Forming a new habit
I know that one of the problems for many people’s weightloss is sleep – they don’t get enough. I have the opposite problem. I sleep WAY too much. Right now, I’m not working and school hasn’t started so there’s not an external reason to get up early and go to bed at a regular time. I think it’s probably not a good habit, so I’ve decided to give changing that habit a try. I want to be up by 8:00am EVERY day and try to go to bed by 11:30pm. Right now, I’m getting up between 10 and noon more often than 8, so that’s going to be a big change.
Rest is a good thing, but boredom is its brother. – Voltaire
There are lots of places to find “research” and lots of theories about how habits are formed and how to develop new ones. First of all – there is a biological basis for habit forming. The study of this biology in the brain is probably beyond my meager blogresearch, but I found some good articles. Automatic responses to things like learning to drive or ride a bike are governed by the basal ganglia, which apparently respond well to rewards. Some of the research from Ann M. Graybiel, the Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience at MIT is summarized here, and shows that habits are formed by a combination of repetition and reward. Punishment can help change habits, but these researchers have found that positive feedback is more useful than negative in changing or developing behavior.
The reward of one duty done is the power to fulfill another. - George Eliot
So I need to develop a system to make this repetitive and provide a reward. Well, repetitive isn’t hard to set up.
Right now, my wake up routine is:
- Wait till the snooze button doesn’t work anymore, then fall back asleep.
- Go to the bathroom down the hall (my bathroom toilet is broken).
- Come back to my bathroom and weigh myself & test my body fat.
- Wash my face and head downstairs to start the coffee.
So now I have to figure out where to add in the reward. I also think I need to motivate myself to actually get myself up and running. It helps me to (1) have to get out of bed, (2) have a specific list of things to do as soon as I’m up and (3) a comfortable environment to get up to. So to make the repetition part of the equation work I’ll overcome those three things. (Another great morning routine must be shared – I found this at www.howtowakeupearly.com)
Lose an hour in the morning, and you will be all day hunting for it. - Richard Whately
I’ll add an alarm clock across the room to make me get up. On the mirror in the bathroom down the hall, I’m adding a list of the specific things to do before lunch. And finally, I’m adding a a timer to a space heater to start running 10 min before the alarm goes off. I HATE waking up to a cold room. But there is research showing that cold rooms help you sleep better. Plus, I’m cheap and a cold house is cheaper than a hot one in the winter.
The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn’t, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. - Monica Baldwin
Now I’ve been told before that one should not use food as a reward when dieting. But what else provides a visceral reaction of reward? So I’m going to start my “rewards” with coffee. I’m moving my single-cut coffee maker right next to the alarm clock. I get to start the coffee as soon as I get up, then come back and start drinking once I’ve done my weigh-in. I think I need something else though – Leo on ZenHabits has a list of the benefits of rising early, but not all apply to my slacker wake up time of 8am. I need another reward – I think I’ll just go with “what I can do with the time” as a reward. My list of most important things to do on the bathroom mirror will have to be part of my reward.
Behind every successful woman is a substantial amount of coffee. - Stephanie Piro
Ok, so I have the plan. Now I have to make sure I set my self up with a Before Bed Routine to make that happen tomorrow. I just need to work my plan! Wish me luck, I’ll report in!
Sleeping In, future goals, not weight loss, sleep
Here I am – up and caffeinated at 8:30am! I did hit the snooze on both alarm clocks, so I’m going to move one of them into the bathroom. The heater on a timer was genius, I just need to set it to turn on a few minutes earlier.
Did Ok – I moved the alarm clock to the bathroom, but set it wrong. Doh! So I only had the one alarm go off, but I was still up and out of bed by 8:30! Marc thinks it’s weird to keep the coffee in the bathroom, but if it works for me, it works for me. :p
So I’ve been at this for about a week now, and only had one major slip up. I’ve moved the time up from 8am to 7am in anticipation of eventually having to move it to 6.
The parts that worked:
* Two alarm clocks
* First alarm clock is music, second alarm goes off 5 minutes later and is an annoying alarm in the other room
* On cold days, the heater is AWESOME.
* Keeping some basics of my morning routine (although I fixed the toilet in my bath so I don’t have to walk down the hall)
Parts that needed adjustment:
* The “to-do” list is now a printout from my calendar. School just started, so that helps.
Parts that didn’t work:
* The coffee is just more work than it’s worth. Now, I’m in the habit of making a skinny vanilla latte first thing, while I get the animals fed and wait for my breakfast to cook. Num.