I Ran A Bit Every Day for a Month. The Results Were Bewildering!
Guide to Keystone Habits and how they can transform your life
My friends and family said I have become more likeable. I did better at my craft. All that in just a month?
A healthy body takes time, effort, and love to cultivate. Health is an ongoing process, not an outcome to achieve on a timeline.
Apart from the obvious health benefits, running transformed something else too, and that changed my life.
I Was a ‘Sometimes’ Fitness Person
I have generally been a fit person. While not an athlete, I have consciously adopted a healthy life. I eat wholesome meals and do Yoga, Karate, and Strength Training. But I have struggled with consistency and routine.
Motivation strikes me like lightning and fizzles out like a spark.
My workouts have always been sporadic. The slight tummy paunch never really left me, and the chisels have always been a distant dream.
The irregular spurts of motivation kept me going, albeit inconsistently, in other areas of my life too — side hustles, hobbies, and freelance projects. I was doing good enough. ‘Good enough’ paid my bills. But something seemed amiss.
The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency. — Jim Collins
I felt mediocre. I wanted to do something to get rid of this feeling.
And just then, I decided, on a whim, to run 5k every day at my local park. Run, without fail. Run as if my life depended on it.
The First Days Are The Toughest
The first day was fueled by this mad drive to rise above the ashes and be the best runner the world has ever seen.
The very next day, I sheepishly tried to reward this future legendary runner with a break and a burger. But I resisted! I wanted to cross out every single day for the next 29 days in my calendar.
But I persisted! I wanted to cross out every single day for the next 29 days in my calendar.
As humans, we are constantly looking for feedback. However, like humans, feedback comes in all shapes and sizes, never predictable, never reliable. Thanks to technology, however, we can get a reliable and consistent dose of feedback.
The Strava app regularly showed my performance stats, speed graph, and challenge progress over time. I did a 5k every day. On some days and stretched it to a seven or even a 10k.
My runs improved. From taking 8 minutes to run a kilometer in just over 15 days, I came at 6:30, which was a huge milestone and a personal best.
My 5k best effort was at 30 minutes by the end of the month. I reduced 10 minutes of run time when I first started at 40 minutes.
The endorphins kept me going after the difficult first few days. I saw something else subtly transforming too…
The Secret Sauce— Keystone Habits
Not all habits are created equal. Some habits are better than others because, once acquired, they make other positive habits much easier to develop. Other habits may provide you some enjoyment but won’t ripple into other areas of your life.
Take the habit of playing video games, for example. Aside from being fun, investing time in playing games like Call of Duty or League of Legends doesn’t offer much to improve your quality of life.
You don’t learn much save for developing some basic direction skills navigating the game map and mastering the art of trolling teenage boys on the internet.
On the contrary, dedicating the time and energy to get good at games is more likely to harm other areas of your life. Instead, you’ll be sitting all day, getting fat and lazy.
A habit like running, on the other hand, is drastically better in its ability to improve your life. It will make you fitter, increase your stamina, give you more energy, improve your focus and alertness, raise your metabolism, etc.
Ironically, running might help you become better at video games. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true.
These “high return” habits are often called keystone habits. If you can only adopt a single new habit, try to develop one of these.
Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as “small wins.” They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious. by Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
When I started running, I didn’t know about keystone habits. I had made a promise to run every morning dedicatedly. Over time, a routine began to emerge around my running. Regular healthy breakfasts, optimum protein intake, and the best of all — waking up early and sleeping like a baby.
And therefore, with better nutrition and better sleep, I felt energetic at my work. My focus and motivation levels also soared. Prose that took me hours to write started finishing faster, simply because I felt more alert and concentrated.
Earlier, I used to feel snacky and often grabbed a piece of brownie or other junk food. With running in my daily schedule, I was much more in control of what I put inside my tummy. Snacks were replaced with salads and fruits.
Running became a keystone habit around which a lot of my life changed, for the good!
Here Are 3 Tips to Help You Get Started with Running —
- Start by having short but sweat (notice the pun? 😝) sessions of half an hour. Short enough to not get bored and long enough to sweat!
- Invest in a good pair of wireless headphones. Listen to music or audiobooks while running.
- Play around with your pace while running. Variation in pace makes running more engaging, just as how variation in pitch makes a speech interesting.
Pro Tip: These days, the term ‘BHAG’ is becoming popular for goal setting. It stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. If you are to achieve a goal, don’t focus on the BHAG itself. Look for small tangible wins and be consistent. If you want to read 50 books a year, monitor the number of pages you’re reading each day :)
What Other Keystone Habits Can You Develop?
Unfortunately, it is difficult to know exactly which habits give the best returns per unit of time invested. During my search for keystone habits, I found the internet flooded with a lot of low-quality listicles.
Even an article that is on the first page of Google search results mentions subpar points like “Sleep more” or “Stick to Routines”.
Worry not, I have identified the following four keystone habits that had the best return on investment for me :
- Exercise
- Reading
- Writing
- Meditation
Pick any one of these, and you won’t go wrong!
Finally, A Few Words From The Author -
Running helped me improve my mental health and take control of my routine. And yet, it wasn’t really about running. Instead, it was about the promise I made to myself for just one non-negotiable activity of my day. And that had a ripple effect on my lifestyle.
For you, it could be playing a heartfelt song on your guitar or knitting or painting, or even just playing a sport for fun or otherwise. It can be anything.
What’s your keystone habit?
Recommended Readings
These insights helped me develop new habits and become more productive.
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