Habit Replacement > Habit Formation
Why compelling alternatives trump discipline
I’ve noticed in my coaching work both at TKS and my private coaching practice that high performers love identifying what good habits to adopt, and are excited for the payoff once they execute on these new habits (growing in their craft, their relationships, or their health).
They are so enthusiastic about becoming their most capable self, yet ~95% of these high performers don’t do the things they know will is going to give them what they so badly want. Why is that?
Understanding habits
My working thesis is that the seemingly unthreatening old habits that we haven’t gotten rid of when we’re adopting new habits are the primary reason we don’t adopt actions and behaviours we know are good for us.
Our old, unproductive1 habits are a lot like leeches. They go unnoticed, slowly sucking away the time, energy, and attention. So, guess what happens to our execution of our ambitions? They don’t happen simply because…guess who stole the precious resources required for these new habits we want to adopt?
Habits are actions we do that become routine and require less and less activation energy.
Let’s look at time as a form of space. Our daily schedule and our mental capacity have limited bandwidth. We fill up both our calendars and our brains with stuff. This stuff takes up space.
Habits take up space in our lives. When we do anything, it naturally takes time, therefore takes up space. The space any action takes up is consequently taking away space for other actions.
Our new habits don’t have the space needed for them to exist in our daily schedule if we don’t reduce or eliminate the space taken up by our habits that are currently holding us back.
What does it take for us to follow through on doing the inputs required for our desired output?
First, identify the culprit
More recently, I notice that it’s hard to stop doing a poor habit if we don’t have more compelling alternatives available first.
“Compelling alternatives” isn’t some fancy term I coined; it’s quite literally to have more interesting and desirable options compared so that we’re more likely to not do what is not good for us and keeping us away from our potential.
In a void of better options, we will continue to do what slowly destroys us (or at least holds us back) because we don’t have a better alternative in the moment. By “in the moment,” I mean when you are about to do the thing your wisest self knows not to do, but your present, impulsive self itches to do. It can be as severe as an addiction or yelling at someone we love because that’s our habitual way of speaking.
More interestingly, it can be as mundane as watching that 4th episode of The Office or picking the chips instead of the raw cashews as your late-night snack. Or most likely, reaching the end of all the Instagram stories in your feed and wondering wtf happened to sleeping earlier.
It’s these seemingly harmless or unthreatening habits that are directly holding us back from our highest self. The fatigue, lack of motivation, and not having enough time that we blame as the reasons we aren’t where we said we’d grow to, are due to us not doing the better thing. But is not doing the better thing is a result of not having a more compelling reason to stop doing the shittier thing.
In these instances when we’re on autopilot, do we have top of mind a stronger course of action that we can execute instead? Most often we don’t, so we continue to grow less than we know we are capable of.
I know it can feel overwhelming to see each of these moments as a fork in the road, but I actually think that’s tremendously empowering. String along enough wiser decisions in these moments, and we end up on a radically different path than if we stayed on our default way of being.
Second, generate more compelling options
When we do have a compelling alternative to our current habit, we are more likely to not do the usual thing that’s been part of holding us back. If there are more compelling alternatives, we don’t have to exert much mental effort to toggle to the better option.
In the same vein that working on our old habits is underrated, the moments outside of these “fork-in-the-road” moments are how real transformation happens. Similar to how athletes train in off-season, how we prepare in our downtime dictates how we’ll show up for game time, for when it counts.
Actively reflecting on what we can do instead of the more shitty thing we currently do is not a clear enough step to take.
More compelling alternatives have 2 components:
They are directly related to the direction in which we want to grow; and
They don’t feel hard to do.
Example: Like many, I used to scroll on Instagram stories in bed before sleeping for like half an hour. Great way to have way too much blue light to sleep. I also realized I was not reading as much as I’d like to cause it was hard to find the time. So I actively reflected on more compelling alternatives to Instagram stories before sleep and have since been writing in my paper agenda and reading a paper book to wind down. It’s enjoyable to do and I grow at the same time (more sleep and more reading), so it’s easy for me to adhere to.
Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but better sleep and reading 10x more than I was before is a step change.
A proposed habit-replacement guide
Next time you’re hard on yourself for not growing the way you expect, try this out:
Step 1: Identify where you want to go. You either have a felt sense of your underutilized drive, or you are fed up with your current circumstance and are hungry for better.
Step 2: Realize “I am not getting to where I want to go with the way I currently operate.”
Step 3a: Ask “What are the key personal resources2 missing for me to get there?”
Is it a lack of focus to execute on what needs to be done, money to get your project/startup to the next stage, etc.?
Step 3b: Ask “Am I using the resources I currently have to the fullest extent posisble, or is there more in my control that I could be doing?”
Identify the things you can be doing right now.
Step 4: Ask “What changes do I need to make to the way I currently operate such that I have more of [insert scarce personal resource from step 3] (ex: more time, more focus, more money).
Identify the key habits or activities to incorporate.
Step 5: Ask “Which old habits need to be removed or replaced to create the space required for me to execute on the step 4 habits?”
Tie a more compelling habit to each current old habit holding you back.
Set up your environment accordingly (get the necessary equipment, furniture, membership, etc.).
Step 6: Experiment for a week. Observe throughout the week, without judgment and with curiosity, as to why you are not doing the new habits.
Step 7: Iterate.
Step 8: Let me know how it goes!
It’s not that you don’t care enough or that you’re not trying hard enough. It’s that you’re focusing more on what you need to do, rather than what you need to not do.
I mean “unproductive” in the sense that they don’t move us toward where we want to go, not in the strictly work productivity sense.
Personal resources, according to me, are money, time, energy, and attention.