Geek's Guide to Getting Better

Tomorrow I start again—new week, new me—and I will never skip a gym day, choose unhealthy food or oversleep. Never again.

And in five days time when the pressure has become too much and I naturally fail (because I am only human after all) and after I have berated myself for failing (because I am only human after all) I will once again return to the precipice of “new” and dare to try again.

Sound familiar? This is the perpetual cycle of self-sabotage I have been on for most, if not all, of my adult life. That desperate desire to improve myself, but the completely naïve belief that if this time I *really* mean it, then I’ll be able to make it happen. I have been back at this threshold so many times they put a plaque up commemorating me.

The truth is, I do want to change. Obviously. I wouldn’t be writing a blog about getting better if I didn’t want to change, but I am also recognising more and more that I am likely a winner of the neurodiverse lottery that I hear so much about on social media. Now, I’m no medical professional, and I definitely don’t think anyone should seriously seek to self-diagnose themselves with anything based off a cursory scroll through TikTok and a thirty post streak of “if this sounds like you then you have brain squiggles” reels, but even I have to admit that time-blindness, racing thoughts, hyper-fixations, and an inability to commit to even a hobby for more than three days, are all a little outside of ordinary.

This, at least according to me, is what brings me back to the threshold every time. I want to change, and in my adreneline and neuro-squiggly excitement for change, I over commit and tell myself how I am going to change everything overnight and that it’ll happen because I really really want it. If I believe hard enough, maybe I really can fly. And so the morning of “new day, new me” arrives and I leap from the threshold, arms spread, knowing that belief alone is the wind beneath my wings.

And for a few days, it works. Pure willpower can topple the peaks from mountains and nothing can stand in my way, I am the bringer of change and all bad habits shall tremble and quake before me. I am forever changed and I will never return to the way I was before. And this is perfect and all the things I touch turn to gold.

But forever is a long time. And wouldn’t it be great if I just took *one* day off because I have been amazingly good all week and today has been hard. One night won’t make all that much difference. But if I only have tonight, I should probably make the most out of it. Let’s really make sure we’re enjoying that one cheat night we’ve agreed to. Then the morning comes again and the consequences of my actions stare me in the face, burning brighter than the summer sun at 5.30am and I am pretty sure it’s not a sin to skip the gym as well.

I’m back in the old habits and on the miserable climb back to the threshold, hoping when I get there the motivation will have resurfaced and I’ll be ready to go again, because next time I’ll definitely make it.

There Has to Be Another Way

Since stepping out into the big adult world in 2011, I have fallen into this loop again and again, and every time I manage to trick myself into thinking that this time it will be different, and I have finally come to realise it never is. The enthusiasm is a lie, the motivation is deceiving, and just like Icarus, my wings of willpower begin to smoulder before I even notice the heat. I have realised that I need to do things differently, that I need to adjust my thinking.

I have already talked about the importance of systems, and how they are the backbone of everything we do. But changing systems is hard. The grooves in my brain that built these habits were laid over decades of bad choices and no amount of “really hoping for the best” is going to rub those marks out. It takes effort, it takes dedication, and it takes time.

I recently watched a Ted Talk from Angela Lee Duckworth about the power of Grit. In it, she talked about how the success rate of high achieves in education was not determined by skill, by natural ability, by IQ, or any other measure, but by one thing. Grit. As she puts it: “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

Endurance. That’s the word she kept coming back to, and that was what I was beginning to realise that I was missing. It wasn’t enough to decide on a change and simply to want it hard enough, it was about asking how I can develop the endurance to stick with things, especially on the days when I don’t feel like it.

Now, this might sound like I am just excusing away a lack of discipline, but there’s real evidence to support this. Stage and Fedotov state in their paper ‘Anomalous cumulative inertia in human behaviour’:

Human behaviour is dictated by past experiences via cumulative inertia (CI): the longer a certain behaviour has been going on, the less likely change becomes.

That makes things sound hopeless. If I’ve spent the last 20 years avoiding good habits, it sounds impossible to make a change now, right?

Wrong.

Modern neuroscience has busted the myth that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. In the paper ‘Aging and brain plasticity’, Pauwels, Chalavi and Swinnen explore how there is “mounting evidence for lifelong brain plasticity”. You really can change your mind, and science proved it.

None of this, however, is to say that it is easy. Yes neuroplasticity means that your brain is capable of learning new patterns of behaviour and forgetting old ones, but the cumulative inertia of old habits doesn’t go away on its own. It’s tough, and it takes time, and most of us have never had to learn how to unlearn the things we do.

Seasons of Change

After decades trapped in wasp-cycle routines, I decided it was time to force a season-by-season reset—so I devised my ‘Seasons of Change.’ I call it ‘Seasons of Change’, because like the seasons, they are long enough to settle in, but not too long that they overstay their welcome and I get stuck in a rut. Plus it sounds a little like the song from Rent and the musical theatre lover inside me couldn’t miss the opportunity.

A season of change is a defined period of time where I commit to no more than three changes. Those changes can be as small or as big as I want, but they have to be contained enough that I can track them with a single measurement. I can’t have my change be “I am going to eat healthier” because that can’t be easily tracking with one measure. Should I measure my calories? My macros? The number of times I say no to a pasty?

The period should be short enough to not feel like a burden, but long enough to let the behaviour have a chance to settle in. We aren’t looking for life-long adjustments, this is about trying new things to figure out what feels right. You need to give it space to breathe, but you also need to commit to putting it under the microscope in the future to see if it has any real benefit.

For me, I am going with a 6 week season. It feels comfortable, achievable, and quick enough that even if I hate it, it’ll pass quickly enough. The season breaks down like this:

• Choose 1-3 small, measurable changes.
• Weeks 1 – 2: get your reps in. Focus on committing to every single completion. Celebrate every win.
• Weeks 3 – 4: chart your growth. Start thinking about how this effort compounds into greater change over time, keep that long term focus now that the short term high is starting to fade.
• Weeks 5 – 6: Start to reflect on how it feels. What is the biggest success? What is the biggest challenge? Can you pivot and get better outcomes?
• Pick your next few small changes, keep the ones that worked, throw the rest out.

It’s as simple as that. Simple, but not easy. I am anticipating the middle two weeks to be the hardest, as I get over the initial excitement and the wind begins to fall out from under me. I need to keep looking to that horizon to see where I’m trying to reach.

Pitfalls I am Expecting

If the last 6 weeks of doing this blog has taught me anything, it’s that you can never be too prepared for things to get tough. There are a couple of pitfalls I can foresee with the seasons model, but luckily for you and I, there are a few solutions to these as well:

1. Too many things I want to change
   There are a huge number of things I want to change, how do I choose where to start? Try ranking them in order, maybe of importance, or ease, or excitement. It doesn’t really matter what metric you use, but just put them in an order. Then pick the first few from the top. There’s where you start. Keep adding to the list when you get more ideas, but only ever take a couple at a time.
2. Perfectionism
   What if I miss a day? What if I get it wrong? What if it doesn’t stick? Then maybe the way you did it this time just isn’t for you. There’s more than one way to knit a scarf, in your next season try something different. Or move it to the bottom of your list and let the idea percolate a little while longer. This isn’t a race and there are no more points for coming first than coming last, the only thing that matters is that you keep jogging.
3. Skipping the review
   This is the only one that is lethal to the system. If you don’t stop to notice the seasons change, before you know it you’ll be back in winter wondering where the summer went. Reflecting on the experience is vital, but it doesn’t need to be cumbersome. Five minutes thinking while you have a cup of coffee before work is enough, all you need is space to reflect on the season and how it has felt for you. To take the learning and to apply it and move on to the next one.

The key to this whole thing is: intentionality. It’s about not feeling powerless in the journey of your life, and about choosing to ease up on the throttle a little, slow down, and really think about the direction you’re moving in.

My current season is focused on two things:

1. Intentional, focused movement for at least 20 minutes, 4 times a week.
2. 90 minutes of “deep joy” a week

That’s it. That’s the whole season. It’s small, it’s simply, but imagine where I’ll be in a years time if just these two habits stick. That’s a pretty powerful thought. Standing at the threshold of this six weeks, I’m not asking “will I fail again?”, I’m asking “what new wings will I build this season?”

What are you going to do for your next season? Take some time and share in the comments what you are going to be focusing on, and how you plan to bring seasons of change into your life.

And remember, as Philippa Perry said in ‘The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read’:

If you’re not designing your life, someone else is designing it for you.