Design Your Work: Praxis Volume 1

by Tiago Forte

I would argue that a similar mechanism explains how habits are broken and formed. As any product designer will tell you, your main competition is not another new product. It is the status quo. Our existing habits are so stable that it takes an outside force — a disturbance — to destabilize the system just long enough for new solutions to establish themselves. This study reported that 36% of successful changes in behavior were associated with a move to a new place (nearly three times the rate associated with unsuccessful changes). I’m sure you’ve experienced this — moving to a new city or traveling, suddenly all your behavioral axioms become unmoored from their context, and it takes all your energy to fulfill basic needs like food, water, and a place to sleep. It is during these in-between times that new habits are formed and old ones broken almost effortlessly. From the chaos emerges a new pattern of habits to resolve a new set of forces.