Forming Habits by Combining Them
A lil life hack from me to you x
Is anyone else really bored of walking the same old routes in the 2 mile radius of where you live? I know I am. Alas, today I have a life hack for you which could spice up your walks a bit, or also you could apply to basically literally anything else in your life. It’s up to you.
There are like 3–4 podcasts I listen to on a weekly basis, and a few more where I’ll tune in if I particularly like a topic or a guest. So I listen to a lot of podcasts, often more than 10 hours a week. It’s awesome.
And I don’t know why I did this, but for some reason I can never bring myself to listen to a podcast when I’m sat at home. I guess part of me always thinks it’s wasted time as I could be engaging with something that uses more of my sense, like being on my computer or watching TV or something. TV engages more senses than podcasts, so why listen to a podcast when you could be watching TV?
So anyway, I tricked my own mind into only letting me listen to podcasts when I’m on the move. Now, that could be walking, running, driving, or on a bus/train/plane. Literally any form of transportation, that’s when I listen to my podcasts. And since the pandemic sort of ended any transportation that isn’t me on my own two feet outdoors, I’ve been walking and running a lot in lockdown.
But it’s sort of had this weird effect where I almost look forward to going for a walk or run if I have a good podcast to listen to. I’ve combined something I want to do, with something I don’t want to do. By combining these two habits, it’s meant that I’ve been exercising way more. In fact, I ran 5km a day for 100 consecutive days in 2020, and it might jus be the best thing I’ve ever done.
Warning: I just stepped away from writing this blog post for like 30 minutes and I came up with an analogy which is so spectacularly niche and probably only makes sense to me, it’s just the most George vs Life thing ever. You’re going to need to bare with me I’m afraid
So, when the government thinks of which things it wants to tax and which things it wants to pay people to do, it’s all about externalities. For those that didn’t study Economics at school: an externality is basically the after effects of an action which affect other people other than the person doing the thing. The classic example is smoking. Smoking is both bad for the individual, but it also has a negative externality for anyone else in the room of the smoker, because they are inhaling second hand smoke, so despite the smoker’s acquaintances not being involved in the smoking at all, they’re suffering because it’s happening. This is why the government taxes cigarettes, because they are trying to price in that negative externality, and dis-incentivize people from smoking.
But there’s also goods with positive externalities! The two big ones are healthcare (particularly vaccines) and education. The government (at least in the UK) subsidizes these good because they know that society benefits from having a healthy, educated society of people. If education wasn’t free, then not everyone would do it. Likewise, if this COVID-19 vaccine cost the individual money, then way less people would get it, and it wouldn’t be as good for society as a whole.
And here comes my analogy: you can think of yourself as the mayor of your own body. There are certain hobbies/actions which have positive externalities on your body, and some have negative. You need to motivate yourself to go for a run because it’s for the good of your health, so somehow you need to incentivize yourself to do that, which is where podcasts may help!
And if I take the analogy even further, it still kind of works: If you as the mayor of your own body don’t pay attention to the externalities of your actions and you just do the things that optimize in the short term, then you’re probably not going to get educated, you’re not going to exercise, and you’re going to eat junk food, play video games and not get a job. This is the pure capitalism way of running your body, basically it’s Texas. No income tax, but shit infrastructure for when things go wrong. I guess the other end of the spectrum is like PHD students or members of CrossFit, in my analogy they would be the socialists. they’re so aware of how good doing this thing is for them that they obsess over maximizing it.
So yeah, just like how the dentist always gives you a lollipop to incentivize your to come again to this place which has positive externalities on your life, you need to be like the mayor of your own body and tie together your hobbies and actions to make sure you have a good enough balance.
It’s okay to eat junk food and play video games, but why not tie it to a positive habit like doing yoga or catching up with a loved one? The world doesn’t have to be black and white: It’s not like you have to be either 100% healthy or an absolutely mess: you’re allowed to live in the grey.
Embrace the grey, and negotiate with yourself and make reasonable decisions as the mayor of your own body.
(I told you it was niche, didn’t I)
x
1st March 2021
Did you see my last post ?
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