In some ways, I really hope you think this article is boring.

When I talk about habits, I usually dig into the science on cues and rewards. I might philosophize about which habits are the most important to work on.

But it can be difficult to appreciate exactly how the science affects everyday life. It’s one thing to know the definition of a habit; actually seeing the impact of habits on everyday life is more difficult.

So today I just have a few examples.

Unlike examples I’ve used in the past, these don’t show me or a client making a huge behavior change. They aren’t even explicitly related to fitness. They are just snapshots of habit psychology playing itself in everyday life.

If they seem boring, that’s because they are. I’m about to talk about running out of soap and turning on the lights.

But buried in those incredibly mundane everyday events is a point: habits are often small, but they affect everything you do.

This is what they look like.

Example One: Running Out of Soap

This week, I ran out of soap in my bathroom.

I usually keep a huge jug of soap under the sink, but this time, when I went to refill the soap dispenser, it was empty. Bummer.

Hardly the end of the world, right. There’s a Target literally a block and a half from my apartment, and I had some hand-friendly dish soap in the kitchen to use in the meantime.

What I think is interesting is what happened when I didn’t replace the soap. This was a busy week: I had a conference to go to, a farewell dinner for a coworker, and just stuff going on in general. So for a few days after using the bathroom, I would walk into the kitchen to wash my hands there instead.

And yet, every single time, I would try to use the sink in the bathroom first.

This happened pretty much without fail. Immediately after flushing, I would turn on the sink and reach for the soap dispenser. Sometimes I’d give it a couple of pumps before realizing it was empty and walking to the kitchen.

On several occasions, I would walk into the bathroom thinking “The soap dispenser is empty. Use the kitchen sink. You’re out of soap.” But somehow I would still wind up reaching for the faucet.

It’s a classic habit example. The action chain “close toilet, flush, turn on sink, add soap” is heavily ingrained in my mind. As it should be, because I use it multiple times a day.

But even when completing the chain is impossible (no soap), I would still try to do it. Flushing was the cue to trigger my next action: hand-washing.

Theoretically, this would change over time. Turning on the sink and discovering (for the thousandth time) that I was out of soap is punishing rather than rewarding, so the behavior should die down.

Eventually. But habits are often deeply ingrained. I’d completed my action chain hundreds or thousands of times, and it would take a similar number of failures for me to completely learn my lesson.

And yes, I did eventually go out to buy soap.

Example Two: Light Switches in a Power Outage

A little while back, my apartment lost power. It only lasted a couple of hours, but that was long enough to give an illuminating (get it?) example of habits.

Ever walk into a room during a power outage, flip the light switch, and immediately feel like an idiot?

Yeah, that happened to me a lot.

Similar to the soap example, flipping a light switch is an action cued by walking into a new room. Chances are you reach for the switches without even thinking about it.

In fact, the only reason I really noticed was because the lights didn’t turn on. Had the switch worked as expected, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

You almost certainly have habits similar to the light switch and the soap.

Another example: have you ever checked the time on your phone, put it away, then immediately checked it again? The first time was dictated by habit instead of conscious awareness.

Things like closing cabinet doors after opening them, locking your apartment on the way to work, or the spot you set down your coat are all habits.

They are small habits, for sure, but they illustrate the cue-action-reward process that applies to bigger habits like consistent exercise and nutrition.

Example Three: Being a Musician

I include this one last because it will not apply to everyone. But if you are a musician you are probably intimately familiar with the power of habits. My recent experience shows how.

When I was growing up, the electric piano in my family had three pre-recorded songs: Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, Faure’s Après un Rêve, and a piece that I loved but couldn’t identify (until recently).

I had learned two of the pieces in the intervening years, but was still missing that final, unknown composition. After a few hours of Googling model numbers and checking their preset pieces (I couldn’t remember the model we had), I finally found it: Lake Louise.

Here’s where the habits come in. When you already know how to play a piece of music, you don’t really think about it much while playing; your hands just kind of know where to go because of muscle memory.

Things get a little tricky when a piece has sections that are musically similar but not exactly identical. As you learn the second section, you sometimes make mistakes by playing notes from the first section.

This happened to me several times today, as I was learning the end of Lake Louise. I had to very consciously and intentionally direct my fingers to transition into the second section, but (because I’m still learning) I definitely slipped up on more than one occasion.

In a sense, each note of a piece is the cue for the next note of the piece. When two sections are similar but not identical, mistakes happen because the musician confuses the cue from one section with the cue from another.

This is a small moment, but the idea can extend to other situations: be careful for similar (but not identical cues).

Where else does this apply? If I do go to a bar, I am usually friends, and I act in a particular way when I’m with my friends.

If I go out for drinks with coworkers, it takes conscious effort not to lapse into a much more familiar, potentially not-work-appropriate tone. For me, the bar environment cues a certain kind of behavior.

These examples are everywhere: you might get nervous before a thesis presentation because you are used to being nervous before presentations in general (even though you know your thesis material inside and out).

You might get nervous at the gym because you have friends or family who are very focused on appearance (even though, at the gym, probably no one is judging you).

Remember that cues can trigger multiple actions. Sometimes you need to consciously step in and choose the right one.

A final example familiar to musicians illustrates how hard it is to change habits.

As most of us know, changing a bad habit is as hard or much harder than creating new habits in general. When you learn a piece of music, it is so, so, so much easier to learn something new than to correct a mistake you made learning something the first time.

If you learned a piece wrong and consistently hit the wrong notes in the same places, it will take hours of painstaking, note-by-note work to stamp out that mistake. You need to rework the connection between the cue (the notes before) and the action (the note you are targeting), and you need to do it manually.

And it won’t happen overnight either. Long after you thought you had corrected it, the mistake will sneak back into the piece and require more attention.

The lesson from this example: habits are everywhere, and they are hard to change.

Everyday Habits

The above examples are as simple as they are illustrative. They could happen to basically anyone, and they do; you could come up with a dozen similar examples from your own life if you tried hard enough.

The key takeaway is that habits dictate a lot of your behavior. It would be too cognitively intensive to manage all of your actions all the time, so your brain goes on autopilot.

Analyzing these autopilot examples helps show the cue-action relationship more clearly. It shows that, by using automatic habits, you can facilitate a healthy lifestyle without micromanaging every aspect of your life.

How can you actually form those habits? You can learn more about that in my piece The Psychology of Habits: How to Form Habits (and Make Them Stick).

This is part two of a conversation I had with John Fawkes. You can check out part one here.

The fitness industry as a whole focuses on brutal, grueling workouts, fleeting “inspiration,” and (somehow) quick and “easy” results.

That’s not the way I think. And I’m not the only one.

Today I want to bring you a conversation I had with fitness blogger John Fawkes.

John Fawkes helps busy people lose fat, get strong, and build better habits.  He writes about weightlifting, sleep, and goal-setting at JohnFawkes.com, when he’s not busy playing video games or enjoying a cheat day.  Download his habit change cheat sheet and learn five ways to change any habit.  

We sat down to chat about habit building and the biggest mistakes people make when they try to get fit. This is part two of our interview (you can check out part one here).

The Interview

Benyamin: There’s a story from Warren Buffett. He was coaching a young guy and asked him to write down a list of his top 20 priorities and then narrow it down to five. And he says, “Great, you have your top five priorities for the year. What about the other 15?”

And the young guy goes “oh well, every so often I’ll do a little bit with one of those.”

Buffett says no. “You have your priorities. Focus on those.”

John: I would even break that down more. The other 15, shelve those and think about them next year. But for the five, make two of those your focus. Maybe think about what you want to do with the other three, do a little planning. But finish two before moving on.

Even five is too much to be thinking about doing at once. You can probably only really work on two.

Benyamin: And I think that really ties into the idea of that gradual build up that we talked about earlier. If something is your fourth priority, you don’t need to go on four day fast and start a keto diet, but you can do a few push-ups. You can do a small action to build up before something becomes an immediate priority.

John: Speaking of push-ups, so many people are totally in denial that bodyweight training is even an option. I get so many emails where people say “I can’t make it to the gym, so I can’t work out.”

…

I’m shocked that I even have to explain this to people. Push-ups, squats, lunges, pull-ups, these exercises are totally useful. If you’re having trouble being consistent, I highly recommend getting a little bit of equipment to keep at home––some adjustable dumbbells, resistance bands, or maybe a jump rope.

Having that home equipment makes it a lot easier to find the time to do 20 minutes of exercise at home, instead of needing to spend that 20 minutes traveling to and from the gym.

Benyamin: Especially because a lot of bodyweight fitness is super fun! You can do so much skill work, and learn some stuff that looks and feels really impressive.

John: Absolutely. I’ve only recently gotten big on it, but you can do so much more than push-ups and squats. There’s a lot of cool stuff. Handstands, cartwheels, some of that stuff is just fun.

It becomes less about the effect it has on your physique and more about exploring your limits.

Even with that limited equipment, there’s a lot you can do to get a good workout. You know what a mechanical advantage drop set is?

Benyamin: Sure sure.

John: A mechanical advantage drop set is where you string together several exercises with the same weight and that all target the same muscle.

The trick is that you start with an exercise that you can use very little weight with, then move on to exercises that (because of the mechanics of the exercise) let you lift more weight.

For example, if you do lateral raises with 10 or 15 pounds, you can progress to dumbbell shoulder press with the same weight and have it be challenging because you’ve pre-exhausted the muscle. So that’s a great way to get a ton of mileage out of a pair of really light dumbbells.

You don’t necessarily need to invest in a whole home gym.

Benyamin: For sure. I find that I often recommend the gym over bodyweight fitness, just because the act of actually going to the gym makes it easier to establish the habit (it’s so easy to just lie around at home otherwise).

But for some specific people I’ll say “oh yeah, maybe this bodyweight fitness makes more sense for you specifically.” In which situations would you recommend one over the other?

John: It depends partly on people’s goals. If you want to get really strong, in terms of maximal strength, there’s only so much you can do with bodyweight training. It’s hard to get around the fact that you’ll eventually need some heavy barbells.

Even if strength isn’t your goal, if you find getting stronger and really seeing those numbers go up motivating, that’s a great reason to choose the gym because you’ll be more consistent. A lot of people get a psychological benefit from going to the gym.

It depends on the relative convenience of the two also.

Bodyweight training is best for people who are extremely busy and don’t have time to travel to the gym. It can also be a good option for people who are too intimidated to go to the gym, but at some point you will have to get over that. And it doesn’t get easier until you actually do it.

What I have almost everyone do is a mix of both. I give people a few gym workouts and one bodyweight workout. I’ll also tell them that they can use the bodyweight workout as a fill-in if they really need to miss a gym workout.

For most people that’s a good middle ground. Some people want to do all bodyweight, or they want to do mostly bodyweight, but do a few gym workouts to get around the equipment restrictions.

And then I also see some people who don’t want to do anything bodyweight or anything at home and really love actually going to the gym, and they find it easier to go to the gym six days a week than just four.

So it’s partly about people’s fitness goals, but it’s also about their lifestyle and what’s the most motivating for them.

Benyamin: Absolutely. I know for me personally, those home workout were so hard when I was just starting out. Because yeah, my home had those adjustable dumbbells, and mine even went up to 40 pounds.

But it also has my computer. It has my bed. It has the Internet. There are so many distractions. I was eventually able to start doing stuff at home, but it was only after I started going to the gym.

But I think that differs a lot from person to person.

John: I’m always looking for ways to give people short term results in performance. Because the body composition results, those changes are more long-term, and that makes them a bad source of motivation.

Even if that’s your high level goal, you need something day-to-day you can feel good about. So I try to use exercises where people can see progress. And then after a while we’ll switch up a couple of exercises to keep seeing that progress – not change everything up and just be programming hopping, but change up just enough to give a sense of variety and progression.

It’s so important to get those short-term wins that you can feel good about. And also impressing on people that you need to let yourself feel good about that.

It’s easy to get sucked into those body goals and ignore everything else, but when you see success with a program, celebrate it. Allow yourself to treat that as a win and you’ll be much more consistent.

Benyamin: I used to play a variety of sports, and I played on one team that had just the worst mentality about winning and losing. When we lost, it was like “UHHHG. We should have won that game! That was terrible.” But when we won, we said “Well that’s what we expected to happen anyway.”

And it’s kind of that same idea. You need to let yourself experience the wins, even if they aren’t always for your primary goals, in order to keep yourself going.

John: There are kind of these stages of development about what motivates you too. The first time you decide to start working out it’s all about your appearance, or maybe your health.

So usually when you’re starting off, you need to just do what you enjoy even if it isn’t the “right” workout. Go to the gym and try out the machines that seem fun, or play a sport and don’t go to the gym, or bring a magazine to the gym and read it between sets.

Early on, when you’re struggling with motivation, have fun.

Once you’ve build the habit, you can start focusing more on the right workout. You can focus more on things like strength and body composition.

Then eventually you reach diminishing returns and need to switch your motivation again. Work on trying new things and expanding the repertoire of what you can do.

Benyamin: That stages of motivation idea is really great. In the interest of not losing that in the rest of this discussion, let’s end on one last question.

What’s the most important thing you want people to take away from this conversation?

John: Oh man that’s tough. Let me think.

In the end, it’s not that much about the program you are or doing the right workout. It’s about your ability and commitment to follow it consistently. That means you should prioritize doing what you can do consistently.

If that means doing something that’s a little less effective but more convenient? Do it. If that means modifying a workout to make it more fun? Do it.

Do whatever it takes to make it something you’ll still to and find enjoyment in.

Once your consistency is completely automatic, then you can escalate your commitment. But enjoy it at first.

Benyamin: Thanks much to John for sitting down for this talk. Remember, you can check out the first interview here.

Make sure you check out John’s site: https://johnfawkes.com/

For more information related to what we talked about here, check out these posts:

• Why Does Everyone Hate Exercise and Love Fitness?
• The Complete Psychology of Habits
• What it Feels Like to Be Fit

 

When I first moved to Chicago, I was terrified of buses.

I was living in a midsize house in Logan Square with 13 roommates (not an exaggeration). I was unemployed, had never been to Chicago before, knew nothing about the city, and could barely find my house on map.

Google Maps saved me from being completely clueless, but even when it told me which bus to take there were problems. Sure, I could take the 73 along Armitage, but was I supposed to take it east or west? Which direction even is east or west?

The first time I walked up to the intersection I was frantic. There were four bus stops with three different bus numbers. I waited for a few minutes and only saw one bus come through, and in my panic the thought that went through my head was this:

“Maybe I should just take this one.”

…

What?

I was trying to get to specific place to meet a specific person about a job I desperately needed. I even needed to catch a connecting bus down the line.

How on earth did it make sense to get on the first bus I saw, just because it was there?

Of course, it didn’t. And if I had been just slightly more composed, none of this would have been a problem. I had all the information I needed. I just wasn’t using it.

The bus stops in Chicago are labeled. They tell you the bus number, the direction of travel, the final destination, and the run times. They even have a number you can text to find out how long you need to wait.

Google Maps may not literally say “take the bus east,” but if I had paused for two seconds I would have realized that my college-educated ass knows how to read a map.

Fortunately, I was able to hold out, get on the right bus, and catch my connection. That job didn’t work out, but the advice I got was excellent and I found a different one before too long. I also overcame my fear of buses, and ride one daily for my commute.

But having no idea what to do almost led me to a terrible decision. When you are scared and uncertain, it’s easy to jump at the first course of action––whether it will actually solve your problem or not.

Most decisions don’t have the immediacy of a bus stop. It’s a terrible feeling when you watch your bus pull out just as you’re walking up to the intersection. And it’s hard to be graceful while desperately sprinting to beat the bus to the next stop.

And yet, so many decisions play out like that intersection.

Riding the Bus to Fitness

(How’s that for a cheesy subheading)

When I work with people trying to get fit, there are usually two competing urges.

The first urge is “nope nope nope I don’t know what this gym thing is and I don’t want anything to do with it. Keep it away from me!”

People with this urge don’t really know what to do at the gym. The idea of standing on the gym floor surrounded by equipment. and not knowing how to use any of it, is kind of terrifying.

So people with this urge do a couple things.

Some of these people will start to research. They’ll look up all the popular beginner programs, detailed analyses of whether Stronglifts is better than Ice Cream Fitness, and maybe even dive into some research to figure out whether 3×8 is better than 4×6 for building muscles.

And, of course, they never work out.

Other people with this urge skip the research and go straight to the not working out.

In either situation, the cause is the same. Uncertainty and fear of the gym lead to inaction. I covered this urge in my article I Have 11 Favorite Exercises, But I Won’t Tell You What They Are, but I’ll save you a click: the message is that the specifics of your workout are not that important. You need to pick something and do it consistently.

But there’s a layer of nuance to add to that message. Because if I had picked that first bus, I would have wound up on the south side of Chicago instead of my meeting. The second urge is jumping on the first program that comes into view.

People with the second urge have a different problem. Because although the most important part of fitness is consistency, the exercises you do actually matter at least a little bit.

The second urge is how people wind up hurting themselves with too much weight or working out for a year with zero progress. Before you start working out, you need to know which bus to get on.

And, like with my bus experience, the buses are not that complicated. The information you need is available, and you don’t need to research the activation of different muscle groups or the difference between 3×8 and 4×6.

You just need a simple place to start, based on the fundamentals of a good workout.

I’ve written about what makes a good workout before, and even put together a simple one for your first day at the gym. In summary, do three sets of eight reps (or 3×5, or 4×6, or 1×8, I don’t care) for each type of movement, then move on to the next one:

• Squat – Lunges, Back Squat, Goblet Squat
• Hinge – Deadlift, Romanian Deadlift, Glute Bridge
• Push – Bench Press, Push-up
• Pull – Pull-up, Seated Row, Dumbbell Row
• Core – Plank, Side Plank, Ab Rollouts

That’s it. Simple. Timeless. Effective. At the highest level of athletic development, working out gets complicated. But the fundamentals of a good workout don’t change.

Of course, your goals may not be related to lifting; you may want to run, or play a sport, or just improve your diet to lose a couple of pounds.

In every case, you already have the information you need to choose your bus (or you can get it quickly). Figure out which way is east and go for a ride.