Habits to Trade In Right Now
In Exchange for Your Writing Habit
Spectrum has launched. I repeat: Spectrum has launched. Spectrum is an anthology of queer, neurodiverse short horror fiction, edited by Aquino Loayza, Freydís Moon, and Lor Gisalson. This anthology contains twenty short stories, including mine—“These Thirteen Simple Tricks Will End Your Sleep Hallucinations For Good.” You can order Spectrum at Third Estate Books or snag the Kindle edition from Amazon. What are you waiting for? You could be reading it right now!
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Sometimes people tell me they don’t have time to write and sometimes that is true. I have gone on at length in Shelf Life before about the illusory truth that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. I will go on at length about it some more this morning.
It’s true that every day has the same number of hours in it but that doesn’t mean everyone has the same number of hours to work with. Some people need more sleep and some people need less. Some people have family obligations like child- or eldercare, and some don’t. Some people are working two full-time jobs while others are only working one (or none). We don’t all have the same amount of time in a day to dedicate to the things we would like to be doing even if everyone technically has access to 24 hours.
“We all have the same 24 hours in a day” is always used in the process of comparison. Why does that person have more than this person? More success, more money, more happiness, more material things? The implication is that person used their daily 24 better and smarter than the person you’re comparing them to and that’s why they have more.
Spoiler alert: That is rarely the reason why someone has more. According to the Federal Reserve Board in their Survey of Consumer Finances, the median American household net worth in 2022 was $192,000. The Bezos Household’s net worth in 2022 was $177 billion. The number 177 billion is so big I can’t even get my mind around what to type into my calculator to figure out how many times the median net worth it is. Bezos did not accumulate this net worth by using his 24 hours that much better than all the other entrepreneurs. Spoiler alert: He got it by utilizing the daily 24 hours of other people to enrich himself. That’s what’s known as the American dream.
Anyway, we don’t all have the same amount of time in every 24-hour spin around the ol’ axis to dedicate to our pursuits. That’s the point I’m making. But we do all—or most, I should say—have some time-wasting habits that we could yeet into the abyss in favor of our pursuits. That is what today’s Shelf Life is about.
Everyone probably has a habit somewhere in their life they’d like to get rid of. I have had some success in this arena. As I mentioned in a recent article, I quit smoking once quite a long time ago, which was difficult. Also, more recently—as in the last two years—I quit drinking Diet Coke which was harder for me than quitting cigarettes, believe it or not. I will share the reason because I do think it’s germane to later parts of this article: Everyone knows cigarettes are bad for you and there’s tremendous social pressure to not smoke cigarettes. There is no social pressure to not drink Diet Coke. There’s actually social pressure to drink it (omnipresent advertising campaigns). Also it was very hard to convince myself to quit doing something when I wasn’t totally convinced the thing was actually bad.
So I’ve had success building good habits and I’ve had success quitting bad habits. I’ve also had some failures quitting bad habits and sustaining good habits. I’m all over the habit map. This is fine. It means I have a lot of experience with habits.
What I’m on about today is habit trading and habit piggybacking to find more time for the things you want to do. Maybe this is your writing habit. Maybe it’s painting or taking a walk around the block in the middle of the day (highly recommend) or reading. The strategies I’m offering for your consideration today can help you find time for these things and also help you stick with these things.
When I say habit trading I mean exchanging one habit for another. This can be easier than ending a bad habit—or starting a new one—cold turkey. Think of the person who quits smoking and swaps out lollipops or chewing gum for cigarettes. That person is trading their cigarette habit for another, less-harmful habit. That’s habit trading.
By habit piggybacking I mean bundling two habits together so they become, in a sense, one habit in your routine. Or that one habit supports the other. Think of a person who smokes a cigarette every time they drink a cup of coffee. Drinking coffee will reinforce the smoking habit. The taste of coffee will remind this person they want a cigarette. The cigarette habit piggybacks on the coffee habit.
You can use these two strategies to make time in your busy schedule.
The first step is identifying habits you have. These might be good habits you wish to sustain, like going to the gym every day, or they may be bad habits you want to quit, like smoking cigarettes. The great thing about this exercise is any kind of habit will do. You don’t have to have good ones or bad ones. You just have to have some habits.
With your good, desirable habits, you can look for ways to piggyback another habit on. With the bad habits you’d like to shake, you can try habit trading to exchange them for something you want to encourage.
There! I solved it for you! Go enjoy your good new habits and newfound creative time. You’re welcome.
No, I’m just kidding. It’s not that easy. Of course it’s never that easy.
Break your list of habits into those you definitely want to keep, those you definitely want to kick, and those about which you feel ambivalent. Not all habits have to be good or bad. Some habits may be value neutral—and that’s fine.
Positive and neutral habits are ripe for habit piggybacking another good habit onto them. For instance, if you have a habit of walking around the neighborhood for a half hour a day and you’re looking for a way to fit a half-hour reading habit into your schedule, might I suggest . . . listening to audiobooks on your walk? That’s just one example—but today’s Shelf Life isn’t about habits to keep forever, it’s about habits to trade in right now—the bad ones you’d like to kiss goodbye.
Bad habits can be hard to get rid of. A strategy I’ve learned during many years of therapy, that works really well for quitting bad habits, is diversion. The idea is to divert your attention from the thing you don’t want to do and point your attention at something you want to encourage. Try to distract yourself from your bad habit with your good habit.
To do this, you have to practice mindfulness. I’m admittedly not the best at practicing mindfulness. I’m mostly good at mindlessness. But I can pull some mindfulness together for a little bit if I have to. Make a list of the triggers that lead you to do your bad habit. For instance if smoking is your bad habit your triggers might be boredom, frustration, drinking coffee, and driving in your car. If your bad habit is vegetating in front of the television, the trigger may be boredom (boredom is at the root of lots of bad habits), or there may be a specific time of day or a specific show that is your trigger.
Once you know the trigger is when you start the mindfulness part. You have to be mindful of the trigger situation approaching so you can distract yourself from the bad habit and divert your attention to the good habit. I had a really hard time resisting cigarettes when I was driving because I was so used to smoking while I drove. Realizing that driving the car was a trigger, I looked for some ways to distract myself from thinking about smoking while in the car—without getting too distracted because, you know, driving. Audiobooks turned out to be a big help. Listening to an audiobook while I drive occupies the part of my brain that tends to wander off and think about eating, drinking, or smoking (the holy trinity).
Let’s say the habit you want to ditch is scrolling social media while you’re lying in bed at night, and the habit you want to build is writing. You know the trigger situation is lying down in bed for the night. That’s where you have to be mindful and when you pick up your phone to start scrolling, tell yourself—“Not right now. I’ll write for five minutes and then I’ll scroll.”
To make this easier on yourself, you could reinforce this plan by keeping a pen and notebook by your bed so you can free write on paper. You can leave your phone out of reach in another part of the room—for instance, move your charger to your dresser so you can’t reach your phone without getting up. You could employ a phone-locking app like ScreenTime or AppBlock to prevent you from scrolling.
Write for five minutes and then treat yourself to a little scrolling. The next night maybe you’ll write for seven minutes and scroll a little less. Each day you can focus on writing more and scrolling less until your bedtime activity is writing and not scrolling.
My phone’s lock screen and background say “NO SCROLLING” in huge, neon pink letters, to remind me to do anything else besides scrolling social media.
Finally, I want to end with an important note: You don’t need to use every minute of your day for productivity. There’s nothing wrong with a little mindless TV watching or social media scrolling or online shopping to relax your brain. Everyone needs leisure activities. I’m only suggesting cutting out—or cutting back—on these activities if you have fulfilling creative pursuits you want to get to but for which you don’t have time. There’s probably a little time stashed away in these habits that you could take back.
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