#if-then

My pastor put things into perspective again today. Often times we ask ourselves why things aren’t going our way. Where are the blessings that God has promised us? Here’s the thing, yes God promised us blessings, but those promises came as part of if/then statements. Cause and effect. You can find it throughout the Bible. God says “if you do this, then I’ll do this.” 

04.13.16 | Living The SpiritLife | If? Then.

(Leviticus 26:3-5 ESV) 3 “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, 4 then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. 5 Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and…

Blaise’s first impression of London is cold sleet, glowering grey skies and masses of people dressed so heavily in dark, bled-out clothes that their faces become a rain-blurred parade of ghosts. The apparition point is in a building partly destroyed in the recent skirmishes, and cold drops sting his face the moment they’re through, the shock stealing his breath while he still struggles to feel solid ground after the transition. The air tastes like ash. Despite the recent tidings, it hardly feels like a place of victory.

Colossians 1:21-23 and the quality of our expectation of the good news of Christ

Colossians 1:21-23 is another passage (along with 1 John 1:9) that I heard quoted as supporting the idea that as we do or don’t do something, it causes God to do or not do something in response. The “if-then” construction is what throws people off. To be sure, it’s hard to translate properly into English.

However, the “if I am doing something – then God will be doing something in response”…

I had to get up early for an appointment today. The person didn’t come on time, so I sat around waiting for him - he was about, oh 2 or 2.5 hours late.

It completely threw me off my my game. I was on the computer, on Reddit, plunking around, waiting, so my initial START of my habit chain didn’t happen. And after I met the guy...I just didn’t do anything until the end of the day.

I’ve talked about what I’ve loosely termed Habit Elasticity in a relatively recent post (”Day 617 & NaNoWriMo”) and an older post (”Day 169, On the Cusp of Habit #3 and Habit ‘Elasticity’”)

I defined it in the latter post as the “snapping back in place” ability for established routines

I’m hoping that there is an elasticity to habits - that once a habit has “set” it is easier to get back into the rhythm. Which is great for 750 words. But I don’t know if my exercise habit has fully set. If it hasn’t, I’ll rely on the SRHI to know when to move on to flossing...But once the stressful period is over, my habits snap back.

I referred to this elasticity in the context of turbulent swaths of time, but it could just as easily apply to instances where the implementation routine doesn’t go well in the frame of a day.

Why did automaticity fail to execute today? The “if” of my if-then protocols didn’t occur, namely “when I wake up, I get on the rower” - instead I did other stuff. Because the first part didn’t discharge, the rest of my behaviors didn’t go off either.

In a daily manner my habits as they are constructed are quite brittle - any deviation and they shatter. But it’s interesting that this does not occur with my golden standard of habit formation - brushing my teeth. 

I’m good at toothbrushing - If things don’t go according to plan I just pick it up after the interruption no problem.

I think there are some reasons for this. Either:

1) Brushing my teeth isn’t a chronological implementation intention - it’s tied to the feeling of dirtiness/cleanness of my teeth. Therefore I’m being reminded of the need to brush my teeth constantly, during the interruption and afterwards. Chronological implementation intentions don’t have this benefit. (One a side note, it may be informative to come up with a catalog of different types of implementation intentions.)

2) Brushing is far more of a habit and is much more highly tied to my sense of self during a day. I’ve talked to athletes who have this - there’s just a nagging sense of something missing if they don’t work out. It’s more than just “having to do it”  - the activity is part of their daily identity and is lacking when the activity isn’t discharged.

3) A combination of these two things.

Clearly it’s something I need to evaluate in my habits.

Lydia and I had a bit of a clash yesterday, at least from a habit/regimentation perspective.

She wanted me to take care of something, but it was, unfortunately, right when I do my writing. Since it’s a time based habit now that I’m pushing it, any interruption becomes problematic. I don’t do as well as I could, and if it messes up it also has a tendency to unbalance any other habits that are linked to it in the bookend.

Delays in the if-then protocol of the link then also prevent the next habit from forming efficiently. For example, if I have to take care of something after my writing habit, then my meditation habit suffers if I’ve implemented it as taking place “right after my writing is done.”

This started to get me angry and frustrated, but I got over it and realized that this problem has been bubbling up for a long time. Often times Lydia wants to eat before I do because she gets up earlier. Being out of sync pushes me subtly to hurry up my habits even when she’s not pressuring me.

She’s pretty good about not pressuring me, and we have tried to eat separately, but I feel the push nonetheless. A subtle push like this prevents me from doing quality work when I’m in my habit, which won’t at all help when I’m transitioning more and more to the quality of the work rather than it’s regularity. 

So how can I tackle the problem? Here are a few ideas:

1) Wake up earlier. I describe the benefits of this in my post “Early to Rise - The Habit of Getting Up Early” but an added benefit is that helps sync you with your significant other or roommate. It affords you greater control because you can shove more uninterrupted, un-rushed time to work. I’m reminded of one of my favorite children’s authors, Lloyd Alexander, who developed a habit of getting up at 3 am to write.

2) Have multiple chains. Rather than having an unending series of constantly expanding chains starting from wakeup, make space in those chains. For example, right now my chain is like this:    wake up ->rowing->drink a glass of water->writing->shower->meditate->record->eat

There are options here. I could do random stuff after rowing because writing is tied to drinking that glass of water. I could do the same thing before my shower because meditation is tied to the shower. There is flexibility here.

I could also start making a chain right before going to bed.

3) Complete autonomy. Address the issue and come to a mature understanding that I’m out of the picture until after I record. It’s very easy to NOT do this because it’s not like I don’t have absolute flexibility. But that way of thinking leads to an erosion of habits.

4) Focus even more on the implementation if-then link. The link - the joining of trigger and action - is the most important aspect of habit creation. So if I have to take care of something halfway into my meditation, that’s ok. As long as I continue and record right after finishing in order to protect that “joint”. 

It is, however, wrecking havoc on my eating habit because usually that’s the thing that becomes unchained, preventing me from anchoring it at any one trigger.

Day 665 Record Keeping (81) Day 634 Fixed Meditation Day 511 Writing (81) Day 51 Rowing (79) Day 1 Eating (19) Good sleep, good wakeup. 

New Eating Habit My eating habit has been on it’s last legs for a long time so I decided to destroy it. I talked about a reimplementation recently and did a test run last week.

What I found was that it solved issues regarding decision fatigue. And I’m focusing on my SRHI index referring to specifically my first shelf - “automatically eating a clean meal right after recording” - as evidenced in my score it’s no where near any sort of automaticity. I’m recording this habit for the previous days actions, as this fits neatly in my daily schedule of tasks.

But what I’m realizing is that automaticity really depends on a crisp, clear, if-then and a Tiny Habit. It worked (is working) for rowing and it’s definitely working for my writing habit - which should be more correctly described as a Writing/Work habit.

In it I’m pushing specific tasks I find incredibly difficult, but I’m being very attentive to when I do the task (after I drink a glass of water after my rowing) and the tinyness of the habit (30 minutes). I’ve been shocking myself at how much I’ve been getting done over the course of a week with very little anxiety - this is usually the amount I get done after screaming at the computer and tiring myself over the course of full days.