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The mathematics of good habits

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My old gym had a cheesy quote on its membership card:

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going!

Part of me is really annoyed that I let the gym really got into my brain with this clever piece of marketing jargon. The other part of me appreciates the quote whenever I find myself slipping out of a routine.

Habit is the most important, and the most difficult part of getting smarter-fitter. So what makes forming good habits so hard? And how do I we turn an occasional weekend fit-stint into a routine?

zen habits describes an interesting approach to habit-forming with a few tips specific to exercise: Engineer your habit change so that it’s harder not to form the habit.

Here’s the basic idea:

  1. Increase positive feedback for the habit - Create a log or journal, join a forum or a real-world club, reward yourself early and often…
  2. Decrease negative feedback for the habit - Reduce exertion by starting slowly with an exercise routine…
  3. Increase negative feedback for not doing the habit - I don’t know that I like this one idea because it seems to imply punishment, and that’s not really healthy, is it?
  4. Decrease positive feedback for not doing the habit - Get rid of the things that tempt you to not do your habit, like TV, Snickers bars, whatever…

Link

Related posts:

  1. Extreme Motivation: Tips for Maintaining an Exercise Habit
  2. Running Every Day
  3. How to break a bad eating habit
  4. No Year’s Resolutions
  5. Zen motivation

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 10:04 pm by monica and is filed under Link. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “The mathematics of good habits”

  1. Cam Says:
    September 19th, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    Good advice indeed, particularly #1. In fact, I’ve found the ‘Seinfeld Chain’, discussed elsewhere, to be especially useful as a positive feedback/motivator. Which leads me to ask, since the one you provided at is nearly full for September, whether you plan to add another couple of months (but preferably a whole year) so my chain will remain unbroken. I sure hope so.

  2. Tim Says:
    September 19th, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    Cam, we’ll certainly be adding to the chain over the next couple of days so that month navigation is sorted out properly. I’m using the chain too and don’t want to see it obsolete either.

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