Habit Taxonomy

So far, I have talked a lot about things related to habits, but not about habits specifically. In this chapter, I will discuss what I mean when I talk about habits. I present to you the Habit Taxonomy.

It is imperative that you, the reader, and I, the author, have the same understanding of what a habit is. Different people might define the same term differently, which often leads to confusion. Abstract concepts especially necessitate a clean-cut definition so no problems arise from misunderstandings.

Thus, in this part of the book, we will conceptualize the idea of habits and fill it with meaning. This may require you to replace your current understanding of what a habit is.

With a conceptualization, it is easier to understand how habits work and how they affect your personal development and growth. Conceptualizing habits helps us to grasp subtleties and nuances within different types of habits. This, in turn, helps sharpen our understanding of how personal growth works—allowing us to make the right adjustments. Of course, such a conceptualization is and can never be perfect. However, having a structured understanding will help us to focus our time and energy in the right way.

The common understanding of habit is variegated. Merriam Webster has several definitions for what a habit is. It can be “a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior” or “the prevailing disposition or character of a person’s thoughts and feelings (mental makeup).”

In this book, we take a threefold approach to defining habits, breaking them down into three categories, each having unique characteristics. The biggest commonality of each habit is their character. A habit is something done (almost) automatically, and it is done consistently. Essentially, a habit becomes part of a person’s character and is relatively permanent. Doing something only once, thus, cannot be a habit. At this point, it is easy to see why Daily Repetition is so important for forming habits.

The three types of habits are Growth Habits, Behavioral Habits, and Mindset Habits.

The Three Types of Habits

Growth Habits

Every successful HabitSystem should begin with Growth Habits because they have the capacity to positively affect all areas of your life. In a nutshell, Growth Habits are related to learning skills and enhancing knowledge—they make you grow as a person. Growth Habits can be broadly categorized into five categories. These categories are physical growth, mental growth, creative growth, entrepreneurial growth, and generic personal development. To help understand these categories of habits, we can refer to them as Growth Spheres, as shown in this image and then detailed below:

Physical Growth

Physical growth relates to all growth that has to do with your body and your health. It is about personal fitness, sheer power, agility, energy, and wellbeing. This can involve weightlifting, climbing, cycling, football, yoga, or any other type of physical activity that improves your health or increases your fitness level. It also includes daily routines that enhance your health like drinking green smoothies and getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine.

Mental Growth

Mental growth encompasses knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual development. It’s about being intellectually well-rounded, skilled in various areas, and calm. Examples of Mental Growth Habits include reading, meditating, visualization, or learning mentally taxing activities like coding or math.

Creative Growth

Creative growth is more of an external representation of your mental capabilities. While your creative pursuits all start mentally, they eventually become pieces of art in the outside world. Creative Growth Habits can manifest in anything from writing, drawing, and making music, to designing websites and taking photos.

Entrepreneurial Growth

This type of growth relates to your career or your business. It’s about becoming a better sales person, a better manager, or simply a more efficient worker. It encompasses growing and developing your business, managing your finances, and becoming financially independent.

Personal Development

Personal development refers to generic activities that make you grow as a person. This includes but is not limited to morning routines, success journals, or maintaining consistent sleep times.

In Section Three, The Crown, we will examine different types of Growth Habits in each of these five Growth Spheres.

The Importance of Growth Habits

Growth Habits are the first habits you should implement because they directly influence every facet of your life. From the physical and mental, to creative and entrepreneurial, the benefits of Growth Habits are seen broadly across all areas of your personal development. These benefits grow steadily over time and compound each other. As such they represent the quickest means of upward personal development. Growth Habits offer the highest return on investment in the shortest period of time.

Wait! Did I just say that they will provide fast results? Didn’t I just spend most of the book thus far driving home the point about the long-term component of habits?!

I did! Yet, habits will yield results faster than you might expect. By fast I mean that changes may be noticeable in a matter of a few weeks. I consider this fast in the context of a lifespan. Of course, it is not fast like take a pill and become superman. Something this “fast” does not exist and if it did, there would be severe negative consequences in the future.

But really, Growth Habits will create results faster than you might expect. In part, this is because you probably have never before followed these habit-forming techniques and so have had no idea of what to expect. You will be surprised by the effect of Daily Repetition and how a streak of 30 consecutive days creates significant impact.

The Spillover Effect

Growth Habits do not exist in a vacuum. That is, everything in your life is connected—for better or worse. In this book, we target the positive parts of life, and Growth Habits are habits that will add something to your life. They will improve a certain area of your life and, in the long run, spillover to other aspects of your life.

Success begets success.

Have you ever wondered about the fact that many successful people seem to be good in multiple areas of their life? Why are they healthy, physically fit, financially well off, and engaged to attractive people? This is not a coincidence. I call this the Spillover Effect.

You may have heard of the term upward spiral or the opposite, downward spiral. This concept encompasses the notion that positive experiences result in more positive experiences—but the reversal is also true.

The concept of Growth Habits and that of Growth Spheres assume that a variety of skills from unrelated areas increase the chance of creative peaks and business progress. The more skills you acquire, the more you understand the world, and the higher the chances become that this big net of improvements will help you create something new and unique.

Most successful breakthroughs in science and business were caused when unrelated disciplines came together. Steve Jobs was a fantastic marketing guy—a visionary; Steve Wozniak was a coding wizard. In today’s age of the Internet, it is now possible for a single person to build up a broad array of abilities. In my opinion, every person should strive to achieve not only broad knowledge but also a varied collection of skills. Scott Adams, the guy behind the famous Dilbert comics, calls this the “talent stack.” On his blog, you can find various articles related to this concept.

Essentially, implementing Growth Habits will turn you into a jack (or jane) of all trades and a knowledge machine. You will succeed in creative pursuits, you will master physical arts, and you will achieve the highest possible level mentally. This is a holistic approach in which the total of your abilities equal more than the sum of your knowledge and your skills—because they are interconnected.

It is quite simple: the more you know and the more energy you put into creative and physical pursuits, the more likely it is that you will live a fulfilled life. That is, a life of success and happiness. It is never too late to engage in a new activity. And doing so will unleash new streams of energy that you can direct to other areas, and so on.

Imagine you are happy with your work life. As a result, you will come home in a good mood. Your spouse will like your mood and this improves your relationship. You are energized and go to the gym regularly. As a result, you feel more powerful and wake up earlier in the morning. Your boss recognizes your motivation and power and gives you a promotion. You come home and have great sex. Everything just seems to work.

Now imagine your job sucks. You come home in a bad mood. Your relationship is negatively affected by this. You are frustrated and buy a bag of chips and watch some stupid TV show to cool off. You go to bed late. You are tired at work and skip your workout with your buddy. Life is shit.

Both examples are greatly exaggerated but they provide the gist of the Spillover Effect at work. When things in one area of life flow smoothly, this creates a spillover and positively affects other aspects of your life.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a great example. He not only became one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, but also a movie star and governor of California. Becoming an actor was made possible by being a great bodybuilder. And becoming a politician was facilitated by the fact that Arnold was a renowned actor.

The trick is to get going; to create the spark that fuels these positive spillovers. Growth Habits do just that: they ignite the little fire that burns small and weak at first, but continues to burn consistently. Then, as it is fed by our daily habits, it grows and grows and affects other areas of life. All of this is a process. It does not happen overnight; it takes months and years, but it will happen. It is just a matter of time.

The Consumer Producer Dichotomy

Apart from the Spillover Effect, there is another characteristic that Growth Habits have: they create something instead of consuming something.

A life spent only consuming the creativity and work of others is not a remarkable life. Every person can produce and create unique things—be it moments, works of art, or relationships. Growth Habits will help you create something truly unique; something that is special because you put your own ideas into it.

Creating things that are special is one of life’s joys. In my view, every person should strive to create lasting remnants, even if only for the time you are alive.

Put bluntly, you can either consume or produce. And do not get me wrong, consuming is not bad by design. It is just that too much consumption can be detrimental. You should strive to be more than an average person who consumes TV series other people produce, eats food produced by others, and has their life defined by somebody else’s standards for living well. We are all capable of building something unique—we just need to acquire the skills to do so.

If you do the opposite, no growth takes place and nothing special happens. In fact, the cause of many bad habits is that you are a consumer rather than a producer.

Consumers are passive and consume value; producers are active and create value.

This, as always, has to do with your mindset. Installing Growth Habits will change your mindset for the better. As soon as you start to produce stuff on your own—even if it is just a scrawly painting at first—you will see things of value with different eyes. More importantly, you will value your time more. After all, time is the most precious asset we have.

In order to get rid of your consuming habits, you need to replace them with better habits. That is, instead of being passive, you become proactive and start to produce things.

All of this will take time. But still, you have to start somewhere. Five years ago was the best moment to start. The second-best moment to start is now. After all, the rest of your life is still totally up to you. Don’t waste it by only consuming. Instead, start to become a producer yourself.

Attention: Growth Habits Are Not Your Typical Habits

Chances are, the way I defined Growth Habits is different from your idea of habits. For most people, habits are automated forms of behavior like brushing teeth or being punctual. I agree that these are correct examples of habits. However, these smaller habits are what we call Behavioral Habits. We will examine them in the next chapter.

I like to view habits a bit more broadly than the above-mentioned notion. For me, a habit can also be the daily engagement in an activity like writing. But writing will always require mental energy. It is not an easy activity. Lifting weights, drawing, and working on your business are also mentally taxing activities. Unlike brushing your teeth, all these activities require serious effort.

It is near impossible to engage long-term in such activities when the Completion Threshold is set too high, requiring too much energy to maintain on a daily basis. Entropy is the biggest enemy of big goals when those goals are too far away from your default level. The key is to reduce the Completion Threshold to a level so low that engaging in the activity becomes incredibly easy. Stephen Guise conceptualizes this in his book, “Mini Habits,” which had a big impact on my own Habit Journey. Give it a try!

The interesting thing is that once you make it a habit of writing daily (which you do when the Completion Threshold is low enough), you will find it really easy to keep going.

Thus, Growth Habits as we use them in the HabitSystem are more or less just super-chargers that make you “do” the given activity on a daily basis. In short, they make “Action” possible. And as you know, the mere act of starting creates energy on its own. And once you are reading, training, writing, drawing, or meditating, it is very easy to keep going. The big energy drain that leads to failure is caused by goals that are too lofty and unrealistic to be achieved daily. With very simple and small habits, we avoid this energy drain, and on good days we get started fine, while on bad days we’re happy to have a low Completion Threshold.

I hope this little interlude made you aware of how Growth Habits are to be understood in the context of your HabitSystem. Writing, reading, exercising, etc., are all still energy-requiring activities. However, we created a habit of getting started that fuels further growth that is consistent and sustainable.

Behavioral Habits

Behavioral Habits are less significant than Growth Habits and Mindset Habits. However, a set of good Behavioral Habits will make a big difference in the long run by positively affecting your growth and mindset.

Behavioral Habits are related to your habitual behavior. They often involve a trigger or a cue that makes you behave in a certain way. Examples include pressing the snooze button in the morning (a bad habit), taking a cold shower when you shower, or using a to-do app when a new task emerges.

Behavioral Habits guide our everyday lives.

Because Behavioral Habits often already exist in a bad form, like hitting the snooze repeatedly, they are harder to change.

Implementing a Behavioral Habit often means replacing a bad habit with a better one. This is different from Growth Habits. In the case of Growth Habits, we just have to do something every day. In the case of Behavioral Habits, we have to unlearn bad habits and subsequently replace them with better ones. It requires more effort.

Later on, you will learn how to replace bad habits with better ones. In Section Three, The Crown, I will also provide you with a list of inspirational Behavioral Habits.

Mindset Habits

Mindset Habits are the ultimate habits. In the long run, the power of your mind is the best predictor for happiness and success. After all, everything you do and how you perceive everything happens in your mind. Happiness and success happen there. With a strong mind, you can handle all types of situations—adverse or fortunate. With a strong mind, you have confidence in your skill and the belief that you can master all types of situations, no matter what.

Mindset Habits refer to the way you interpret and view certain things in this world. Your mindset guides your thoughts, intentions, and reactions to outside stimuli. Mindset Habits are often subliminal, and it is often difficult to explicitly describe them. Basically, your Mindset Habits describe your operating system, your set of beliefs, and how you view the world.

And eventually, your belief system results in actions. Changing your mindset is the most important thing in the long run. A weak mindset is the biggest limiting factor if you want to achieve something in your life. A weak mindset means that you have limiting beliefs, do not believe in yourself, and that you fear making important decisions—and, thus, end up doing nothing.

Examples for Mindset Habits are the way you view other people (philanthropic vs. misanthropic), whether you procrastinate, your consumer behavior, and whether you are stoic or not. All these habits have a big impact on both your behavior and your actions. The wrong mindset can make the most intelligent person fail. The right mindset with strong beliefs and strong Mindset Habits can turn an average person into a success machine.

As you can see, the three types of habits provide a holistic view for personal growth. Let’s further understand this view.

Habit Spheres

The conceptualization of habits—the Habit Taxonomy—is not only about the three different types of habits but also about the spheres in which you can find these habits. Growth Habits are part of the outside sphere that I refer to as the Action Sphere. The Reaction Sphere is where the Behavioral Habits are to be found, and the Mindset Sphere is where Mindset Habits reside. Essentially, there are two broader spheres: the inside and the outside sphere, and something like a mix (where the Behavioral Habits reside). Here is how it looks:

Action Sphere

The Action Sphere encompasses everything you actively do. It is everything you put out into the world. It is something visible and rather explicit. Activities such as reading, writing, exercising, painting, everything social, and everything business-related are all part of the Action Sphere. The Action Sphere, thus, is not about thinking, it is about acting and doing. Growth Habits are part of the Action Sphere.

Mindset Sphere

The Mindset Sphere (or inside sphere) refers to your mindset, your beliefs. It is how you think, and it encompasses things such as your worldview, your self-image, and your understanding of the world. Mindset Habits are part of the Mindset Sphere.

Reaction Sphere

The Reaction Sphere is in between the Mindset Sphere and the Action Sphere. It is how you react to influences from the outside sphere, and thus encompasses elements from the Action Sphere (what you do) and from the Mindset Sphere (how you react mentally). This is the sphere where habits in their traditional understanding reside—Behavioral Habits.

Brushing your teeth may be the perfect example of a Behavioral Habit. It may be an action, but it does not lead to growth and thus is not part of the Action Sphere. Also, brushing your teeth is not mentally complex and does not relate to your view of the world. Behavioral habits are part of the Reaction Sphere.

How Growth Habits Create Mindset Habits

Your mindset and belief system represent the culmination of all your experiences. Your mind does not exist in a vacuum, but is confronted with reality day after day. What you do feeds back into your belief system.

Confidence, for instance, has to be based upon some experiences; it cannot be created from thin air. You cannot just be confident—there has to be a reason. Of course, you can fake confidence or competence for a short period of time. But from my experience, the best way to gain confidence is to have experiences that create confidence. In other words: how can you be confident if there is no realistic foundation upon which your confidence is based?

And it is not only confidence that has to be rooted in reality. All your thoughts and beliefs are greatly impacted by your experiences. The key to creating a strong mindset is thus to experience the right things. Growth Habits help you to do just that.

Let’s now learn how this is going to look like.

The mindset changes you will experience

First, with Growth Habits you will gain confidence in your ability to do and succeed in anything you can imagine. We call this the “Generic Habit Learning Skill.” We will more closely look at this skill, which is essentially a Mindset Habit, later on.

Second, you will realize that everything can actually be learned. You can simply declare what you want to do, and then go out and do it.

Of course, it will take some time to experience these epiphanies. From my experience, the real manifestations of these mindset changes—new Mindset Habits—occur after a solid year or two into your Habit Journey. Admittedly, it is challenging to describe these mindset changes because they are implicit. Furthermore, you can only truly feel and believe them once you have internalized them. Just reading a text will not implement these mindset changes. But after the first time you experience the knowledge that you are certainly able to learn, it will get easier and easier.

The reason I am talking so much about all this is the fact that most self-help books focus solely on Mindset Habits. They focus on concepts such as process orientation, stoicism, consistency, discipline, willpower, learning, working hard, etc. However, as good and desirable as these ideas may be, looking at them in isolation is futile. Reading about process orientation is nice and fluffy—but how will it actually help you to make process orientation a Mindset Habit? The answer is simple. We must follow an outside-in approach to change our mindset.

The outside-in approach to change your mindset

In essence, an outside-in approach means that actions are required before internalization can happen. Growth Habits are the key in getting those actions going so you can begin the outside-in method of changing your mindset. This is how it looked like in my case.

At first, the concept of daily habits was interesting to me because I saw how it could help me to write daily, read daily, and become a better person overall. However, I completely underestimated the impact these simple daily actions would have on the way my mind works—the way I think. Growth Habits like reading, coding, and writing have fundamentally changed the way I think. It seems like a door I had not known of suddenly opened. I realized that you can just make up your mind and go out and do what you want to do.

It took me over a year to realize this deeper philosophical meaning of Growth Habits, but I now believe that Growth Habits are actually bigger and broader in influence than I had previously thought.

Thus, I propose a novel approach to changing Mindset Habits. Instead of trying to embrace nice concepts like discipline and willpower by reading about them, it is better to start with Growth Habits because then the mindset changes happen automatically as a result.

Why do I call this an outside-in approach? I call it this way because Growth Habits reside on the Action Sphere and are part of the outside world. The Mindset Sphere is part of the inside world. In this approach, we start with the outside to create changes in the inside.

The general approach you read and hear most about is an inside-out approach. It goes along the lines of changing your thoughts and your actions will follow. The outside-in approach is completely diametrical to this common suggestion. By creating the right actions, your mindset will change, which in turn will lead to a better mindset resulting in even better actions in the long run.