How to make sure your new habits stick

Mike Romano was born in 1950 and raised in Milwaukee, the youngest of four boys. Aged 18, beginning to veer slightly off the tracks, he enlisted in the army, figuring that he was going to be drafted anyway. He eventually ended up being assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam, an elite and well-respected unit of paratroopers. There was a problem with this Brigade though. One that was an open secret amongst the soldiers. Rampant drug use. Some of the soldiers became addicted through treatment for their injuries, and the continued ease of access to opium products even after their hospital stays. That’s certainly how Mike Romano got addicted. The problem got so bad that other units started to refer to the 173rd Airborne Brigade as the ‘jumping junkies.’

And it wasn’t just Romano’s paratrooper brigade that suffered this problem. The issue was widespread enough for the White House to get so troubled by the reports that it commissioned a study to investigate the scope of the drug-use problem. The results were disturbing. Before the war, the typical soldier had only casual experience with hard drugs, and less than 1 per cent had ever been addicted to narcotics. But once in Vietnam, almost half of the soldiers tried narcotics, and 20 per cent became addicted. 20 per cent of all users started in their first week in Vietnam, 60 per cent within the first three months. And, unlike Mike Romano, for most of the soldiers drug use started not because of an injury, but simply because they were a fact of life, part of the culture.

Government officials were terrified by what would happen when so many thousands of drug addicts began to return home to America. Mike Romano was exactly the type of person they were worried about, and in fact when he finally boarded his flight back to the United States in 1969, headed home for Milwaukee, he smuggled back with him a stash of opium-laced joints.

So what happened to Mike, and so many others like him? Well, events didn’t play out quite how the government had been expecting. Whilst it wasn’t easy, Mike weaned himself off opium and within a couple of months was clean. Helped significantly by bumping into and starting to date a friend from grade school, getting a job, and settling back into his community. And Mike’s story was not a one-off. During the war, 50 per cent of soldiers had been casual users, and 20 per cent had become seriously addicted. White House researchers following up on the soldiers after they returned home, calling eight to twelve months after to ask about their ongoing drug use, found that only 1 per cent of the vets were still addicted to drugs. Essentially the same rate as existed before the war. The anticipated and much-feared catastrophe had not occurred.*

So why did this happen? And how is it relevant to you as you return from your summer break ready to ‘start the new term’ with the new intentions and resolutions you have in mind?

Environment.

We are all affected significantly by the environment we are in. If I want to lose weight, I have a much better chance of doing this if I surround myself with the right people, who exhibit the good eating habits that I need to emulate, and with the right foods. If I make sure my environment makes the good behaviour easier and the bad behaviour hard. For our soldier Mike Romano, finding a girlfriend who loved and cared about him, being near his family members, getting a job that involved interesting work, no longer being surrounded by addicted soldiers and replacing this with contagious drug-free behaviour; all of this helped significantly in his success in becoming a former addict.

Many of us use our summer break to reflect; to gain perspective; and to consider what we should be doing differently when we return to our desks. Not looking at emails beyond 6pm. Going for a 30 minute walk every morning before leaving for/starting work. Having a proper lunch break. Being much better at prioritising our time. Making sure we spend enough time connecting properly with our colleagues and those we lead. Getting better at saying no.

All of these sound great. Especially when we are sitting on the beach with friends and family and fired up with good intention and enthusiasm.

But we all know how easy it can be to slip into old habits when we return to work. We might stick to our new habits and routines for a couple of days. Perhaps a week. Even a fortnight. But it can be hard can’t it to maintain the discipline; to be properly rigorous with ourselves, and to do exactly what we promised ourselves we would do. Even though we are fully aware of the good sense and logic behind sticking to the new habits and routines.

And this is where your environment comes into play. And the tweaks you can make to give yourself the best chance of success. If I want to ensure I don’t look at emails beyond 6pm, can I make sure that I leave my laptop at the office (or in my office space at home) rather than having it close to hand in the evening. Can I move my email app on my phone off my home screen so it’s not so easily accessible? What about making sure I have a proper lunch break? Can I tell my colleagues who work near my desk that I am trying to make sure that I have a proper lunch break, and request that if they see me breaking my new rule, they are to pull me up on it? Can I put diary reminders into my calendar, prompting me to make appointments with colleagues for a coffee (virtual or real) and catch up?

These are just some examples. You will be able to come up with so many more. The principle remains the same throughout though - making sure that your environment supports and helps your ability to put your new intentions and habits into practice, and sustain them.

For those in elite sport, ensuring their environments support their ability to bring a disciplined approach is fundamental. Whatever sport, whatever national league, elite clubs will do all they can to provide an environment that supports performance. From the layout of the gym via the weekly routines and schedule, right through to the food provided in the canteen.

Why should it be any different for you? What prompts and nudges do you have in place to ensure relentless discipline on the behaviours and changes that you want to implement? How are you tweaking your environment to give yourself the best chance of success?

So that you not only start ‘the new term’ in the best way possible, but are still benefiting from your summer holiday reflections and improvements by the time we reach Christmas.

If you’ve got to the end of this and are nodding your head, then take one more step please. Take a minute to think about what tweaks and changes you can and need to put in place. Write them down. And action them.

*with thanks to Dan and Chip Heath who shared this story in their fabulous book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

For more on this or any aspect of leadership, with a healthy dose of mindset, sport, and I hope usefulness thrown in, do feel free to browse through all the articles in the Huddle, or get in touch with me directly on catherine@sportandbeyond.co.uk.