When I first learned about habits, I felt like a kid in a candy store. My eyes lit up and I wanted to taste everything. I could not get enough.
Do you know that feeling?
It turned out I was good at picking up habits almost overnight and sticking with them for a long time.
But in 2016, my habits took a toll on me twice within a short period of time: once when I got sick in March and once when I became frustrated with work in May.
By picking up too many daily habits, I had painted myself into a corner. This is what my pattern with acquiring and maintaining habits looked like:
Stacking habits is a great idea. The more things you do daily, the faster positive benefits will compound.
But, like a Jenga tower, I’d always stack them too high, and once I reached the 10-daily-habits line…
…the tower fell. And then I started from scratch.
Habits are like tools. But you can’t use the same tools for every task.
Even if all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, not everything is a nail. What do you do if you need to screw something? Worse yet, over time, if all you have is a hammer, everything will start to look like a nail.
Let’s say your marriage is in serious trouble. You might have built an awesome morning routine, which really helps you be your best self. But a broken relationship can’t be fixed with self-help. It needs time and attention.
So maybe, you need to trade your good habit for another for a while: staying in bed after waking up and cuddling.
When the well is broken, forget about fixing the sink.
Switch your tools and get to work!
With that, let me introduce you to meta habits. Meta habits help you change your habits on a dime. They’re the equivalent of a really well-sorted toolbox.
Here are the 5 meta habits I find the most helpful:
1.Take inventory of all your habits once every month or quarter.
Grab a piece of paper, write down your typical day, and count your habits. This helps you figure out whether you’ll still get to where you want to go, if you just continue the path you’re on.
You could also do an annual review:
2. Monitor your habits by tracking them on a daily basis.
The moment the tracking itself becomes a hassle is a warning sign to check your stack and should initiate the stock-taking above. You can use a simple checklist to do this, or one of the many available tracking apps, like:
3. Use a calendar.
Whether you like it stocked to the brim, almost empty or half-filled with important stuff that includes a 50% time buffer so you get it all done doesn’t matter. The habit of using a calendar altogether does, because it shows you exactly where your time is going.
4. Have a ritual to start and end the habit-driven part of your day.
This could be coffee or brushing teeth in the morning and reading a chapter or brushing your teeth again at night. Marking your day with a start and end point creates habit-free space, which in turn, helps balance your stack.
5. Get outside feedback regularly.
It’s hard to see when we’re doing things that aren’t working in the midst of our day-to-day. Getting feedback from someone on the outside regularly, who has another perspective, is super helpful. This could be:
- A weekly Mastermind meeting.
- Sharing your progress in a like-minded Facebook group.
- Hiring a coach.
- Or even a monthly coffee meeting with a good friend.
Don’t look for the miracle set of habits to work for the rest of your life. It doesn’t exist. Don’t stack your habits too high. Inevitably, one day, the stack falls over.
Most of all, don’t hammer screws. Upgrade your toolbox.
That way, you’ll be prepared for whatever breaks next.