There are only a few ways to change your health behaviours in a meaningful way:
Let’s focus on that last piece through setting up action ahead of time. Think of it as a very laid-back DEFCON 1. Here, you set up your personal environment so that you’re a single decision away from any action that you might want to take. This seems straightforward but, it can take a bit of doing. Let’s say that you are sitting—for work or relaxation—when you notice that your back is feeling sore. This leads to a pang of guilt. We’ve all been there.
Let’s say that you have a piece of fitness equipment but it’s in an out of the way corner and/or serving as a very expensive clothes hanger. You could go dig it up, dust it off, or pull the clothes off of it. You realize, though, that by the time you do all of that, you’ll have drained your entire motivation battery—all before you actually start exercising. The motivational moment will have passed before anything happens, which makes things feel pointless.
It’s just as easy (maybe easier) to think, “I should start working out three days a week” because no further action is required. It’s the lack of clarity that kills us; this statement is as fuzzy as a peach. There’s no clear starting point in terms of either action step or time period. Most problematically, it’s disassociated from the immediate moment. Call it procrastination if you want but it doesn’t matter—it’s just one more layer of friction between the immediate moment and action. So, you go back to doing whatever you were doing before perhaps carrying a pang of guilt with you.
I believe that a number of our anxieties stem from an inability to respond to our motivational moments in real-time. One way you can attack this problem is to better engineer your environment. This is sometimes referred to as nudging. Here, you traverse the many—often hidden—actions that exist between the present and your target. Imagine you’re a mantaur (half human, half human) who sees an intruder in your forest home. In principle, you should be able to take aim with your bow and fell the intruder. Except…
Your bow is unstrung, your arrows are jammed in a tree somewhere—you’re not quite sure where—and, while we’re at it, you’re overdue for some target practice. The practical reality is that you’re just not going to hit that sucker. So, you swear that you’ll never miss this opportunity again. This is where pre-loading comes in.
