Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (10 page)

A professor friend told me, “One of the faculty who recruited me told me that if I accepted the offer, he'd reveal the secret to how to be a productive academic. On days set aside for research and writing, he disciplines himself not to answer any phone calls or check any email until 4:00 p.m., at which point he spends one or two hours only doing that. Also, once he started it, colleagues learned not to bother him before 4:00, so it's self-reinforcing.”

After some time had gone by, I sent Adam an email to ask whether Scheduling was working. He answered:

From: Adam

Scheduling is the answer for me. This week, I had lots of meetings, but if I'm missing my usual time, I'm making it up later in the day. I used to spend the day gearing up to work, and not always getting it done. Now it's like having an appointment. I feel very drawn to working during that period now in general. I'm not sure yet if it's the formation of a habit, my commitment to keeping the schedule, or a combination of both.

When I had lunch with two writer friends, one of whom had just quit her day job to work on her book full-time for a year, I couldn't resist delivering a short lecture on Scheduling.

She talked about what her schedule might be, and our other friend added, “When she's making her schedule, shouldn't she decide what things she won't have much time for?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like not dating as much, or not making as many plans with friends.”

“Well, does she need to do that?” I didn't want to contradict her, but I disagreed. “If she makes a schedule, she can set aside time for all her priorities.”

“I'm pretty social,” the first friend added. “I'm concerned about spending so much time alone, writing.”

“So make sure you schedule enough social time.”

The goal is to develop habits that allow us to have time for everything we value—work, fun, exercise, friends, errands, study—in a way that's sustainable,
forever
. Favoring work at the expense of everything else makes work itself less pleasant, diminishes quality of life, and creates a constant feeling of “emergency.” Also, what happens if a person sacrifices a social life to write a book, the book is published, and it fails? The price would be too high. Even if the book were a
success
, the price would be too high.

Scheduling is an invaluable tool for habit formation: it helps to eliminate decision making; it helps us make the most of our limited self-command; it helps us fight procrastination. Most important, perhaps, the Strategy of Scheduling helps us make time for the things that are most important to us. How we schedule our days is how we spend our lives.

Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are; if I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.

—Goethe,
Maxims and Reflections

T
o be effective, the Strategy of Scheduling often must be paired with the essential Strategy of Accountability. It's not enough to schedule a habit; we must actually
follow
that habit. Accountability means that we face consequences for what we're doing—even if that consequence is merely the fact that someone else is monitoring us.

Accountability is a powerful factor in habit formation, and a ubiquitous feature in our lives. If we believe that someone's watching, we behave differently. Deadlines help us keep the habit of working. Late fees help us pay our bills on time. Grades help us study. Attendance records help us get our children to school on time. When we believe that we may be held accountable for our actions—even when we're accountable only to
ourselves
—we show more self-command.

This tendency is very marked. In one study, where
people were asked voluntarily to pay
for the beverages they took from an office kitchen, people paid more honestly when the price list was accompanied by an image of two eyes than when it was accompanied by a flower image; in Boston, when a
life-sized cutout of a policeman
was placed at a train station's bicycle cage, bike thefts dropped 67 percent. The
mere presence of a mirror
—which allows people literally to watch over themselves—makes people more likely to resist bullying, to argue their own opinions, to work harder at tasks, and to resist temptation.

On the flip side, when we don't feel accountable, we behave worse. The anonymity of hotels and travel makes it easier for people to break a healthy habit or moral code; using a pseudonym makes people more likely to act badly; even the slight disguise of sunglasses makes people feel freer to break their usual standards of conduct.

For this reason, it's often worthwhile to invest in systems of accountability. A chief benefit of fitness trainers, financial planners, life coaches, executive coaches, personal organizers, and nutritionists, in addition to their expertise, is the accountability they provide. For Obligers, most of all, this kind of external accountability is absolutely essential.

Another way to create accountability is to go public. In his memoir
The Writing of One Novel
, novelist Irving Wallace explained, “
When you are a free and independent writer
, without employer, without hours or deadlines, you have to play little games to force yourself into the actual writing. For me, one game is to announce … that I have finally decided on my next book, that I am ready to write it … to put my pride on the line.”

Someone wrote on my blog: “I publicly announce that I'm going to do something, because I know the downside of people giving me shit for not doing it will motivate me to do it, even more so than any intrinsic motivation I may attach to the task itself.” Another reader agreed: “When I tell people my goals, I feel ‘uber' committed to them. I'm very careful about any commitment I make out loud, because it's almost as if I feel there's no way out of the commitment after I own it.”

My sister, Elizabeth, used public accountability to deter herself from eating junk food, which is bad for anyone's health but especially for hers, because of her diabetes. When she started her new job, she made a point of telling her coworkers that she was committed to eating healthfully. Eating right was a particular challenge, because TV-writer custom dictates that the office kitchen is jammed with goodies—countless varieties of muffins, cookies, candy, cereal, chips, and any other food that writers add to the grocery store list—all free, which makes the array even more enticing. (Workplaces in general seem increasingly filled with food temptations. Many more employers now offer free food, not to mention the birthday cakes, treats served at going-away parties and office showers, Girl Scout cookies, pizza runs, leftover holiday goodies, vending machines, and so on.)

I asked her if she thought that telling her colleagues had helped her keep better eating habits. “Yes, because for me,” she said, “declarations are important. I have to say, ‘I don't eat cupcakes' to make myself go through with it.”

“Because then you'd be embarrassed for other people to see you eat junk? Or because declaring the habit somehow makes it more real?”

“Partly I don't want to disappoint myself by not following through. Also, at this point, if I ate a cupcake at work, it would be a huge office-wide story. I am
so
on the record about not wanting to eat that stuff.”

“So that makes it easier?”

“Yes. Plus no one even offers it to me anymore.”

“Do you ever resent that? That they don't even ask you if you want it?”

“No! That's what I tried to
encourage
. We get the most unbelievable food at work—like we were sent these super-gourmet cupcakes from the best bakery in L.A. The first time I didn't eat a cupcake, I almost felt like crying. But now it doesn't seem like a big deal.”

Elizabeth is a public resolver, but for some people, public declarations actually
undermine
their ability to stick to a new habit. A private resolver wrote: “I have to keep my goals private or they lose their magic.” Another private resolver added, “The more I talk to other people about what I'm thinking about doing, the less likely I am to do it! The more I work on a goal in secret, the more likely I am to accomplish it.”

The key, as always, is to use self-knowledge and to consider our own nature—to know whether we're public resolvers or private resolvers. For an Upholder like me, the public announcement of a habit doesn't make much of a difference. It's more helpful to have systems of
self
-accountability. For instance, I have my “Resolutions Charts,” the charts where I track whether I've kept or broken the many resolutions I've made as part of my happiness projects. (It took me years to grasp that my desire to follow these
resolutions
could also be understood as a desire to shape my good
habits.
) In the same way, my UP band keeps a record of my actions, and even though no one sees it but me, that information allows me to hold myself accountable.

Another way to use Accountability, and an approach that Obligers find invaluable, is to team up with an accountability partner. They appear in many forms: a language tutor who charges for a no-show, or a friend who gets angry if he has to work out alone, or an instructor who insists on perfect attendance, or a coach who checks in with daily emails. Such partners can help protect a good habit. In one intervention, people who enrolled in a weight-loss program with an accountability partner maintained their weight loss more successfully than people who joined alone.

A psychiatrist friend made an interesting point about the difference between accountability partners and psychotherapists. “In the kind of therapy that I do, I don't hold you accountable,” she explained. “I try to help you learn to hold yourself accountable to yourself. A coach holds you accountable.”

“Then I wonder if some people need a coach more than a therapist,” I said, thinking of Obligers. “Accountability to someone else is what they're really looking for.”

For instance, my friend Adam Gilbert founded My Body Tutor, a program that provides this kind of accountability. Daily interaction with a “tutor” helps people monitor and change their diet and exercise habits. “People want to do it alone,” he said, “but why? I tell them, ‘You get help in other areas of your life. Why not with this?' ”

An accountability partner doesn't even need to be human. For years, I felt accountable to our family schnauzer, Paddywhack. In high school, when I was trying to stick to the habit of regular running, I always took Paddywhack with me. She leaped with joy every time I put on my running shoes, and her eagerness made it harder for me to skip a day, and strengthened my exercise habit. In fact, one study—admittedly, by a pet-health-care company—showed that
dog owners get more exercise
, and enjoy it more, than people who go to the gym;
older people walk more regularly
with a dog than when they walk with another person.

Even imaginary accountability can be helpful. I'm a devout fan of the gym InForm Fitness and its “Super Slow” strength-training method, and I've persuaded so many friends and family members to go that I'm their number one referrer. One day my trainer told me, “A lot of your friends think you're keeping tabs on them.”

“Really?” I was somehow flattered to hear this. “Why? I don't know what they do.”

“They think you know whether they're showing up.”

I thought this over as I suffered through the leg press machine. “Do you think it helps them to keep coming regularly?”

“I think it does.”

I'd become an accountability partner without even knowing it.

But acting as an accountability partner can be tricky. I don't want people to dread contact with me because I make them feel guilty about some broken habit. Also, it's a lot of work to be a reliable accountability partner. Accountability partners often work better if the people aren't particularly close, or if the accountability is mutual, or if a person is paid to hold someone accountable. Adam Gilbert calls this the “peer or pro” issue, and he's very pro-pro. “People don't take peers seriously,” he told me. “They do better with a pro.”

“Because they're paying?” I asked.

“Maybe people value it more if they pay for it. But I don't think it's really about money. A peer isn't going to tell you the hard truths. You need a pro.”

Sometimes we expect someone to act as an accountability partner—but that person doesn't accept that responsibility. A writer friend is an Obliger, and she asked her editor to give her accountability.

“When I signed the contract to write this memoir,” she said, “I told my editor, ‘I can only write when I have to turn something in, and I don't want to wait until the last minute to work on this book. Please, give me some fake deadlines along the way.' But he said, ‘Don't worry, the book will be great, you'll get it done, blah, blah.' He just kept being so generous and understanding.”

“What happened?”

“I wrote the whole thing the three weeks before it was due. It could have been so much better if I'd started work earlier.”

Out of misguided consideration, the editor had refused to provide accountability. If he'd understood that my friend was an Obliger, he could've taken a different approach.

While individuals can be accountability partners, it can also be useful to join an accountability group. As Alcoholics Anonymous, Weight Watchers, and Happiness Project groups demonstrate, we give and get accountability, as well as energy and ideas, when we meet with like-minded people. For several years, some friends were in a thesis-writing group. They met regularly at a bar to report on their progress—and to hold each other accountable. “The accountability to the group really helped me get work done,” one friend told me. “And it was a lot of fun.”

A
Better Than Before
habits group would be a terrific way for people to hold each other accountable for whatever habits they're trying to form. A group might be made up of friends, family members, coworkers, or strangers brought together by a common desire to work on their habits. Members of the group need not even share the same aims; it's enough that they're all determined to change their habits.

Nothing can replace face-to-face interactions, but when that's not practical, accountability groups and accountability partners can use technology to help them connect. Virtual accountability is less intense, but more convenient.

Another way to harness the Strategy of Accountability is to use a “commitment device,” that is, some mechanism that bolsters our habits by locking us into a decision. We can't change our minds, or if we do, we're heavily penalized. The lowly china piggy bank is a child's commitment device, and adults may open a Christmas account, which levies charges against account holders who withdraw savings before the holiday. According to legend, novelist Victor Hugo's exotic commitment device was to order his servant to take away his clothing for the day. Left naked in his study, with only paper and pen, Hugo had nothing to do but write.

Many people will pay extra for a commitment device. Half of a
popular snack item's loyal buyers
said they'd pay 15 percent more if the snack came in a package that helped them control their consumption. As an example of this attitude, I saw a neighborhood gourmet grocery store cleverly exploit people's desire to eat less Halloween candy: when the chain store across the street was selling big bags of mini candy bars for $2.99, the gourmet store offered its own smaller, homemade bags of the identical candy for $4.99. A customer paid more to get less candy.

Cost can be an effective commitment device in other ways, too. A friend who goes to my gym got special permission to buy a package of fifty sessions, instead of the usual twenty-four maximum, as a way to deepen her commitment to exercise; she knew she'd never allow herself to waste that money.

One flashy kind of commitment device is the “nuclear option.” A friend who enjoys experimenting with strategies of personal productivity used this approach to quit drinking for sixty days. He gave his assistant a stamped, addressed envelope with a check he'd written to an “anti-charity,” an organization whose policies he passionately opposes, with the instruction to mail the check if he had a drink before the time was up.

“Did it work?” I asked.

“Absolutely. I'd raised the stakes, plus I'd tied drinking to my core values. There's no way I'd send a check to that hateful group. It worked so well,” he added, “that my mother did it too. If she had a drink before her time was up, she had to give money to her grandsons to buy video games. She considers that a terrible waste of money.”