A Note to the Reader
Better Than Before tackles the question: How do we change? One answer—by using habits.
Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life. We repeat about 45 percent of our behavior almost daily, so our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.
But that observation just raises another question: Okay, then, how do we change our habits? That’s what this book seeks to answer.
But while Better Than Before explores how to change your habits, it won’t tell you what particular habits to form. It won’t tell you to exercise first thing in the morning, or to eat dessert twice a week, or to clear out your office. (Well, actually, there is one area where I do say what habit I think is best. But only one.)
The fact is, no one-size-fits-all solution exists. It’s easy to dream that if we copy the habits of productive, creative people, we’ll win similar success. But we each must cultivate the habits that work for us. Some people do better when they start small; others when they start big. Some people need to be held accountable; some defy accountability. Some thrive when they give themselves an occasional break from their good habits; others when they never break the chain. No wonder habit formation is so hard.
The most important thing is to know ourselves, and to choose the strategies that work for us.
Before you begin, identify a few habits that you’d like to adopt, or changes you’d like to make. Then, as you read, consider what steps you want to try. You may even want to note today’s date on your book’s flyleaf, so you’ll remember when you began the process of change.
To help you shape your habits, I regularly post suggestions on my blog, and I’ve also created many resources to help you make your life better than before. But I hope that the most compelling inspiration is the book you hold in your hands.
I see habits through the lens of my own experience, so this account is colored by my particular personality and interests. “Well,” you might think, “if everyone forms habits differently, why should I bother to read a book about what someone else did?”
During my study of habits and happiness, I’ve noticed something surprising: I often learn more from one person’s idiosyncratic experiences than I do from scientific studies or philosophical treatises. For this reason, Better Than Before is packed with individual examples of habit changes. You may not be tempted by Nutella, or travel too much for work, or struggle to keep a gratitude journal, but we can all learn from each other.
It’s simple to change habits, but it’s not easy.
I hope that reading Better Than Before will encourage you to harness the power of habits to make change in your own life. Whenever you read this, and wherever you are, you’re in the right place to begin.
Decide Not to Decide
Introduction
It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.
—Alfred North Whitehead,
An Introduction to Mathematics
For as long as I can remember, one of my favorite features in any book, magazine, play, or TV show has been the “before and after.” Whenever I read those words, I’m hooked. The thought of a transformation—any kind of transformation—thrills me. Whether the change is as important as quitting smoking, or as trivial as reorganizing a desk, I love to read about how and why someone made that change.
“Before and after” caught my imagination, and it also provoked my curiosity. Sometimes, people can make dramatic changes, but more often, they can’t. Why or why not?
As a writer, my great interest is human nature, and in particular, the subject of happiness. A few years ago, I noticed a pattern: when people told me about a “before and after” change they’d made that boosted their happiness, they often pointed to the formation of a crucial habit. And when they were unhappy about a change they’d failed to make, that too often related to a habit.
Then one day, when I was having lunch with an old friend, she said something that turned my casual interest in habits into a full-time preoccupation.
After we’d looked at our menus, she remarked, “I want to get myself in the habit of exercise, but I can’t, and it really bothers me.” Then, in a brief observation that would absorb me for a long time to come, she added, “The weird thing is that in high school, I was on the track team, and I never missed track practice, but I can’t go running now. Why?”
“Why?” I echoed, as I mentally flipped through my index cards of happiness research to find some relevant insight or useful explanation. Nothing.
Our conversation shifted to other topics, but as the days passed, I couldn’t get this exchange out of my mind. Same person, same activity, different habit. Why? Why had she been able to exercise faithfully in the past, but not now? How might she start again? Her question buzzed in my head with the special energy that tells me I’ve stumbled onto something important.
Finally, I connected that conversation with what I’d noticed about people’s accounts of their before-and-after transformations, and it struck me: To understand how people are able to change, I must understand habits. I felt the sense of joyous anticipation and relief that I feel every time I get the idea for my next book. It was obvious! Habits.
Whenever I become gripped by a subject, I read everything related to it, so I began to plunder the shelves in cognitive science, behavioral economics, monastic governance, philosophy, psychology, product design, addiction, consumer research, productivity, animal training, decision science, public policy, and the design of kindergarten rooms and routines. A tremendous amount of information about habits was floating around, but I had to divide the astronomy from the astrology.
I spent a lot of time delving into treatises, histories, biographies, and in particular, the latest scientific research. At the same time, I’ve learned to put great store by my own observations of everyday life, because while laboratory experiments are one way to study human nature, they aren’t the only way. I’m a kind of street scientist. I spend most of my time trying to grasp the obvious—not to see what no one has seen, but to see what’s in plain sight. A sentence will jump off the page, or someone’s casual comment, like my friend’s remark about the track team, will strike me as highly significant, for reasons that I don’t quite understand; then, as I learn more, these loose puzzle pieces begin to fit together, until the picture comes clear.
The more I learned about habits, the more interested I became—but I also became increasingly frustrated. To my surprise, the sources I consulted made little mention of many of the issues that struck me as most crucial:
• Perhaps it’s understandable why it’s hard to form a habit we don’t enjoy, but why is it hard to form a habit we do enjoy?