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July 24, 2019 - March 7, 2020
First, find a simple and obvious cue. Second, clearly define the rewards.
When Julio anticipated juice but didn’t receive it, a neurological pattern associated with desire and frustration erupted inside his skull.
This is how new habits are created: by putting together a cue, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a craving that drives the loop.
leaving your running clothes next to your bed)
a sense of accomplishment from recording your miles,
The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, must also trigger a craving for the reward to come.29
Eventually, that craving will make it easier to
push through the gym doors every day.
The cues and rewards stayed the same. Only the routine changed.
If you identify the cues and rewards, you can change the routine.
The evidence is clear: If you want to change a habit, you must find an alternative routine,
When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.
Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget.
Poor teacher training, the officials working with O’Neill finally figured out, was a root cause of high infant mortality. If you asked doctors or public health officials for a plan to fight infant deaths, none of them would have suggested changing how teachers are trained. They wouldn’t have known there was a link.
When the Scottish patients filled out their booklets, or Travis studied the LATTE method, they decided ahead of time how to react to a cue—a painful muscle or an angry customer.
“And I really, genuinely believe that if you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they’ll prove you right.”
She asked each student to look at a computer monitor. It was programmed to flash numbers on the screen, one at a time, for five hundred milliseconds apiece. The participants were asked to hit the space bar every time they saw a “6” followed by a “4.” This has become a standard way to measure willpower—paying attention to a boring sequence of flashing numbers requires a focus akin to working on an impossible puzzle.
when the students were treated like cogs, rather than people, it took a lot more willpower.”
“People want to be in control of their lives.”
He would spend twelve months believing that he had control over himself and his destiny,
The way we habitually think of our surroundings and ourselves create the worlds that each of us inhabit.
Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings.
On the first day of your experiment, when you feel the urge to go to the cafeteria and buy a cookie, adjust your routine so it delivers a different reward. For instance, instead of walking to the cafeteria, go outside, walk around the block, and then go back to your desk without eating anything. The next day, go to the cafeteria and buy a donut, or a candy bar, and eat it at your desk. The next day, go to the cafeteria, buy an apple, and eat it while chatting with your friends.
After each activity, jot down on a piece of paper the first three things that come to mind when you get back to your desk. They can be emotions, random thoughts, reflections on how you’re feeling, or just the first three words that pop into your head. Then, set an alarm on your watch or computer for fifteen minutes. When it goes off, ask yourself: Do you still feel the urge for that cookie?
Where are you? (sitting at my desk) What time is it? (3:36 P.M.) What’s your emotional state? (bored) Who else is around? (no one) What action preceded the urge? (answered an email)
When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD. To re-engineer that formula, we need to begin making choices again. And the easiest way to do this, according to study after study, is to have a plan. Within psychology, these plans are known as “implementation intentions.”
After a few weeks, I hardly thought about the routine anymore.
once you understand how a habit operates—once you diagnose the cue, the routine and the reward—you gain power over it.
make everyone around him want to be a better person.
