Hello, Habits

by Fumio Sasaki

  It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

  —Mark Twain

  Ichiro has reflected on the intensive training he used to go through like this:

  “It’s true that when I was spending time at the Orix training camp when I was eighteen, nineteen and twenty, I was hitting hundreds of balls until two or three in the morning. Looking back, I can see that it wasn’t a rational way to practice. But if someone told me that at the time and I hadn’t done it, thinking that it was a waste of time, I wonder if I would have thought this way now.”

  I want to convey the same idea with this book. I didn’t decide to quit drinking because I understood the disadvantages of drinking; it was because I had personally accumulated a lot of experiences of regret. A person who doesn’t have that degree of regret probably wouldn’t come up with the idea of quitting drinking. I decided that I had to seriously acquire good habits because my own experiences of slacking off showed me that it wasn’t good to live like that.

  I don’t think that what I write in this book will be applied exactly as written by readers. I hope you’ll acquire original methodologies of your own as you go through the process of trial and error.

  When you set out to learn from a book, you want to read about the common pitfalls before you begin. But you won’t understand the pain of a pitfall unless you actually fall. It’s because of that pain that you’ll try not to fall next time. I know I can’t warn you about all the pitfalls in advance. But there are some you’ll keep falling into, even if you’re cautious, and I want to make you aware of those.

  I’d like you to create original habits

  Although I used to think that I was a night person, I was able to switch to being a morning person. And I can now start the day off feeling good. I think that particular example is general enough to apply to other people as well, and I’d like to recommend it to anyone who is interested.

  But Masashi Ueda, whose four-panel newspaper comic strip, Kobo, the Li’l Rascal, has been running for a long time, leads a completely different lifestyle. He goes to bed at three-thirty in the morning and wakes up at ten-thirty. That’s because a bike courier comes to pick up his daily manuscripts at three-thirty, and counting backwards from that deadline, he says it’s best for him to get up at ten-thirty.

  It’s this sense of something being “the best for oneself” that’s important. It’s true that I might be happy if someone copied my habits. But we all live in different places, we’re different ages, and we’re different genders. It’s useless to suggest to a sumo wrestler that he go on a diet. The situation will vary from person to person, and I hope that you will create a customized method that’s right for you.

  There are also things that seem necessary for all of us despite our different situations. Records are one example. You should keep records of the conditions—your mood, physical condition, the season, how busy you are—in which you can or can’t continue to practice your habits. If you keep records, you’ll begin to see how to avoid difficulties that you’ve experienced before. It would make me happy if you could read between the lines in this book and take away that kind of understanding. There are no examples of habits that you have to acquire. The important thing is to think for yourself.

  Step 49: Make peace with the knowledge that your habits will eventually collapse

  Habits are surprisingly tough, and habits are surprisingly fragile.

  —Gretchen Rubin

  Meditation is the act of returning our awareness back to our breathing after it starts to wander, but our awareness keeps flying off somewhere no matter how we continue to bring it back. The Buddhist monk Ryunosuke Koike expressed the phenomenon like this: “It’s like being shaken off when you try to ride a horse but you continue to try to get back on the horse no matter how many times you’re shaken off.”

  Meditation is something you should make into a habit, but I think this expression describes habits in general. No matter how you approach making something into a habit, you’ll continue to be shaken off. Habits will eventually collapse. The important thing is to keep rebuilding them.

  Write a “spell of restoration”

  You might have to abandon your normal routines for a brief period, or sustain an injury during a trip that prevents you from doing things as usual, and you’ll find that the habits you’ve developed will collapse in a few days or weeks.

  One countermeasure for such an occurrence is to write detailed notes on what it’s like when particular habits are going well—what it’s like when you’re in a state of flow. For me, that’s the timetable I mentioned at the beginning of this book. When we keep notes on the methods that have worked, we become confident that we can always find our way back to that state.

  We also forget things about ourselves sometimes, but we can take notes so that later we’ll be able to remember. We can start over if we have things written down. It’s like our very own “spell of restoration,” used in the place of saving data in the game Dragon Quest II. We can write these types of notes ourselves.

  It’s true that some things can’t be dealt with using a “spell of restoration.” If you move, change jobs, get married, or have a baby, you have no choice but to change the habits that you had that were linked to your previous conditions.

  But even after that type of life-changing event, I think these methods for acquiring habits still apply: you may need to acquire new habits, like getting up early in the morning for your kids, taking them to school, or taking your family’s new dog out for a walk.

  It isn’t just your conditions; you, too, will gradually change. Of course, you’ll get older. There’s no need to read a book on biology to see that we’re a little different today than we were yesterday. So to make our habits match who we are, we need to continue to make adjustments.

  Maintain a sense of novelty in achieving habits

  The author Nicholson Baker structures his work using habits, and says he tries a somewhat different approach whenever he writes a new book. For example, “from now on, I’m only going to write on the back porch in flip flops starting at four o’clock in the afternoon.” That way, he maintains a sense of novelty. The habits of mine that I’ve written about here are only for the time being. You have to continue to make changes and slight adjustments so that you don’t get bored.

  Here’s some advice from Daigo Umehara about making changes: “When you want to make a change to yourself, a tip is to not think about whether it will make things better. If things get bad, you can make another change when you realize it.” If a change doesn’t change things the way you wanted it to, you can make another change.

  Committing to the practice of acquiring habits is different from being stubborn with the specific habits that you’ve formed.

  Step 50: Know that there is no end to habits

  As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

  —Seneca

  One thing I used to misunderstand about minimalists: I thought the process of becoming a minimalist “ended” at some point.

  When I let go of things I didn’t need, I thought to myself, “Now I’ll be free from my concerns over my things.”

  I thought it would be easy if only I could find clothes that I would want to wear my entire life like Steve Jobs: “All I have to do is wear a white shirt all my life. It’s super-convenient!” But after moving from Tokyo to the countryside, I’ve had barely any opportunities to wear white shirts, since they get soiled easily.

  And new things become necessary, while others I have to get rid of, depending on my interests. It’s because I’ve realized that my journey as a minimalist hasn’t come to an end that I can once again feel joy in letting things go.

  At the moment, there are no more habits that I want to acquire. But that doesn’t mean I’ve finished acquiring habits. Because even if I’m able to develop my current habits, there will be new, tougher habits that I’ll want to take on.

  The very act of continu
ing to form habits is a habit

  Even when there are no issues at hand, people’s minds will find a way to bring on challenges.

  We’re sad beings, who continue to find some kind of dissatisfaction or challenge—in what would look to anyone else like a peaceful life—which we must continue to overcome. But there are rewards in overcoming those challenges, and there is no end to those challenges. Isn’t that actually something to be happy about?

  Having acquired habits doesn’t mean we’re finished with our habits.

  There is no end to habits.

  It’s a habit to continue to form habits.

  CHAPTER 4

  WE’RE MADE OF HABITS

  We start to understand our “efforts” through our habits

  I recall my father saying to our pet cat now and then, “You’re lucky.” It’s true that there are times when you can feel envious of a cat who’s always dozing and living a relaxed life. A bird is able to sing and do a mating dance without instruction, but we humans have to make an effort to learn to play an instrument or learn how to dance. Why is it that human beings are the only ones who have to make an effort?

  I used to view life as a contest for enduring pain. Only those who have endured the pain of exerting themselves are the winners. But from what I’ve learned about habits to date, the reality of effort seems to be something completely different.

  In this book, we’ve looked at the following in detail:

  Chapter 1: When it is that people generate or lose willpower;

  Chapter 2: That there are rewards to be found in actions that appear painful to others;

  Chapter 3: Specific methods and concepts to help turn those actions into habits.

  After giving this much thought to habits, we’ve already obtained clues about the true meaning of “effort” and “talent.” Though we can’t unveil everything, I think it’s possible to sketch a basic outline. And it seems that effort and talent work differently from how people generally think they do.

  Does Ichiro make an effort?

  Let us first think about effort. In the Japanese expression “effort will make you bleed,” the word “effort” is associated with pain. Is that true?

  Since childhood, Ichiro has been practicing baseball more than anyone else. In an essay written in his final year of elementary school, he claimed, “I have tough practices at least three hundred and sixty days out of three hundred and sixty-five.” When he played for Orix, he did batting practice for two to three hours at a time. Other players would have wrapped up in twenty to thirty minutes. Coach Akira Ohgi watched Ichiro practicing diligently and said, “Of course he can hit if he practices that much. Though normal players can’t practice like that.”

  During his days playing professional baseball, Ichiro was usually the first player on the field, warming up and practicing, even on his off days. Ichiro was always there at practice, regardless of whether he was playing in a game. Any way you look at it, it sounds like hard work, but Ichiro always says: “I don’t make an effort.”

  Haruki Murakami’s efforts aren’t much?

  As mentioned before, when working on long novels, Haruki Murakami writes ten pages every day and never misses his hour of running or swimming.

  But even Murakami said in an interview: “In short, whether it’s work or something else, I’m just doing what I like to do, the way I like to do it. It isn’t like being stoic or anything. I do hardly anything that I don’t want to do. Making a little effort in something you enjoy doing, that’s not a big deal.”

  People who appear to be making constant, Herculean efforts deny that they are doing so, or claim that it’s no big deal. For a long time, I thought that such words were expressions of modesty typical of top athletes and writers. Of course, we can’t easily imagine the type of effort they make, but I think I’ve gained a little understanding of what they mean.

  The confusion is probably caused by the fact that the word “effort” is used with two meanings.

  Separating effort from endurance

  The two meanings contained in the word “effort”—it’s my belief that it’s better to separate these into the conventional meanings of “effort” versus “endurance.”

  I see the difference between them in the following way:

  “Effort” brings you a steady reward that compensates you for the price you pay.

  “Endurance” is on display when you don’t have a legitimate reward for the price you pay.

  “Endurance” is often encouraged in Japanese society. For example, working at a company means receiving a “reward” called a salary. In order to receive that reward, people pay various prices—including time. Other payments can be required as well, depending on the company:

  •You can’t decide when to report to work or leave the office.

  •You can’t ignore bosses that you don’t like, clients, or customers.

  •It’s hard to take time off, even if you’re tired or you have to take care of your kids.

  •You don’t have the discretion to make decisions; you only do what you’re told to do.

  Of course, there are other possible forms of reward besides a salary:

  •Praise for your work from colleagues and superiors.

  •A sense of unity when you accomplish your work as a team.

  •The sense that your work is helping someone.

  If you’re going to work every day when you don’t want to, that’s already in the realm of “endurance.” But if compensation is commensurate with payment, you’ll go ahead and do it. People don’t want to do things if what they’re paying is greater than what they’re receiving.

  Whether it’s your choice

  Besides, whether or not the reward that you receive matches what you’re paying, a key point in determining whether something takes effort or endurance is whether you’re making the choice yourself.

  In the radish test, the students who could only eat radishes appeared to lose willpower. But we can also look at it this way: they were told, “You can only eat the radishes,” even though there were chocolate chip cookies in front of them, too.

  If you choose to eat the radishes, rather than being forced to, your willpower will not be decreased.

  First of all, it’s stressful to be forbidden from doing something, or to be ordered around without a choice.

  Here’s another experiment: two rats placed in separate cages are—the poor things—given an electric shock. Of the two rats, only one of them can press a lever that allows both to escape the electric shock. As a result, the rat without access to the lever ends up showing signs of chronic stress, which leads to weight loss, ulcers, and even a higher incidence rate of cancer. Although both rats are given the electric shock for the same amount of time, the rat with the power to choose to avoid the shock experiences less stress.

  We can think of “effort” as the tolerance required to do what you want and choose to do, whereas “endurance” is tolerance in a situation where you haven’t made a choice and are forced to do something that you don’t want to do. We continue to practice our habits because these are actions that we have chosen to do. You can continue to do something if you like doing it, because regardless of the type of suffering it may entail, you have understood and made a choice.

  There are also stages of endurance in habits

  Endurance is like being made to continue to climb a mountain with neither peak nor downhill paths, one that only continues to rise.

  Effort isn’t like that. Of course there are uphill climbs here and there, and those are painful, but you have a sense of achievement when you reach the summit, and it’s refreshing to go downhill. There are rewards that match your effort.

  When acquiring a habit, though, there is first a period resembling “endurance.” There is a greater price to pay at the beginning; it feels like everything is a struggle, or it’s tough on your body. That’s why we often end up quitting after a few days or so.

  I mentioned ways to overcome that period of
endurance in Chapter 3. The “effort zone” awaits you when you overcome the period of endurance. Once you reach that, habits will no longer be acts that are merely painful, and you’ll be able to receive many rewards.

  It’s okay to judge your own efforts by your own standards

  There will probably be times when someone else’s efforts seem amazing. I sometimes wonder if I’m not making enough of an effort when I see someone biting their lip and letting out a weird cry as they lift a two-hundred-pound barbell.

  But I believe that the effort made by the newcomer at the gym, attempting to lift a fifty-pound barbell without understanding what’s what just yet, exceeds the effort made by a gym regular lifting a two-hundred-pound barbell. An easy standard to measure the level of effort is heart rate.

  The difference between effort and endurance

  “Endurance” is only an upward climb with no rewards to match the price you’ve paid.

  “Effort” brings rewards, like the sense of accomplishment in standing at the summit or the refreshing feeling of the descent. However, there is a stage of “endurance” before something becomes a habit.

  Here’s an anecdote I love about heart rates, introduced in Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain:

  Phil Lawler, a junior high school PE teacher, added heart rates to the measurements taken during PE class. One day, he had an eleven-year-old girl who wasn’t good at exercising put on a heart rate monitor as she ran. Since she wasn’t good at exercising, her time probably wasn’t good. But Lawler was surprised when he looked at her heart rate. In theory, a person’s age is subtracted from 220 to get what is generally considered the maximum heart rate. And Lawler couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw her heart rate: an average of 187.