The Critical Role of Habits

Dear Friends!

Welcome to #5 of my newsletter. If you missed the last four you can find them here.

Another week has gone by. Probably, like for most of you, time feels both very fast and very slow. On the one hand I can't wait until all of this is over. Every day feels like groundhog day. A bit like being on a treadmill and it is getting old, tiring, and emotionally empty. On the other hand, there are some surprising and welcomed "side-effects". I have rediscovered and recommitted to some new daily routines that are helpful and healthful. But perhaps most importantly I have gotten a new sense of appreciation for how grateful and lucky I am in so many ways.

Habits

This week I am going to focus on what I have come to believe is one of the most important aspects of a life well lived. Habits. Our daily routines. Life is a long journey but it is made up of many small steps. Aristotle said it best:

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

I was very fortunate to grow up in a home with hard-working, caring and committed parents who taught me the value of putting your best effort into everything you do. I later met Jessica, and together we have formed an incredible partnership, very much dedicated to a belief that the path to happiness is to focus only on what you can control. Jessica acquired her commitment and love for habits as an elite golfer where you only succeed by focusing on your process and your intention. Not the outcomes. Subsequently, she became a dentist and dentistry is a very interesting part of our health care system in so far as it is one of the few disciplines of health care where prevention has succeeded. Most people brush their teeth. Many flosses. Many even go to annual cleanings and checkups. All in the interest of "avoiding" future health problems. But in other areas of our bodies, we are not as successful.

The best example is of course nutrition and how little our health care system focuses on the most important prevention of all. What we fuel our cells with. Or as Hippocrates supposedly said: "Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food."

Jessica is now dedicating more and more of her time to helping others, as a life coach, examining, redesigning, and committing to better life habits. I am of course extremely lucky that I still qualify as one of her priority habits!

One of the biggest tendencies we all have is to lose our locus of control. We place so much hope and faith in people far away, in people we don't know. It is a sure path to unhappiness. We feel helpless and ultimately hopeless. The best way to change that is to focus as much of our energy on what we can control. Make our beds in the morning. Clean our rooms. Eat better. Sleep smarter. Exercise more. Take more deep breaths. Express love and gratitude to more people. Be kind to every human we meet. Gradually happiness will return and our sense of control will increase and expand. It's a beautiful happiness loop.

2 posts below are highly relevant to this. The first is a great article in the New York Times by Mark Lilla, about how impossible it is to predict the future and why we somehow can't help trying.

"It is bad enough living with a president who refuses to recognize reality. We worsen the situation by focusing our attention on litigating the past and demanding certainty about the future. We must accept what we are, in any case, condemned to do in life: tap and step, tap and step, tap and step …."

The second, is a great podcast with Sam Harris talking to James Clear (Jessica found him years ago on her many habit explorations). His book Atomic Habits is a gem. And Sam does a great job dissecting all things related to habit formation and why they matter so much.

James' view is that there are three primary drivers of results in your life.

1) Your luck (randomness).
2) Your strategy (choices).
3) Your actions (habits).

We clearly have the most influence over our habits, then our choices and least our luck. Therefore it makes sense to focus more energy and intention on our actions. My 3 big takeaways from his interview with Sam were:

Goals vs Systems

We tend to focus too much on goals. On the outputs. Not enough on the inputs. Part of this is because we have become so impatient and we want instant results. But it is the "systems" that produce the results. The problem with systems is that you don't see them and therefore we don't think of them as much. Out of sight, out of mind you know. When you draw a tree you only draw the tree above ground. Perhaps with beautiful flowers or fruit. But it is the roots that set the conditions for everything above ground. The roots are the system of the tree. So, let's focus on the inputs (systems, methods, processes) not the outputs. James said this well in the interview:

"You don’t rise to the level of your goals but fall to the level of your system."

Compounding Effects

I believe it was Albert Einstein who once said that compounding interest is the 8th wonder. Warren Buffett believes it is the most powerful force behind value creation. If you just keep improving anything, every day, ever so little, the long term effects are remarkable. The challenge is that you won't notice each increment. Or hardly. Which often leads us astray. But we need to commit and deepen our resolve to the daily habits that ultimately shape our destiny. Tiny improvements on things you repeatedly do make a big impact.

Leading vs Lagging indicators

This will for sure be a returning theme of my newsletters. Perhaps one of my most deeply held convictions. Measurements are key. We can only manage what we measure. Unfortunately, we are too focused on lagging indicators over leading indicators. In other words, measuring what has already happened. And it is not as useful since it doesn't say much about what is GOING to happen. James again states this well when he says that

"Outcomes are lagging measures of your habits."

My take on that is that habits are leading indicators of outcomes!

Let's look more into a mirror than into a future. Our habits will shape the future we want!

Stay Safe!

WEEK IN REVIEW

Mark Lilla wrote a relevant piece on our human desire for trying to predict an unknown future and how really unhelpful it is to our health and well being. Read it here.

Great podcast with Sam Harris and James Clear on habits. Enjoy. Click on the picture of James to get to the Making Sense Podcast with Sam Harris and James.

As promised last week, here is the second part of Reid Hoffman's talk with Angela Ahrendts. If you haven't listened to the first episode you can do so here. Second part is here.

Here is how I introduced Angela last week....can't say it better this week! 

Angela is a truly elevated leader who brings a mission and meaning to her brands whether at Burberry or Apple. I have had the great privilege to experience, feel, and witness these qualities in person, and in her case these qualities are not just aspirations or declarations. They are rooted deeply in her soul and therefore comes from a place of authentic self which is why it is so inspiring.

Ending with some humor. It is so important to practice and often work on your humor muscle. Laughing helps us relax and put things in perspective. It's often so helpful. Here are some Stephen Colbert takes on how we can reimagine our future handshakes.