In 2016, I tried an experiment. For my New Year resolutions, rather than focus on goals and projects I wanted to accomplish, I decided to examine certain behaviors I wanted to stop doing.
I think focusing on negative behaviors can immediately dampen any resolve for improvement. If we get too discouraged with our present selves, the danger is that we’ll quit before we even begin.
Not everything I wanted to stop doing was necessarily a bad thing: most of them were just distractions. Mental clutter. A way of filling up my days with busy-ness so that I never had to confront projects I’d said had a higher priority.
Some were automatic responses to situations, that had ossified over time, morphing unconsciously into less desirable habits. Those automatic responses, that had become almost reflexive to certain stimuli: reflex actions like doom scrolling social media while I sipped my morning coffee.
Tracking Progress
So I made a list and almost immediately discovered another problem. How do you track a negative? How do you track that you aren’t doing something? How do you measure success?
The answer, of course, is to develop an alternative to the undesirable behavior. Ask yourself, what you want to do instead.
We respond better when told what to do rather than what not to. When children are running in the school hallways, tell them to “Walk!” rather than “Don’t run.” It focuses them on what they should do.
Likewise, I always say “Remember X” rather than “Don’t forget X” in order to focus on remembering.
Prescription is more effective than prohibition because it gives us an option of what to do instead.
Outcome
What was the outcome of my experiment?
When I made myself aware of some of my bad behavior, it was easy to find an alternative. Other behaviors are stickier. Maybe, like Ben Franklin, I should focus on cultivating one virtue a week, in rotation.