Habit Change

In the past, I have been guilty of jumping into changes too quickly. I'd become overwhelmed and quit. Part of the problem was not preparing and part of it was not making changes that worked with my personality.

I started reading, "Organizing From the Inside Out" last night... this book teaches you how to organize your life in a way that flows with who you are.

Steve Pavlina has a great post today about Habit Change. He equates habit change with chess strategy.

He says:

"Trying to change a habit overnight is like trying to execute scholar’s mate in chess. Scholar’s mate is a strategy of achieving checkmate in only four moves. It only works against total beginners. Against a chess player with an ounce of experience, scholar’s mate will fail. A botched scholar’s mate puts you in a disadvantaged position, so attempting it is usually a bad idea unless you’re playing against a complete novice.

Are you applying the scholar’s mate strategy when trying to change old habits or adopt new habits? Do you go straight for the kill, only to find your attempt shot down?

When you try to change a habit without devoting sufficient time to the early game and middle game, you’ll almost always fail to make the change stick. Only the very easy habits will succumb to this kind of brute force strategy.

The early game of habit change is education and setup. In the middle game, you execute some changes to support your habit change. Only in the endgame do you go directly for the kill."

Go read the rest... Habit Change Is Like Chess