The goals you set for your life are as fluid as life itself. In your teens, your goals may include making a varsity cheerleading or soccer team, or maintaining a certain GPA. Once you graduate you set your sights on new goals, whether it’s achieving a certain amount of wealth, or reaching a certain “level” in your profession. Once you’ve been in the working world for a while, your goals may develop further, into becoming a successful entrepreneur, writing a best seller, running a marathon, learning a new skill, or simply taking better care of your health. Though your goals come and go with the ebbs and flows of life, it turns out that there’s a commonality to reaching them: If you’re able to make the steps needed to make them a reality a habit, you’re more likely to succeed.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, he explores the idea behind the “10,000 Hour Rule.“ Essentially, the notion is that if you put 10,000 hours worth of your effort into anything, you’ll become really, really good at it. I love the idea because I believe it’s an inspiring path towards knowing that you really can make anything in your life happen if you work hard at enough. The trick part, of course, is getting to that 10,000 hour milestone. According to researchers who conducted a study at the University of Southern California there may be a simple answer to that question: Form habits.
“When we try to change our behavior, we strategize about our motivation and self-control. But what we should be thinking about instead is how to set up new habits. Habits persist even when we’re tired and don’t have the energy to exert self-control,” said Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC, and one of the study’s lead researchers.
In the study, for example, the researchers looked at the various behaviors of college students, particularly during a stressful time. They found that essentially, past performance predicts future behavior–good, and bad. For example, students who tend to eat junk foods in “normal life” will eat more of them during a stressful time period, like final exams, when a plate of donuts is put nearby. Although that finding is fairly expected, the behavior of students who didn’t normally eat junk food was provocative: Even when presented with unhealthy options, the kids who ate oatmeal every morning at breakfast did exactly that, despite having an alternative, and a change in their lifestyle. (Even though they may have been sleep deprived, and time-crunched, both factors that research often indicates tends to lead to increased cravings for sugar and junk).
Similarly, the kids who read the paper every morning continued to do so, even when it meant moving other things around in their life to make the time. The kids who ran every morning kept running every morning, despite their stress, too.
The take-away? Make anything a habit, it becomes your default mechanism, regardless of the chaos that may be elsewhere in your life.
Personally, I’m a believer. Having run five marathons and I’m not sure how many half marathons, it’s certainly a habit I’ve developed, and one that I had to work very hard to develop. Though I consider myself a “late in life” athlete, having not been any kind of a runner until age 25, it has become a habitual behavior that “sticks”–regardless of the chaos that may ensue elsewhere in my life. When my father died of a heart attack, unexpectedly, for example, my family was rocked with uncertainty about the future. My response? I woke every morning and went running–just as I had before he passed. When I was pregnant, I woke at 5 am to get to the gym because I was too tired to work out after a long work day; running was just about the only thing that made me feel “normal.” After I gave birth, I was itching to get back to running–not because I wanted to whip back into shape so much as because but because it was such a habit that it almost ceased to be what I “did” and became who I “am.”
Aside from physical health, this finding is encouraging for almost any area of life. Do you want to write a novel? Set aside 20 minutes a day to do the work–every day. Do you want to become more financially aware of where your money goes? Get in the habit of checking your budget each morning. Do you want to save more for retirement? Make a habit of setting x% of your paycheck aside and transfer it to your retirement. (If you need some ideas on how to uncover those funds, check out an article I recently wrote an article for
Citi’s Women & Co with some clever ways to kickstart the retirement savings process).
