Icecubes And Self-Improvement

I recently finished the book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. In it Clear breaks down what it takes to develop positive, lasting habits. For more info on the book, feel free to look into it here, but today I want to focus on Clear’s ice cube example. 

Let’s say you’re sitting in a room at 25 degrees Fahrenheit and there’s an ice cube on the table in front of you. The ice cube will stay pretty solid right? You try to get the ice to melt so you start to raise the temperature of the room a degree at a time - 26, 27, 28, - but the ice stays solid. 29, 30, 31 - still solid. But then at 32 - something happens. The ice starts to melt. 

If you paid even a smidgen of attention in grade school science, then you know that the above story makes sense because the melting point of ice is 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But even though those results only appeared when you reached 32 degrees, you had to go through the work of turning up the temperature, and that energy counts. 

This may seem like a silly analogy but I have found it enormously helpful to apply to my own life. Getting an ice cube to melt is like starting a new habit. You’re starting with a fully frozen ice cube at an unknown temperature below freezing. I say ‘unknown’ because depending on the habit, we all are starting in different places. Some of us may have an advantage and are starting at 30 degrees, while others may be at 0. But none of us will see results until we get to 32 degrees.

For example, think about starting a fitness habit. Maybe you were a former athlete, or maybe you’ve never worked out once, there will still be a period of time where you feel like your new habit sucks. You don’t see any results, nothing feels good, and none of your goals are being realized. But then one day, you’re all of a sudden able to achieve something. A heavy lift comes with ease, 3 miles feels like nothing, or the pounds finally start to come off. It might feel like it was all of a sudden, but those accomplishments wouldn’t have been possible without all the prior work.

A sports season is also a great analogy. When I was a competitive swimmer, we would spend the whole season training to the point of exhaustion, letting our body hair grow (it’s a thing, I swear), and wearing suits for extra drag. In most meets we weren’t able to shave off even marginal amounts of time and it felt like we weren’t really achieving anything. But at the end of the season, we would taper, we would practice a little less, get more rest, shave, and wear faster suits for the big meets. Lo and behold, we were able to see massive improvements all at once. In this instance, we were creating those 32 degrees moments extremely intentionally by building up a foundation of endurance and technique during the season so that we could take full advantage of our rest and accessories at the end.

But under normal circumstances, it can be insanely hard to get to that 32 degrees point in the first place. When we don’t see results quickly, we get anxious and try to look for other ways to get there faster, or we get discouraged and quit prematurely. I’m not saying you have to beat your head against a wall when something isn’t working, but you do have to give something new a chance to develop. Most new habits take about three weeks to form, and on top of that, your body/mind will take even longer to register this new habit and demonstrate any noticeable changes. For habits, it pays to be consistent above all else.

What happens after 32 degrees though? Once ice starts to melt, it can melt quicker, but then it’s just water and water evaporates when it gets too hot. This is where my mind has been lately. I have many positive habits that I’ve been using for years so I have a great foundation, but oftentimes I’m left wondering why I continue to engage in these behaviors. It’s good for me’ - isn’t a good enough reason. It can feel like I do all of these things for no tangible gains.

However, I have to remind myself that consistency is difficult to pull off and I have to create these mini opportunities to reach 32 degrees to keep myself going. For example, I have the foundation for a fitness habit, but I don’t have the foundation for long distance running, so that is something I can work on with my foundation of fitness.

Developing the foundation in the first place to see these 32 degrees moments is hard work, perhaps the hardest, because it takes years of consistency. You may only get to see a glimpse of your results pay off here and there, but without the foundation, you wouldn’t have anything at all.