Once again, some time has passed since my last post and it felt as if that needed changing. As such, this outing is a mild departure from some of the more clinically-directed recent posts and looks at a slightly more parallel topic: that of habits. More specifically, this is a reflection on one of my recent reads which I have found to be particularly worth eulogising.
The book in question is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, and it follows in the footsteps of another fascinating (though slightly less recent) read of mine: “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. You’ll not win any prizes for guessing that the topic of these books is habit formation and the manipulation of such habits towards one’s desired goals. In a profession such as medicine, some of the concepts here have huge potential, and I so I thought this would be a worthwhile exploration.
The book in question is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, and it follows in the footsteps of another fascinating (though slightly less recent) read of mine: “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. You’ll not win any prizes for guessing that the topic of these books is habit formation and the manipulation of such habits towards one’s desired goals. In a profession such as medicine, some of the concepts here have huge potential, and I so I thought this would be a worthwhile exploration.
What's the excitement
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle.
I suppose my personal fascination in this is well summarised by the quote above. As Aristotle and an increasing number of psychologists can attest, we are a little more automatic and subconscious than we would like to think. Indeed, we are our habits: we primarily fill our time with our habitual actions, we interact with the world cloaked in our habitual mannerisms, and the very essence of ‘us’ is a constellation of our habitual thought patterns and processes. Shyness and confidence; procrastination and dedication; physically active and sedentary; these all have the weight of repetition behind them, reinforcing whatever other factors may have nudged us in one direction or the other. Proponents of the concept of ‘a self’ may be worrying a little bit here (this in itself would be a fascinating domain to explore) but the major factor that I think is worth exploring is the power that such a recognition grants us. Let’s explore this aspect of it a bit more.
I suppose my personal fascination in this is well summarised by the quote above. As Aristotle and an increasing number of psychologists can attest, we are a little more automatic and subconscious than we would like to think. Indeed, we are our habits: we primarily fill our time with our habitual actions, we interact with the world cloaked in our habitual mannerisms, and the very essence of ‘us’ is a constellation of our habitual thought patterns and processes. Shyness and confidence; procrastination and dedication; physically active and sedentary; these all have the weight of repetition behind them, reinforcing whatever other factors may have nudged us in one direction or the other. Proponents of the concept of ‘a self’ may be worrying a little bit here (this in itself would be a fascinating domain to explore) but the major factor that I think is worth exploring is the power that such a recognition grants us. Let’s explore this aspect of it a bit more.
Compounding
The concept of compounding is used alongside that of ‘marginal gains’ in this book to highlight the very real impact of such thinking. This can perhaps be most pithily summarised as ‘trajectory beats position’. This is something that great sports teams (Team Sky being the perennial example) through to successful investors know. Slow and steady really does win the race. I’m not entirely convinced that we do (or are even able to) develop any trait truly exponentially, as some of the graphs in the book suggest, but the concept of trajectory is sound. Marginal gains accrue over time, and there is some compounding in there. Whilst the progress may not feel very significant for much of the time that it is actually being made, when it is summated it really can be. Our major challenge is that we rarely give enough time to allow this accumulation, and the primary fault is inconsistency. We might revise for an exam, train for a race, or save for a specific goal, but the passing of such a target can result in the waning of the motivation (which may have inconsistent anyway). And negative habits compound just the same, pulling us in the opposite direction to that which is desired. Skipping going for a run, breaking a diet plan, or ‘just the one’ cigarette/drink, is rarely a one off. Momentum builds up and it is easy to slip into the same ruts that we were previously travelling in. The result is less of a run-away exponential graph, and more of an oscillating around a set point.
So What?
Now this is probably a pretty valid question. What is the actual applicability of this pop-science rambling? Well I guess it depends on what you want. This approach (in addition to other factors of course) has played a role in the success of the greatest sports stars, musicians, scientists, and many other leaders of professional domains. Disregarding success, I personally think that the implications of such a concept are profound for one of our most valuable commodities: time. As I steadily turned through the pages, a subtle disquiet nagged at me. As James expanded on his analysis of bad habits, the nature of this sensation began to take a more coherent shape: I wasted a lot of time! The vacuum of social media, emails, Youtube, Wikipedia articles, and good old-fashioned TV were siphoning away hours of my life. And the true epiphany was that much of this was not fully intentional. Now, I find all of these examples very valuable uses of time in their own place. However, the whole world is at the end of a few 4G-assisted finger swipes, and the habits that this has resulted in have been insidious. I’m a big fan of Twitter, to take one example, but I have a new sense of caution about how it can devour literal hours of my time; a death by a thousand cuts. And I have a lot of other things that I would quite like to get done, for which there never really seems to be enough time. To get to the end of a week and think how you could have spent those hours more enjoyably and more productively is a bit of an eye-opener.
Now What?
Unfortunately, there is no magic trick to banishing your and habits and developing the ones you desire. However, there are some hacks that can help ease the process of what ultimately remains a hard path to follow. The book goes into much more detail, but the key features of creating effective habits are:
I will share one of my own approaches to give an example. I’ve tried using a ‘habit tracker’ (simply look for a habit tracker in the app store) to keep a reference of which good habits I want to ingrain into daily life. This is simply a list of your daily desired habits with a tick box next to them, allowing you to plot adherence over time. With my next exam on the horizon, I have a row for ‘study’. For this to be ‘ticked off’ I need to answer all my Anki flashcards for that day (more on them here on my previous blog post: http://www.rapidsequence.org.uk/blog/medical-education-spaced-repetition) and add at least one new card to the deck. This addition of a new card is a small target (easy), but requires me to look into a topic to find a question that I don’t know the answer to and therefore learn something new. The unanswered flashcards are clearly waiting for me (obvious) and the process of ticking off the box once I have completed this task is surprisingly satisfying. I think the result is something less effective (certainly in the short term) than dedicated ‘cramming’ revision, but, I hope, more powerful in the long run. And that is essentially what habits are about. A slow but steady march in the direction that you would like to go.
Well thank you for reading! It’s been a slightly different angle than some of my more recent posts, but hopefully still an interesting and useful one. If this is a topic that interests you, have a look at a few of the links below and please share your comments. To close, I will leave a quote from the excellent Farnam Street blog post on the topic that I think beautifully encapsulates the advice I would have liked prior to all the exams of recent years.
"First forget inspiration.
Habit is more dependable.
Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.
Habit is persistence in practice."
- Octavia Butler
BW
Tom
- Make it obvious
- Make it attractive
- Make it easy
- Make it satisfying
I will share one of my own approaches to give an example. I’ve tried using a ‘habit tracker’ (simply look for a habit tracker in the app store) to keep a reference of which good habits I want to ingrain into daily life. This is simply a list of your daily desired habits with a tick box next to them, allowing you to plot adherence over time. With my next exam on the horizon, I have a row for ‘study’. For this to be ‘ticked off’ I need to answer all my Anki flashcards for that day (more on them here on my previous blog post: http://www.rapidsequence.org.uk/blog/medical-education-spaced-repetition) and add at least one new card to the deck. This addition of a new card is a small target (easy), but requires me to look into a topic to find a question that I don’t know the answer to and therefore learn something new. The unanswered flashcards are clearly waiting for me (obvious) and the process of ticking off the box once I have completed this task is surprisingly satisfying. I think the result is something less effective (certainly in the short term) than dedicated ‘cramming’ revision, but, I hope, more powerful in the long run. And that is essentially what habits are about. A slow but steady march in the direction that you would like to go.
Well thank you for reading! It’s been a slightly different angle than some of my more recent posts, but hopefully still an interesting and useful one. If this is a topic that interests you, have a look at a few of the links below and please share your comments. To close, I will leave a quote from the excellent Farnam Street blog post on the topic that I think beautifully encapsulates the advice I would have liked prior to all the exams of recent years.
"First forget inspiration.
Habit is more dependable.
Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.
Habit is persistence in practice."
- Octavia Butler
BW
Tom
RSS Feed
