Day 58: Habits Reduce Cognitive Load
You can’t fight biology
February 27, 2021
Today I had a family get together. A wonderful time with family. We ate a lot of food. By the time everyone left I felt full and to be honest kind of lazy.
But I can’t quit now. I opened my stretching app and did my stretches. I have this long unbroken chain since January 1st. Breaking this long chain now would be a tragedy.
Right after doing my stretching exercises, I jumped into my every other day push-ups using my Home Workout app.
It is ALWAYS feel so much HARDER to do the things that we dread than actually doing it. This is why forming habits is so important to achieving any worthwhile goal.
The real payoffs of habits is that it reduces cognitive load. When we are deciding, we suffer from decision fatigues. Should I do it? Should I not do it? I’m busy today. I’m so full after a indulging in good food and great time with family.
However, because I’ve been working out every single day since the beginning of the year, working out has now become a habit. Yes, I had about thirty seconds where I was lingering and thinking whether I should do the workouts.
Then I remember I don’t want to break my long chain of consistency. As soon as I open my workout app, I jumped into it with full force and just did it.
You don’t understand the amazement I have been feeling through this journey. I know it’s only been close to two months but for the very first time in my entire life I have been consistently working out. For those of you who are already there, it’s no big deal. But for those of us who has never achieved any consistency in working out this is a big achievement.
Oddly enough, working out consistently is no longer a big deal. I dare say it’s slowly embedding into my identity! I’m the kind of guy that works out every day. That’s just me. It’s part of my schedule. In fact, I moved my schedule around so that I can work out consistently.
I noticed that my late night workouts have kept me up at night. I have too much energy to fall asleep after working out. The reason I worked out so late is because of work and other responsibilities take up my entire day. Therefore, the last item on my schedule is working out. What happens is that I end up working out at 9pm or sometimes past 10pm.
Then in the past couple of weeks, I decided to work out earlier. As soon as my work day ends, I jumped into workout rather than wait til right before bedtime.
The amazing thing is that because it’s now part of my schedule, there’s no more decision fatigue. It’s just a thing I do.
Also, remember 100% is easier than 80%. What this means is that if you are a 100% committed to doing daily exercises then it erases all decision fatigues. It just means you gotta do it every single day. No ifs or buts. Just do it. But if you are 80% committed and say you will work 4 days or 5 days a week then there are days that you will slip and think to yourself you will make it up later in the week. And before you know, you have not done ANY exercises for the week.
100% committed is the only way to go.
Watch the video above about how to rewire your brain for better focus, execution, and life.
I will do a monthly recap for February shortly. I just wanted to share this key insight I have experienced first hand about forming habits. It’s no longer a theory for me. It works!
Stats:
You can find the things I’m tracking in the GoogleSheet below. Please note some of the things I want to track will change over time as I learn from experience and what the data tells me. After all, I’m a data scientist.
Regardless, certain items will always be tracked because they are my outcome or target variables(such as weight, blood pressure, number of hours fasted, etc.)
I welcome you to watch, cheer me on, or participate in this journey of consistent doing and tracking of good self-improvement habits.
