My husband goes for a walk every morning. Come hail, snow, or fires; he is out of the door at 5:30 am and has been doing that for more than 20 years. Sometimes he is out walking at 4:00 am if he wakes up early and can’t go back to sleep.
I, on the other hand, use the weather as an excuse for not going for a walk. It is either too cold or too hot; windy or stuffy, raining or fire season. And even if it is perfect weather, I will skip walks because I hadn’t finished the article I was writing or sketch I was making.
This year I decided to nail my walking habit. That led me to read all I could find about habit building.
Why can some people form habits so easily while others struggle relentlessly?
The answer came from a very unexpected source —Gretchen Rubin’s book The Four Tendencies.
Rubin explains when we try to form a new habit, we set an expectation for ourselves. Therefore it’s crucial to understand how we respond to expectations.
We face two kinds of expectations:
- Outer expectations, such as meeting work deadlines, observing traffic regulations. And
- Inner expectations, such as to write every day or keep a New Year’s resolution.
In her book, Rubin hypothesizes that in terms of responding to expectations, just about everyone falls into one of four distinct groups:
- Upholders
- Questioners
- Obligers
- Rebels
Each group responds differently to outer and inner expectations and needs to adopt different strategies to form habits.
Upholders
Upholders respond readily to both outer expectations and inner expectations. They wake up and think: “What’s on the schedule and the to-do list for today?” They want to know what’s expected of them and meet those expectations.
They avoid making mistakes or letting people down — including themselves.
Upholders can rely on themselves, and others can rely on Upholders. They’re self-directed and have little trouble meeting commitments, keeping resolutions, or meeting deadlines (they often finish early). They want to understand the rules, and often they search for the rules beyond the rules — as in the case of art or ethics.
Because Upholders feel a real obligation to meet their expectations for themselves, they have a strong instinct for self-preservation, and this helps protect them from their tendency to meet others’ expectations.
However, Upholders may struggle when expectations aren’t clear, or the rules aren’t established. They may feel compelled to meet expectations, even ones that seem pointless. They may feel uneasy when they know they’re breaking the rules, even unnecessary rules unless they work out a powerful justification to do so.
Upholders find it relatively easy to cultivate habits. Still, they too have to put a lot of effort into it. They embrace them because they find them gratifying.
Even habit-loving Upholders must struggle to foster good habits shows how challenging it is to form habits.
My husband is an Upholder, which is why he is so disciplined with his morning walks.
To my surprise, I found out; I too am an upholder. It took me just three weeks of setting up an alarm to wake up early and go for a walk. I used to write while my husband was on his walk. Now I wake up early, write and then go for a walk.
Questioners
Questioners question all expectations and will meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified.
They’re motivated by reason, logic, and fairness. They wake up and think, “What needs to get done today, and why?” They decide for themselves whether a course of action is a good idea, and they resist doing anything that seems to lack sound purpose.
Essentially, they turn all expectations into inner expectations.
Questioners resist rules for rules’ sake.
Because Questioners like to make well-considered decisions and come to their own conclusions, they’re very intellectually engaged, and they’re often willing to do exhaustive research. If they decide there’s sufficient basis for an expectation, they’ll follow it; if not, they won’t.
Questioners resist anything that seems arbitrary. For instance, they would say, “I can keep a resolution if I think it’s important, but I wouldn’t make a New Year’s resolution because January first is a meaningless date.”
Questioners themselves sometimes wish they could accept expectations without probing them so relentlessly. Questioners often have analysis paralysis. They always want to have one more piece of information.
Questioners are motivated by sound reasons — or at least what they believe to be sound reasons. Questioners can sometimes seem like crackpots because they may reject expert opinion in favor of their own conclusions.
If Questioners believe that a particular habit is worthwhile, they’ll stick to it — but only if they’re satisfied with the habit’s usefulness.
Obligers
Obligers meet outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations. They’re motivated by external accountability; they wake up and think, “What must I do today?”
Because Obligers excel at meeting external demands and deadlines and go to great lengths to meet their responsibilities, they make terrific colleagues, family members, and friends.
Because Obligers resist inner expectations, it’s difficult for them to self-motivate — to work on a Ph.D. thesis, to attend networking events, to get their car serviced. Obligers depend on external accountability, with consequences such as deadlines, late fees, or the fear of letting other people down.
Obligers can sometimes do things for the sake of others that they couldn’t do for themselves.
The weight of outer expectations can make Obligers susceptible to burnout because they have trouble telling people “no.”
Obligers may find it difficult to form a habit because often we undertake habits for our own benefit, and Obligers do things more easily for others than for themselves. For them, the key is external accountability.
Rebels
Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. Instead, they choose to act from a sense of choice or freedom. Rebels wake up and think, “What do I want to do today?” They resist control, even self-control, and enjoy flouting rules and expectations.
Rebels work toward their own goals, in their own way, and while they refuse to do what they’re “supposed” to do, they can accomplish their own aims.
They place a high value on authenticity and self-determination and bring an unshackled spirit to what they do.
At times, the Rebel resistance to authority is enormously valuable to society. But Rebels often frustrate others because they can’t be asked or told to do anything.
They don’t care if people are counting on them or when told, “you said you’d do it,” or “your parents will be upset,” or “it’s against the rules,” or “this is the deadline,” or “it’s rude.” Asking or telling Rebels to do something often makes them do just the opposite.
Rebels sometimes frustrate even themselves because they can’t tell themselves what to do.
No surprise — Rebels resist habits. They value their freedom more than the benefit habits can bring. For them, freedom means no limits, and a life controlled by habits sounds like living a life of a prisoner.
Rebels resist habits, but they can embrace habit-like behaviors by tying their actions to their choices.
The world is full of Questioners and Obligers.
Most people, by a huge margin, are Questioners or Obligers. Very few are Rebels, and the Upholders category is also tiny.
Because Upholders and Rebels are such small categories, people who try to shape people’s habits on a large scale — employers, device manufacturers, insurance companies, instructors — focus on solutions that help Questioners, by providing sound reasons, and Obligers, by providing accountability.
How Four Tendencies Can Help You Build Habits
If you are a Questioner, you might need a sound reason for taking action (such as why you should write every day). Still, those logical arguments don’t matter nearly as much to an Obliger who will need external accountability.
An Upholder can lecture a Questioner on obligation — and make a Questioner less likely to meet an expectation because Questioners question all obligations.
As an Upholder, you might spend a lot of time worrying about things like knowing the rules of writing (whether a comma should be italicized in a footnote reference) and feeling inadequate when you unknowingly break them.
As a Questioners, you might feel exhausted by your own questioning, but you might think it is the most rational approach and hence stick with it.
As a Rebel, you sometimes wish to follow the rules but wouldn’t want to stop being Rebels.
But if you are an Obligers, you might resent others for their expectations, leaving you no time to meet your own expectations. But when given the opportunity, you might fail to meet them anyway.
The Four Tendencies framework is a great tool to give insight into human nature and your own nature. There was so much I didn’t know about myself before I read The Four Tendencies. I didn’t know why I couldn’t take up morning walks. Because they conflicted with my other habit — writing a journal in the morning. When I started waking up early and wrote my journal first, I had no problem going for a walk.
This year I am building three more habits:
- Write daily posts on LinkedIn. I haven’t been posting much for the past six months. I want to get back into the habit of posting every day. Regular posting not only keeps me in touch with my readers but also with the narrator in me.
- Write articles and newsletters in batches. For example, draft 4–8 pieces in one batch, edit and schedule them in another batch. Same with newsletters.
Your Takeaway
- Building a habit depends upon how you respond to expectations.
- To form a new habit, you set an expectation from yourself. So you need to know how you would respond to the expectation.
- There are two kinds of expectations — outer expectations and inner expectations.
- We all have different tendencies, and they play an important role in how we respond to expectations.
- Upholders respond well to both outer and inner expectations.
- Questioners question all expectations and will meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified.
- Obligers meet outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations.
- Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. Instead, they choose to act from a sense of choice or freedom.
- Knowing your tendency can help you make strategies to build habits aligned with your nature.
You can take a quiz at Gretchen Rubin’s site to determine your tendency.
