Break the Twitch Articles

We’ve all done it. We start off with the best of intentions to work out regularly or to write daily. The first couple of weeks go great. At some inevitable point, we have a busy day or something comes up—and we fall off. Keeping up a new habit can be hard, but we can significantly improve our chances when we set ourselves up the best we can with intentional readiness.

With intentional readiness, we can reduce the friction and increase the ease in which we do the thing we’ve set out to do. That way, it’s easier to do the thing as planned—even when the unexpected happens or when we’re grumpy or tired. This concept is the opposite of intentional friction—what Anthony has shared—a Break the Twitch concept of adding more difficulty around an action you want to do less of.

A Tool For Change

Back in 2014, I was working full-time in a career that wasn’t right for me. In general, things were fine. I got along with my manager and team members in the office and across the world. I had set boundaries and implemented a work-life balance that was working okay. Even though I told myself that I had a lot to be grateful for, I felt hopelessly stuck and exhausted. Knowing that I was on the wrong career track took a heavy emotional toll on me. I had listlessly looked for other jobs in different fields, but nothing really stood out to me. In the absence of knowing what to do next, I didn’t want to keep on doing the same thing.

To help with the stagnancy I felt, I decided to meditate for an hour every day for three months. Ambitious, I know—not quite what I’d recommend for building a new habit. But I thought meditating for a long period each day would help with the stress; I also hoped some additional clarity would come out of it. I was determined to take on the challenge.

So, I cleared out a spot in the spare bedroom and laid out a yoga mat. I decided that since I was new to meditation, I’d allow myself different variations—listening to guided tracks, meditating with music and without music, going through book exercises, simply breathing, staring at the wall, and even journaling. I had everything for these variations readily accessible for whenever I sat down on the mat. Every night, I sat down on the mat, and the practice began. As long as I did one of the options on the mat for 60 minutes, it counted.

Sticky Status Quo

Unsurprisingly, it was quite difficult to meditate for an hour every day. It would’ve been much easier to turn on the TV or browse the internet like I was accustomed to doing most evenings.

I ended up meditating for an hour a day successfully for a little over two months before I decided to stop. While I didn’t do the full three months, the length of time I did was still an accomplishment. Meditating regularly was easier with a clear intention, with everything ready to go, and with a specific time slot to do it. Even better, doing this helped me gain more clarity. Through all those hours of reflection, I gathered the courage to make a plan to leave my job in the next six months.

The reality is, it’s often the easiest to stick to what we’re accustomed to doing. Meaning that without greater intention and preparation, it’s much harder to build and sustain new habits—especially with life’s distractions and curveballs.

Both Anthony and I have used intentional readiness and intentional friction to significantly change our lives over the years. We use readiness to make it easier to do the things we want to prioritize. Alternatively, we use friction to make it harder to do the things we want to deprioritize.

Intentional Readiness, Defined

Intentional readiness is the practice of preparing and setting up for the action you want to do more of, so it’s easier to do the action when the time comes.

There are three components to intentional readiness—setting your intention, planning and preparing, and scheduling.

1 / Set your intention

It starts with setting the intention. When setting your intention, the more specific you make it, the better. As an example, this could be wanting to eat more vegetables during the week. Even better would be eating one serving of vegetables Monday through Friday.

2 / Plan and prepare

The preparation part is gathering and preparing all the things you need for eating more healthy vegetables. This would include making a list of the vegetables you want to eat, shopping for the vegetables at the grocery store, and then washing, cutting, and storing them in ready-to-go containers in the fridge.

This is the most time-consuming part that many of us skip altogether or scramble to do when we think about taking action. Not having certain things prepared and set out beforehand only adds to the resistance of starting on the task or in this case, eating healthy vegetables. It increases the chances you’ll abandon the effort or postpone it until later.

3 / Schedule it

The final part is scheduling a specific time on the days of the week when you will plan on eating the vegetables. Let’s say you determine the best time would be lunchtime. That means at the designated time when you are about to eat lunch, you have the healthy vegetables ready to go.

Let’s take another example. You start with a general desire of wanting to be more active and exercise regularly. After some thought, you set your intention to go for a 20-minute walk every day. The preparation part would be setting your exercise shoes right by the door and laying out your workout clothes in advance. The scheduling part is deciding when you will go for the walk, ensuring that anyone who needs to know is aware you’ll be busy during that time, and putting it on the calendar.

Intentional readiness combines aspects of preparation and design so that when the moment comes, there is less work and less resistance around whatever your intended action is.

Why Intentional Readiness Is Important

With all the distractions enabled by technology and by our devices, it’s easy for us to be pulled away from what it is we want to do more of—especially if the required steps or components are not set up in advance.

Instant gratification is available at the press of the button across many devices and appliances in our lives. While this is beneficial, this also means that we are getting more accustomed to results and outcomes coming automatically and easily. With the click of a button, we are able to order whatever food or product to our doorstep. We can even have another human complete a task that you don’t want to do—like doing your laundry or running an errand through an app service like TaskRabbit.

This instant gratification doesn’t translate well when it comes to the things that no one else nor a device can do for you. This is why intentional readiness is important. When we practice intentional readiness, we are setting ourselves up with the greatest chance of success. With intentional readiness, even when something unexpected inevitably happens, we’re better prepared to still do that thing.

Focusing On What You Can Control

While it makes sense to just focus on what you can control, this can be easier said than done. Sometimes, because life can be so unpredictable at times, we try to control as much as we can to mitigate the unknown.

We may inadvertently end up trying to control things that we can’t possibly prevent. Things such as emergency situations, traffic, mix-ups, or technical difficulties, to name a few. We try to prevent these by worrying, catastrophizing, or putting off the decision or action. Even within ourselves, there are often seemingly mysterious forces at work (oh, well hello, Twitch). So we blame ourselves for not being able to do better or control ourselves better.

Yet, there is a fair amount we actually can control that we overlook. I smile now when I think back on ways I overly worried about things I couldn’t control, and at the same time, completely missed the things I could control. We can reduce a great deal of suffering for ourselves if we minimize the over-thinking and lessen the under-acting in our lives.

Intentional Readiness and Intentional Friction Combined

You can combine intentional readiness and intentional friction to help with what you’d like to do more of and discourage what you’d like to do less of. Through forethought and customized design when it comes to your goals, you’re focusing on what you can control. While you may have days when you don’t do the thing even with intentional readiness, you’ll have a better track record when you’ve put in the work of setting your intention, preparing, and scheduling.

Do you have things you want to do more of that could benefit from intentional readiness in your life? Give it a try, and remember, what’s more important than good habits is to restart and keep on going.

Writing things down on a to-do list is what many of us do, myself included. Not only do lists help me remember what tasks or projects I need to tackle, but they also keep me accountable. Having a way to keep track of things helps me to prioritize and stay organized and productive. But you know that one thing on your list that sits for days without getting done? It’s the one thing that moves from one day’s list to the next day’s and the next day… If you experience this too, you’re not alone. A couple of years back, Anthony came up with a procrastination hack called the Habit Rule of Half. This simple rule has helped us to overcome procrastination and get those hanging tasks done.

Why We Can’t Finish Our To-Do Lists

Some tasks are straightforward and easy. We simply complete the task and move on.

Others aren’t like that. Resistance is what we feel when we encounter certain tasks on the to-do list. Perhaps we’re not entirely sure how to go about the task, and the lack of clarity adds to the resistance. Maybe it’s the fear of failure, of judgment, or of making a mistake. We end up procrastinating and avoiding those things we can’t bring ourselves to get started on.

If there’s any aspirational clutter in the mix, the combination makes it even worse. We feel torn between all the things we want to do and all the things that we need to get done. When we feel the resulting internal tension, there’s an impact on our ability to focus and get started.

It’s common to experience angst when the tasks remain uncompleted and no progress is made—which increases the pressure we feel. The greater the pressure, the greater resistance we often feel. This increased resistance leaves us feeling worse, and gets in the way of completing the task, finishing the project, or reaching the goal.

Applying the Habit Rule of Half

Anthony was determined to find a solution, a procrastination hack, that could help. At the time, we were working hard to build new habits and make progress on the things that were important to us.

He created a simple rule called the Habit Rule of Half, that’s worked well for us over the years.

Here’s how it works. If a task is left uncompleted at the end of the day, cut it in half and add it to the next day’s list. If it doesn’t get done by the end of that day, cut it in half again and add it to the next day’s list. Keep doing this until the task becomes small enough to tackle.

You can apply the Habit Rule of Half to whatever it is you keep on postponing or pushing off. Household projects, work assignments, taxes, budgeting, or researching something. Writing a blog post or making a YouTube video. Even things like walking, exercising, jogging, or bicycling.

For example, you have a goal to jog four miles, but you haven’t managed to break out your sneakers. In this case, you’d cut this in half and write, “jog two miles” on the next day’s to-do list. If you still don’t do it, write down “jog one mile” for the following day. Keep cutting the distance (or the time or the amount) until you make it out the door. Keep on cutting it in half until it gets to a small, bite-sized chunk that seems easy to do.

A More Compassionate Approach

While the Habit Rule of Half is a simple concept, it’s often much harder in practice. The concept goes against what our inner critic usually thinks would be the best way forward. We think, “Well, I’m now behind, so I need to do more to make it up.” So we put more pressure on or add more to the task in an effort to catch up. This may work for some people—but from my experience, this leads to less motivation and greater stress and resistance over time.

Adding more pressure was how I “motivated” myself for two decades—and it worked at best, okay—until it no longer did. Eventually, I burned out. We can also end up getting more overwhelmed or find ways to avoid or make excuses for the things we need to do altogether.

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There are usually reasons why we don’t do the things we want or need to do. As humans, our natural state is to want to do things, to make progress, and to contribute. So if we’re struggling with something, it’s not that we’re lazy or that we’re not good enough. There are usually underlying reasons of fear, insecurity, or self-sabotage happening under the surface. At least that’s what Anthony and I have found.

The Habit Rule of Half can be a more compassionate approach to making progress on the things we feel resistant towards. If a to-do item isn’t getting done day after day, it doesn’t matter how many times you put it on the list. Any small amount of progress is better than the to-do item dragging on unaddressed. In a way, you’re practicing compassion for your tomorrow self by cutting the to-do item in half and seeing how it goes the next day.

The Hardest Part

It can be tempting to think you’re simply lazy if you’re not getting something done—that if you go easier on yourself, you will just continue putting it off. Therefore, as the distance, time, or amount of your task halves, it might not seem like this will help you make any progress at all. And so you continue to put the pressure on. However, this becomes a catch-22, a sort of convoluted avoidance tactic our brains use to keep us “safe” from dealing with what’s under the resistance.

The hardest part is often getting started. Once you are out there walking, you are more likely to actually tackle the original distance or time you wanted to do. This is why the Habit Rule of Half is effective. If we cut what might feel like an overwhelming task in half, starting then seems more manageable. While it’s no magic bullet, it can help in reducing the resistance and making progress. And once we get the ball rolling, it’s much easier to continue the momentum and get into the flow.

So the next time you notice a task moving from one day to the next, try a more compassionate approach with the Habit Rule of Half and see what happens.

There are a million different productivity gadgets out there, and unfortunately, none of them do the work for us. One day, I’m sure our artificially intelligent overlords will figure it all out. For now, no gadget out there will magically improve your productivity or reduce your anxiety overnight. I’m willing to be wrong though; if you know of one, I’d sure love to know about it.

At the same time, there are things that can be very helpful in the pursuit of a focused life. Cultivating a focus practice will always take effort, but there’s an opportunity to meet ourselves halfway by adapting our environment, too. Over the years, I’ve found helpful tools for a focused workspace that create an inviting and peaceful environment to get my best work done.

While Amy and I have been working at home together for a few years now, we found we needed to adjust our practices when the pandemic started. Pre-pandemic, working at home with your partner already came with its challenges. In a pandemic situation, all bets were off.

For much of the world, the pandemic quickly uprooted major facets of day-to-day life. There will be lasting shifts in our cultural landscape from what’s happened in the past year. Many companies are likely to continue going fully remote. More meetings will be done virtually than face-to-face compared to before. There’s a greater need for the home to be multi-faceted in its functionality and use.

Over the years, we’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t when you’re working at home with your partner. It really has been an evolution of sorts. We started out sitting side by side in a small “office” bedroom in our old Minneapolis home, to having separate work areas in the house now in Phoenix.

We decided to talk through our experience working from home together—what we’ve learned, and what we’d recommend to others in a similar situation. If you’re still adjusting to making work-from-home work-for-you, read on (or check out the video below).

Tips For Working From Home With Your Partner

1 / Intentionally create some separation

Especially if working from home is a relatively new arrangement, you’re likely not used to spending all day, every weekday, with your partner. It can be easy to fall into the habit of not giving each other enough space—especially when it used to be there by default.

Back in 2018 when we began working from home together, it seemed like a good idea to have all the equipment and desks in the same place. However, it didn’t work out so well in other areas as we’ll discuss more below. We have separate working spaces now, which has made it easier to focus and to do our best work.

As annoying as commutes can be, driving or biking to work and back each day is actually built-in decompression time. This transition time tends to go away completely when working from home. You can find other ways to transition from “work” to “home” mode so there’s more of a separation.

2 / Allow focus blocks throughout the day

As we all know here at Break the Twitch, uninterrupted focus is worth its weight in gold. It’s nearly impossible to focus effectively if you’re asking each other questions or sharing things every few minutes.

While it’s tempting to share with your partner the second you think of something, it’s better to establish boundaries and guidelines for focus blocks during the day.

60 to 120 minutes of uninterrupted work time—similar to the 90-minute focus blocks we do over in Attention Collective—is my recommendation. It usually takes around 15 minutes to even get into this type of focused flow, so do your best to not interrupt when your partner is in the zone.

It can help to create some simple, visible guidelines that make it easier for your partner to see that you’re doing focused work. Indicators like “having headphones on” or having a small colored light you can turn on when you’re focusing can help. Having a Time Timer can be a wonderful visual indicator with the benefit of showing when you’re expecting to be done.

Test and establish the rules that work best so you each can do your best work. While we can’t control everything, even the smallest distractions can pull us out from a deeply focused state. So work together to create specific guidelines that work well for each of you.

3 / Same team!

There will be times when things are more frustrating, and communication wires get crossed. It’s bound to happen. When exchanges become more casual and interspersed, communication tends to be less clear and concise.

During these situations, Amy and I like to use the callout, “Same team!” It’s a lighthearted, humorous reminder when we have temporarily forgotten that we’re both working towards the same thing.

Imagine two soccer players on the same team, running after the ball and elbowing each other—each preventing the other one from getting the ball. Then imagine a coach screaming, “SAME TEAM!!” from the sidelines at the top of her lungs.

During these times, it’s good to remember you’re both working toward the same goals (hopefully—at least, that’s the assumption here). Take time to step back and make sure you’re communicating fully and effectively. Misunderstandings about issues you’re actually aligned on are a huge waste of energy better used for almost anything else.

4 / Schedule meetings like you would in an office

Schedule specific times to sit down and discuss priorities, household tasks, or whatever else needs to be done. Try to keep the meetings as light as possible and slow the pace down. It helps a lot when you do what you can to make the meetings more fun and positive.

It feels overly formal, yes—but that’s actually the point. Especially if you’re working on the same projects or business together, work-life balance becomes a thing of the past. At times, we’ll inadvertently discuss deadlines while washing the dishes, or make decisions while eating dinner. It’s almost too easy for everything to all mesh together. The stress from never being fully “off” of work can build up over time and lead to burnout or exhaustion.

5 / Learn each other’s working styles and adapt

Each one of us has a different working style and energy flow during the day. One of the fun parts about being in a relationship is that opposites tend to attract, which means that working styles may likely differ. If you’re working at home with your partner, any differences between the two of you will need to be accommodated.

Some people need more of a 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, Pomodoro-type situation, while others work best in three-hour chunks. Psychologically, it may be difficult to work when you don’t see the other person working at the same time. Perhaps the other person is taking a mental break by playing a game or checking social media while you’re working. Do what you can to trust that the other person is doing what’s best for them.

Most importantly, understand that each person works differently, and trying to force your own working style upon someone else doesn’t really work. In the end, the other person works best if given the space to do so on his or her terms.

6 / Take it day by day.

There is a lot to consider and learn when adjusting to a new work-from-home situation, so remember to take it day by day. Do what you can to stay flexible and communicate in a kind and honest manner with the other person. It’s always best to approach any disagreements with curiosity, kindness, and creativity, rather than with annoyance or blame. No matter what happens, the situation will evolve over time, and you’ll adapt along with it!

If you know someone who could benefit from these tips on working at home with your partner, share this article!