While reading this interesting article on how habits, especially, healthy habits helps us achieve balance in life & work, & hence, achieve happiness, I couldn't help but think how Islam tells Muslims to create good habits, too. Nowadays, Muslims complain that they can't fast for a month in Ramadan or can't even pray the 5 daily mandatory prayers. But, Islam asks parents to make these as habits for children, as young as, 7 year olds. Praying or fasting constantly for a few years make those as habits, & then those habits continue on for a Muslim, for their whole life. Then, they don't seem difficult to do, be it the fasting during long days of summer or praying after a hard day of work.
Some other good & healthy habits from the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) includes, for instance, laying down for about half-an-hour after lunch & taking a light walk after dinner. Making yourself to take a walk after dinner may seem daunting for a person at first, especially, if they have gained weight & not used to doing it on a regular basis, but after a few nights, it will become a habit, which will help in losing weight & keeping it off, while helping to keep the person healthy.
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Fogg is perfectly placed to train himself into a healthy habit. He is an expert on the subject, having studied human behaviour for 20 years, mostly at Stanford University, where he’s the director of the Persuasive Technology Lab. From his research, he’s learned that the best way to automate a new habit is to set the bar incredibly low. ... “You pick something so small, it’s easy to do. Motivation isn’t required to do it,” he says. ... “If you want to maintain the habit, you will always be okay with just doing the tiny version of it,” he says.
Habits are important because, as Gretchen Rubin puts it, “what we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.” In her new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, Rubin narrows her view dramatically, turning to the daily routine actions that make up our days. “Habits are the invisible architecture of our lives,” Rubin says in an interview. In fact, studies have shown that approximately 40% to 45% of what we do every day is a habit—something we do by default. When we wake up, we brush our teeth. We get in the car to go to work &, without thinking, we put on our seatbelt. There’s no decision-making at work. It’s automatic. “If you have habits that work for you, you’re much more likely to be happier, healthier & more productive.”
“We are what we repeatedly do,” wrote historian & philosopher Will Durant, paraphrasing Aristotle, in The Story of Philosophy. “Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” And in his defining treatise on the subject, the 19th-century philosopher William James referred to humans as “mere walking bundles of habits.” But which ones? If almost half the things we do are out of habit, it’s a smart plan to make those habits the right ones. Good habits, in effect, can be the prelude to happiness.
But developing a good habit, or breaking a bad one, isn’t easy, as anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution can attest. The reason: There is no one-size-fits-all solution for habit change, & surprisingly little consensus on how we make habits or break them.
There’s no magic time interval to make a habit, however. “The speed of the habit formation is directly connected to the strength of the emotions you feel,” says Fogg.
In looking at how we develop routines, she identifies 4 broad human tendencies in her book. There are “upholders,” such as Rubin herself; she wakes up to a to-do list, knows any expectations of her—whether from other people or herself—& avoids letting anyone down. There are “obligers,” who are motivated by external accountability. “Questioners” respond to expectations, if they make sense based on their own judgement, & “rebels” resist control, even self-control. ... In their own lives, rebels may respond better to an angle that reflects their individualism, instead of, say, being lectured about the benefits of a spin class.
Rubin believes that knowing how you tend to behave better equips you to shape your habits—&, sometimes, to outwit yourself. We may be lovers of familiarity, who enjoy rereading a favourite novel, or novelty-seekers, for whom the same breakfast day after day is anathema. For an abstainer, cutting back on that bad ice-cream habit may require never bringing ice cream into the house, whereas a moderator may be able to take a spoonful or two and put it back in the freezer.
Part of the trick is actually seeing our habits as such. Routine actions can be so ingrained, we continue to take them, even when they don’t make sense.
A habit has 3 components, says Charles Duhigg, a New York Times reporter & author of The Power of Habit. There’s the cue, which is the trigger for an automatic behaviour to start. There’s the routine, which is the behaviour itself. Last, there’s the reward, which is how one’s brain learns to latch onto that pattern in the future. “When most people think about changing their habits, they just focus on the behaviour,” he says. “What studies have shown is it’s really diagnosing & understanding the cue & the reward that gives you the ability to shift automatic behaviour.”
Duhigg had a bad habit of going to his work cafeteria every afternoon for a chocolate-chip cookie. The daily snack caused him to put on 8 pounds, so he decided to study his craving. It happened consistently around 3 p.m. That was his cue: the time of day. His routine was straightforward. He got up from his desk, went to the cafeteria, grabbed a cookie & chatted with his colleagues while eating it. Figuring out the reward he was seeking took some trial & error. “Is it that I’m hungry, in which case, eating an apple does the job?” he says. “Or a boost of energy, so coffee should work just as well?” Duhigg tried buying a candy bar & eating it at his desk. He tried going to the cafeteria, buying nothing, but socializing as he normally would. It became clear that the reward was the social time. Now, he’ll just get up & chat with a colleague for 10 minutes before going back to his desk. The cookie has become a thing of the past.
One of Rubin’s bad habits was night snacking, so she developed the new habit of brushing her teeth right after dinner. “It signals to your brain, ‘We’re done here. The gates are coming down. The locks are on the doors,’ ” she says. Now the urge to snack at night is gone. The cue to snack has been disrupted by another habit. “People will say, ‘Make healthy choices,’ ” Rubin says. “I would argue: Don’t make healthy choices. Make one choice & then no more choosing.”
And be patient. New habits, on average, take 66 days to form, according to research from University College London. Depending on the person and the habit, it can take months longer. Meanwhile, there are temptations. A mother says her child can’t have a popsicle after soccer practice, but the child convinces her to make this time the exception. With enough persistence, the exception becomes the rule.
William James equated suffering each lapse in a good habit to dropping a ball of string. Every fall undoes enough string to require many turns to wind it back to where it was before. And loopholes come in many forms. There are moral licensing loopholes: giving ourselves permission to eat a bag of chips as a reward for losing pounds. Or false choices, such as avoiding the gym because there are so many emails to catch up on. “We are just masterful advocates for ourselves & why we should be off the hook,” says Rubin, who lists 10 potential loopholes in her book, but adds she discovers more all the time. And yet, she says, by catching ourselves trying to use a loophole, we can choose to reject it. “Just spotting them is enough to disrupt their power.”
Little fixes can make a big difference. Disorder in our lives can act as a “broken window,” Rubin writes in her book, citing the 1980s crime-prevention theory that claimed communities that tolerated little things such as graffiti or the breaking of windows were more likely to attract more serious crimes. So what are the “broken windows” in our everyday lives? It could be letting the laundry pile up at home or having a cluttered desk. Making your bed each morning, Duhigg writes, is correlated with better productivity & an ability to stick to a budget. The bed-making itself doesn’t lead to smarter shopping choices, but it lays the right foundation for other good habits.
The key is not to think about grand, sweeping changes, but rather, small ones. Fogg would say very, very small. ... It runs counter to the way we think about changing habits. ... Maybe we think aiming big is important because, that way, at least we’ll do half of it. It turns out the exact opposite is true.
To build a habit, Fogg says, you use an existing routine, such as brushing your teeth, as the anchor. That anchor becomes the reminder. Next, you do an incredibly simple version of the target behaviour. If you want to develop the habit of flossing, you make your goal to floss one tooth. That’s it. The habit isn’t learning how to floss, because everyone knows how to do it. The habit, Fogg says, is remembering to do it. Then, the final step is to celebrate instantly. Maybe shout “Victory!” or think of the theme music to Rocky. “What you’re doing is, you’re hacking your emotional state,” says Fogg. “You’re deliberately firing off an emotion right after you floss.” It sounds odd, especially because your fingers are probably messy & your gums could be painful. But, says Fogg, “emotions create habits. The habits that form quickly in our lives have an instant emotional payoff.”
Convenience has a major influence on our choices. It’s the reason hotels have mini-bars or leave the overpriced chocolate bars on the counter in plain sight. The converse strategy, for individuals, is to make bad choices harder. Regret pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock each morning? Put the alarm clock on the other side of the room. And, no matter the routine, it’s only a habit if it actually sticks. That’s the reason Rubin thinks timed habit changes—the 30-day detoxes or the year without sugar—can be dangerous. “Why a year? And what happens in month 13?” she says. “You need to have a plan for that.”
**************************************
Rubin identifies 4 broad tendencies when it comes to adopting behaviours: Upholder, obliger, questioner & rebel.
Upholder: ‘I do what others expect of me—& what I expect from myself’
Obliger: ‘I do what I have to do. I hate to let others down, but I often let myself down.’
Questioner: ‘I do what I think is best, according to my judgment. If it doesn’t make sense, I won’t do it.’
Rebel: ‘I do what I want, in my own way. If you tell me to do something, I’m less likely to do it.’
***************************************
Some other good & healthy habits from the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) includes, for instance, laying down for about half-an-hour after lunch & taking a light walk after dinner. Making yourself to take a walk after dinner may seem daunting for a person at first, especially, if they have gained weight & not used to doing it on a regular basis, but after a few nights, it will become a habit, which will help in losing weight & keeping it off, while helping to keep the person healthy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fogg is perfectly placed to train himself into a healthy habit. He is an expert on the subject, having studied human behaviour for 20 years, mostly at Stanford University, where he’s the director of the Persuasive Technology Lab. From his research, he’s learned that the best way to automate a new habit is to set the bar incredibly low. ... “You pick something so small, it’s easy to do. Motivation isn’t required to do it,” he says. ... “If you want to maintain the habit, you will always be okay with just doing the tiny version of it,” he says.
Habits are important because, as Gretchen Rubin puts it, “what we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.” In her new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, Rubin narrows her view dramatically, turning to the daily routine actions that make up our days. “Habits are the invisible architecture of our lives,” Rubin says in an interview. In fact, studies have shown that approximately 40% to 45% of what we do every day is a habit—something we do by default. When we wake up, we brush our teeth. We get in the car to go to work &, without thinking, we put on our seatbelt. There’s no decision-making at work. It’s automatic. “If you have habits that work for you, you’re much more likely to be happier, healthier & more productive.”
“We are what we repeatedly do,” wrote historian & philosopher Will Durant, paraphrasing Aristotle, in The Story of Philosophy. “Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” And in his defining treatise on the subject, the 19th-century philosopher William James referred to humans as “mere walking bundles of habits.” But which ones? If almost half the things we do are out of habit, it’s a smart plan to make those habits the right ones. Good habits, in effect, can be the prelude to happiness.
But developing a good habit, or breaking a bad one, isn’t easy, as anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution can attest. The reason: There is no one-size-fits-all solution for habit change, & surprisingly little consensus on how we make habits or break them.
There’s no magic time interval to make a habit, however. “The speed of the habit formation is directly connected to the strength of the emotions you feel,” says Fogg.
In looking at how we develop routines, she identifies 4 broad human tendencies in her book. There are “upholders,” such as Rubin herself; she wakes up to a to-do list, knows any expectations of her—whether from other people or herself—& avoids letting anyone down. There are “obligers,” who are motivated by external accountability. “Questioners” respond to expectations, if they make sense based on their own judgement, & “rebels” resist control, even self-control. ... In their own lives, rebels may respond better to an angle that reflects their individualism, instead of, say, being lectured about the benefits of a spin class.
Rubin believes that knowing how you tend to behave better equips you to shape your habits—&, sometimes, to outwit yourself. We may be lovers of familiarity, who enjoy rereading a favourite novel, or novelty-seekers, for whom the same breakfast day after day is anathema. For an abstainer, cutting back on that bad ice-cream habit may require never bringing ice cream into the house, whereas a moderator may be able to take a spoonful or two and put it back in the freezer.
Part of the trick is actually seeing our habits as such. Routine actions can be so ingrained, we continue to take them, even when they don’t make sense.
A habit has 3 components, says Charles Duhigg, a New York Times reporter & author of The Power of Habit. There’s the cue, which is the trigger for an automatic behaviour to start. There’s the routine, which is the behaviour itself. Last, there’s the reward, which is how one’s brain learns to latch onto that pattern in the future. “When most people think about changing their habits, they just focus on the behaviour,” he says. “What studies have shown is it’s really diagnosing & understanding the cue & the reward that gives you the ability to shift automatic behaviour.”
Duhigg had a bad habit of going to his work cafeteria every afternoon for a chocolate-chip cookie. The daily snack caused him to put on 8 pounds, so he decided to study his craving. It happened consistently around 3 p.m. That was his cue: the time of day. His routine was straightforward. He got up from his desk, went to the cafeteria, grabbed a cookie & chatted with his colleagues while eating it. Figuring out the reward he was seeking took some trial & error. “Is it that I’m hungry, in which case, eating an apple does the job?” he says. “Or a boost of energy, so coffee should work just as well?” Duhigg tried buying a candy bar & eating it at his desk. He tried going to the cafeteria, buying nothing, but socializing as he normally would. It became clear that the reward was the social time. Now, he’ll just get up & chat with a colleague for 10 minutes before going back to his desk. The cookie has become a thing of the past.
One of Rubin’s bad habits was night snacking, so she developed the new habit of brushing her teeth right after dinner. “It signals to your brain, ‘We’re done here. The gates are coming down. The locks are on the doors,’ ” she says. Now the urge to snack at night is gone. The cue to snack has been disrupted by another habit. “People will say, ‘Make healthy choices,’ ” Rubin says. “I would argue: Don’t make healthy choices. Make one choice & then no more choosing.”
And be patient. New habits, on average, take 66 days to form, according to research from University College London. Depending on the person and the habit, it can take months longer. Meanwhile, there are temptations. A mother says her child can’t have a popsicle after soccer practice, but the child convinces her to make this time the exception. With enough persistence, the exception becomes the rule.
William James equated suffering each lapse in a good habit to dropping a ball of string. Every fall undoes enough string to require many turns to wind it back to where it was before. And loopholes come in many forms. There are moral licensing loopholes: giving ourselves permission to eat a bag of chips as a reward for losing pounds. Or false choices, such as avoiding the gym because there are so many emails to catch up on. “We are just masterful advocates for ourselves & why we should be off the hook,” says Rubin, who lists 10 potential loopholes in her book, but adds she discovers more all the time. And yet, she says, by catching ourselves trying to use a loophole, we can choose to reject it. “Just spotting them is enough to disrupt their power.”
Little fixes can make a big difference. Disorder in our lives can act as a “broken window,” Rubin writes in her book, citing the 1980s crime-prevention theory that claimed communities that tolerated little things such as graffiti or the breaking of windows were more likely to attract more serious crimes. So what are the “broken windows” in our everyday lives? It could be letting the laundry pile up at home or having a cluttered desk. Making your bed each morning, Duhigg writes, is correlated with better productivity & an ability to stick to a budget. The bed-making itself doesn’t lead to smarter shopping choices, but it lays the right foundation for other good habits.
The key is not to think about grand, sweeping changes, but rather, small ones. Fogg would say very, very small. ... It runs counter to the way we think about changing habits. ... Maybe we think aiming big is important because, that way, at least we’ll do half of it. It turns out the exact opposite is true.
To build a habit, Fogg says, you use an existing routine, such as brushing your teeth, as the anchor. That anchor becomes the reminder. Next, you do an incredibly simple version of the target behaviour. If you want to develop the habit of flossing, you make your goal to floss one tooth. That’s it. The habit isn’t learning how to floss, because everyone knows how to do it. The habit, Fogg says, is remembering to do it. Then, the final step is to celebrate instantly. Maybe shout “Victory!” or think of the theme music to Rocky. “What you’re doing is, you’re hacking your emotional state,” says Fogg. “You’re deliberately firing off an emotion right after you floss.” It sounds odd, especially because your fingers are probably messy & your gums could be painful. But, says Fogg, “emotions create habits. The habits that form quickly in our lives have an instant emotional payoff.”
Convenience has a major influence on our choices. It’s the reason hotels have mini-bars or leave the overpriced chocolate bars on the counter in plain sight. The converse strategy, for individuals, is to make bad choices harder. Regret pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock each morning? Put the alarm clock on the other side of the room. And, no matter the routine, it’s only a habit if it actually sticks. That’s the reason Rubin thinks timed habit changes—the 30-day detoxes or the year without sugar—can be dangerous. “Why a year? And what happens in month 13?” she says. “You need to have a plan for that.”
**************************************
Rubin identifies 4 broad tendencies when it comes to adopting behaviours: Upholder, obliger, questioner & rebel.
Upholder: ‘I do what others expect of me—& what I expect from myself’
Obliger: ‘I do what I have to do. I hate to let others down, but I often let myself down.’
Questioner: ‘I do what I think is best, according to my judgment. If it doesn’t make sense, I won’t do it.’
Rebel: ‘I do what I want, in my own way. If you tell me to do something, I’m less likely to do it.’
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