Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (7 page)

In my case, alcohol wasn't an issue for Foundation. I'd given it up years ago, more or less, because alcohol makes me belligerent, indiscreet, and sleepy. Not drinking wasn't hard for me because I've never enjoyed alcohol much; also, Jamie has hepatitis C, which means he can't drink at all, so I feel less inclined to drink, out of team spirit.

Alcohol isn't the only drinking issue that gets attention, however. Some people worry about drinking enough water. Waiting in a drugstore line, I overheard a woman say to her friend, “I'm making a big effort to drink more water. I buy a big bottle every day, and I drink from it constantly.”

I wished that I could tell her not to bother, that water drinking is credited with vastly greater health benefits than it actually provides. Contrary to popular belief, we're not likely to mistake thirst for hunger, and we don't have to try to drink water, because if we're dehydrated, we'll feel uncomfortably thirsty. And
we don't have to drink eight glasses
of water a day; a person who doesn't feel thirsty and produces a good amount of slightly yellow urine is probably getting enough water.

Of course, for people who love to drink water, or believe that it makes them feel good, great. And it's better to drink water than sweet tea. But I regret the waste of precious habit-formation effort when I see people wearily force themselves to chug from their water bottles, or when I see “Drink more water” at the top of the lists of desired habits.

Fostering good habits takes energy, and that energy is in short supply; we're better off exploiting that energy to create the habits that will do the most good. First things first.

Fourth: unclutter.
I'm constantly surprised by the degree to which, for most people, outer order contributes to inner calm. Order contributes to the Foundation more, really, than it should. A crowded coat closet or an overflowing in-box seems like a trivial thing—and it
is
trivial—yet an orderly environment makes me feel more in control of myself. If this is an illusion, it's a helpful illusion.

Outer disorder may act as a
broken window
. The “broken windows” theory of crime prevention was introduced in the 1980s by social scientists who observed that when a community tolerates disorder and petty crime, such as breaking of windows, graffiti, turnstile jumping, or drinking in public, people are more likely to commit more serious crimes. As a law enforcement theory, it's controversial; but whether it's true on a community-wide level, it's true on a personal level.

For many people—like me—a clean, well-maintained environment helps to foster a sense of self-command, which in turn makes it easier to maintain good habits.

In law school, I happened to visit the group houses of two friends in one day, and I remember being struck by the difference in their kitchens. At the first stop, the kitchen was orderly. My friend pulled a box of crackers out of the cabinet and some cheese from the fridge, and both packages were closed and neatly stowed away. When I visited the second friend, she said, “Help yourself to anything.” Several open bags lay scattered on the counter—pretzels, chips, and Entenmann's mini-chocolate-chip cookies—and as we sat talking at the kitchen table, other people wandered through, and everyone grabbed a few handfuls. “If I lived here, I could eat an entire box of cookies in a day,” I thought, “and not even notice.” We were all young and single, and no one wanted to eat junk food, but the habits of that house made it much harder to resist.

People get a real lift when they put things in their place, tackle nagging tasks, clear surfaces, and get rid of things that don't work or aren't used. This surge of energy makes it easier to ask more of ourselves, to use our self-control, and to stick to a challenging habit. Also, accomplishing small tasks boosts our sense of “self-efficacy.” The more we trust ourselves to follow through on our own commitments, the more likely we are to believe that we can keep an important habit.

Of course, it's also true that some people thrive in an atmosphere of disarray. For them, an uncluttered environment doesn't help—or may even stifle—their productivity, their creativity, and their peace of mind.

But for me, messy surroundings are a broken window that makes me feel less productive and creative, not more. When my office is crammed with open books, scribbled notes, half-empty coffee cups, and uncapped pens, I feel overwhelmed. Clearing my space clears my mind.

Each person has different broken windows. An unmade bed is a common broken window, which is why “Make the bed” is one of the most popular happiness-project resolutions, and in fact, as Charles Duhigg points out in his fascinating book,
The Power of Habit
,
the habit of bed making
is correlated with a sense of greater well-being and higher productivity. Other common broken windows include having a messy car; accumulating piles of laundry or trash; not being able to find important items, like a passport or a phone charger; hanging on to stacks of newspapers, magazines, and catalogs; wearing pajamas or sweats all day; or not shaving or showering.

For Jamie, as he often emphatically reminds me, dirty dishes left overnight are broken windows; for me, if the dishes make it into the sink, life feels under control. One of my broken windows? Falling asleep in front of the TV.

When I started my inquiry into habit formation, my sister, Elizabeth, agreed to be my habits “recruit,” to allow me to test some of my theories on her. In one of my first attempts to tinker with her habits, I tried to persuade her to change her sleep habits—but it wasn't something she wanted to work on.

“Sometimes when I'm watching TV at the end of the day, I'll take a nap on the sofa,” she told me. “That's when I get the best, deepest sleep.”

“You're not taking a
nap
,” I protested, “you're passing out in front of the TV! For me, that's a broken window. It seems so sad.”

“To me, going to bed before midnight seems depressing. I'm losing one of the good parts of my day.”

Elizabeth, I realized, is one of the people who feels cheated if she doesn't have that end-of-the-day time to herself, even at the expense of getting enough quality sleep. So I dropped the subject.

I decided to repair some of my own broken windows. I began with my bad habit of leaving piles of my clothes around the bedroom—for days. Especially when I feel rushed, I tell myself, “A pile of clothes won't make any difference.” But maintaining order makes me feel calmer and more in control; letting my environment get messy makes me feel worse. Once I started the habit, I realized, too, that putting away my clothes nightly meant that the task stayed small. Secret of Adulthood: Keeping up is easier than catching up.

Next, I turned to the nagging task of phone messages. I dislike the beep that tells me that we have messages—and our phone is always beeping, because I hate to pick up messages. Instead, I declared a new habit. Every time I hear the beep, I
must
pick up the messages.

But before long, I admitted defeat. I just couldn't make myself do it. I switched to a new habit: handing pen, paper, and phone to Jamie when he comes home from work, and making
him
get the messages. He doesn't seem to mind.

I also considered my office habits. Each morning, I sit down at my desk, with a cup of coffee on one side and a diet soda on the other, and connect to the world through email and social media. As I start clicking around, I feel reassuringly in command—like an airplane pilot running a system check in a cockpit, or a surgeon reaching for an instrument.

I wanted the end of my workday to be as satisfying as the beginning. My habit had been to walk away from a messy desk, but now, for my last ten minutes of work, I file papers, blast through some emails, fill out forms, put my pens in the pen cup, check the next day's calendar, and gather items that need to go somewhere else in the apartment.

I soon discovered that this habit also makes it much easier to walk into my office the next morning; I hadn't realized how discouraging it was to sift through the papers and coffee mugs to get started afresh.

The Foundation Four made a big difference to my own habits—but did they matter as much to everyone? To experiment with my theory about the importance of the Foundation, I asked my friend Marshall if he'd let me make him a habits recruit to help him clear his clutter.

I knew Marshall through one of my children's literature reading groups. He's a newspaper columnist with enormous creativity, but as he told me one day, “I don't have any trouble finishing my assignments, but I put off doing my own work.”

“What work?” I asked.

“Work on my spec script, my idea for a novel, or the collaboration I might do with my brother.”

Because I'd been to his apartment, I knew it was fairly messy, and I was eager to test my theory that clearing clutter—and in this way, strengthening his Foundation—would help him with his writing habits. As I explained to him, “My theory is that Foundation habits make it easier to form other good habits, so creating more order might help you with writing. Over and over, people tell me that getting control of their
stuff
makes them feel more in control of their
lives
. Also, there was a Princeton study that found that visual clutter reduces your ability to focus and process information.” (I love to throw in research—it's more convincing to people if I cite a study.)

“Okay,” he answered, with cautious enthusiasm.

I arrived at his place, a classic one-bedroom New York City apartment in Greenwich Village, armed with a snack and my little notebook; I was ready to take notes if some habit-formation truth revealed itself. I couldn't wait to begin—but Marshall looked as though he might be having second thoughts.

Since he'd met my sister when he was living in Los Angeles, I invoked her now. “Remember, I helped Elizabeth clear her clutter. People often feel bad about their clutter, but
no one
is messier than Elizabeth. Though it's true, she has gotten a lot better,” I added, to be fair. “Nothing will shock me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

As we worked, I mentioned some favorite clutter-clearing habits, in case any happened to appeal to Marshall. “Follow the one-minute rule: if you can do a task in less than a minute, do it.” “Never keep newspapers overnight.” “Use counters for activities, not for storage.” I told little inspirational clutter-clearing teaching stories. “I met this guy who has a complete set of
t
the
Believer
magazine,” I said, “and somehow the fact that he has a set makes him think they're valuable.” I shook my head. “It's easy to get in the habit of collecting things that aren't actually meaningful or useful, and then you have to organize them and store them. Like shopping bags. I want to save them. But who can use fifty shopping bags?”

He responded by handing me a yellowing stack of newspapers. “Would you add these to the pile inside that cabinet?”

I looked inside. “Why are you keeping all these?”

“They're the newspaper sections with my column.” He looked at the pile. “Maybe I could hire someone to clip the pieces. And put them in a book. Or
scan
them. Then I could put the pieces online.”

“Do you have a site?”

“No, but maybe I should have a site.”

Marshall's suggestions gave me pause: was he “raising the bar”? People
raise the bar
when they consider starting a new habit, and then, from an impulse that's either enthusiasm or unconscious self-sabotage, they suggest refinements that make the habit prohibitively challenging. A person decides to start exercising, and instead of aiming to walk for twenty minutes a day, he decides to start a routine that rotates between cardio, weights, and balance, four times a week for an hour. The bar is so high that it's impossible to clear.

Marshall might be raising the bar. He'd moved from keeping old newspapers stuffed in a cabinet to hiring someone to clip, scan, and upload them to an as-yet-to-be-created website. On the other hand, journalism was his livelihood.

Well, at least the papers were stacked neatly out of sight for now.

Marshall was sorting through a giant box of old papers, and in a surprisingly short time, he'd emptied it out.

“Wow, that was fast!” I said. “You only started forty minutes ago.”

“No,” he shook his head. “It took me
seven years
to clean out that box. There was mail in there from 2006.” We both took a moment to ponder that.

After a few hours, Marshall got the stunned look that I often see when I'm helping people clear clutter. I, on the other hand, felt more exhilarated the longer we cleared. By this point, his apartment was crammed with bags and piles. “I know it looks overwhelming,” I admitted. “A Secret of Adulthood is that things look messier before they look tidier. This is the messy stage.”

“That's okay,” he said.

I started laughing.

“What?” he asked.

“I realize that although you'll be glad we did this, it's a huge pain for you. I get a big kick out of it, and thanks for being so game. I know I can be kind of relentless.”

“No, it's good to clear out all this junk.”

I remembered a conversation I'd had with Elizabeth a few years before. She was moving, and I'd gone to L.A. to help her box up her possessions. We cleared and packed without a break for two days. A typical moment: just when we thought we'd finished the kitchen, Elizabeth opened the oven and discovered that it was jammed with long-forgotten items. I love this kind of challenge, and I worked until the minute I had to leave for the airport. Elizabeth had collapsed on the couch with a pair of scissors in one limp hand and a roll of packing tape in the other. “Would you mind taking a taxi?” she asked. “I think I'm too tired to drive you.”