Watch
Listen
“Please Note: I will not engage in work emails after 7pm or on weekends.”
Shonda Rhimes
I’m in the middle of a big habit push.
Each day I reach out to 13 people. It might be my best friend, a family member, someone I heard on a podcast, someone whose tweet I reply to or someone I’m asking on a date.
I do 8 courage challenges, up from 5 in August. A courage challenge is a hard thing I pick when nothing is making me do it.
Running went from 13 minutes to 34.
An anti-habit is a rule about what I won’t do.
As my habits got bigger, I tightened my anti-habits:
Fasting runs until 2pm. It used to end at noon.
Eating stops at 8pm instead of 10pm, so dinner is digested before bed. Sleep comes faster and goes deeper.
Messaging and social apps stay closed until 2pm. They used to open at noon.
Chess stops at 8pm, with 5 games as my daily max.
Haruki Murakami ran a jazz bar in Tokyo and smoked 60 cigarettes a day before he wrote novels full time. When he made the switch, he and his wife started going to bed soon after dark. He quit smoking.
In writing mode he wakes at 4am, writes for 5 to 6 hours, runs 10 kilometers in the afternoon and goes to bed at 9pm.
Going to bed at 9pm buys him the 4am start.
A Formula 1 car can go from 300 km/h to a full stop in under 4 seconds. Brakes that strong let a driver stay at full speed longer before each corner.
The more aggressive your habits are, the more aggressive your anti-habits need to be. They’re the boundaries that protect the time, energy and attention the aggressive habits run on.
What anti-habit can you set before you push a habit harder?
