Habit fragility and puppies

How a puppy broke all my routines, and how to build resilient habits

This is issue #7 of Russell’s Index, where I write about the lessons I’ve learned—and continue to learn—as a founding employee at SharpestMinds. Subscribe for a new issue in your inbox every week(ish). Emphasis on the “ish”, for now.

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Habit Fragility

I’ve fallen behind on this newsletter recently. But I have an excuse—the monster pictured below.

The monster at 9 weeks old

Lucy showed up in our life quite suddenly and all my habits have gone out the window.

I’ve spent the last few years obsessed with forming good habits. I cultivated an extensive morning routine. I was doing pushups and sit-ups every day. I was reading every day. And—the habit I am most proud of—I was writing every day.

These all started as atomic habits. A single pushup. A single page. A single sentence. I would call a day successful if I did the bare minimum for each habit I was cultivating. Progress came from consistently showing up—from maintaining a streak.

After some time, I was doing much more than the bare minimum. I was far enough past “one sentence a day” that I was confident I could publish an entire newsletter every week. And so Russell’s Index was born.

But these new habits had become… well, habits—I was doing them without thinking. My day was a series of habit stacks, each habit cueing the next. Wake up, make some coffee, read a chapter, shower, write for an hour, start work.

The trouble with habit stacks is that they are fragile. Missing one habit can cause a chain reaction in all the habits stacked on top. A big enough change in routine or environment and all that conditioning is out the window.

Lucy was that sudden change in environment in our house. Puppies are a lot of work and require almost constant vigilance—when they are awake. Get down from there. Don’t eat that. Stop biting my feet. Lucy has disrupted my well-oiled routines. It turns out my habits were quite fragile.

Lucy demanding that I stop writing.

I no longer have the privilege of reading and writing in the morning before work. The puppy is awake. The puppy requires constant vigilance.

I can no longer use my lunch break to read articles. The puppy is awake. The puppy requires constant vigilance.

This is not to say I can’t do anything anymore thanks to Lucy. Just that my pre-puppy routines do not mesh well with the routines forced on me by puppy ownership. Lucy sleeps a lot (thank goodness) but that time needs to be prioritized towards SharpestMinds and, you know, life—eating, sleeping, spending time with loved ones.

Those sweet moments when the puppy is asleep.

So I’m back to square one with most of my habits. Luckily, I’ve built some resilience into my approach. My standards for myself have risen. One pushup and one sentence do not feel like big wins anymore. But my goal has (in theory) always been the same—do the bare minimum.

So I have lowered my expectations back down to the atomic level and begun to experiment with new routines. If I can longer write in the morning, it just means I need to find another time in the day to squeeze it in. I’m writing this just after 10 pm (Lucy’s bedtime) and so far, so good. But I won’t be satisfied until I’m writing every day —even it’s just one sentence.

It’s a good thing if our standards for ourselves rise, but failing to meet those standards can often cause us to give up entirely. Life happens. Our environments will change and we need to be ready to build up our habits from scratch every time.

I’ve found it very effective to keep those atomic goals in the back of my mind and to scale back when needed.

Do the bare minimum. But do it every day.

-Russell

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Thanks for reading! This was a bit of a departure from my usual content. And I expect to get back to SharpestMinds related things in future issues (so much to talk about!). But the next issue is probably going to be puppy-related as well. I’m just fascinated by the puppy training process. It’s very much like training machine learning algorithms, and there are lessons in both directions.