What V. Frankl taught me about maintaining habits

Field Note  ·  Habits

“The habit you're trying to build by willpower will fall apart at the first real crisis. The one you built by meaning will outlast almost anything.”

Viktor Frankl survived three years in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and emerged with one dominant insight: people can endure almost any how if they have a sufficient why. His method of logotherapy is built upon the premise that the primary human drive is not pleasure or power, but meaning. And that when meaning is present, suffering becomes bearable. This is an insight forged in the most extreme conditions imaginable. But if you think about your own daily life and far less dramatic circumstances, it might also explain why you could never make morning runs stick until you stopped trying to make morning runs stick.

The willpower is not sufficient

Most habit advice relies on the willpower model: reduce friction, add cues, build streaks, use rewards. They are great tools that genuinely work quite well; however, they might fall short until something unexpected happens. For example, a serious illness, a period of despair, a breakup, a move to another place or country. When life hits hard, the streak breaks, the friction returns, and the habit solely relying on these tricks is in danger of dissolving. So, the first step in any habit formation is to build a strong foundation and find your why to bear any heavy load in the future.

"Those who have a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how.'" — Viktor Frankl

Building from meaning instead

There are habits that last a lifetime, and habits that evaporate within months. But, most importantly, the difference between them is rarely discipline. I have been reading since I learned the first letters: through teenage years, college, getting married, moving countries, and writing a dissertation. And once, with a newborn in my arms at 2 am, a book was open on the pillow beside me. There is nothing optimised about this habit. I have never tracked it, never forced myself, but also never rewarded myself for finishing a chapter. Reading is just something that deeply matters to me, in a way I couldn't fully explain but also couldn't imagine living without.

If you think about your own life, you will likely find something similar, a habit so deeply ingrained into who you are that it never occurred to you to question whether you'd keep it. The people who fall in love with running, or pottery, or music, or cooking, don't think about the hacks. The habit is the anchor. It holds them together when everything else collapses. And there is a profound difference in what it feels like to do hard things willingly, because they mean something, versus hard things that simply have to get done.

The Frankl question

Now, for any new habit you're trying to build, ask this before you even start: why does this matter beyond the outcome? Not "what does it produce?" but "what does doing this make me?" Not "what do I get?" but "who am I becoming?" One of the most universally wished-for habits is to exercise and eat well. But you should be honest with yourself about what's actually driving it. Do you want to produce a body that gets a certain kind of attention? Or does waking up at 6 am to run a mile play a much larger role in your story than just fitness? Maybe it's about the kind of person your children see in the morning. Maybe it's about proving something to yourself that has nothing to do with how you look.

If you can't answer the Frankl question with something that genuinely moves you, something connected to your actual values, your actual story, your actual sense of who you're trying to become, then almost no amount of behavioural engineering will carry you through the hard weeks. The tricks will hold until it doesn't, but a strong foundation will carry you through a lifetime.

The lab experiment

Take one habit you've tried and dropped. Write one honest sentence about what it would mean (really mean) if you became someone who kept it. Not the outcome it may or may not produce, but what identity would it give to you? See if that sentence has any charge in it.