Closing 2021
The TLDR summary (3 minute read)
I refine my approach to identity based behaviour change by iterating on my approach to quarterly belief and habit setting.
The last time I talked about reflection, it was about reframing deterministic goals with positive beliefs that intend to consolidate by forming new habits. It was about describing the characteristics and identity I want to strengthen. A year later, it’s time to check in with how that went.
In a nutshell, the framework of setting beliefs in this post last year provided a great and lightweight way to set principles that would help me identify if a new behaviour or habit was aligned with my desired beliefs or opposed to them. Whether they were they aligned with a strategy for growth for the year or not. By setting out the 4 areas of Work, Relationships, Health and Fun, and 2 or 3 beliefs for each, it made it easy to do that sense check on new habits and to use habits as a vehicle to drive behaviour change incrementally.
Identity based behaviour change
While the Habit Loop is defined quite well by authors Charles Duhigg and James Clear, I didn’t find as many examples for how they regularly filter habits based on their connection to identity and beliefs. James Clear presents a linkage between outcomes, process and identity for which I now understand the connection to the Habits Loop. I didn’t really see a name for it so I guess this is what I like to call it: Identity based behaviour change. Let me know in the comments if this is already well defined by someone including James Clear because I’d love to read about it.
Where the framework has been less helpful has been to prompt for generating new habits systematically which by default, I assumed was an issue. When reflecting, I was able to describe the new habits that I formed in alignment with these beliefs and was surprised that they were quite exhaustive albeit things that I set out on closer to the beginning of the year.
Reflection on 2021
I noted down all of my new habits or environments I’ve put myself in (cues) that help me form new constructive habits easily for each of my 2021 beliefs.
2021 was a really cool year. It started off with incremental improvements in my work life, moving to some cool energy transformation content at Synergy but since it just wasn’t fast enough learning, I moved to IBM. I think I’ve found my people in that the team I work with is just so good and the culture of growth and development is fantastic. I can be a better person at IBM.
I was able to really improve my default hesitance to build new relationships and strengthened many bonds with friends and colleagues. While I don’t think my health was very good overall, it helped me to pin-point an unsustainable practice I’ve had regarding an over-full calendar that’s reduced my capacity overall.
Three learnings to apply to next year:
Keep up a habit of hypothesising what some new habits could be to consolidate the belief and take the first step to make them easy to put the belief setting in to practice
My ability to consolidate beliefs and habits depends on my energy and health to follow through. I realised that my extensive music performance schedule has hindered my ability to keep my health and energy levels high for my higher priorities. I’ve enjoyed work a lot this year and it’s time to turn some more attention to it and to keep up my health, music is something I feel ok about reducing my load on.
Keep the review cycle light and quarterly
What am I doing now to make it easier to form these habits? Simply setting a quarterly calendar event on a Saturday to remind myself to take the time to check in with my 2022 beliefs and new habits.
Setting up 2022
When I looked back at the 2021 beliefs, I was surprised at how timeless they were. Of the 9 that I set in 2021, I replaced 2 and added one to reflect a tweak in direction and method.
Time spent listening to Brené Brown’s audiobook ‘Dare to lead’ has been giving me the vocabulary and guiderails to describe and hone my preferred personal brand of leadership. Rather than embracing uncertainty and supporting in the community through it, I choose to demonstrate the required behaviours with courage and authenticity.
Fun is reframed as these sorts of blogs for reflection, creating a quarterly cycle and sharing the learnings from the last quarter
With the beliefs set, I took a moment to think of some new habits that might help me to consolidate them. Where in 2021, some of the habits kicked off as deterministic goals, this year, I have a set of habits to test, knowing that I can make them more attractive and sustainable using the Habit Loop. If they don’t take even with the right habit loop, perhaps they are not well aligned to the beliefs I want to consolidate. Hence, ‘possible’ or ‘probabilistic’ habits that may or not take and that I’ll be able to reassess each quarter. For each of the 11 habits listed in the slide above, I have a trigger, an event that I’ve flagged that will remind me to kick off the habit loop.
With the quarterly reflection block stuck in to my calendar and a handful of new habits with habit loop triggers, I feel I’m ready to take on 2022! See you next quarter.
