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Breaking Down Micro-Habits

We had a worksheet where we looked into sort of some goals you were trying to form and trying to break them down into individual steps. I wanted to bring up, bring up student for a hot seat and just go over it and see what, see what they thought. So, um, I think Marty, did you have? Ah, Did you manage toe? Great. You're the goal I would achieve was, you know, at first I was gonna put just be fit enough to feel comfortable with my shirt off. But that wasn't, um, very measurable. And so I just went with do strongest again starting november 3rd. So working out three times a week. That's great. Strong lips, of course, is the app that I recommended yesterday. Uh, you seem to have done it before. Yeah, great. It's really cool because they break it down to three. You work out you're going to each day, and the perfect part about it is that they give you you just put in your first wait and your first day, and then that's it. Every day you show up and you just it tells you what to do. So you don...

't have to think about it automatically updates. Yeah, great. So you're gonna start working on Strongest on November 3rd, right? Great. Um, that was that. Was that your entire goal? Well, that's kind of like the one that they just think through more on Be just more specifically. What would your micro have it be? Here. Think about this. So you have. Ah, The goal now is to get yourself to do strong lifts three times a week, starting november 3rd. Um, that's a great goal. Uh, what would you How can you How would we get yourself started on the school? What's the first step? You can dio, I think for me, the micro have it would just be waking up at five. AM every day. Yeah. Do you have, ah, give a gym signed up before already? Yeah, I do. You do. And where is it in relation to your house or your daily path? Um, it's I live in Redwood City. It's in Daly City. Stuff about I don't know how far that is, but 20 minutes away. Great. Do you happen to go there like drive that route already? Or do you really have to drive their manually. Yeah, it is on the way to where I'm going. Great. So, waking up early, getting yourself to go to the gym for a couple days, they're getting yourself started entering there and starting to work on strong lifts, probably on a lightweight to get started off strong lips kind of allows you to build a micro habit into your routine because they start off with a very easy lightweight that you start working out with. So you can't really like you can get there and just simply doing squats themselves, um, can get started. That makes sense. Yeah, Great. So do you think that you'll start that on november 3rd? Yeah, I think the what I want the micro habits to kind of lead to is just to get me to the gym. Because once I'm there, then I'll do it. Yeah, if I'm on the way, I'll do it cause it's like I'm already headed there. Why would I waste 20 minutes going there, toe Not work out. So I think it's just it's really just waking up and get into my car is the biggest issue. Great. So this is it better. This is a better what? We're breaking this down now. Now it's not about doing strong's of the gym. That's the angle. But it's really about getting yourself to the jump first and in particular, getting yourself to the car first. Yeah, I'm making up waking up early. Do you have to wake up? You have a job and daily sit here. Is the Francisco okay? And what time does your work start? I use you start at nine. You just started 98 to be the early. That's a tough one here because you actually do really have to change quite a bit here to make yourself wake up early first and then get yourself to the car and get yourself to the gym. But it sounds like something you might be able to do. Do you often wake up early? Um, I mean, I'm the type of guy that, like, uh, I'll hit the snooze button. If I just feel like just make you tired and lately it's been a lot, um, now would work on in the evening, like after it just I'm just even more tired. I just can't do I'd rather just get it over with. So then it's done, and I want to think about anymore. Absolutely. You may want to consider setting up a server. Bet here where you say I will stop over at the gym and at least swipe my card for or else I will pay a penalty. But if I do manage to make it to the gym, I will receive some sort of award just because it will allow you to even if you wake up late. I don't know how long it takes to you for you to take an exit, get to the gym and get back on the highway. But it may be worth it, even not even a swipe your card. But just say I will take the exit at this exit as a micro habit. You know, I mean saying that I will drive in my car and as I get to the exit that is towards my gym. I will take that exit at least for the first week or two until that becomes the automatic routine. You kind of want to get yourself Teoh to just find yourself getting in the right lane and taking that exit as you get towards it, so that if I were to recommend anything I would say, even if you don't have that much time before work. Even if you were running late, you probably have enough time to take eggs and get right back on the freeway. True, right? There's no way that that that's gonna cause you more than a minute or two. So I would I would recommend thinking through that as a way to break down a habit that can make sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So if we started to lay this out from the micro habit routine system, let's go ahead and look back. Um, we have a We have this system where we're saying for the first week or two, we're going to focus on this micro habit of I will take the exit towards my gym before I go to work or on my way to work, right? Right. Can you add you? Can you think of some kind of reward that would make you feel good if you succeeded? Um, what would you like? Tea. I think of like I tend to think of buying myself something or like massage or some kind, experiential thing. What? What are you looking? Everything you looking forward to? I think it's just more like accomplishment. Feel accomplishment? Yeah, more like intrinsic That way. It's not that I should get anything but what I feel good about it because I feel bad not working out. So yeah, being a work towards it would make me feel better. That's true. We'll talk about this more during break, probably. But I'm sure that we can think of some kind of some kind of internal feelings or a great first step is a reward. It's often good to commit to something that you would like or sort of like allowing yourself to to eat something you you want to eat, or even like the idea of having it there You can sort of act. Is that as that? If I take that exit five days in a row, I get to. I think I got it because you know that it's pretty near this Filipino bakery, and I'm like I've been staying away from it. But like if I could get that, like, at least like once a week, you just like a really small box of your reader breads and, uh, yeah, I could probably my reward. That's a great one if I if I go OK, so I would highly recommend even if you're trying to be strong with only three times a week, I would really recommend you focus on doing it five times a week to take that exit. That exit formula habit three times a week is is great. But taking the exit is really easy. Doesn't take any time. And that is gonna be a first step that's gonna start bringing you to the gym. The days that you need to succeed you want to get in the habit of of really taking that exit. That's the habit you want to start off by forming. That probably will not take you very long. It can take you 20 to 30 days. Yeah, thinking that if I take this exit five days in a row that on Friday I get to get myself Ah, Box from the Filipino bakery is a great great micro habit system with a positive enforcer. Okay, the second step is to make sure that you have an accountability partner. So right now we're still looking at we're looking at the motivation to access on a prat on the and starting off with a positive for reinforce or we've mentioned having accountability. Partner. Do you have any friends who you can report to you or anybody who you can promise that you'll do this to you, my friend Trevor. Great. So you want to set up with Trevor A, uh Uh. Basically, you just tell him what you're gonna do and pretty commit to this. And now here's the core. I tend to find that for me. My closest friends are also my worst enemies. So they're the people I'd never want to give money to. Like, I have a friend named James, uh, who? He and I would always make bets with one another Because, like while we love each other, there's no way in hell I want to give him $50 you know, So that was a bigger motivator for me than you know, donating to anti charity. I don't know if you feel the same way with Trevor, but probably not. But what you should think about is considering considering a bet. I don't know if you're willing to, but I highly recommend you test this out for a couple weeks. where you say All right, Trevor, I will take a detour and go on this exit five days in a row. And if I do it five days in a row, I get to reward myself with this with this bakery. And if I don't, I have to pay a penalty. In fact, here is a check. Pre write a check handed to him and say, cash this. If I don't send you a photo or send you an update five days in a row, Does that make sense? Yeah. And watch difference in your brain. Monitor this for those five days. The first day you're gonna be like you might even miss it. Oh, God. I gotta turn around. I don't pay his penalty. So you turn around and go there. It takes will power to make that right turn occur. But over time, you'll start to judge each day. It will get easier and easier to where you'll start moving towards the right lane bar earlier. You'll just find yourself making that exit. You kind of see how that path might happen. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And, um and I think you should that that's a very effective start. the only other recommendation I have is just toe. Measure out your measure out your gym distance and how much time it takes for you to get off the exit into the gym and outback of a gym. If it's too long, that's gonna be a huge, confounding variable that might hurt your progress over time. And you may want to reconsider the location of your gym just to make it closer. I'm not a driver. I don't drive, so it for me it's always about walking distance. Um, so just it's just something something to think about. But for right now, don't change anything. Just keep up with this. Take the exit, Get back on the exit. At least over here time, I sense. Yeah, I think since great Cool. Cool, thanks. Problem. Become a whole new set. That Like that. So thanks for doing thanks a lot. Does anybody else want to do a micro habit breakdown? Sure. Thank you very much for joining us. Great. So let's talk about your goals. So I would really like to create a good morning routine. Great. Um, and in that I'd like to have meditation and kind of drafting out what I would like to get accomplished that day and possibly journaling, you know, kind of all the smorgasbord of good things. And, um, I guess I've been serving with that for a while and I haven't made any progress because it's, like, overwhelming. Like, I want all this great stuff and it'll probably, you know, take up entire morning. And so nothing is happening. So I guess that's the question, I guess. I guess I could use the micro habits to try to. He's in sure with morning routine. I have experienced this. I found one really, really effective tool for morning routine was big, long posted notes. In fact, I think we have some in the green room, so I'll bring you something that after this, But having a physical reminder in the morning of what you want to do in order is a really effective first step. What we're doing here is kind of making it as easy as possible to know what you need to do. Now. I start off my morning routine. As I discussed in the previous session, I had a morning of 14 things. That was a crazy, huge example of how can I do all of this at once and make it part of my day, and that was because I was trying to build up to the morning routine. But I started off by saying I will do at least the 1st 2 things is before I before I get out of bed. So it was like Wake up on, put on my H R V and check my HIV before I rolled out of bed and then started to work towards building out. But I was allowed to do all of them in a row. I on the second we decided to go crazy and say I'm going to all of them or else will pay $50 penalty if I don't do all of in a row and I found that was really effective. But for each of the individual items, I would break it down into micro habits, so I didn't have to floss my teeth. I just had a flawless one tooth. I didn't have to dio. I didn't have to check my H r V for the whole time. I just had put on the heart strap and, uh, and open the app. So let's look at a list of items you have written down. Uh, let's see. Well, a number of things. So basically getting up in my alarm, uh, meditating, Um, I have to get the pets up and prepped, Um, kind of a more protein e breakfast. Um, I like getting a physical paper and something kind of nice and kind of quirky I like to do, but I'm getting physical newspaper every day and doing that over a newspaper. I know it's crazy, but it's kind of nice. I like having that with my breakfast and coffee. But I have this really bad habit where I hunt of start reading and I leave it on the dining table. And you know what? Maybe I only get half way through our busy and I haven't even touched it. And it just sits there, you know, all day and into the next day. And then there's like now there's two newspapers on the table, and now there's now it's kind of stacked up, and I've it's now, and this is like this mess, and it's this backlog of newspaper sitting there looking ridiculous. And are you OK with not finishing and newspaper? I've had over time. Like why should, like, look at it. So I kind of think I should just It just should just go. They should just, you know, you should just leave right away today. So throwing away your newspaper after breakfast or putting in the Recycle bin? Yeah, um, it's kind of like that. I like, you know, there's there's news and I kind of want to see what's going on. So, like addressing that And then no, some journaling and planning, maybe the three important things that I want to get done that day, all of all of that. And I guess maybe so is the answer that I just to do a tiny step in all of those things. First things first step is to focus on making a list that you're comfortable with. So things like I'll have a protein breakfast are really, really difficult from a decision. Fatigue perspective. What is protein? You mean how many grams protein is it? Is it gonna be, you know, eggs, or is it gonna be bacon? There's gonna protein powder. I wrote down on my on my fortune point list that it was going to be two eggs, bacon and protein powder shake, I think. And that list was like it was core to my routine. So you may want to choose a list of items and say, like, I would really recommend that when you're starting to form a habit, you focus on just just make one food, and that's what you're gonna eat night. And I think that from a willpower perspective, having eggs and bacon on a high fat, low carb breakfast is really, really effective just to keep your blood sugar steady throughout the morning. But what I want to do with you is is, uh, kind of what we can do it actually, right now, don't you foot to new Page and copy this over to, ah, sticking out during the break. But let's write down the order of things that are gonna happen. So you're gonna wake up. What's your next step? Meditate. I guess. Maybe I could say your bed. Well, I'd rather not. Well, I couldn't go out. You go to where, uh, like my kind of back room, I think would be kind of nice toe. Wake up into your back room. How do you meditate? Well, I haven't really gotten very far with that yet, But, um, things case, I'll just say that the secret to meditation you have never done before is headspace. It's an app called headspace. You get on your phone. It's free for the 1st 10 days. Just write down under their base open headspace. App. Headspace is like a 10 minute guided meditation. 1st 10 days. It's called Take 10. It teaches you how to meditate by, uh, it's like you take 10 minutes of your day. It's very it tells you what to do and because 10 minutes a short and there's a lot that goes on in it. You don't get bored, but it gets you in the process meditation. And then after the 10 days, it becomes 15 minutes and then 20 minutes so you can grow as you desire to grow the app. I highly recommend it. It really taught me and trained me how to meditate. So I would really recommend you do that. So if you want to wake up and then you're gonna go into your back room and I would put out a pillow or something today that's like that where you sit and that's your meditation chair. Whatever it is, that's where you meditate. You do your headspace app on. What do you do after that? Um, visualize. Like this morning off? Yeah, um, maybe. Well, it depends on so some mornings. I haven't like an exercise class in the morning, and sometimes I have are some days I have a class at night, so that kind of makes it a little trickier. Let's let's do everything before your exercise class. Okay? Couldn't shower after at that point, but not if I was gonna go after you. Brush your teeth anywhere in the morning after breakfast after breakfast. And so when you cook breakfast Well, I could do that next so I could do with breakfast. Great. So make breakfast, and then I would just side with your breakfast. Is that highly recommended to be? I think I started doing some hard boiled eggs, like in a batch, and just leave in the fridge. And then it's just super easy. Yes, we eat two hard boiled eggs. Done. Um, and then the next step is Teoh Either shower or go to the exercise class. Uh, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Great to the next step. Is Teoh told the newspaper that coffee that that has the newspaper has to go away afterwards. So you eating breakfast in your coffee? Yeah. Yeah. Great. So, coffee and you brew your coffee. How do you do it? Um, yes. Yeah. So keep in mind if the mawr we automate each individual action, the more it becomes completely natural in our brain. So if it's like, I will cue up the coffee and then grab a hard boiled egg, put it on a plate, and then grab a coffee that's brood and sit down with my with my, uh, with my newspaper until my coffee is done. Then pick up my coffee, pick up my coffee and plate, put it in the sink in Washington, pick up the newspaper, put it in the recycling. Okay, so that was OK. That deep? Okay. Yeah. I do believe it's best to write it down, step by step by step, but, uh, understanding that you want to make every action so automatic that everything becomes just a natural part of you, you are that will start to reduce the will power usage that you use in the morning and completely make it a systematized morning routine crying that interesting? Yeah, that is interesting. Is I would not have occurred to me care that much about, you know, getting into that level of detail. Yeah. So, actually, this is interesting. I guess that a lot of people have mentioned this, that they start doing it, but a lot of it becomes hand wavy like get breakfast and go to the gym. And, uh, when we get down deep, that's when we start to attack our basal ganglia instincts, where it's like, I do this in this way in the same way that you grab your toothbrush with the same hand and use the same hand to put on the toothpaste and move in the same way in your mouth. You want to get that level of automaticity with each of your actions. So I'd say that during the break, Let's go ahead and break it down, step by step until your shower, or until you're out the door on Ben will be able to identify a perfect routine. Make. Sounds great. We'll come back and look at that when we come back. Sounds great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. You so much. All right, great. Is there anybody from the, uh, any questions coming up from? The people are reacting very interestingly, the way to this and just sharing some of their thoughts in the chat rooms about how to make it dead simple. So you just don't think ahead exception. I think they're really engaging with the way that our students are approaching. This was Well, that's excellent. Cool. So I think that we've done some really interesting chat on on micro habits. We briefly just talked about these These steps that the trigger, the routine and reward are all part of the habits cycle and identifying a trigger in this case for morning routine. Waking up is an excellent trigger for, um, for other habits like like taking a like driving in the car. Being able to take that exit can act as, ah as a trigger that starts to be to begin a to begin. You have it a couple of things about about this is the all or nothing follow. See, fallacy. So we talked about this with Bryce, Um, that one cookie or one miss work out. It's not the end of world. Don't allow a single set back to derail your product, your progress, but using if then formula, you can allow yourself a little bit of leeway. So if I miss my gym workout, then I will do 20 pushups before I get into work. Is an effective on effective backup plan. I will do air squats in the bathroom before I talk to my boss or something. Um and yeah, ideal triggers are concrete and consistent. There's something that you already do ideally, something like walking into a room, something like, uh, flipping a light switch, something like getting it from a table. Those are all very concrete triggers that you probably already do in your daily routine. So, in summary, the micro habit formula involves micro habits plus accountability, as well as a positive and negative reinforce. Er, you put those all together and you get success. So yeah, definitely check out pavlak dot com for a slash c. L and you can enter your email address and you'll be able to join. Our accountability group will be able to match over the counter bility. Partners will go deep into discussing individual habits. You'll also get accountability Coaches definitely check out the download from creative life as well