Charles Duhigg writes in his book, The Power of Habit, that “change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” He’s absolutely right. That book is what pushed me to add structure around my bedtime, cook more of my own food and become a more consistent runner. None of that was particularly easy, since before 2016 or so I had been doing the exact opposite. Everything was built up piece by piece (and with a lot of help from running, which tends to bring other habits along with it).
Other habits I’ve built, however, have simply fallen into my lap, something I recognized a couple months ago after getting sick with the flu. I spent that Thursday and Friday at home, pounding Advil and sleeping a lot, and by the time the weekend was over I realized it had been four days since I had drank coffee. For anyone who drinks two or more cups of coffee a day, you probably think four days without coffee sounds challenging. Anyone who drinks five or more probably thinks I’m insane. Four days without coffee sounded miserable to me too. I don’t think I had done a day without caffeine in the prior four years, if not longer.
The flu had given me a gift. I was so achy from the virus, and had taken so much medicine, that I skipped over the caffeine withdrawal period. I had headaches, I’m sure of it, but I associated them with something else. My stomach felt nauseous, so I avoided coffee while sick, and by the time my head had cleared, and any medicine had worn off, I was past the worst of it. I spent Monday and Tuesday of the next week quietly continuing my experiment, drinking nothing but decaffeinated tea, and by the time 5pm rolled around on Wednesday I had done it: one week with no caffeine.
Changing habits is daunting, and we’re always in awe of those who can create change out of nowhere. The overweight coworker who eats nothing but carrots for lunch and sheds thirty pounds; the scrawny kid who commits to a workout regimen and gains a similar thirty pounds of muscle. We love stories like these because they conjure up images in our minds of supreme willpower and strength, of the smoker who triumphantly discards his last cigarette and never looks back.
I think what we miss when we tell ourselves these stories is the role that external catalysts play in jumpstarting our actions. I spent the first twenty-something years of my life with an unmade bed before I started dating Anne, and now I refuse to leave my bed unmade, regardless of where I slept the night before. Did she force me to change my ways? No. But she makes her bed, and so I started making the bed when she was around, and very quickly I realized that the arduous task I had hated doing wasn’t so arduous after all. Even better, I started competing with myself. I didn’t want to break the streak.
I bet that for most of us, there is a catalyst that drives us to change our behaviors, even for the strongest willed people out there. I met a runner once who had gone from 300 pounds to running 100 mile races in one year. His secret? His wife bet him that he couldn’t run a half marathon in a week’s time and he did. He jumped so far beyond the source of his fear that, after his legs had recovered, running that next three miles didn’t seem so bad. The more we think about it, the more we realize a lot of the strong-willed people we know had catalysts just like these. A parent who suffers an early heart attack. A boss that makes you get into the office earlier.
This might seem like a direct contraction to Duhigg’s message in The Power of Habit. After all, the point he drives home in the book is that small changes in behavior lead to much larger ones. He certainly doesn’t advocate for grand gestures, like throwing away all your junk food or trying to wake up three hours earlier. He definitely would not advocate for sitting and waiting for a so called catalyst to come save the day. When one does, however, I’m sure he would advise us to take it. If the hump is the hardest part to overcome, then why shouldn’t we accept a ride to the top?
It’s been two months since I stopped drinking coffee, and I’ve only broken it once. Interestingly, the day I decided to get a coffee, which was two Saturdays ago, I decided to get another a few hours later, which says a lot about how easily habits can be unbroken. Even so, I stuck to my original plan and haven’t had any since, aided along in no doubt by the city’s quarantine measures, but back on track just the same. Is caffeine something I feel I really need to cut out of my life? Not at all. I love coffee. I want to go back to drinking coffee some day. But for now my curiosity is getting the better of me, and I want to see where this goes. I was given a free ride through the part of going cold turkey everyone fears most – the withdrawal – and I’m not going to let that go so easily.