The 6 Changes Habit Creation Technique in Action
I first read the posts at 6Changes.com just before Christmas. At the time, I was preparing for the yearly planning that my wife and I do each January. I already wanted to make some changes in my own life, and 6changes.com was like a small revelation. It convinced me to tackle an important change, gave me a set of things to do, and happened to be at just the level of detail I needed. I’ve gone through enough attempts at self-improvement to know they don’t all stick. That naturally made me wary of some of the claims Leo makes, but it also helped me to recognize the truth of many of his ideas.
In summary, he advocates the following regimen for making a change in your life:
- Choose a habit to develop
- Only work on one at a time
- Build anticipation up to a starting date
- Commit publicly to the overall habit
- Break the habit into 8-9 small steps
- Choose habits and steps that can be done daily
- Add one of the small steps each week for two months
- Commit publicly to each step when you start it
- Report publicly on your progress
You can check out his site for more on the reasoning behind these steps.
I have spent the last 7 weeks following this plan step by step. I recount the experience here because a detailed blow-by-blow of one person’s attempt would have helped me when I started.
Preparation …
After reading through the ideas at 6changes.com, I wanted a habit that would help me continue developing new habits, as well as get me doing some of the simple things that I wanted to make sure got done each day. My nightly post-mortem and planning session was born. This includes a variety of small but important steps: writing in my journal, getting to inbox zero on my various inboxes, going through my tickler file, planning the next day, and nightly prayer.
I followed Leo’s advice and didn’t start right away. I thought through the small steps I wanted to take each week, and made plans to start the first full week of January, giving me a few days to recover from New Years and having family in town. I came up with 8 small changes to my nightly routine that, combined, would make a big difference. And because I was starting out so small, it was really quite easy. Also, I told my wife about the new goal, and I started tracking it at Daytum.
I broke my habit into the following small steps:
- Organize desk
- Record date in journal, scan inboxes, and clear daily plan
- Write in journal
- Process inbox items
- Process ticklers for tomorrow
- List things I want to get done tomorrow
- Prepare to pray
- Nightly Prayer
Getting Started …
I already prayed each night before bed, so my first step was just to organize and clean up my desk, before my prayer. Organizing my work area took all of about 1 minute and typically just involved me plugging in my laptop, cell phone, and Zune. Sometimes there was more to put away, like when my son decided to do his homework on my desk and just leave it all there. But it never took more than a couple minutes to finish, so it was easy, even when I stayed up quite late.
The next week, I opened up a page in OneNote and recorded the date (Alt-Shift-D for you keyboard fanatics). Then I closed it. I scanned my inboxes, but did not process anything. And I looked at my calendar. Total added time: 30 seconds. That was the beginning of my journal writing habit. I made it to the end of the second week without missing a day.
The third week, I expanded my journal entry by actually writing a little about the day, sometimes spending a few minutes recounting something I’ve been thinking about or an interesting story. This added about 5 minutes to the process. My entries aren’t typically very long. Sometimes, I add some thoughts about what I hope to do the next day. So far, I haven’t missed a day writing a full journal entry since January 17th.
Building on the Habit …
Now to the most obviously beneficial change: processing my inboxes. This could have been daunting, initially, since I hadn’t been doing a good job of this. That is to say, all my inboxes were full of crusty old stuff that had been lying around for weeks or months. Even though I knew I would start working on this part of the resolution near the end of January, I didn’t try to get ahead of myself by changing my inbox processing earlier or doing a big purge the day before. I just eased into it. I figured if I went through one or two items each day from each inbox I’d be pretty close to inbox zero by the end of the week.
Of course, I went through a lot more than 1 or 2 items each day that first week. I had to, just to keep up. But it’s pretty easy to delete or archive all the random stuff that doesn’t require any action. And I made sure to finish each day with less in my inboxes than I had started with. Ever since then I’ve been at inbox zero in my personal email and physical inbox every single night. My work email is a slightly different beast that I tackle at work anyway. I do take care of the easy stuff at night though. And now that I’m current on all that it usually takes just a few minutes.
Next step: tickler file. Ever since first reading about the tickler file in Getting Things Done, I’ve thought it would be a great tool to use. Of course, using it absolutely requires some sort of daily habit, or it’s just another place to lose track of things that are important. Well, now I had a daily habit that I’d kept up for a month without fail, so I added going through my tickler file, which I keep in OneNote, each night. That was a huge change, in that I now had an easy way to remind myself of something at any point in the future.
The one modification I’ve made to the tickler described in GTD, is the addition of four “week” folders for the four weeks of the month, which I go through on Sunday. Then I only need seven “day” folders instead of 31. It’s easy to remember to go through the longer time periods when I should because I put reminders to do so in the shorter time periods. For example, my Sunday tickler file has a reminder to go through the weekly tickler file, and my “4th week” tickler file has a reminder to go through the monthly tickler file, etc.
Once I had the habit of looking back by writing in my journal, dealing with the stuff at hand by processing my inboxes and tickler file, it was time to look forward by planning the next day. For me, it’s a really simple process that just involves listing in order the things I expect to do the next day. I usually include my plans for the commute (1.5 hours one way on the train and subway), focus goals for work, and how to spend the evening with my family. I also add reminders to my calendar for things I cannot forget. This addition makes it easy for me to just get up in the morning and go. I don’t have to think as much about what I should be doing.
Going Forward …
All that brings us up to Valentine’s day. I’m spending this week and next improving my nightly prayer, which is still too perfunctory. And I’ve started working out a plan for the next habit to create. I have a lot more confidence going into the next one, because of the experiences I’ve had over the last 7 weeks.
Overall, it’s been a great experience, one that I hope to repeat in March and April.
