What are the situations or moments when our good habits break, fall apart, and stop to be in place?
You may have encountered a situation in which you have to travel as a part of your job. You take on the journey and are under some mental stress. In moments like this, you focus on a primary operating mode. You want to deliver your peak performance, you are alert and put everything else behind. It's in such situations that fresh and not yet well-established habits fall apart. Even some well-established patterns can suffer from a hard change in the environment. Additionally, the shift in the daily schedule disrupts your regular schedule. But it's this schedule that brings the hooks or triggers for your habits.
A habit consists of three components. These are the trigger, the routine, and the reward. The trigger or hook is attached to a specific time, a location, a smell, or any other senses. Since necessary hooks are missing, more mental energy would be required to get into the routines.
But the remaining mental energy is probably wasted with social media or just watching some TV series so that the psych is cheered up a little bit.
Stress has a severe impact on our health but also on our way of thinking. It's not only the stress stemming from the tasks at work, but it's also a mixture of different locations, people, and the topics that become important in different situations or with other people. Maybe it's just my malleable mind and my mindset that I want to connect, to adapt, and to learn as much as possible in new environments, cultures, regions. But this mindset takes a toll on each journey. It's only afterward with some reflection time that I come to realize what fell behind. I happen to recognize that I sacrificed my habits and also some structure of thinking that I fought hard for to build up.
On one side, I want to stay young and be always a learner. But on the other hand, I want to grow and remain on a steep trajectory towards a great personality with great character traits.
One way to deal best with this trade-off is to make some preparations in advance of a journey. It's like letting your smart self plan for moments when your less-smarter self is facing all the challenges. And it's still essential to take some time to reflect after each journey.
The preparation might look like jotting down some if-then or when-then rules. For instance, if I'm getting back to the hotel, I'm setting a location-based reminder on my phone that I need to only 5-10 minutes for adding a few lines to my diary. Or, if I'm waking up in the morning, I want to do some push-ups. I consider it a good idea to put these rules on a post-it or piece of paper, or several little pieces. Then scatter these pieces in the hotel room. Maybe leave an additional note for the room service explaining your situation, if you're in the mood for it.
As I'm writing about these suggestions, I remember the book Simple Rules by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt. Also, a useful habit tracking tool is the iOS app Streaks by Crunchy Bagel and their additional Streaks Workout app. In case you're curious about what my habits are that I'm focusing on, these are journalling, essential physical exercise, and reading computer programming and architecture related books.
This topic is way more critical and even more related to other changes in our lives, not just traveling and work. Our habits form our careers, our development, and fate over time. So don't let chances influence and shape your destiny.
