21 days of time tracking with TimeTag: Day 3
21 Days of Time Tracking
How to hack your brain into creating a new habit
Day 3 -- I started touching on this on day 2, but one of the real secrets to achieving a goal is to turn it into a habit. The secret of a habit is that you already have so many -- you literally don't think about them (consciously) because your brain has them on a kind of autopilot. Like I mentioned yesterday, our bodies tend to be kind of lazy by nature. We don't like to expend a lot of energy because evolutionarily speaking, energy was hard to come by. We didn't always know when our next meal was, or how nourishing it would be. So our bodies developed really strong ways to make sure it could survive lean times -- by turning things into fat and also by making sure we tend to follow the path of least resistance.
Our brains expend a lot of energy. Truly -- if you've ever studied for a test or tried to learn a new skill, don't you feel really tired afterwards? That's because building neural pathways is very costly from an energy point of view. When the brain is offered the ability to do something automatically, and with very little energy, then it's happy -- it gets to keep humming along with very low exertion. That's what evolved into what we call "habits" -- things that we have done so many times, that our brain has all the pathways built and ready to go, so it's like turning a dirt road in your brain into a super highway. It runs smooth, never has traffic, and can handle a lot. That's why, for example, when you start driving it's a lot to pay attention to, but by the time you're 3 years into it, you can drive while you talk to others, listen to music, or sometimes (which is so crazy), drive and not even realize you just drove somewhere because your mind was entirely somewhere else.
I bring all of that up to reinforce just how powerful turning an ambition into a habit is, for achieving a goal. For my goals, meditating every day for at least 10 minutes -- I will admit it's something that I have tried so many years to achieve. I'm finally starting to get on a streak now though, because I did a couple of key things that helped my brain build a predictable highway out of a dirt road:
I started meditating every day at the same point in my day. Not necessarily same time, but I meditate always after coffee but before my dog walk. The reason for this is because I tried same time before, but time is so variable. Some mornings I wake up really early, and others I wake up late. If I set a precise time, then I'd be setting myself up to fail on the weekends, for example.
So what I did was think: Ok, I always drink coffee (a habit I already have), and I always walk my dog (another habit). I will literally put meditation right between those two events. So I can start to train my mind: When I finish coffee, I meditate. When I am done meditating, I walk my dog.
That nice little trick can start to get your brain rewired, turning a new action into something that you start to do without thought.
This exact reason is also why I'm having such a hard time with my running goal -- I have yet to find a good place for it. If I say I just want to run every day, it's far too easy for me to rationalize it away every hour. In the mornings, I'm too busy or tired. In the evenings, I am too tired or hungry and all I want to do is unwind with music or tv or FaceTime. I still need to find that magical point in my day where I say: After ___, I run. After I run, I ____.
If you're trying to start a time tracking habit, for example, one of the best ways is to put stickies everywhere (virtual or real) that tell you: When you start an activity, start a timer first. When you finish that activity, end the timer. Start with just one activity. You'll get good at that habit. "When I sit down to write, I first start a timer. When I'm done writing, I stop the writing timer". (TimeTag also has an option to notify you X minutes after starting timers to let you know they're still running!)
Then move onto a new activity that you might want to time track -- it will get easier from there, because your brain is like: Oh I'm already doing this with this other thing! Eaaaasy.
If you haven't already gotten your copy of TimeTag, download it below for free! Hope you have a wonderful day!