Aggregation of marginal gains: Improvement doesn’t always come from making one thing a lot better, it can also come from making a lot of things a little bit better.
If you can get 1 percent better every day for a year, you’ll end up 37 times better. One percent worse takes you down to almost nothing.
This means that you should worry more about current trajectory than current results.
Habits are the “compound interest of self-improvement.” Outcomes are a lagging measure of habits.
Think about an ice cube- going from 20 degrees to 30 degrees takes a lot of heat, but the ice cube still looks the same. When the temperature finally passes 32 degrees, the ice “suddenly” starts to melt. But really, the changes were happening the whole time.
That’s why focusing on results can be so disappointing – change takes a long time.
Moving from Goals to Systems
Winners and losers have the same goals. Every Olympic athlete has the same goal: to win. But not every athlete has the right system for winning
Goal-oriented thinking puts happiness off until the future. “When I reach this goal, I’ll finally be happy.”
Fall in love with the process rather than the product.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Three Layers of Behavior Change
Think about two people being offered a cigarette. One says “I’m trying to quit.” The other says “I’m not a smoker.” These two people approach habit change very differently.
(1) Outcomes: Concerned with final results and goal-setting.
(2) Processes: Building habits and systems.
(3) Identity: Changing your beliefs.
Identity change is the North Star of habit change.
Identity habits can be positive and negative. Self-identifying as a musician will help you practice more often. Identifying as tone-deaf will probably hurt your chances.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Greatness then, is not an act, but a habit” – Will Durant
To change your habits, first decide the type of person you want to be. Then prove it to yourself with your actions.
Habits might help you become you richer, smarter, fitter – but that’s not the point. Habits aren’t about getting something, they’re about becoming someone.
Four Steps of Habit Formation: Cue, Craving, Response, Reward.
To understand the steps, think about why habits exist in the first place. Habits are “reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment.”
When we face the same challenges over and over, we come up with habitual solutions. This moves some of our behavior to more unconscious control, helping the brain conserve energy.
Having good habits leaves you with more mental space for free thinking and creativity.
Cue: What triggers your brain to do something.
Craving: The psychological desire to change your state of mind.
Response: The actual action/habit you perform.
Reward: The end goal of every habit. Some good thing.
First purpose of rewards is to satisfy a craving. Second purpose is to teach us what to do in the future.
These four steps create a loop. The way to change habits is to change the loop.
Four Laws of Behavior Change:
(1) Make it obvious.
(2) Make it attractive.
(3) Make it easy.
(4) Make it satisfying.
Cues
Cues are Often Unconcious.
When you do something enough, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.
Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing.
Behavior change starts with awareness.
Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Japanese train conductors use a method called pointing-and-calling, where they have to point at things and say them out loud. This raises non-conscious habits (like checking the train’s speed) to more conscious level (by saying the speed out loud).
You can do the same thing in your life by spending a few days writing down all of your habits, and questioning whether they are positive or negative.
Starting a Habit
The first rule of behavior change is to make it obvious. This helps develop better cues.
The most common cues are time and location.
Studies show that “implementation intentions” are effective ways to stick to goals.
Implementation intentions are formatted like: “When [X] happens, I will do [Y].” The [X] is the cue that triggers the behavior.
To use this in your habits, commit to habits with specific times and places: not “I will work out more,” but “I will exercise for 30 minutes at 5pm at my local gym.”
French philosopher Diderot was given a beautiful red dressing gown. In his essay “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown,” he writes that once he had one expensive possession, his other possessions no longer felt satisfactory.
The “Diderot Effect” describes this spiral of consumptive behavior. But the same effect can help us: when we do one good thing, we can be inspired to do more good things.
We can use this effect by “habit stacking,” tying desired behaviors into other existing habits.
The Importance of Environment
Growing fields of choice architecture and nudge theory recognize that you can get people to do things differently without them even noticing. This is because people’s behavior is often based on environment.
Dutch electric meter story: a city in the Netherlands used far less electricity than their neighbors. The only difference? Their electric meters were in the main hallway, where energy consumption was constantly visible.
To create new routines, it can be helpful to create a new environment.
Examples of positive environment design: putting fruit in a big bowl instead of in the fridge, keeping a book right by your bed, etc.
A helpful mantra: “one space, one use.” This gives every habit a home.
The Secret of Self-Control
Many US soldiers became addicted to heroin in Vietnam. But when they came home, almost 90% of them never relapsed. The best theory for why – the cues that triggered heroin use in Vietnam were gone.
Research tends to indicate that “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in ways that doesn’t require willpower.
You can break a habit, but the cues will stick around.
One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
The inverse of “make it obvious” (for habits you want) is to “make it invisible” (for habits you don’t want).
Cravings
The Dopamine Cycle
Craving is controlled mostly by dopamine in the brain.
The world is filled with people trying to take advantage of our natural desires. Magazines show us impossibly beautiful people. The food around us is filled with sugar, salt, and fat that our cavemen ancestors could never have imagined.
Habits are dopamine-driven feedback loops.
Dopamine is released both when you experience pleasure and when you anticipate it.
To make a habit attractive, use temptation bundling to link something you want to do with something you need to do.
The Social Element of Habit Formation
The people in your life can affect your habits.
If you want to do something, try to be part of a culture where your desired behavior is normal. Want to read? Join a book group. Work out? Fitness group. And so on.
We tend to imitate the habits of our close social groups, our society as a whole, and the people we see as powerful.
Using Cravings To Remove Negative Habits
To remove bad habits, reframe your cravings in a negative light. (Make it unattractive)
Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings.
Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.
Response
Just Do Something
“The best is the enemy of the good.”
There is a difference between motion and action. Planning, strategizing, and learning are all motion. They don’t produce anything. Action delivers an outcome.
Talking to a personal trainer doesn’t get you in shape.
Motion allows us to feel like we’re doing something without the risk of failure.
Repeating a habit leads to physical changes in the brain. The best way to strengthen your habits is doing them, not thinking about them.
Engage in active practice, not passive learning.
Instead of asking “how long does it take to form a new habit?” ask “how many does it take to form a new habit?”
Friction
People are lazy, and that’s not a bad thing. When deciding between two options, people tend to choose the option that requires the least amount of work – saving energy. We are optimizers by nature.
Low-effort habits can take over, though. Scrolling on a phone and watching TV take very little energy.
You have to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it.
Use addition by subtraction – remove points of friction getting in the way of your habits.
Make your habits as easy as possible to start – a habit should take 2 minutes or less.
Instead of trying to engineer the perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing consistently.
To remove bad habits, make it difficult.
One option is to use commitment devices – a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future.
Reward
Make it Satisfying
We are, of course, more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying.
The first three laws of behavior change – making things obvious, attractive, and easy – make it more likely that you’ll do it this time. Making it satisfying increases the chances you’ll do it next time.
Delayed Rewards
The human brain did not evolve for life in a delayed-return environment. That’s why sugar is so bad – it’s an immediate reward adapted from times of scarcity, and even though we know it’s going to hurt us in the long run, we still like it.
But we all know that delayed gratification is smart! So what do we do?
Turn instant gratification to your advantage by adding a bit of immediate pleasure to good habits.
For example, think about avoidance habits – you want to stop making impulse purchases or stop eating junk food. The problem is the success is non-action, which isn’t very rewarding.
So consider adding a real reward. Every time you resist the temptation to buy coffee, earmark that money for something you want.
Paper Clip Strategy
Worker starts the day with 120 paper clips in one jar, and moves them every time he makes a call.
Making visual progress is satisfying.
This is the inspiration for the whole “don’t break the chain” philosophy.
When you miss a day, don’t miss twice.
But remember Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Nick Beachy 