Doing more than one thing at once assures that nothing or almost nothing gets done. This is particularly true when trying to form good habits.
Multi-Rabbit Chasing Failures
There have been times in my life where I behaved badly. I was drinking too much. Smoking cigarettes. Staying out late. Eating badly.
I sat at a bar and mused.
“I’ve got to fix this,” I’d say to myself.
And I would try.
Without great commitment or ceremony, I’d say, “I’m going to start running again. I’m going to eat better. I’m going to quit drinking anything but beer, I’m going to go to bed earlier,” etc, etc. etc.
These vows didn’t last of course. At the tiniest pretense, I would be back at it and feeling like crap the next morning and swearing to do better.
How a One Rabbit Habit Began a Life Long Habit
The only success was eating a vegetable every day.
In those days there were a lot of Meat-and-Threes, restaurants that served a choice of meat and three vegetables. They were a wonderful institution in the South that gave anyone the opportunity to eat a square meal every day.
So among my empty vows one stuck. I vowed to eat a vegetable every day. I did it for lunch at several Meat-and-Threes in Memphis, where I was living at the time.
A Habit? How Did That Work?
That One-Veggie-a-Day Rabbit had all the ingredients for habit formations. I had lunch every day and thus repeated the action every day. Repetition is a must for habit formation.
I didn’t know it at the time, but habit formation works best if you keep it simple. If you can perform an action and it’s easy and you can feel good about it, you are going to form a habit for that action. With all he convenient Meat-and-Threes in town, this one rabbit was easy.
Soon enough, I headed straight for a lunch with veggies without even thinking about it.
Want to Make a Change?
Focus on one thing and make the desired action simple. A One Rabbit Habit.
And as James Clear said in his great book, Atomic Habits, make it easy.
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