If you are looking for serious advice on Habit formation, then there are lots of good resources out on internet. One of the best books on the topic is Atomic Habits by James Clear. You could also look at the works for Prof. BJ Fogg including his Ted Talk or his book Tiny Habits. This blog post is probably the wrong place for professional advice.

In case you are looking for advice from someone more average, and someone who has struggled to incorporate health and mindfulness into his routine, but still somehow figured out a way, then you may find something useful.

Bit of History

Before Corona Virus hit, I had worked hard to build a good routine, I was going try to do different 30-day challenges with a bunch of friends e.g. Cold Shower Challenge in January 2020, I did a 100 push-ups a day (spread over all day not in one session :P), etc.

But when the lock-down hit everything changed. All routines fell off track.

Watching kids and staying on top of office work was taking up all the time, and that was ok, it was more important to get the house in order. But as a result, I started experiencing a severe back pain.

As the paranoia around Corona Virus has subsided, I’ve been meaning to build some exercise routine again.

I have been slowly trying to rebuild some exercises and meditation into my routine. After multiple failed attempts and frustrations, I have reached a place where I am moderately satisfied with where I am.

If you are in a similar position and would like to figure out to build healthy habits in these difficult times, then the following tips might be helpful –

Start small

As I was experiencing back pain, I thought stretching would a good thing to start with. So I started by just doing 3 surya namaskar in the morning. Plus, whenever I experienced back pain, I’ll do a few back stretches during the day.

As this was only taking 5 mins, I didn’t feel that it was taking time out of anything else that I could be or should be doing.

I did the same thing with Meditation, I started using Headspace 5 mins sessions in Basics (free course).

Use a Habit Tracker

There are two reasons why this is so important –

Real-time feedback –

Problem with healthy habits is that you don’t see the results in real-time. The feedback loop is too slow. The joy of drinking a Coca-Cola or eating an ice-cream is real-time – in the moment. The corresponding dopamine release is instant. Whereas, doing an exercise is painful in the instant, you will see the results in loooooong-term. It much easier for you to convince yourself to skip exercise than to say no to ice cream or binge watching Netflix.

Using a Habit Tracker can help you build a substitute for the long feedback loop. Seeing a streak on a calendar is win and putting that ‘X’ against a day could give you that instant dopamine release as well, and the feedback loop of checking the box or not is real-time as well.

Loss Aversion –

Habit Trackers are also useful for another reason that they build on the idea of Loss Aversion, that human mind prefers to avoid losses. Once you have a streak of a few ‘X’s on the calendar back to back, you will feel invested in it and you will try to avoid breaking the chain. This strategy is also known as “Seinfeld Strategy”, as popularized by the famous comedian, Jerry Seinfeld.

If you need a recommendation on a Good Free Habit Tracker, check out Loop Habit Tracker (only available on Android).

Two-day Rule

Even after using Habit Tracker, you will still have missed days. And it’s important not to beat up yourself for those missed days. Instead on these days, it’s important to remind yourself of the Two-day rule. Two-day rule is another popular rule around habit-building that basically says, “No two missed days together”.

If you miss the exercise one day, then make sure you don’t put two missed days on your Habit Tracker back to back.

Layer things on top

After I had gotten into a bit of routine with the small setup. I felt a bit adventurous and thought I’ll add some body-weight exercise to my routine e.g. push-ups, sit-ups, crunches etc.

So, I added another set of 5-min exercises following the Surya Namaskar.

So now my routine looked like 10-min exercise and 5-min meditation

Slowly over 2 months, I’ve added a third-set of 5 mins as well and now I have a more respectable 15-min morning exercise routine

Combining Two-day rule and layering

I think this is where the Layering becomes beneficial. In case I feel like I skipping some day, I’ll tell myself may be I’ll just do Set 1 – 3 Surya Namaskar.. No harm in that.. that’s easy.. just stretching.. Basically, I’m tricking myself into moving

Once I start, I’ll tell myself ok may be I can do one more set and skip the last one. Both sides of me win, the good side feels like that I got in some exercise, and the dark side wins as I didn’t do all the sets.

But next day, I’ll myself of the two-day rule and get all 3-sets in.

Remind yourself Why you are doing this

Another thing to note is even though I have been doing this routine for a while, it’s not something I look forward to. It’s like eating vegetables, you eat them because you know they are good for you. Instead if you had an option to eat chocolate all day, or chips with coke and some Jack in it (actually masala peanuts would be better than chips with that), you would look forward to that.

Why I mention this is because every morning I have this urge to skip the exercise today.

Doing exercise is hard, and I don’t know if it’ll ever be something I look forward to, but you still need to do it.

I tell myself this will give me more energy during the day, and get more done at work, and I won’t experience back pain

It comes down the idea of Pain and Pleasure driving your actions. As the famous Jeremy Bentham quote goes, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do”.

So on the days you are don’t feel like exercising (which is everyday for me :P), remind yourself of why you are doing this in the first place.

July 21, 2020 is my 21 day streak of doing exercise and Meditation everyday.

It’s debatable whether you need to do the habit for 21 days or 66 days to make it stick. But I feel by doing I have earned my right, to brag about this on internet, and pretend to be an expert who can advice you on what to do. Take it or leave it :).