When a positive habit becomes toxic
Is your monkey brain hijacking your best behaviors?
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Back in early 2020 I started journaling. I had created a Notion account and thought it would be a good habit to start each day by putting my thoughts on the page.
Since my first entry on the 26th Jan 2020, I’ve written 345 entries which comes to an entry every 2.5 days. Not exactly “daily journaling” but still a lot of writing.
The reason I think I’ve been somewhat consistent with daily journaling is because I find it therapeutic. It calms me down and allows me to get closer to the mental state I need to be in to be productive. It acts as a focusing force.
With that being said I’m considering stopping my daily journaling habit.
If I had to be completely honest with myself I’ve started to use daily journaling as a way to procrastinate. There are days I spent 2, sometimes 3 hours writing up my thoughts in Notion. Since I’d typically start the work day journaling, it becomes a valid excuse to avoid doing the work which really matters.
“Daily journaling is important for my mental health, and I want to start each day putting pen to paper”, is what I tell myself. 2 hours later and a 1,000 words which bring me only temporary value is a heavy cost to pay.
Does the journaling put me in a better mood and reduce stress, in the short run yes, but when the day is over and that feeling that I didn’t get enough done comes around, I feel bad.
Do I sometimes need to put my thoughts to paper and remind myself about all the positive aspects of my life, yes I do and journaling is great for this, but I’m starting to believe that my daily journaling habit is starting to take more than it gives.
Our brain is tricky. It’s designed to help us survive and reproduce. If you’re unhappy (maybe you feel stuck in your job, or struggling to grow your business) the brain will latch onto whatever it can to limit your exposure to “pain”.
One way our minds do this is by hijacking certain positive behaviors and twisting them to fill up time. The more time we spend doing the things we enjoy, the less time we spend doing the things which bring us “pain”.
On the surface this doesn’t seem like a bad thing but there are times we need to experience some discomfort. It’s the only way we grow.
One example where I do this is by staying at the coworking space later than I should and missing gym sessions. The work never ends in my business and it’s easy for me to rationalize staying in the coworking until late in the evening. I’m in my comfort zone and it’s so much easier to put my feet up and go through my email for the 5th time in the day than closing the laptop, walking home, getting dressed and dragging myself to the gym to lift heavy weights. Ironically, the exercise I’d get from more frequent gym sessions would boost my overall productivity but our monkey brains are short term thinkers.
If we are to become the best versions of ourselves, we need to constantly evolve and address our personal weaknesses. This means being honest with ourselves. This means we have to sometimes modify, or even kill, habits which are giving us some benefits, but are no longer a net positive in our lives.
For now I’m going to continue daily journaling but I’m going to introduce a stopwatch and give myself no more than 30 minutes to get my thoughts on the page. I’ll report back in a few weeks.
- Justin