By Annamaria Testa/ It's already a classic scheme: in January we make a list of objectives, often vowing to achieve important goals. And after a few months we forget them. The news is that trying to do great things is a less good idea than is commonly believed.
And it's not a good idea, as it just doesn't work. This is also confirmed by "Harvard Business Review", in an article entitled: "To achieve great results, start with small habits. “Ok, so what exactly is a habit? And how does it work?
Consolidated routines and skills
We call a "habit" a behavior or a thought process that, after repeating it many times, has become something automatic. And in the same context, we tend to copy them easily, without even having to decide, often unconsciously.
For example, a habit can be the gestures we perform for daily hygiene, or always sitting in the same place when we are at the dining table. Or driving a car by changing gears at the right time. In fact, it seems that 45 percent of the activities we do every day (including emotions and thoughts) are habits.
Basically, habits are routines or consolidated skills. They are stable. They form slowly (an average of 66 days), and disappear just as slowly. They are activated through a habitual loop, which includes 3 elements: the contextual state in which we use autopilot, the specific behavior we activate in a given state, the advantage or pleasure that activates that behavior.
Also, we have to consider these 3 elements when we want to change an old habit, or to eradicate a harmful habit. Having habits seems something nameable. Some may also remember the poem by Marta Medeiros which begins like this: "He dies slowly/he who becomes a slave to habit".
Note, however, that Medeiros actually condemns being slaves to custom. Which is something different from setting it as a habit of performing routine tasks that are unavoidable, in such a way that you are not always forced to invest new cognitive resources on them. And to reserve our precious little attention for other, more important tasks that require more commitment and are more rewarding.
There is only one way through which habits can "enslave" us. And it is better to be careful: this happens when what we usually do turns into a kind of automatism, of gesture or thought, from which we can no longer escape.
In this sense, the phenomenon of functional constancy is emblematic: we are so used to using an object (for example, a paper clip) in a certain way that we cannot even imagine being able to use it. that differently. So it's not surprising that one of the simplest and most popular tests of creativity is precisely about inventing as many alternative uses as possible for a common tool, such as a brick or even a paper clip.
Five steps
Now, let's go back to where we started. According to the Harvard Business Review, in addition to saving cognitive skills and attention, cultivating habits has an important added benefit. It is about changing or improving our behaviors.
And this thing has to do with the fact that very often we fail precisely after we pretend to do something in a very unexpected and very radical way. Thus, writes HBR, "the man who has never done physical exercises aims to do gymnastics for at least half an hour every day, the woman who stays behind the Internet until midnight, sets herself the goal of reading at least 1 hour every night, before to fall asleep, or the person who has just eaten a second dessert, intends to immediately give up the consumption of any kind of dessert".
When we think this way, we risk becoming discouraged very quickly, and exposing ourselves to disappointment. Big goals also require a lot of effort, persistence, and total commitment. It's best to start with small habits: small, easy things that can be part of a larger goal. This is also not easy, as changing entrenched behaviors is never easy. Still, much easier than revolutionizing everything in one go.
It can be done through 5 steps. If you remember what we said above about forming habits, you realize that these are not only reasonable suggestions, but excellent ones.
First: identify a very, very small task. So small that it really requires minimal effort, and can be done in a very limited amount of time (HBR example: read a paragraph every night. Or: do just one pump every morning).
Second: incorporate that task into an already established routine. For example: read that paragraph as soon as you lie down in bed. Or while brushing your teeth. Or do a pump before putting on your socks.
Third: consider all the times you perform your task. It only takes a few seconds.
Fourth: Don't rush to increase your efforts suddenly, just increase them gradually. Fifth: Engage one or more friends in this micro-habit challenge.
Of course, all this does not mean that it is not worth setting goals on an individual or collective level. They help us understand the right direction where to walk. But it's the habits that really help you get there, and they're built step by step. / "International"
*This article was published by Bota.al and reposted by Tiranapost.al
