Read Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives for Free Online Page B

limitations. I’d learn to love travel, or to appreciate exotic cuisines.
    Also, I’d assumed that I was pretty much like everyone else, and that everyone else was pretty much like me. That’s true; but our differences are very important . And they have a big influence on habit formation. For instance, I kept reading the advice that because our minds are clearest in the morning, we should do our most demanding intellectual work then. I thought I “should” follow this habit, until finally I realized that my own habit—starting my day with an hour of email grunt work—suits me. I need to clear the decks before I can settle down to serious work, and I suspect that if I’d tried to change my habit, I would’ve failed.
    I should tailor my habits to the fundamental aspects of my nature that aren’t going to change. It was no use saying “I’ll write more every day if I team up with another writer, and we race to see who can finish writing a book faster,” because I don’t like competition .
    To avoid wasting my precious habit-formation energy on dead ends, I need to shape my habits to suit me. For this reason, I developed a list of questions to highlight aspects of my nature that are relevant to habit formation.
    They say the world is made up of two types of people: those who love dividing the world into two types of people, and those who don’t. I’m clearly in the former category.
Am I a Lark or an Owl?
    Research shows that morning people , or “Larks,” really do differ from night people, or “Owls.” Most people fit somewhere in between, but the extremes—the two chronotypes as measured by their sleep midpoint—do exist. The two types are more productive and energetic at different points in the day.
    I’m a Lark: I go to sleep and wake on the early side. Owls do just the opposite. I used to believe that Owls could become Larks if they made an effort to go to sleep earlier, but research suggests that this attribute is hardwired. Genes play a big role, as does age: young children tend to be Larkish; adolescents tend to be Owls (with a peak at age 19.5 for women and age 21 for men); older adults tend to be Larks.
    Interestingly, research suggests that Larks are likely to be happier , healthier, and more satisfied with life than Owls—in part, because the world favors Larks. Owls fall asleep later than Larks do, and because work, school, and young children start early, Owls get less sleep, which makes their lives harder.
    Larks, Owls, and everyone in between should consider that aspect of their nature when trying to shape a habit. An Owl shouldn’t bother trying to form the habit of getting up early to study, and a Lark shouldn’t try to fit in two hours of writing after dinner.
    Sometimes we may not recognize our own type. A friend told me, “I went on a meditation retreat, where we woke up at four. It was like a switch flipped for me, and my life became so much better. Now I go to bed around 9:00 or 9:30, and I wake up at 4:00. I love it.”
Am I a Marathoner, a Sprinter, or a Procrastinator?
    Especially for workplace habits, it’s key to distinguish the pace at which people prefer to work. I’m a Marathoner. I like to work at a slow and steady clip, and I dislike deadlines—in fact, I often finish work early. In law school, I had two massive writing requirements to complete by graduation, and I wrote them both by the end of my first year. (Side note: perhaps my eagerness to write big papers was a sign that I wanted to be a writer instead of a lawyer, but that’s another issue.) Working on projects steadily, over long periods of time, ignites my creativity.
    By contrast, Sprinters prefer to work in quick bursts of intense effort, and they deliberately wait for the pressure of a deadline to sharpen their thinking. A Sprinter told me, “I never prepare a speech until the people are in their seats, and