Non obvious habits

Some habits are harder than others.

Habits like working out have a clear feedback loop. When you go on a run, you feel the endorphins and get the runner’s high. This built in reward wires you to want to do it over and over again.

But what about habits like meditation and writing where there is no immediate reward?

How do you stay consistent with those?

Undoubtedly it’s harder. It happened for me with writing. As soon as life got busy, I stopped writing. A big part of it is that I didn’t have that immediate dopamine kick and so it was easier to drop.

I think there are a few things that can help us stick with those habits.

The more obvious one is to build your own rewards. For me, after I finish meditating, I light some palo santo. It feels calming and in a way is my own version of a runner’s high.

The second and more important approach is to regularly reflect on why that habit matters. Just because there isn’t an immediate reward doesn’t mean that it’s not rewarding in the big picture. Writing makes me more creative, observant, and clear. When I reflect on that and the importance of those behaviors, I’m more likely to stick with it.

The third piece is to reduce the stakes. To make harder habits easier, we can just make them… easier. Now I’m getting back into writing, I’m trying to lower the stakes — I don’t need to publish each piece on LinkedIn, I don’t need every post to be thoughtful, and I don’t need a great conclusion to each post.

See what I did there.