Unlearning: Get rid of old habits slowing you down

New habits are useless if you keep falling back onto your old ones

When trying to improve some part of yourself or learn a new skill, most articles and eye-catching videos will tell you that consistency is key, small gains every day, and much more.

While this is all very good advice one piece of advice is mostly left out which can be one of the most frustrating hidden hurdles.

Old habits that stop your new progress.

Here’s the best way to learn something new by unlearning what you knew before.

Photo credit by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Coming into a new year often has people setting themselves with huge goals. While you set out with the best intentions you often forget to take into account all the old habits that have been hardwired into your brain.

These can be small tasks that scale in bad ways. Like scrolling through social media, playing games, or watching something. Bad scaling as in as time passes the more you lose track of the time you spend on them and how they can really take over your day.

Step 1: Recognise the Problem

Like chocolate bars, these things are nice in small doses, but when they consume all our free time they become more of a comfort habit.

It’s being able to take a step back and realize that when you think you spend 5 minutes on Instagram in the morning you actually spend 45 minutes.

This is something I noticed after starting my work placement my good habit of getting up at half 6 and leaving at half 7 was being completely taken up by my 45 min scroll through social media.

It put me on the back foot to start my day for weeks until I recognized why I was falling so easily into this habit.

If the habit is more subtle try and quantify it by seeing the time you spend on it or how you go over your original intentions. Do you intend to eat half a chocolate bar and then eat 3?

When you find the source of the habit you can then move on to step 2.

Step 2: Break Down the Habit

Once the bad habit is noticed, breaking it down is next. While it seems easy to tackle it straight on, it’s ingrained in you. So you need to find out why you fall into it so easily and why it makes you feel this way.

Does it give you some sense of control back?

Does it give you joy on an otherwise miserable day?

Does it bring excitement?

For me, it was happiness. I was mostly looking at funny videos and comics and I would get caught up and keep scrolling and scrolling looking for something funnier until I realized the time and had to run.

Most of the time I had even just turned off the alarm on my phone and brought it right back into bed with me which just kept me there in the bed.

So the problem truly was that when I woke up I was clicking straight into Instagram once I turned off my alarm before climbing right back into my warm bed and getting stuck.

Breaking it down smaller was, it was too easy to:

Pick up my phone
Click into social media
Get back into bed

Now that I’ve broken this problem it’s onto the final step

Step 3: Attack these Smaller Problems One by One

Divide and conquer as Caesar said right?

Now that the bad habit has been recognized and broken into smaller parts just simplify it further by taking them on one at a time.

With the understanding of why you have this habit try and find that in something else. If you watch too much TV and social media, find an interesting audiobook or podcast to listen to as you do something more productive.

Place barriers between you and the trigger of these habits so as to slow you down from initiating it.

Take my own example with bringing my phone to bed.

First I moved it farther away from my bed to turn off the alarm, having it at a distance stopped me grabbing it from the bed and turning the alarm off, and start scrolling.

I also had the volume very loud so as to make me turn it off fast to not disturb my brother in the room below me. This gave me a shot of energy and woke me up that little bit more. I also starting making the bed so as to discourage me from getting back in.

I also moved the app to a folder in a new location to make it more difficult for me to get to in the morning. Adding that extra few steps between you and the habit can act as a deterrent to doing it. Sometimes I delete the apps altogether.

Photo by Malvestida Magazine on Unsplash

Conclusion

The most important thing I feel is that you build an understanding that you can have great intentions of starting loads of new habits…

BUT,

To get these habits going faster and make it less likely to crash down, you’ll need to find the bad ones that could be standing in the way.

Sometimes it could be one or even a few. You might not even notice it.

But to help the new ones stick, old bad ones have to go.

Thanks for reading this far, I hope you’d consider following The Hidden Hutch where I will be posting more content!