Commitment, Inertia, Habit, and Addiction

Getting ready to end one year and begin a new one seems like a good time to consider the concepts of commitment, inertia, habit, and addiction. Only one of these is an active choice. The other three are different versions of “but we’ve always done it that way,” which can be good or bad.

This is a useful distinction in so many areas of life, from career to marriage, wellness to cultural change. For a common starting point, here are my working definitions (the limited perspective I am using for this moment for these words).

Commitment:  A solemn, binding promise to yourself to do (or not do) something you have an emotional or intellectual investment in.
Inertia:  the tendency of a body in motion to continue that motion, and resist any change.
Habit:  A recurrent, often unconscious, pattern of behavior acquired through frequent repetition.
Addiction:  Physical or psychological dependence on a substance or activity.

We need one more limited definition to make this one-sided conversation work. A goal is the purpose toward which effort is directed. A commitment requires a goal. Addiction requires you to think, believe, or feel something terrible will happen if you don’t comply with your addiction; that’s not the same as a goal. Habit can go both ways, serving a goal when commitment has a weak moment or putting obstacles in the path of new commitment. Inertia manifests most often as resistance to new commitments. Commitment must be stronger than inertia for change to occur.

Let’s use wellness as an example. Let’s say you want to do some or all of the following in 2015.

• Lose weight
• Firm up what is left
• Sleep more or better
• Have your doctor say "good job!" after your check-up
• Train for and finish a race or other physical event (running, swimming, biking, dancing...)
• Eat to support the choices listed above and improve your overall health

Commitment to your goal is where you start. Be clear about your goal in order to choose the best steps to achieve it. In choosing your steps, try to include some that can become habits through repetition, e.g., always go to Saturday morning dance workout or always eat a salad for lunch on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Don’t try to change everything at once, or inertia (resistance to change) increases. (Think of Dr. Suess and the oobleck — if you poke it fast it seems like a solid, but if you poke it slow it is soft and pliable.) Once the first couple steps have turned into habits, add the next.

At the extreme, if the activity becomes more important to you than the goal, take a moment to consider it. Is the activity still serving the goal? Is it becoming an obstacle to reaching the goal? Is it impacting other areas of your life negatively? This is where some people talk about “exercise addiction,” when the amount and/or kind of exercise you do starts to have negative effects in your life.

Now let’s make this all about me. I began taking rebound classes in Kangoo Jumps boots because they are a fun cardio workout. I kept going because I was getting better at it. (I do love learning and improving at a new skill.) And…um…the endorphins from jumping were amazing to me.  I became an instructor for three reasons: to share the fun, to share the endorphin rush, and to design a class that allowed more people to have access to the first two. Then came the setbacks: snow shoveling muscle injury, arthritis, and high room rents. Teaching class remained a commitment, but taking class became part habit and part addiction (got to have those endorphins!). That was not a bad thing until taking class became an obstacle to teaching class (inertia to be overcome). From now on, I want to be more in tune with the commitment and more aware of when and how habit, addiction, and inertia interact with that.

Viewed from the perspective of commitment / inertia / habit / addiction, where are you getting in your own way and how will you change that? Let me know how that goes in 2015.