What is a Habit routine & How it helps us ?
Let us first discuss, How do we humans work to get better results? Can you guess ?
We co-ordinate & co-operate with each other to get the work done.We amplify the results when we work together.Do you agree ? Thats the advantage any species on the earth has, to work as a team.This is also the core topic for the book “Sapiens” written by Yuval Noah Harari. You might be thinking Why am I discussing about this team work ?
After working with the habit building process with many individuals for the past 2+ years, I found a similar pattern with the habit building process.Even the habits are more effective to deliver results when we combine them.As they work as a team for long term sustainable results.
So what do we call it, when we combine habits together ? Yes, It is called Habit routine.In simple terms we can call them a morning routine or evening routine etc.
Why are they more effective ?
As by building a routine, we can efficiently work with less distraction and the habits when packed in the form of a routine are synergistic to each other.
Eg: The Morning routines are the more effective ones as our health is very intricately related to the circadian rythym.Even when you explore Ayurveda and other ancient texts, they mentions about the significance of Brahmamuhurtha. The temparature is cool, air is fresh, environment is calmer & less distractions in the mornings, thus making morning routine a perfect start for the day. Even the important aspect of habit building is Consistency, which can be kept as there are less chances to skip it, If we do it in the morning.
We can also build a Evening routine, Sleeping routine & Dietary routine based on what exactly we are looking for.Though these routines are a bit challenging to build as they tend to easily break, still they are very effective for better results whether it comes for weightloss or stress management.
In the initial few months we focus on building the habits, but slowly our intention is to build a 30 minute Morning routine or a 15 minute evening routine, where we combine 2-3 habits together & keep doing them till they become a habit.
Eg: A simple morning routine can be like 10 minute meditation followed by 10 minute walk & a 5 minute book reading.It forms a 30 minute Morning routine, which is very effective in long run, as habits compound with time, where as the habit routines compound much quickly if we can execute them properly.
SOURCES :
1.Atomic Habits – James Clear
2.The Power of habit – Charles Duhigg
3.Predictable Irrational- Dan Ariely