Productivity

I’ve always been the sort of person deeply interested in starting new things. In fact, starting new things seems to be fairly typical for all the creative types I hang out with at The Garden. Unfortunately the flip side of this gift is generally not finishing the things we start.

However in recent years I began to make some serious headway in understanding how to make habits stick. On 5th January 2023, I started (again) my headway into the world of fitness, choosing to workout every work day (5x per week). Fast forward two whole years and I’m still going strong. No pun intended.

This wasn’t the first time I had tried to get serious about fitness. I had always been interested in sport and enjoyed physical activity but I had never succeeded in creating any lasting change. So what changed exactly?

First let’s talk about some theology. It’s fair to say that the primary goal of the disciple of Jesus is to be formed into his image. We might call this formation, where our very nature becomes like him.

There is a circular relationship between what we do and who we are. God is love and God is also loving. When I become a patient person, I become patient with people. When I am patient with people, I become a more patient person. Here we see the real importance of habits as it pertains to character or nature. Habits are what we do repeatedly. They become who we are.

So now I am no longer just a person who goes to the gym. I am an active person. It’s who I am. I go to the gym because strong people go to the gym. And I am strong because I go to the gym. Solidifying habits is not just a nice goal for those interested in self-help, it’s a crucial part to the life of the Christian.

If you’re unable to properly form new habits then you’ll be trapped in the old habits of the flesh (the shadow side of who you are).

If you’re wondering where you can find pictures of super ripped Sats to verify all of this then slow down because I’d be the first to admit that fitness progress has felt glacially slow. But one thing I am convinced of is that a change of identity has taken place alongside my change of behaviour. Ultimately the results will speak for themselves not in two years but in the next ten or twenty years.

So how do we create unbreakable habits? And perhaps more importantly, why do we keep dropping the ball on the things we really want?

The life you live today is often a reflection of the decisions you made yesterday.

This is a statement which is generally true but not always true. Life has all sorts of nonsense that will arrive regardless of what you do. We didn’t sign up for everything so please don’t think I am throwing blame your way. We don’t want to live under shame or heaviness – that’s not helpful for anyone.

But it’s also unavoidably true that you are a huge factor in your experience of life. And that the fruit of our lives tells us interesting things about the seeds we have sown. We are all too quick to blame others instead of taking responsibility for ourselves.

The redemptive power of curiosity

I’ve found approaching this conversation with curiosity is really helpful. Curiosity dispels shame but also gives us the benefit of reflection and wisdom.

• If you’re physically out of shape, get curious about why that is the case
• If your spiritual life is empty, get curious about how that happened
• If you’re constantly exhausted and on the edge of burnout, get curious about what’s going on
• If you can never meet the right person because there’s no good men/women out there, get curious about why that is your experience

Note how this is so different from shaming people (or ourselves) for why they aren’t where they should be.

If we don’t take time to really understand what’s going on, how are we going to be able to change the way we approach these areas in the future?

A person on the edge of burnout might quite naturally respond with defensiveness by pointing to the long list of responsibilities or immoveable commitments they cannot escape from. Curiosity would instead lead to honest conversations about the importance of boundaries and saying no.

Curiosity asks questions which is something we see God do a lot throughout scripture both in the Old and New Testament. Much of the first interactions between God and humans involve curiosity and questions.

• Where are you?
• Who told you that you were naked?
• Where is your brother?

God is not asking questions because he doesn’t know the answers. He’s asking because he’s trying to help us reflect and do some important digging into what’s going on beneath the surface.

Before the pandemic, I had tried multiple times to implement some sort of fitness programme but it had never lasted. Looking back I can see that it never could have. The environment of my life was all wrong.

• I was working for a church fulfilling multiple full-time job roles which left me no time.
• I was paid poorly for some roles and not at all for others which meant I was using all spare time to try and make additional income.
• I had zero margin in my life and was already sacrificing sleep and family life to keep up with all of the above.

I was well-intentioned in this season but totally unaware of why things were not working. I truly believed that fitness was important. But there was a mismatch between my beliefs and my actions. I needed to get curious about why that was. Eventually I realised that there was simply not enough space in my life for not just health but a whole host of other things like hobbies, rest and fun too.

(This new-found curiosity emerged from a very curious set of circumstances, notably that particular church having a spectacularly public meltdown. I’m deliberately fast-forwarding a very long albeit interesting story which goes beyond the scope of this article. I cover some of the issues in an article about honour culture).

If you’re not open to becoming curious about why you’re not where you want to be then you’re not ready to change. And it’s very unlikely that you’ll create lasting habits.

For the rest of us however, here are some learnings from my journey on forming unbreakable habits.

1. Start small but sure.

The greatest challenge with forming habits is not about the task itself but developing the right pathways in the brain. Once the pathways are formed in the brain, then you can start to build upon the habit to become more intense (or more flexible) as you desire.

Here are some simple rules I set for myself back in January 2023.

• I was going to workout every single week day (Monday – Friday)
• I was going to do something even if it was very small
• I was not going to skip a day for sickness unless I was literally on death’s door

I found creating a higher frequency (5x/week) made it easier to form the habit because my brain was forming this connection with my wake up routine. I would get up at 4:45am, head to meet my friend and then we’d workout. Yes that’s right – we were working out at 5am lol.

It was freezing cold. It was pitch black. Conditions were not cool.

But the extremeness of it made it stick in the brain. The hardest part of it was not the workout but just having the willpower to get up. Once I was up, the rest actually felt comparatively much easier.

To make the whole process easier, I set out all of my workout gear ready (including things like water & keys) so that all I had to do was get dressed and leave the house (without waking up my kids – a considerable task with creaky London houses).

My goal was to keep my streak going as long as possible and in 2023 I missed very few days due to sickness or holiday. In 2024 however, I decided to relax a little bit and whilst I still workout 5x/week, if it’s been a super busy week or a late night then I don’t kill myself for the sake of it. That’s because the habit is already strong.

Go intense but realistic in your initial creation of a habit. It’s better to be super consistent at something easy than inconsistent with something hard. You can then dial it back to be more realistic in the future. We moved from doing bodyweight exercises at 5am outside in the pitch black to hitting the gym at 6am after the first month. But 5am seared it into my brain.

2. Create an environment for success

We’ve already talked about how important it is to have space for new habits to form. If your life is too full then you won’t be able to fit anything else in.

There is a very real cost to forming a new habit. Your time and your energy is finite and you’ll have to reduce your commitments elsewhere. It took me a while to realise this as an endless optimist. It’s not a lack of faith to be realistic. God has set limits on human beings and there is blessing when we acknowledge them. (Read more about my thoughts on limitation in 2025 here)

But creating space is not the only way we can create a successful environment for habit formation. We can also use accountability to create friction in failure or positive peer pressure to aid momentum. For example, when I started my 5am workout routine, I also launched a preaching series called the 5am Club. It was all about health, stewardship of the body, fitness etc.

We encouraged the whole church to join us at 5am, 5x per week from 5th January. To encourage others, we literally livestreamed on Instagram our workouts for a whole month. Now not everyone will have the luxury of such a public sense of accountability but here’s what happened:

• Very few people actually committed to the 5am Club but everybody knew about it. Because it was ridiculous lol.
• People asked me for months afterwards if I was still working out
• Speaking publicly about the importance of fitness was a compelling reason for me to continue

Imagine if I quit after 6 months? The social cost of my peers would have been too great. Not to mention my reputation as a pastor.

To recreate this in your own context, consider this:

• Make it extreme. 5am is extreme. People pay attention to extreme things
• Make it time limited. The 5am Club was only for one month but it was enough to form the pathways in the brain.
• Make it public. There’s a reason the public side of a marital commitment is so important. It means something. We are built for community. I use social media frequently to hold myself accountable. I used this technique to produce our first album in 2024.
• Make it a documentary. You can literally see the videos of us working out on our church Instagram page on top of a bridge overlooking the London skyline. The record is there for anyone to see. Find a way to get into people’s minds. It’ll increase the likelihood of your success.

For Christian creatives looking for a helpful sense of accountability, consider joining The Garden.

3. It’s ok to evolve.

My understanding of fitness and health has grown over the last two years. And with it my goals have changed dramatically. This is not only totally ok but totally normal. For example, mobility has become an essential part of my focus for 2025. I don’t want to just become stronger, I want to move better. I want to bulletproof my body from future injury. I want to be able to play with my grandkids (I’ve got a while before this possibility).

This is where ultimately habit formation is about your goals. These don’t have to be set by anyone else. And these may change from season to season.

Right now I have four young kids and certain pastoral commitments. I have to find a way of life that fits around that. I would love to actually spend more time in the gym but I cap it at 45 minutes per session because that’s all I can fit in before getting up before the school run.

This will change in the future and that’s ok. I’d love to spend more time playing sports too but that will have to wait for another season. Understanding that life is flexible stops us from becoming overly intense or even impatient.

Find what you can do now and what you have space for. Habit formation is about deciding what you truly want. And no one else can really answer that for you. There are no exact ways of doing life. That’s between you and God.

So go form some unbreakable habits. But don’t forget that you’re allowed to break them too if you really want.