In Unhinged Habits, Jonathan Goodman debunks a “sacred cow” in personal development—the idea that the best way to make meaningful changes in our lives is via small, incremental improvements.
Think of: “The Compound Effect“, “Atomic Habits“, and “Tiny Habits“.
In theory, this is a nice idea.
If you make small, consistent improvements, they compound over time.
However, when I put this philosophy into practice, I feel like I’m making tiny bits of progress in several directions, but not getting very far in any:
My key takeaway from Goodman’s book is that consistency is only one half of a two-sided coin.
And it only works when it’s flanked by periods of intensity.
If you want to experience significant progress, an initial period of focused intensity is required.
Where you go “all in” on one thing for a limited period of time and put everything else on maintenance mode.
This period of intensity carves out new neural pathways and creates a new baseline standard which we can then maintain with consistency.
Now, what was previously our “ceiling”, becomes our “floor”.
As the author puts it:
“Intensity is for gaining. Consistency is for maintaining.”
In this view, consistency is a supplement to intensity.
For long term change, you need both.
Think of two approaches to learning Japanese.
Person A commits to spending 15 minutes on Duolingo every day for a year.
Person B moves to Tokyo for six months and immerses herself fully in the culture — only allowing herself to speak Japanese while she is there. Upon return, she maintains her learning with 15 minutes on Duolingo every day.
Who do you think is more likely to be fluent by the end of the year?
Sometimes it’s worth consciously choosing to get out of balance, so we can go big on one priority.
As Alain de Botton puts it:
“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”
During these seasons, we can be content with putting everything else on “maintenance” until the period of intensity has passed.
This doesn’t mean ignoring other priorities.
But it does mean doing only what is essential to maintain your existing standards in those areas.
To do this, Goodman recommends creating an “off-season checklist”.
Here you list all of the things you need to maintain as you go all in on your priority focus — so you can do so without anxiety that the rest of your life will descend into chaos.
In practice, this might involve creating subheadings for all of the key areas of your life and then a series of daily and weekly tasks to maintain in each.
What follows is an example of the author’s checklists during book writing seasons
Relationships:
— Daily breakfast and dinner with family
— Daily one-on-one play with each kid for fifteen minutes (minimum)
— Weekly date night
— Weekly text or call to a friend to say hello
— Weekly dinner with friends or neighbors
— Three weekly “out-of-the-blue” compliments to colleagues or team members
Fitness:
— Three weekly full-body workouts
— No more than two coffees a day
— Weekly zone 2 cardio session (long bike ride or jog)
Money:
— Publish 5-Reps Friday newsletter weekly
— Record The Obvious Choice podcast
— Publish to Instagram four times a week
— Prepare for, and attend, all team meetings
So a couple of questions to think about…
1.) What’s the one thing, that if you went “all in” on for a 90 day period, would have the biggest positive impact on your life?
2.) And when you do this, what will be on your off-season maintenance checklist?
