In my previous post about the 5% Idea, I mentioned that we sometimes have difficulty making and keeping maintenance habits (an example for me is flossing my teeth regularly). With habits like exercise, we have a tendency to get lost in what we should do, rather than work on getting the consistency of the habit established. So we tend to bounce back and forth between forcing ourselves to work on the habit and forgetting it entirely. Let’s talk a bit about why we do this, and how the 5% Idea can help us to get out of the inconsistency trap.
With maintenance activities, it’s all about the habit. Because we’re going to need to do this thing, whether it be exercise, reading and keeping up on our career, time spent with each child, developing new business ideas, or whatever—because we need to do this consistently, week-in and week out, we’ve got to have a habit. Otherwise the energy involved in doing it routinely is just too much for the benefits received, and we’re sure to stop doing it.
It’s common to overstretch when we try to work on exercise. Do you know anyone who makes a pact to get in shape each New Years, joins a gym, works really hard at it for a few weeks, and then lets exercise go for the year? It’s so easy to get stuck in cycles like these, where we forget about the activity (at least we forget to put time into it), then we feel the pain (weight gain, lethargy, guilt, in the case of exercise) and frantically reinvest.
We have this annoying tendency to overstretch
Why do we tend to overstretch, rather than build up some consistent engagement we can keep up? It can be hard to get these consistent habits going. We don’t feel the pain of them every day when they’re not being done. Or, if we feel the pain, it’s below threshold. It’s easy to tune out soft background noise after a while, and it’s easy to tune out the annoying hum of guilt that says I need to invest more time in my projects each week. There’s pain there, but it’s less pain than the pain of not handling that latest crisis, email, or request.
We don’t feel the pain of not developing our employees until that employee mentally checks out or actually physically checks out and heads for another employer. We don’t think of the stress of becoming obsolete in our career on a daily basis, so we forget to invest in reading or developing ourselves. Because it can go a while before the pain or impact builds up, we tend to miss it or ignore it for a while. Then, one day we see the pain or lack of investment as a problem, and we overstretch to try to correct it. That overstretching reaction is a problem in itself.
Overstretching is not the only way we could approach the situation, but it’s the common way. We could decide to invest in the long-haul, in developing a lifetime habit in that area, and to work in small bits until we get it. But we often don’t. Why? Perhaps we overstretch because, as people, we are not always terrific with the application of patience and flexibility to the hardest parts of our lives.
These virtues of patience and flexibility are so important to human effectiveness, but they are hard to develop. We tend to get impatient for results, especially when we’re feeling the pain. Or we tend to get stuck in our cycles of how things must be done, should be done, and so we don’t alter our behavior enough to get new results, like a consistent habit. “I must do my exercise in the morning” cuts off options like lunch break, walk with kids after work, weekend yoga clinic, etc.
We want the results right away, and we are inflexible with ourselves. You might catch yourself saying things like “I should be flossing seven times a week.” (That’s what I used to say to myself.) But those “shoulds,” that want of results, can get in the way of getting to those results. I might try to floss every day, but if I haven’t been flossing at all, that’s probably too much. That flossing habit won’t have time to take, and my result will likely be: flossing like a madman for a week or two and then I don’t do it anymore. I’ll be upset with myself and won’t believe in my ability to get results in this area, which will make it harder to get them the next time. What a vicious cycle this can become. Can you relate? There’s got to be another way.
It all works better when we stop overstretching and start respecting the system
This cycle of overstretching and then giving up, repeat, gives us terrible results over time. Yet getting stuck in this is our tendency, especially with the harder habits of our lives.
Here’s what the 5% Idea is really about. If you can get out of this cycle, and improve at all, you’re going to be doing better than you did before. If you can be patient with yourself and focus on improvement over time, rather than instant overstretch, you will benefit.
Here’s the thing we don’t get: the bumpy ride of overstretch and then do nothing produces terrible results. If we can grow that in small, patient increments, we can grow your results in any area. If we focus on your historical average (how much time do you actually spend on projects, not time you should spend on projects), we can use that as a starting point. We can then work to build a habit where you learn to do that average, horrible as you think it may be, consistently. Consistency (not robotic perfection, but more consistent execution than before) always helps with maintenance habits—I think it’s required for them to “take.”
Why does the overstretching cycle perform so badly? You are a system. A system of habits, responsibilities, things you’re invested in, strengths, weaknesses, and personality traits. As an engineer, I studied and worked on systems. I have a lot of respect for them, and realize that too much change in one area of a system can throw the whole system off. Systems need to maintain some kind of balance, or they break down, they react.
Stretch a habit too far in one area without accounting for it in some other way, and the system called you may not be able to handle it, at least long term. Let’s say you run for seven days straight and you’ve never done that before. That’s quite a stretch. You may be able to keep it up in the short term, but there are just too many things in your life that will be ready to come in and stop that habit from taking root. There are many, many different ways the system could react, and throw you back to where you started. Here are a few of the blocks that could come up with the exercise:
- The pain of exercise on your body, which isn’t conditioned for that much.
- You haven’t yet changed your lifestyle in other areas to free up the time.
- Others may question why you’re running so much.
If you can get unstuck from the overstretching and start to work on consistency, you experience success on several levels. First, you’ll probably be getting more of the habit in. Second, you’re being more consistent, which usually improves results with maintenance habits, as opposed to “crunching.” Third, you know that this is all toward a bigger picture, which is that every year you’re going to be doing this successful maintenance habit more and more. You’re going to enjoy these results for a lifetime. Every year the habit will grow in results, and getting those results will get easier. You won’t have to think about it so much.
Much as I love the 5% idea, it’s not for everythingI’m not advocating the 5% Idea for every habit or change. There are areas where we need to move faster. Luckily, though, we generally feel more pain in the moment in those situations, so it’s easier to set a habit, even if it’s a bit of a stretch.
If you had just had coronary bypass surgery and been told by your doctor that you needed to drastically modify your health habits or you would probably die, the 5% Idea would not be enough. You would need more drastic measures--although you might not take them. According to Dr. Edward D. Miller at John Hopkins, only 10% of patients change their lifestyles when measured two years following bypass surgery. Perhaps the 5% Idea could help that 90% that don’t change, although I’d probably advocate a faster rate of change, like the 10% Idea. You get the idea.
So the 5% Idea isn’t for everything, but I believe it can help with most of our habits. If you’re willing to invest a bit, and be patient in the smaller areas, I am convinced you will build a habit that will last a lifetime and get you better results than we get through the overstretch cycle.
In my next post, I’ll give you a walkthrough of how to apply the 5% Idea in detail. Until then, here’s some fieldwork for you. Ask yourself these questions around one area where you’d like to develop a more consistent habit. For this habit:
- How could lack of patience or unwillingness to try different approaches be getting in the way?
- What other things in the system called my life tend to react or get in the way when I try to invest in this habit?
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