Staying productive under uncertainty: the importance of rewriting your habits
Humans are driven by habits. Those habits are driven by triggers. This setup is a genius invention to save brainpower - and it’s a nightmare when your triggers are removed or reshuffled unexpectedly.
No trigger, no habit (so not really your fault)
The things you do regularly and automatically are usually triggered by a social cue, a localization, or by a specific previous event. That’s why it’s so easy to forget working out while traveling and why you tend to forget to take a lunch break when working on your personal projects at home. It’s also the reason why you get up to walk 250 steps when your Fitbit beeps at you for not moving enough.
Mandatory lock-down and voluntary shelter-at-home rules have had a huge effect on these triggers. Even for those who’ve been working remotely since before the move to work-from-home lost a lot of their usual time and routine indicators. More often than not, those hadn’t even been set up consciously. They just developed over time. And now they are gone.
The neighbour’s alarm clock used to mean that now is your last opportunity to get up without being late to work.
The commotion on the restaurant terrace downstairs was your cue to start thinking about lunch.
The kids coming back from school meant it was time to update Todoist for the next day.
Suddenly, a myriad of triggers just disappeared, putting everybody’s routines into drama mode.
You aren’t a slob - you’ve been making to many decisions
The brain invented habits so it could save energy. No need to decide when exactly to brush your teeth nor when to have lunch. All those mundane decisions had been automated a long time ago. Now you spend 15 min staring at the fridge trying to decide whether it’s a yogurt kind of day or a scrambled eggs kind of day. Then you need to figure out whether you’ll do Music class or English class with the kids. And the day has just started.
No wonder that by night time you can’t even decide which show to watch on Netflix.
By that time you literally used up all your decision nodes of the day. Any additional expectations become a drudge, sprinkled with a vague sense of failure. You used to get so many things done! But that was before you had to reinvent your life from scratch without previous warning.
Pretend that THIS is the new normal - because it might be
When lock-down started in Spain, most of us expected this to be a one-month-interlude. The logical step was to put life on hold for a month, to be resumed once this is over. Fast forward about 10 weeks, and it’s still not over. In many countries schools haven’t reopened yet, or they are working with reduced schedules. Social distancing in public spaces and restrictions on mobility are still the norm, and won’t go away anytime soon.
The truth is, you don’t know whether your old routines will ever be back. And for your own sanity, it’s time to create new routines that serve your current situation. Pretend that this is what you’ll be living with for the foreseeable future. And start reducing the complexity of your day-to-day so you can start saving brain power for more important decisions.
Small changes that make life less scary
Your brain is surprisingly malleable, and you can enact a surprising amount of change through the creation of tiny habits. Above all, it loves predictability and repetition. Both breed familiarity, and familiarity is the absence of danger, which means survival (for your brain). So here are a couple of things I’ve done to put my brain at ease:
Work happens at my standing desk. Non-work related writing happens at the dining table or on the sofa. Context switching helps to remember what I am supposed to do.
Two clear schedules for the week with kids and the week without kids. One accounts for homeschooling lessons, the other focuses on social connections outside of work.
Batch cooking and a list of favourite recipes conveniently taped to the fridge.
Scheduled calls with friends and family - using a calendar app to limit back and forth.
Workout schedule within my calendar.
My calendar, and an array of alarms (using different alarm tones) are currently my biggest source of calm. Using alarm tones means I can shift my workout time in accordance with the schedules I am allowed to leave the house - without having to work on an entirely new trigger. Scheduling my lunch break means I actually have lunch, even if I won’t meet anyone for a coffee afterward.
Look at the decisions you are taking every day. Which of these can you automate or decide once for all? Where can you save mental energy in favour of more important decisions?