Break the Twitch
Love Your Attention, Build Better Habits
When you think about the holidays, what feelings come along with it?
I might venture to say that much of the original purpose of the winter holiday season has been lost amongst the retail-mania of Black Friday deals and finding the perfect gift for everyone on your list. While gifts can be a great way to show people you care about them, don’t let actually spending time together get lost in the chaos.
[Read more…] about Ideas For A More Intentional Holiday Season
It might be a long weekend or a holiday vacation that takes us out of our usual element. In the new place, we don’t have the same habit triggers and setup that we had at home. The normal schedule is disrupted and eventually a long-standing habit is broken. Perhaps you’re building a habit of writing every day, and a particular election that occurs—one that you should probably comment on— but simply can’t quite get the right words together to do so. So you wait. Then it doesn’t quite feel right to write anything else, so you wait some more. Then a month goes by. When these situations inevitably happen, how do we get habits back on track?
Over the last few weeks, I’ve half-written a bunch of blog posts that you could be reading right now, but none of them felt quite right. At this point, so much has happened that I’m honestly not quite sure what one thing I could write about that would feel like I was making up for lost time. And the longer I let it go, the louder that sound echoed in my brain.
If you’ve felt this way too, understand that it’s completely human. We are not robots. Even though we can build up the discipline muscle over time, getting it stronger, every now and then we pull a muscle and need to take some time to recover. So now that you’re ready to get started, here’s how you can get back on track, too.
[Read more…] about How To Get Habits Back On Track After Time Off
There has been quite a bit of discussion around minimalism, what it is, and what it is not. These discussions have inspired me to think more about my beliefs and reflect on what being a minimalist actually means to me.
There is no doubt that learning and implementing the principles of minimalism have changed my life for the better. Before 2014, I knew that the patterns I was beginning to identify weren’t working, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. Buying stuff made me happy, for a while. Heck. Buying stuff still makes me happy, but minimalism has helped change the kind of physical things I choose to spend money on.
From the beginning, Amy and I have subscribed to the idea of rational minimalism provided by Joshua Becker who writes the popular blog becoming minimalist.
Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it. —Joshua Becker
It is a relatively simple and straightforward approach to living a better life with less stuff, which is why we love it.
Despite that over the last two years Break the Twitch has grown to include building habits and creating opportunities, minimizing distractions is one of the three pillars that make up my own definition of intentional living. Without minimizing distractions and removing mental and physical clutter from our lives, it’s incredibly difficult to set up the other two pillars.
In other words, minimalism clears the ground, habits build the house, and the foundation built creates opportunities.
While some people choose to embrace a minimalist lifestyle that requires 100 items or less, I have established some basic beliefs that help focus my life in a meaningful way.
For the last several decades, we’ve been exposed to messages encouraging us to identify ourselves with brands and physical possessions. We’ve learned to make assumptions about a person based on the car they drive, the clothing they wear, and the things they own. Separating my sense of self-worth from the things that I own allows me to explore who I am without them. Instead of relying on a fancy watch to show off my perceived social status, I get to focus on finding ways to contribute, help others, and spread kindness. Now, it seems absurd to determine how “successful” a person is based on such trivial information. Through minimalism, we learn that these things mean very little about a person’s character, who they are, and their contributions to the world.
Focus on contribution instead of the impressiveness of consumption to see the true beauty in people.
While it’s true that the less stuff we own, the less stuff owns us, there does come a point where the opposite is true. Through minimalism, we free ourselves from the things that no longer serve us and it should stop there. Stressing out about a house full of clutter or stressing about only owning 100 items or less, is still stress. Minimalism means letting go of stress related to possessions in both directions. This creates the freedom to focus people, relationships, contribution, and self-care.
Declutter as much as you think is necessary, then live your life. Feel free to adjust as you see fit.
After two years of minimalism and decluttering, I know what things bring me joy more than ever before. When you carefully assess the things you own and make decisions to keep or discard the items, patterns emerge. I’ve come to understand minimalism is a tool that allows me to create things I love that bring me the most joy. In fact, 99% of the physical possessions I’ve purchased in the last two years are directly related to filmmaking and producing videos for the Break the Twitch YouTube channel. My desire to create increasingly better visual content has led me to realize just how happy it makes me.
Through the slow and steady process of decluttering, seek patterns that help you understand what truly brings you joy.
It’s easy to believe there is a point when we become “official minimalists™” and suddenly have freedom, time, and energy for all the wonderful things life has to offer. This is undeniably false. I have significant evidence that minimalism is not a finish line you reach, but a framework with which you view the world. It’s a way to actively edit life in a way that allows us to give our best and live our best. Minimalism is truly a journey that lasts a lifetime as our needs and desires will change throughout.
Don’t expect to reach a point where everything clicks. There’s no finish line, just a framework.
When schedules are overbooked and our homes are cluttered, the slightest unexpected disruption can cause a negative chain reaction. Imagine a $20 parking ticket that goes unpaid, racks up fines, and eventually causes your vehicle to be impounded. Having the time and financial capacity to pay the $20 fine prevents the chain reaction from happening. While minimalism will not solve all of life’s problems, it will create the space to better deal with them. Imagine an unexpected visit from a friend and not stressing out about how untidy the house is. Minimalism helps create this space to enjoy more of the good surprises and to deal with any unpleasant ones.
Minimalism won’t make all of our problems go away, but it sure does make them easier to deal with.
Whether you agree with these points or disagree, I encourage you to explore what minimalism means to you. I believe intentionally promoting the things we most value while removing the things that distract us is worthwhile for everyone.
If you’re interested in reading more, check out these these simple minimalism guidelines or this intentional decluttering guide.
In this popular video on simple habits, I discuss how to shift from talking about doing, to actually doing.
By breaking down the things you want to accomplish into the smallest units possible, it reduces the hurdle to actually taking action. In addition to that, it has become clear that it is not what you do on any particular day that matters. It is the small things you repeatedly do that become the big things you spend your life doing. My favorite quote says this well:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. – Annie Dillard
If we try to run a marathon before we’re able to run a mile, it is unlikely we’ll run again the next day due to soreness and exhaustion. We may even be frustrated at our inability to run a marathon and, discouraged, give up completely. It’s the difference between jogging for 10 hours straight then not jogging for 19 days, and jogging for 30 minutes every day for 20 days in a row. While the same hours are spent, I’m sure you can imagine which scenario would be more beneficial.
Over the last eight weeks, I’ve been experimenting with this philosophy and truly putting the push-up theory in the video to the test.
About two months ago, I started by doing ten push-ups twice per day. That’s about all that I could do comfortably without being too sore to complete them again the next day. Since then, I’ve done the two sets six days per week, taking a rest day on Sunday, then increasing by two repetitions each Monday. Now, about two months later, I’m doing two sets of 24 push-ups and will be moving up to 26 on Monday. This method of slowly ratcheting up and building a habit really does work.
I now look forward to it each day and enjoy the challenge and progress. If you told me that would be the case when I started, I wouldn’t have believed you for a hot second. What’s really cool is that I’ve never tried to do more than 25 push-ups in a row before, so in a few days, I’ll be setting a new personal record.
Instead of starting with 50, start with one. Do one every day for a week, take Sunday off, then start with two every day the next week. It is as simple as it is effective. Once you reach your desired level, choose a new item to begin building and stack with the one you’ve established.
Whether you choose something from the list or use the list as inspiration, start on one small action today. There will be plenty of time to build additional habits as you go. Just remember to start small and build up from there, while letting go of the day-to-day results. When the action reflects the intention, the results will come over time.
Over the last few years, my views about life, work, and fulfillment have been steadily changing. There will likely be no end to that evolution, but one major shift has happened that I’ve only recently been able to express. It is said that life is a marathon, not a sprint but when looking from a holistic perspective I’ve come to believe that neither are true.
After writing my last post (about the False First Step) and finally publishing the idea that I held onto for so long, it felt amazing to put it out into the world. I had finally hit my goal of sharing the idea and even better, it seemed to really resonate with people.
Despite receiving a fair amount of attention (and some criticism), Break the Twitch isn’t any different, other than the fact that there are a few hundred more of you getting this blog post delivered to your email now.
It’s not that I expected anything to change, but for a long time I’ve viewed goals and aspirations in a completely backward way. Maybe it wasn’t a conscious thought, but somewhere lodged in my brain was this idealized concept of success. This magical place where we finally “succeed” in life, everything gets really easy and everything is great. We work hard, sprint towards a goal then, phew. We made it!
I used to want to win the lottery, I mean, how great would it be to never have to work again. While a boatload of cash might solve some financial issues, it won’t actually solve much else unless we really know what to do with it. It’s almost impossible to know what to do with $100 million until we know what to do with $100.
We still have to continue working towards something or else what was the point? All the money in the world won’t do push-ups for us or steam vegetables and feed them to us (well, maybe that last one, eventually). But let’s pretend there is, in fact, that point when we’ve made it, what then?
I remember the last time I had a goal that I wanted to hit by losing weight. It was about four years ago. After six months of working out every day and eating perfectly clean meals, I hit it. Satisfied with my progress, all of the habits that got me to that goal slowly went away. I had achieved my goal. I had succeeded, completed the challenge and then returned right back to the weight I was when I started.
So if there is no finish line, no goal weight, it seems to me that success, or perhaps the life we want to live, is simply a line. And our current lives another line.
It is only doing the things that matter to us each day that begin to blur those two lines together, eventually creating a single existence. Assuming we want to stay there or continue our growth, there is no end where we’ve “made it” and should stop doing the things that got us there.
Perhaps the idea of enlightenment is actually just the consistent pursuit of enlightenment. Greatness, the consistent pursuit of greatness itself.
I’m never* going to sell this website for millions of dollars and cash out so that I can finally do what I want. The hundreds of hours of work that I put into Break the Twitch every month is the life I want. If I want to share my ideas with and, ideally, help more people with my writing, I have to keep writing. If I want to keep a decluttered home, I have to continually declutter and not bring new things into it. I have to continually avoid the temptation of online purchases to make sure that I’ll be ready and able to buy a plane ticket when a good friend gets married and wants me there.
Some days feel successful, others might feel like failures, but every day is a new opportunity to move those lines a little closer together.
For more on this, check out the video below or click here.
*wait, how many million did you say? just kidding.
PRE-S: The popularity of this blog post led to the creation of my new eBook, which expands on the below topics and provides practical, actionable advice for combating the False First Step. Check it out!
I still remember getting the package.
It was a nondescript brown box, just like one that might show up on any other day. After sliding my fingers through the opening in the side, the packing tape popped apart, and the box opened to reveal my new sports watch and heart rate monitor band. My heart rate sped up a bit just from the excitement of the new purchase.
As a part of my recent fitness aspirations, I had decided to start running. To be honest, I hated running—always had—but those extra 20 pounds definitely needed to come off. And this time, I was serious. I just needed the right gear to get me started.
That’s why I was particularly excited about this delivery. The watch and monitor were all I needed to be accountable to myself and finally help me reach my health goals. I felt like I was already a runner now that I had the gear.
There is a poorly kept secret out there with a multi-billion dollar industry built around it. It’s the marketing industry—one whose sole purpose is to convince us we can have everything we’ve ever wanted by making a purchase. It sells us on better versions of ourselves but delivers only short-term satisfaction.
From 2010 until early 2014, I spent over $12,000 on Amazon.com, buying more than 350 items. It started after Amazon Prime was introduced, when suddenly Earth’s Largest Selection was just one click away. Remember those early days? One click of the Buy button was all it took to have something magically delivered to the front door in just 48 hours.
You’d think that $12,000 would buy some really high-quality, expensive stuff and experiences. I could’ve spent three or four months traveling the world, bought an old RV and toured the U.S. National Parks, or even provided funding to build part of a new home for orphans. But that wasn’t the case.
With the exception of my MacBook Air for $950, and the $2,500 I spent for a camera, lenses, and accessories, most of my purchases were under $50.
That heart rate monitor? $50
A book on photography to go with my fancy new camera? $28
A calligraphy pen? $19
For four years, I impulsively chased the books, gadgets, and products that I thought would help me reach my goals. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was trying to become a better version of myself without doing any real work. I thought I was taking action when all I was really doing was taking out my credit card.
The marketing industry had convinced me that making a purchase was a valid action step. If I want to be a runner, buying a heart rate monitor is a step in the right direction, isn’t it? It was exciting because I truly believed that I had taken a step towards a better, healthier me. I’d get a burst of dopamine, which felt good.
Then, two days later, the excitement would return as I opened the box to find my brand new identity staring up at me. Owning a heart rate monitor definitely made me a real runner. Another rush of dopamine and a feeling of accomplishment would come over me as I examined my purchase, tried it on, and flipped through the manual. The new me was going to be so fit.
This is the false first step: believing we’ve made a meaningful step toward a goal when all we’ve actually done is spent money or not done the thing we actually need to do. We’ve actually lost something (money and time) rather than attained something (meaningful progress).
[Tweet “Ads tell us that buying something is a step towards achieving our dreams. They’re lying.”]Over the next few days, I went on a couple runs with my new gear. I eyed my distance, kept my heart at a healthy 160 beats per minute, and tracked my pace per mile. I would deliberately check my heart rate at red lights so that the passing cars would notice me being a real, serious runner. Only serious runners had this kind of equipment, right?
A few days later, I was sore. It was raining. I didn’t want to get my new gear wet (even though it was waterproof), so I took a day off. Then I took another day. And then, I never really wore that heart rate monitor again.
I realized that if I only had a new pair of running shoes, I’d be even better at running, and I’d get out there again and hit the pavement. So I ordered a pair of shoes—Nike, (on sale!) of course. This would definitely be the thing that got me out there running again. After all, Nike’s slogan is, “Just do it.”
I decided to take a couple more days off running while I waited for them to arrive, which sounded logical because I was basically risking injury by running in my old pair. Forty-eight hours later, when my new shoes arrived, however, I didn’t really feel like running then, either.
I’m still not a runner, six years after those purchases. But while browsing Amazon shortly after the shoes arrived, I found a book on photography that I got really excited about.
Perhaps you can see where this is going.
On January 2nd of 2014, everything changed.
I was browsing Amazon to look for some lightning deals after the new year holiday, and I came across the advertisement you see below. In that moment, the real reason I was purchasing all of this stuff was suddenly right in front of me.
If you want to be healthier and happier, this Kindle Fire seems like a great way to get there, right? It’s offering you a fresh start, with endless ways to get healthy and happy. Endless!
For just $99, we can click a single button, get a fresh start in life, and discover innumerable ways to get healthy and happy. It’s clear that a fresh start, good health, and happiness are things that we all want. For the 2016 New Year, the number one resolution was to “lose weight,” followed closely by “getting organized.” And here was the Kindle Fire, promising to help us reach those goals.
Maybe it comes as no surprise that the healthy eating, nutrition, and weight loss industries amassed revenues of $574 billion in 2013 alone. And that number continues to rise. Whether it’s a yoga video on a Kindle or a heart rate monitor on our wrists, we’re spending a lot of money on things that are supposed to help us be healthier and happier. But is any of it working? Let’s take a moment to consider it.
Is it realistic to imply that an Amazon Kindle is the first step to getting healthy and happy? Sure, you can look up recipes and yoga videos on a Kindle, but you can watch Netflix and browse Facebook, too.
Buying a Kindle Fire to get healthy and happy is like saying that the only thing keeping you from your goals is that you don’t have a portable electronic device with a seven-inch screen.
The false first step is an outsourcing of effort, a delay of progress, and likely, a loss of money.
We all know how to be healthy. Go outside, walk, stretch, or move in some way every day. Eat fruits and vegetables, and avoid high-sugar foods. We all know how to do this, and there is nothing on the Kindle Fire that will make us more likely to do these things. But we buy it, anyway.
Using the Kindle as an example, here’s why we False First Step:
Buying that Kindle Fire convinced your brain that you actually managed to do something meaningful towards becoming that person you want to be. Enough so that, for a while, it satisfies your desire to progress and grow, and it makes you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something. Since you’re convinced that you’ve made progress, you move on, and the action never actually happens. Until that uncomfortable feeling comes up again, that is.
Since taking a false first step eased that discomfort last time, the cycle repeats. Perhaps this time, it will be yoga pants or a new pair of running shoes. Maybe it’s a Fitbit that will finally get us outside. Perhaps.
I thought all these things, too, over and over again until after four years, I’d spent over $12,000 and was in just about the same place with my running, photography, and calligraphy skills that I’d been before buying a damn thing. It took seeing that collective financial damage for me to realize the true nature of my buying habits.
Deep down, you know what decision you’re avoiding. It is often the thing you most want to avoid doing that is, indeed, the most important. There are a million ways to avoid it, to distract ourselves and take false first steps until the end of time. But the only way to move forward is to do the difficult thing, do the work, make the call, do the stretches, or hit the publish button. The difficult thing might give you anxiety. It might make you uncomfortable or nervous, but it is on the other side of that thing that the real magic happens.
Instead of investing thousands of dollars in an untested, unproven idea, (good) entrepreneurs are taught to build a minimally viable solution and test it. They see if it works, find out if people are actually interested in it, and find the flaws early on.
If you haven’t spent a great deal of time shooting photos with the camera you already have, you don’t need to buy a $1,500 camera to get better. You need to take more pictures. You might not even know what features you should be looking for that you don’t already have, which makes any purchase at this stage premature.
The minimally viable solution is doing what you can with what you have. Instead of buying new running shoes, go for a walk around the block. Instead of buying a new laptop, write your short story on a piece of paper or on whatever you have available to you.
J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book on pieces of scrap paper. Let’s be okay with writing a blog post on our slightly older PC.
It should be obvious by now that we can’t buy better versions of ourselves. The only way to become better is to spend time working towards what we value most in life.
If your first instinct is to buy something in order to accomplish one of your goals, realize that this is likely a false first step. If you haven’t even tried to accomplish something using the resources you already have, slow down and assess the situation. That discomfort you feel is your opportunity to stop the cycle of consumption dead in its tracks.
Start first by establishing a small action to complete every day—something that, over the course of a few weeks, has the potential to become a strong habit. How amazing will those new running shoes be once you’ve been walking every day for a month? Once the habit is established, those shoes really can enhance your experience and help you continue your fitness journey. But they’re not going to do the work for you.
At the age of 23, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez directed his first feature film on a budget of $7,000–a small fraction of the multi-million-dollar budgets of most Hollywood films. He promoted his film at festivals, eventually sold it and went on to direct major motion pictures in Hollywood. Do the work first, and buy new gear only after you’ve demonstrated a commitment to yourself and others.
To avoid having more clutter in your home and potentially wasting more money on a false first step, borrow or rent the equipment that you think will help you accomplish your goals. This will help establish a sense of urgency, as the equipment will need to be returned. You can focus on using it, and see if it actually does everything you need it to. You can always buy it later down the road if it helps you accomplish what you need.
While it may seem like you’re wasting money on a rental that you might just end up buying, in most cases it works out in your favor. Consider the expense of buying a brand new item that eventually goes unused, or the hassle of having to resell something that didn’t work as you wished. Renting first will save you time and money overall.
The best way to figure out what you actually need is to make a solid go of it and probably fail. You don’t yet know what you don’t know. By making a solid attempt at achieving your goal, you will ask better questions, be able to find better answers, and fail a little better next time. You can figure out exactly what you actually need to get to the next step once you know more about what you don’t know.
The fear of failure is something that plagues us all, but owning that fear and embracing failure as a step along the path is the best thing you can do. Instead of purchasing a new diet plan or perhaps a new camera and placing the blame for failure on those things, own up to your personal growth process.
Embrace failure, and allow yourself to recognize each one as you learn what you actually need to succeed. It took the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun over seven years to get his invention accepted by a distribution company. James Dyson failed 5,126 times on his way to designing a vacuum that worked the way he wanted it to. Don’t give up.
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The last two years of my life have been very different from the years that preceded them. They have been more enjoyable, more fulfilling, and more aligned with my actual values than ever before. In 2015, I had the resources to volunteer my time in Honduras to help raise money for a new nonprofit my friend started. So far this year, I’ve lost almost 20 pounds by doing two sets of push-ups every day and finally avoiding high-sugar foods. No product has helped me do it—no tracker, no push-up accessories, or new gym shorts. The results simply came from aligning my actions with my actual values and desired outcome.
But none of that change could happen until I identified the false first step in my life. I had been making it time and time again to the detriment of my marriage, our finances, and the path to a life of experiences that I truly wanted.
Instead, I was subconsciously pursuing things that made me feel as though I was making significant progress towards what I really cared about.
Remember that once you spend money for a product, the advertiser’s commitment to you is done. They’ve done the work to convince you to buy the thing, but the challenge is still yours to put that thing to work. Many times, you’ll find that you didn’t actually need the thing at all. You just need yourself.
I’m still not perfect at this. In fact, this very post has undergone a number of false first steps over the last year. It’s one of my big ideas that I wanted to share in an epic way. I’ve been so intimidated by it that I’ve come up with a million reasons why it wasn’t ready to be put out into the world. I convinced myself that I needed more data, more research to back up the idea and validate this feeling that I’ve had for so long.
You know what the REAL first step was to getting this post written? It wasn’t tweaking the outline for months. Definitely wasn’t talking with countless friends about the idea and looking for validation from yet another person. It wasn’t even paying an editor to help me polish it.
I took the real first step almost two years after this idea first hit me.
Hitting publish is the only action that matters because it’s the only action that gets me the result I want. I want you to read this, identify the false first steps in your own life, and be changed. There was no way to do that without actually putting this post into the world and seeing what the world does with it.
Because it means we’re doing something that matters. If achieving our goals was as easy as buying something, I’d be a world-class Olympic runner/Nat Geo photographer/calligraphy artist by now. Maybe you’d be a writer or a dancer or a millionaire entrepreneur. Whatever you aspire to, there are a million false steps to get there, but only one real way:
Break the twitch. Stop taking the false first step, and do the work that counts.
I invite you to join me on the journey toward becoming, rather than buying, better versions of ourselves.
Your turn: What false first step have you taken? Feel free to share in the comments below.
