Top Highlights from My Experience with Habits

Recently, I have been writing a series of posts on habits — Top Highlights from Andrew Huberman and Top Highlights from Atomic Habits. This post will focus on the learnings I have had through my personal experience of setting, tracking and keeping habits.

While I am by no means an expert on habit development, I have intentionally experimented with habits since college, and have learnt a few things along the way. I have experimented with using habit trackers, calendar invites, accountability partners, habit journalling and more. I once even printed out a six foot tall paper thermometer in order to track one thousand hours of computer science studying. I have really tried a lot — and I have learnt some things along the way.

So lets dive into the top things I’ve learnt over the years —

Highlight 1: Use an App Based Habit Tracker

I am a big fan of using a habit tracking app and I prefer it to other methods of habit tracking.

Why track habits at all?

I like to track my habit accomplishment rate because it enables me to expand habits I am crushing and revisit habits I am struggling on. If I am batting nearly 100% on a habit, I can either stop tracking it because I have confirmed its become automatic or I can increase the difficulty of the habit. On the other hand, if there is a habit I am inconsistent with, its a sign that I need to use one of the tools from Atomic Habits to improve this habit’s consistency.

Additionally, tracking habits does provide some level of motivation. Building up those digital star streaks is a nice feeling, and breaking the streak sucks.

Why use a habit tracker over other tools?

I have experimented with several tools to track habits — habit journals, spreadsheets, google calendar invites, app trackers and physical notes.

I think app based habit trackers are the best way of tracking habits for two reasons — they are low friction and they automatically track historic trends. Tools like habit journals and spreadsheets tend to be higher friction. While tools like physical notes and calendar invites do not automatically provide historic trend data.

How to use a habit tracker effectively?

Order Habits: Habits in the app should be organized according to the order in which they are done throughout the day. This makes it easy to tell what has been done and what is up next. Additionally this encourages forming habit stacks in which one habit naturally leads into the next.

Simple App: Get a very simple habit tracking app. Some of the apps out there are a kitchen sink of features and as a result are hard to use. I look for habit trackers which have a simple interface and are focused only on habit tracking. My favorite habit tracking app is Streaks.

Have Specific Habit Names: A bad habit name is “work out” a good habit name is “workout at 7am in basement.” This follows the habit structure suggested in Atomic Habits. I like this structure because it leaves very little grey area as to if a habit was accomplished or not.

Highlight 2: Daily Habits

I find turning daily habits into atomic habits is much easier than doing this with weekly or monthly habits. There are a few problems with weekly or monthly habits —

• Natural Trigger: A specific day of the week or month does not act as a very natural trigger. The fact that it is currently morning time (daily habit) is a more apparent trigger than the fact that its Wednesday, or even worse the third Sunday of the month. Building habits around the rhythm of a day I have found provides more natural triggers than building habits around dates.
• Frequency: Weekly habits don’t happen often enough for me to make them automatic. Habit formation is largely a function of the number of times one performs a habit, and weekly habits just don’t provide enough reps for me to make it an atomic habit.

There are however actions that I want to do on a weekly or monthly basis. In order to make sure these actions get done, I form a daily habit to update my calendar or todo list with things I need to do this week/month/year. For example if I want to workout three times a week the actual habit that I will form is to review my calendar every night to make sure I have three workout classes booked. The habit is not the workout classes, that is just an event on my calendar, the habit is the daily act of checking my calendar.

Highlight 3: Focus on Good Habits

Habits can be grouped in good habits and bad habits. Good habits are ones you want to build and bad habits are ones you want to avoid. I use to track both good and bad habits, but I have found that exclusively focusing on good habits is more effective.

The primary reason for this is that there is a lower cognitive load associated with reasoning about a good habit than a bad habit. For example lets consider two habits —

• Doing Good Habit: “I will walk the dog every morning at 9:00am”
• Avoiding Bad Habit: “I will not drink a beer with dinner”

There are a few ways in which the good habit has a cognitively lower load than the bad habit —

• Framing: We naturally can process the language of a positive statement more easily than a negative statement. To demonstrate just re-read the habits above and think about which one was faster to process.
• Tracking: Tracking good habits has an intrinsically built in trigger because some action is completed. Once the action is completed the habit can be marked as successful. But bad habits do not have this natural trigger because some action is being avoided. In the case of the habits above, it is very clear that once the dog walk is done, the habit can be marked successful. But for the bad habit is it successful once you sit down for dinner? Once you finish dinner? Once you clear your plate? There is not an obvious positive action to trigger the recording of a bad habit avoidance.

The biggest problem with only tracking good habits is that there are almost certainly bad habits that you do want to work on avoiding. Even if the goal is to avoid bad habits, I believe focusing on good habits is still the right approach. There are several ways in which a bad habit can be addressed by focusing on good habits —

• Crowd out the Bad: In order to avoid a bad habit, crowding it out with good habits is often effective. For example if you want to eat less red meat, the good habit could be “I will eat a vegan breakfast and lunch.” Technically, this good habit does not say anything about avoiding red meat, but after eating a vegan breakfast and lunch there will not be space left in your belly for red meat — you have, in this case, literally crowded out the bad habit with good habits. I have successfully used this tool to help break the bad habit of watching screens right before bed. Instead of creating a habit to avoid watching screens before bed, I created a habit to clean the house at 9:00pm. While I technically, do not have a habit about avoiding screens before bed, I functionally do not watch screens before bed because I am busy cleaning the house. I have crowded out the bad habit with a good habit.
• Removing Triggers or Increasing Friction: Another way to avoid bad habits by focusing on good habits, is to form a good habit which is geared towards making a bad habit less obvious or harder to do. For example, if you want to avoid responding on slack during a focused work session, focus on forming the good habit of closing slack as part of a ritual right before you start a focused work session. Technically, you are not focused on the bad habit, but you have instead formed a good habit which increases the friction of engaging in the bad habit.

In summary, focusing on good habits exclusively is more effective than focusing on good and bad habits because the friction of focusing on good habits is lower. Most bad habits can be reduced by crowding out the bad habits with good habits and by forming good habits to increase the friction of engaging in bad habits.

Highlight 4: Types of Work

In order to create, there are two types of work that are necessary — deep work and enablement work. In order for a business, individual or team to create something these two types of work must be present. This is true regardless of what is being created — art, software, financial forecasts, business plans, a physical building etc…

Deep work is a very specific type of work that requires the following attributes to all be present —

• Minimum Duration: Deep work cannot happen in short intervals — it takes a while to get into a mental flow. Within my field, I consider an hour the shortest block of time that can be allocated towards deep work.
• No Interruptions: Deep work requires that there are no interruptions. Each interruption requires context switching and then reloading context — these interruptions destroy ones ability to stay deeply engaged in a task.
• Directly Productive: Deep work should be directly related to creating something. If you are working on a painting, than deep work means actually painting. If you are working on a software project, than deep work means coding/architecting. Deep work should very directly progress the thing you are trying to create. This stands in contrast to enablement work, which is geared towards enabling productivity. Examples of enablement work are — buying paint brushes, doing code reviews, reviewing someone else’s forecast model, setting up meetings, going to meetings. Enablement work does not directly produce anything but helps to support future productivity.
• No / Low Context Switching: A focus block should include no more than two tasks to focus on. Anything more than this requires too much context switching.

So deep work consists of a lengthy block of time with no interruptions focused on a small number of directly productive tasks. Anything that is not deep focus, I group into enablement work. Enablement work is probably not the perfect name for this other bucket because there are types of work that are not deep work and are not exactly enablement, but I use these names because they are close enough. Enablement work can fit into arbitrary short blocks of time, typically involves high context switching, is often not directly productive but instead enables future productivity and typically enablement work is highly interruptible.

Both enablement work and deep work are critical to creation — you cannot build software that the world uses unless you code and you review others’ code, you cannot make music to share with the world unless you produce music and interface with clients, you cannot make a startup unless you deeply focus on developing a business plan and you make sure your rent is paid. Creation requires both enablement and deep focus work.

Different jobs, teams and companies will require a different ratio of focus work to enablement work. Some jobs like software engineer are heavily weighted towards focus work while other jobs like managers are heavily geared towards enablement work. These are both critically important functions, but they are very different modes of working.

Enablement work is too diverse for me to really have generalizable thoughts on, but deep work is much more specific and I do have thoughts on habits / systems for supporting / maximizing the usefulness of deep work —

• 90 Minute Blocks: I have found that a 90 minute block of time is the perfect allocation for deep work. This provides sufficient time to become deeply engaged, but is still short enough that attention does not wane. Each day, I aim to have two 90 minute focus blocks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. These focus blocks are sandwiched between time allocated towards enablement work.
• Turn Off Notifications: I turn off notifications before a focus block. For me this means Slack is closed.
• Use a Timer: I use a timer to keep track of time during these focus blocks. There are two reasons I like using a timer rather than looking at the clock. First, there is something about pressing the start button on a timer that makes whatever happens next feel important. Pressing start on a timer feels more significant than checking the wall clock time. Second, seeing the timer count down during a focus block provides an incentive to make the most of the focus block.
• Phone Out of Reach: During a focus block I keep my phone out of reach. Its not enough for me to mute notifications on my phone, it actually needs to be physically out of reach.
• Ritualize the Start: The start of a focus block is an important time. It is when you get yourself in the headspace to concentrate. My ritual before a focus session involves: filling up my water bottle, making a pot of tea, plugging in my phone for charing (out of reach), closing slack, setting and starting a timer. By ritualizing these actions I get into a focused headspace and set myself up for success.
• Start with Intention: At the start of every focus session the first thing I do is to think about what I want to achieve during this focus session. Without clear intention its easy to change focus several times during a focus session. So I start by thinking about the one or two things I want to achieve in the next 90 minutes.
• Block Calendar Time: For jobs where success heavily depends on focus work, it is critical to make focus work the priority. As a software engineer, the top priority of my job is to create useful software. So, I reflect this prioritization in my calendar by blocking focus time. I will decline meetings during these focus blocks — the focus blocks are the top priority and enablement work fits around the focus blocks, not the other way around.
• Break After: A focus session should be hard. It is important to take a break after a focus session to relax and treat yourself. I block at least 15 minutes after a focus session to go for a walk or eat a little food.

Highlight 5: Habits, Task Lists and Calendars

Habit trackers, task lists and calendars are three different things and they should be used differently.

The function of a habit tracker is to track the success rate of habits so you know which habits have become automatic and which habits need some additional attention. Habit trackers also provide a little added incentive to keep habit streaks alive.

The function of a todo list is to track tasks that need to get done but not at a specific time. I group my todo list into daily, weekly and backlog todo tasks. I have a daily habit of reviewing this todo list to mark tasks as done, add tasks and move tasks around.

The function of a calendar is to plan a future event at a specific time. Calendars are good for things like keeping a social plan and remembering a doctors appointment, but they are not good for tracking habits because they do not keep historic trends.

Habit trackers, task lists and calendars all serve an important function — but the functions are unique. Trying to use a task list to manage habits, or trying to use a calendar as a task list is not optimal. It can be made to work, but the tools are not being used in their most effective ways.

Use all three of these items — but understand that they are useful for different things and use them for their intended use.