Simplicity

You have learned that every system—your body and mind included—will react with Resistance to change. This Resistance is equal to the size of the change and the tension it creates. You also know that sustaining change requires energy, which is often not available due to the fact that willpower is a scarce resource.

Consequently, instead of wanting to change too much in too short a period of time, we will look at small gradual changes that will require much less energy.

When you go through the world with open eyes, you will find that many things in life are quite simple. They may seem complex at first and, technically speaking, they often are. But when you dig deeper, most great things and ideas started out simple, almost mundane. It took a lot of time and many repetitions to make them as complex as they are today. Those many steps taken over time represent the natural process. Something simple gets better and better, is continually improved and, at the end, seems complex. But the result is just the one-time representation of your repetitive actions. The process is what matters, and despite how complex it was along the way, it began with a simple idea.

You will not be starting with the end result, but with a simple idea, which over time with Action and Daily Repetition (see Element #3: Daily Repetition), will get you to that end result. Going through the process is what takes that simple start and creates a complex end result.

When we talk about Simplicity, we differentiate between three different types of Simplicity.

The first, Simplicity in Concept, refers to the notion that your general approach should be based on simple principles.

The second, Simplicity in Habit Design, refers to the notion that your habits should be so simple you can easily do them daily. The minimum level of action for your habits is called the “Completion Threshold.”

The third, Simplicity in Tracking, encompasses the idea that the way you track your habits should be as simple as possible.

Let’s now learn more about these three types of Simplicity.

Simplicity in Concept

Trying to come up with the perfect system may seem like a good idea. After all, you may want to get it right from the start. However, time and again it’s been shown that simple concepts win out over complex ideas. This sounds quite similar to the notion that Action—learning by doing—is preferable to long and drawn out planning, which is unnecessary and can be counterproductive. While Simplicity is similar to learning by doing as opposed to planning, there are some differences.

Over the course of time, and given the application of energy, simple ideas turn into complex things. It took tens of thousands of years for the human brain and body to get to where it is today. And, while our bodily functions and intellect are now intricately complex, human life started out incredibly simple.

When you try to make changes, you have to start simple and you have to start small. In fact, a lot simpler and smaller than you may think. The first step to change—the first step in your Habit Journey—will seem insignificantly small, almost nonexistent. You will want to go faster, bigger, and more complex. But you have to resist this urge because it is caused by motivation, which causes you to overestimate your energy and your ability to keep up with complex approaches. Remember, motivation is fleeting, it clouds your judgment, and it will come and go as it pleases.

And also remember Entropy. The bigger and more complex you set things up, the greater the required energy to keep that new level, and the greater the chance that Entropy will do its work. Big approaches may work for a couple of days or even weeks, but once the motivation lessens, it will seem incredibly hard to keep going. That’s when you stop and you’re back at zero again.

Because of all of this, you have to start really small and simple with your HabitSystem. It should be very simple at first so you can achieve sustainable change. Over time your system will gradually evolve, grow bigger and more complex—just as the oak tree will develop over time to be large and elaborate. This steady growth is a direct result of sticking to the path of mastery and elevating your mindset to a new level.

As a beginner, you start at level 0 and move up. When you try to cheat your way by starting at level 4, you will inevitably face an opponent that is too strong for you. When you decide that you want to read a lot and think to yourself, I will now read 30 pages every day, you are doing just that—trying to shortcut the system. It will work for a couple of days but then failure emerges.

I tell this to many people and I get criticized a lot for my recommendation of starting simple and small. I hear, “You need to think big,” or “30 pages a day is totally not that much.” Both arguments are completely right, but they also thoroughly miss the point.

Let me put it this way: if it were so easy to read 30 pages every day, why are so few people doing it? There are two possible answers. First, people might not want to read. Second, it could very well be that reading 30 pages every day is not very easy. It’s obvious that the first answer is not correct because, from what I can tell, many people out there actually want to read. Thus, the second answer, the difficulty, is much more likely. And indeed, if you’ve tried it, you can agree with me. Going from zero pages a day to 30 pages a day is actually quite hard. It is not easy. If it were easy, a lot of people would do it. Since not many people do it, it obviously is not that easy. It may be easy short-term and you may do it for a couple of weeks. But doing it consistently—which is the only thing that matters—is quite difficult. We looked at this when we talked about Entropy and Resistance.

Of course, there are also many people who read a lot. But these people also started out slowly. When you read constantly and consistently, it is easy to read 30 pages a day. However, it is not that easy for people who do not yet have a reading habit. The same is true for many other things. For instance, it is not hard to go to the gym regularly if you have been doing so for a couple of years. Once an activity becomes a habit, it is easy to do it. After all, this is what we are here for—turning activities into daily habits, so they become easy.

What I mean with all of this talk about Simplicity is this: a simple system will always beat an elaborate system when the going gets tough. The simple system is more adaptable, flexible, and versatile. Simple things are easy to do—hard things are hard to do.

While this sounds very theoretical and abstract, there is actually a practical component to Simplicity. It is covered in the next two aspects of Simplicity, namely Simplicity in Habit Design and Simplicity in Tracking.

These two types of Simplicity are two of the most important notions of the whole book. Read these passages carefully and, more importantly, stick to them when implementing them into your HabitSystem. It is of the utmost importance to have a simple habit design and a simple Tracking method. Simplicity is at the crux of success. Without it, the two elements of the trunk—Daily Repetition and Habit Tracking—will not work out.

An oak tree can only develop a strong trunk and crown when the roots are stable. Daily Repetition and Habit Tracking, which provide you with the stability needed to grow, are only possible when the requirements of Action and Simplicity are met.

Simplicity in Habit Design

So far we have talked about Simplicity in Concept, that is, Simplicity in the overall fabric of our HabitSystem. Let’s now fill this idea of Simplicity with life and look at it from a more practical perspective.

The way each of your habits is designed has to fulfill the requirement of Simplicity.

Simply put: Doing your habit should be just as simple as not doing it at all.

Designing habits this way allows us to be consistent, making Daily Repetition possible. In theory, it is possible to read 30 pages every day. However, reality is another story. Reading 30 pages every single day will not work in the real world—especially if you start at normally reading zero pages a day. It may work for a couple of months (and even that is a very optimistic guess), but there will inevitably be one day where you simply are unable to read the desired number of pages. And then, you lose your streak and become demotivated.

Is it desirable to read 30+ pages every day? It sure is. Yet, when it comes to designing our HabitSystem, we must choose a simple approach. We can say, “We achieve our habit of reading when we read one page.” This is compatible with reality.

Even on very challenging days where time is a very scarce resource—and there are many of these days—you will be able to read one page. It does not take much. Reading one page is just as simple as not reading at all. This is what we call the Completion Threshold.

The Completion Threshold simply refers to the minimum level of Action that is required to make you say, “I have achieved my habit today.”

For the reading habit, the Completion Threshold is one page (and you already committed to it). In the case of writing, it could be fifty words. For learning a new language, our Completion Threshold could be one new vocabulary word or 10 XP in Duolingo (which is not very much).

The gist is that it should be incredibly simple to reach your Completion Threshold. Remember that even little things add up over time, and also remember that your willpower will be depleted. On these days, you will still be able to execute your habit.

You may now ask, and rightfully so, With only a page every day, how am I going to make any progress? The answer is, of course, you won’t. Reading only one book per year is not what we would call an achievement. But things get interesting after you read that one page. In most cases, you will just continue to read. After all, reading one page happens quickly, so you might as well just continue reading. And then you suddenly read 50 pages on a good day and five on a bad day. On a very bad day, you may only read the one page. But you read at all! Your average pages per day will be above one. To give you an idea of how this looks in real life, my average for 2016 was 27 pages a day—up from 13 in 2015, when I first started with the HabitSystem. On some days, I read close to a hundred pages; on other days, I just read one page. But I read every single day.

You’ve got to set the bar very low. Even 10 minutes every day can be too much. Especially as your number of habits increases. You will be happy when you have designed your habits in a way that you can do all your daily habits in a matter of seconds or minutes.

To sum it up, we want our habits to be simple. Consequently, we set the bar very low to ensure consistency. We call this bar the Completion Threshold. Every day we strive to do more than what is required. On some days, however, we are happy that the bar is set low—and we still can achieve our daily success.

Simplicity in Tracking

At this point, you may have a broad understanding of habits and some of the peculiarities of the HabitSystem. What we have not talked about in detail yet is Habit Tracking. Believe me, we will cover this topic in detail in a couple of pages. For now, all you need to know is that you will track your daily habit completion.

Like the design of habits, your Habit Tracking has to be very simple. If you utilize a cumbersome approach, Tracking will fail. By cumbersome I mean doing something like writing down the number of pages you read every single day, which would be too time-consuming and you would have to bother with paying attention to the number of pages you read every day. Trying to do so every day would be counter-productive because you will inevitably fail.

In the HabitSystem, we use either a binary Tracking—success and failure—or a Tracking with three states: success, failure, or skipping.

• Success: We reach or surpass the Completion Threshold. It does not matter by how much, it just matters that we do. In our Tracking method of choice, we use a tick mark or a “1” to symbolize that for a given day on which we have completed the habit. Success is associated with the color green.
• Failure: We fail to reach the Completion Threshold. There may be many reasons, but what matters is that we have not completed the habit for that given day. While this is not desired, it will happen. In our Tracking method of choice, we use a “0” to symbolize that for a given day, we have failed the habit. Failure is associated with the color red.
• Skipping: Apart from the binary options of success and failure, there is also the state of “skipping” a habit. We will cover different methods of skipping in the appropriate section. Skipping is associated with the color yellow.

In the chapter dedicated to how to track your habits—using spreadsheets, apps or pen and paper—we will closely examine how to track your habits. We will also go over ways you can design your HabitSystem to incorporate skipping.

For now, remember that just like your habits themselves, your system of keeping track of them has to be one thing: simple.