There’s one approach to building habits that I call “the elevator approach.” In this approach, you’re on the ground floor when you start. You paint the picture of where you want to go – e.g., I don’t exercise today – but, this year, I expect to exercise five times per week. That goal might be the equivalent of the 5th floor on your exercise habit building.
Then, with a flourish, you press the elevator to come and get you.
The other approach is the “stairs approach.” You simply take a first step – i.e., you go from exercise zero times per week to once. It might just be a ten minute workout. But it is better than nothing. Then, you increase the quantity or frequency or quality, and so on.
For instance, this is how I’ve changed my workouts in the past 4 years.
2020: Time to become aware of how little I’ve been taking care of myself – get an Apple Watch. Then attempt to just close the 3 rings. But with COVID and two young kids, I barely manage this.
2021: Close my rings significantly more often. My exercise ring is closed by walking outdoors on most days. I manage an occasional morning run.
2022: I want closing rings to be a habit most weekdays. I also want to substitute 15 mins of an outdoor walk with an Apple Fitness+ workout. This happens roughly half the time.
2023: I get a virtual personal trainer on Future. For half the year, I manage to do a 15 min workout nearly every weekday. After reading Outlive, I add a 10 min run for some regular Zone 2 + VO2 max training. Also begin to bring back an hour of soccer every week.
2024: Convert to 2 days per week personal training with ~1 hour workouts. For the remaining weekdays, doing a mix of running and Fitness+ workouts.
It’s still early in 2024. But I know that I’ve walked up a few more stairs vs. 2023. And I’ll continue to climb up more stairs as time passes.
That’s the secret about building habits – that there is likely no secret elevator that is going to take us where we want to go.
We love stories about people who manage to make the elevator approach work for them. That’s no different from loving the stories of people who made hundreds of million dollars in one go.
It might work for a few – but it is likely not the strategy you want to bank on. As a rule, we’re better off assuming it won’t work for us.
So, skip the elevator and take the stairs – both in our approach to habits and in our daily lives.
