so what role do habits play in productivity? This might sound like a really obvious thing for you, but I think it's worth a discussion. Habits are something that we build as a sustainable thing that will happen repeatedly—let’s say daily—so that when we wake up, we might meditate and then make our plan for the day.

For example, right? Maybe I want to journal and then make the plan. So, we have these habits that, if I do these on a daily basis—doesn't have to be daily, but daily would be a really common one—if I do these on a daily basis, it will help me to get to where I want to go.

So, for example, if I build the habit of walking, that will help me to have the health that I want. Plus, I'll be out in nature more. That's also another thing that I want. Plus, you know, I get to walk with my friend and connect with someone I care about. So, this daily walk is a habit that will lead to things that I actually care about.

So, what we want to do is reverse-engineer our goals so we can figure out what the habits are that will lead to those goals.

For example, if I said, "I want to finish a book by the end of this year." Okay, great. What habit do I need to create to make that book happen? And it might not just be one; you might think, "Oh, obviously a writing habit, right?" Yes, obviously a writing habit.

And maybe there's others. Maybe I want to do a pre-writing habit. Maybe I want to do an editing habit. Maybe I want to meditate beforehand so that I can let my nerves calm down and I can feel open as I go into the writing.

So, you know, there might be some other things that support that, but the main habit is obviously a writing habit. And so, we want to think, "What habit will lead to the goal?"

So, let's take a couple of other examples. A podcast is a great one, right? "I want to record two episodes every day until the season is done, and that's my habit." Okay, great, I need to do that.

Actually, before that, I need to plan the episodes. Maybe I need to write out some notes and think about it. So, maybe a second habit is, "I want to go for a walk in the morning where I reflect on the topics of the episode and then write down some notes after the walk."

So that's actually two little habits—a walk and some notes. And then, in the afternoon, I'm going to set up my microphone and record two episodes that I just reflected on in the morning.

So, you can see there that I have a set of habits that are actually going to lead to me having the impact that I want, which is, "I'm going to put this podcast out."

And so, that's what you want to do—like, what are the habits that will lead to that? Now, if you're having trouble with that, comment on the YouTube version of this podcast. So, if you're not on YouTube, go look at my beautiful face. Put a comment below and say, like, "Here's my goal. What habits do I need?"

But what I want you to do is not just ask, like, "Tell me what habits." I want you to make a guess. "So, here's my goal. I'm thinking these are the habits. What do you think, Leo?" And I will answer every single one of those.

If you don't do the work of making a guess, I'm going to ask a follow-up question. You're going to force me to ask the follow-up question, even though I've already asked it. "What do you think might lead to it?" So, take a shot at it.

Some habits that lead to goals would be a writing routine, a recording routine, a coding routine—if you're making an app. Another habit would be a focus session with other people. So, "I'm going to do a daily focus session with one or more people where we get on a video call, say what we're going to do, and then do it on mute. At the end of the hour or two-hour session, we're going to say how it went." So, that's a habit.

Another habit is to do a daily meeting with a team member. So, let's say you're doing an app, the two of you code. So, you have a coding habit and then a daily meeting where you get clear on where everybody is, what issues there are, and what needs to be done tomorrow. So, that could be a habit—a meeting habit. Or I get on a call with someone every day where we talk over these issues. So, that's a habit.

Other habits, as I've mentioned, are meditation and walking. If you want some way of reflecting on things or clearing through your emotions, those can support the project. Journaling would be another one. Therapy, getting a coach—these are all ways of breathing exercises, another one.

So, these are habits that support the main habits. Planning at the beginning of the day can be a habit. Waking early, if you need a little bit more time for writing, I've done a YouTube video on how to wake early, so go look at that if you'd like. Zen Habits Official is the channel—the official Zen Habits YouTube channel.

If you want to look, just search for Zen Habits—you'll see my amazing face on there. But I did one on how to wake up early, so if you want that habit, go look at that.

These are some of the habits; there might be others, but those are the ones that come to my mind.

Okay, so how do we build and maintain these habits in a sustainable way?

The first thing is that I encourage you to do it at least once a day—no more than five times a day. Five is stretching it. So, I would really only shoot for once a day, one habit once a day in the beginning, and then you can add to it, build on it.

So, for example, if you wanted to do three habits, start with one for the first week. The second week, you can do the second habit; the third week, you can do the third—or maybe wait another extra week and then do the third.

This way, we're not trying to do three things at once. We want to really let ourselves do this one habit and get that going.

And only once we feel like, "Oh yeah, I did five straight days of that or seven straight days," now I'm going to do the second one. But if you're struggling with the first one, scale it back.

And so, that's the second idea—not just doing one at a time, but doing it as small as possible.

So, let's say you wanted to do a meditation habit—two minutes. I actually did another video on the meditation habit—how to meditate. Go look for that video. But I have a method for building a sustainable meditation habit, which starts with two minutes a day and then you increase it slowly.

If you want to do a writing habit, start with a 10-minute writing habit, and then build on that two minutes at a time if you're able to keep it going.

So, 10 minutes is not that hard. Sit down, block out everything else, and say, "I'm going to do nothing or write. Those are my only two options for 10 minutes." And so, you can just sit there and be like, "I got nothing." But eventually, what you're going to do is, "Okay, let me write down a few words. Let me write down a couple of notes." And then you start to get into the flow.

And that's really what we want to be doing—not just starting small but letting ourselves get into the flow of it.

If I want to write, let me just try and write, you know, a couple of sentences the first day, the second day a paragraph. And what happens is this flow starts to come out.

If you want to record things, record yourself just saying gibberish, like, "I don't know what to record right now." Record that and throw it away. The next time, record a few coherent sentences, then throw it away.

The next time, record something that's like halfway decent, and then send it to someone—a good friend who's not gonna judge you—and be like, "Don't really watch this. I just want to be in the practice of sending it to someone."

And then just get into the habit of making videos and sending them to people, and eventually, it's going to flow. And now you're ready to make the ones that actually have lasting value.

So, build habits one at a time, slowly building on that, starting small, and then letting it flow.

I like once a day as a rhythm. On a daily basis, seven days a week is ideal. If you can't do seven days a week, do five days. So, every weekday would be an example. And this gets you practicing daily. But it's not so overwhelming where you're like, "I need to remember something 10 times a day."

That's too hard. But if you're like, once a week, it's going to take forever to build up the reps to make a habit. So, daily is a good idea. If you're feeling a little bit ambitious, twice a day. So, like, let's say a 10-minute writing habit twice a day, a 10-minute coding habit twice a day is one thing. Now you've already got a coding habit—great. Just try and make it more regular, right?

Okay. Make sure you set reminders and have some accountability.

So, somebody else to be accountable to, even just one person. If you'd like some accountability with habits, come into my Fearless Living Academy. Fearless.zenhabits.net is the page to look at more information and sign up.

But at Fearless Living Academy, we have accountability for habits and courses on habits. But have some kind of accountability and some kind of reminders.

Okay, now let's talk about positive reinforcement for habits.

I think there are ways to use rewards. So, let's say I get a treat, you know, a cookie after I meditate. I think that's amazing, right? Or a hot cup of tea after my meditation. You know, a cup of chai after my writing session.

Chai is amazing, right? So, I'm going to do my session, and afterward, I get myself a cup of chai. So, I think that's great. You reward yourself afterward.

Positive reinforcement works with habits way better than negative reinforcement—like, a thousand times better. A lot of times, people will use negative reinforcement, like, "If I didn't do it, I'm going to be really harsh on myself and embarrass myself and do all these mean things to myself."

No, that's not how we reinforce habits. We do it positively.

So, we tell ourselves, "Good job. You meant to do 10 minutes; you did 30 seconds. Great work, actually doing 30 seconds. I'm really proud of you. And I want to celebrate that. And tomorrow, let's see if we can do another 30 seconds or more."

So, we want to just encourage every little movement approximately towards our actual habit. Positive reinforcement is really good, but a lot of times, people want to do positive reinforcement after the habit. I actually think doing it during the habit is the way to do it.

So, the way we would do that is, "Oh, I'm here, showing up and sitting to do my writing. How can I make this an enjoyable thing so that the activity itself is rewarding?" And the way we can do that is through mindfulness.

So I can be like, "I'm going to try and bring a sense of curiosity and adventure to my writing session." And I'm doing it, I'm like, "Ooh yeah, this feels a little bit adventurous. I'm facing my fears. And ooh, what is that like? There's my curiosity. What would it be like if I gave myself a prompt, like, 'What would a monkey do if it were in a robot on the Ganges?' I don't know." So, you can kind of make up something silly and be curious about it.

So, it's playful, adventurous, curious. And as you're doing it, you're really letting yourself experience the mindfulness. It's like experiencing that kind of way of showing up and enjoying it, like having a little bit of wonder, a little bit of savoring of the moment.

And so, this kind of mindfulness of savoring and enjoying the present moment as we do the habit is positive reinforcement as we do it. I still think, you know, play some nice music as you do the habit, have that cup of chai—but have the cup as you do the habit, not afterward, or coffee or tea or whatever you like.

Chai, by the way, is the word for tea.

So, okay, let me finish this episode by talking about what happens if we miss a habit.

And in this one, as I mentioned, this is an underrated skill for habits, and it's the practice of simply coming back—simply coming back to the habit after you've dropped it. This is underrated because people think, "Oh, when I form a habit, I'm going to do it. I'm going to be disciplined. I'm going to stick to it." And they have this idea of how the habit's going to go, which is a rigid idea. "It needs to go well."

But we don't build into our framework, our mind model, the idea that it could be messy.

You could do three straight days and then miss two days, and then do two straight days and then miss a day, and then do five straight days and then miss a day, and then do 30 straight days and then miss a day and feel super disappointed. So that's actually how it often goes.

Now, it doesn't have to be like that. It could be, "I did 150 straight days and then I missed a day, and that caused me to miss 12 more days because I was so discouraged." That's often how it goes as well.

And so, there's not an exact way it's going to go, but we want to broaden the range of how we think it's going to go. And then that allows it to be more anti-fragile, that we are more resilient when things don't go the way we thought.

We're like, "Oh, actually, I did think it could go this way. It wasn't what I was shooting for. Obviously, I'm not trying to miss a day, but that was included in my idea of how habits go. So I knew this was a possibility. And now all I have to do is start again."

As simple as that. "All I have to do is start again." And if it helps, shrink the habit down. If you were doing 30 minutes of writing every day and you missed a day, do 20 minutes the next day.

If you missed two days, do 10 minutes the next day. If you missed three days, do five minutes the next day. So we want to shrink it down so that it's really easy to start again. We want to start back as simply as possible.

I'm going to give you an example of how this works in meditation.

A lot of you have meditated on the breath before, and one common instruction is to count the breaths. There's one breath, there's two breaths, and so you count either on the in-breath or the out-breath, right?

And so it's like, "One, two, three." And then when you catch yourself thinking, you're like, "Ah, I was thinking. Okay, come back." Now you start back at one.

And people will often get frustrated. It's like, "Ah, I have to start back at one. I was just on seven. Dang it. Now I'm back on one." But that's because they have some idea that they should be on seven, and seven is better than one.

But what if one was just as important as seven? And if you come back to one, it's like, "Okay, cool. One is also great. Now I'm at eight. Okay, cool. Eight is great. But now I'm back to one because I thought about something. Thought about how great eight was. Now I'm back to one. One is also freaking great. So is two. Let's celebrate ones and twos, because ones and twos mean we came back."

What if we never came back and we just thought for the rest of the meditation? There are no more ones. You know, that's not something to be mad at ourselves about, but the idea that that could happen. And then instead, we just came back to one.

That's a celebration-worthy event. We came back to one.

And that's what I'm saying with habits. Yeah, you could get a streak going of 150 straight days, but if you miss a day, start back at one and celebrate starting back at one, because that's an amazing thing.

So, I encourage you, as homework, think about what habits are going to sustain the intentions and goals that you have, and post it in the YouTube comments, or if you're listening to the audio version of this, send me an email at [email protected].

I would love to hear from you. I might not reply, but I promise you I'll read it. It'll go to my personal inbox. I will read every single one. I will be thinking about you and be grateful for you for listening and replying to me.

Thank you, my friends. I will see you in the next episode.

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