The author of this article worked with a number of time and habit trackers in his professional life. Of course, they were mostly used for invoicing purposes; my income was tightly coupled with time tracking because of an hourly rate applied to each minute and second worked.
But what if we translate time tracking experience to our personal life? Will it make us more productive and better at building good habits?
It might be surprising, but life is simple when your client or a company you're working for utilizes time tracking to pay your invoices. Normally your amount of efforts ranges from very low to very high across the task/project but hours are being logged nevertheless. This is because you are paid for the actual time spent on a solution, not the level of effort; it is very difficult to measure the effort you’ve put into it. I should have mentioned beforehand that we're talking about (mostly) 1. remote and 2. creative work at a computer screen.
The same could be applied to personal activities. One day could be worse or better than another. However I would introduce a subtle difference here: some activities are inherently measurable, while others are not. Consider comparing running and UI building process. You can easily count number of miles run but how to determine the UI progress? Obviously not by number of buttons placed into the app this time.
That's where time tracking comes in place. Many people strive to get more order into their own lives. Some of them (say hi indiehackers) even believe this is a must to make a wealth. But time tracking is not the only remedy to everyday chaos. There are many other findings that are better understood even before trying out the tracking game.
Are there any scientific approaches to habit building?
Surprisingly, there is a strong scientific evidence on this topic. Partially, researchers widely discuss habits in health care area. Find the key (and surprising!) takeaways below.
What is the habit definition?
Thinking of a habit as a process, here is the definition I like most:
[The] repetition that creates a mental association between the context (cue) and the action (behaviour) which means that when the cue is encountered the behaviour is performed automatically.
For example, imagine that, each time drink a cup of tea, you eat a biscuit. When you first eat a biscuit with your cup of tea, a mental link is formed between the context (drinking a cup of tea) and your response to that context (eating a biscuit).
Each time you subsequently have a biscuit in response to having a cup of tea, this link strengthens, to the point that having a cup of tea makes you reach for a biscuit automatically, without giving it much prior thought; a habit has formed.
How long does it take to form a habit?
The commonly used "3 weeks is enough" claim is just a bait!
It takes up to 10 weeks to form a new habit
A common myth is that habits take 21 days to form. This appears to have originated from anecdotal evidence about the adjustment period for plastic surgery but does not relate to habits as we know them.
More relevant research has shown that it takes 66 days (up to 10 weeks) on average to form a new habit after the first time the new action is performed, but this can vary from person to person and for different actions.
For example one study found that one person took just 18 days to form a habit, whereas others took much longer. Similarly, forming habits for simple behaviours (such as drinking a glass of water) was a lot quicker than for more complex behaviours (e.g. doing 50 sit-ups). There are also differences in how strong habits become for different actions.
Dos and don'ts to build a habit
Keep it achievable in the initial phase
Your long-term goals might extend far beyond the horizon, but keep your initial actions achievable. Moreover, keep them easy. Making 30 push ups a day during a month feels much easier than 1 hour workouts in the same time period.
Initiation requires the patient to be sufficiently motivated to begin a habit-formation attempt, but many patients would like to eat healthier diets or take more exercise, for example, if doing so were easy.
A sedentary person, for example, would be more appropriately advised to walk one or two stops more before getting on the bus than to walk the entire route — at least for their first habit goal.
Choose your own path and leave space for indulgence
People often tend to overestimate their own and others’ abilities during the habit formation phase, which leads to many failures!
Patients should choose the target behaviour themselves. Progress towards a self-determined behavioural goal supports patients’ sense of autonomy and sustains interest,17 and there is evidence that a behaviour change selected on the basis of its personal value, rather than to satisfy external demands such as physicians’ recommendations, is an easier habit target.
It is not possible to form a habit for not doing something
Keeping it short, one cannot give up alcohol just refusing to drink. A bad old habit should be substituted by a new (hopefully good) one.
Should I remind about consistency?
Activity time and setting may vary for simple cases, e.g. it is not that important where to eat your cereal at breakfast if you're still doing it, but they are crucial for more effortful scenarios. The context will become a trigger later, so that appearing in the same time in the same circumstances and not practicing the same activity will make you feel uncomfortable. Although, one or two skipped repetitions are not crucial for habit building, but not more.
Summary
As a time tracker founder I never thought I would say this, but time tracking is not a remedy for inconsistency. You need to build a stronger basis first. The key components are:
- Start with simple goals
- Use the same time and setting if a habit requires significant effort
- Leave yourself space for failures (but not too much)
- Stay consistent regardless of odds