Percentage matters

"100 percent of the time is easier than 98 percent of the time"– Clayton Christensen.

I see an old man walking briskly every day morning at 4:30 to the nearby Balamurugan Temple. He does that without fail, while doing so he will be loudly reciting some religious verses. You may be wondering how come I get up so early every day to watch him. No. I am yet to develop that habit. In every those few days when I got up too early, I had seen him. Which made me arrive at a reasonable conclusion that he is so regular and disciplined in doing that activity. He does that 100 percent of the times, that is the reason he is able to sustain that. I am sure this walk is very important for him to start his day - like a cup of tea, newspaper, Facebook or “Candy Crush” for many of us.

Yes, habits are developed over a period of time with consistent effort. But certain things we do even without our knowledge, mostly because it is a question of survival. Take the example of breathing, a very good habit! Did anybody tell us that we need to breathe regularly?  Do we ever focus on our breath? Unless we attend a meditation class where the teacher tells us explicitly to do so. Unless we get a severe cold and our noses are totally blocked – some of us may be luckier to focus it more often depending on which part of the world we live. 

If I indicate to my dogs that we shall go out they will jump out of joy making all sorts of noises. They learnt by daily routine that it means they can roam around outside a bit. So making a habit is the best way to train these pets. But, if some of you try telling them that, they will not respond at all. It is not because you are not as “soft-spoken” as their master !!  It’s because you don’t know Konkani! So, many a times, we need a bare minimum similar ambiance to behave the way we are trained.

Conversely getting rid of a habit is equally tough. I have this habit of re-arranging furniture and other house-hold items in my house, I don’t think that habit will ever die. Destined to live in the same house for long periods of time, I invariably do some changes. To have a different interior view of my house and to get some exercise to me and to those poor movable items, which can’t move themselves otherwise.  The challenge with this approach is that I would move to the right side of the kitchen to open the fridge thinking that it still remains there. But previous day only I would have moved it to the left side corner when I felt the need of  body movement! Luckily, the number of times of searching it in the wrong place diminishes fairly quickly and would become almost 0% and I will have ample time to go for my next move! However, certain bad habits are not that easy to go away. For example smoking, there is no way one can make it 98%, and then gradually reduce it to nil, that is what at least experts say!.  In these cases, 100% should become 0% instantly, there is no mid-way approach.

Becoming an expert in something is good. Today’s front page news is about one of our Rajyasabha members who prefers to sit at the back bench making sketches of his fellow members by observing them carefully. An able painter, he finds some relaxation during the dull periods in the house by making use of his core competency. I wonder how other experts, who are nominated to the house, because of their expertise in other fields like sports, movies etc can do similar things in a non-invasive manner.

We all know that to become an expert in an area, we need to put in considerable amount of effort. Develop  a habit to achieve that. If I decide that I should improve my knowledge by reading, I need to make it a habit that l read some book or other at least an hour every day. If I default it once in order to play non-stop “candy crush saga” generously gifting candies to others, I will become confident that I can default it many more times. Ultimately to become a permanent defaulter, in the process what will also get crushed is my reading ambition! We should attempt 100% of the times, like we breathe. 98% of the times will not be sufficient. There is no much logic required for our brains to console ourselves that less is just fine. And that 98% of times will become negligible, if not zero times, in no time.