Habits should feel like brushing teeth

Ever started a new habit, did it stupendously well for 30 days, so well you started thinking “I’m so good at this, I got this”.

You up the difficulty level, now you’re shining. You’re that model CEO that gets written about who wakes up at 3am and meditates for 4 hours then works out and runs a $ billion company.

30 days later.

Crash.

It was too much. The system got overloaded. You got overloaded. You’re back to no meditation, no exercise, no all the 6000 good habits you took upon yourself in a short period of time.

I’ve struggled with this for years.

I have intense periods of greatness, followed by… not greatness.

To be clear, I don’t shut off completely or anything. But for short periods of time, I’m able to do all the things that I picture my ideal self doing daily.

Something’s not right. I keep starting, I almost get consistent, I keep breaking.

That’s when something my friend & co-founder Sankalp said one day struck me.

I worked out just for 15 minutes everyday for an entire year. By the end it got so easy to workout, it was harder not to workout. Working out started to feel like brushing.

You just brush, right?

You’re not struggling to add brushing to your morning routine.

Brushing just happens, like a maintenance job.

Habits should feel like brushing teeth.

This thought has stuck with me.

I’ve been practicing 10 minutes of breathing and 15 minutes of flexibility exercises every morning for about two weeks. And while I’m tempted to move up and increase the difficulty, this time, I’m deliberately slowing down.

The objective has become - can I keep doing this for 1 year, after which my breathing and flexibility routine would feel like brushing, would feel like a maintenance job.

Turn habits into a regular maintenance job.

That way I can continue practicing them for the rest of my life, which was the goal in the first place.

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BTW, try this super simple habit tracker app I created using Google sheets.