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out of the emergency room doors and toward the helipad across the street. The stretcher rattled on a bumpy sidewalk
Temptation bundling is one way to apply a psychology theory known as Premack’s Principle. Named after the work of professor David Premack, the principle states that “more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.” In other words, even if you don’t really want to process overdue work emails, you’ll become conditioned to do it if it means you get to do something you really want to do along the way. You can even combine temptation bundling with BJ Fogg’s habit stacking strategy we discussed in Chapter 5 to create a set of rules to guide your behavior.
The habit stacking + temptation bundling formula is: After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT]. If you want to read the news, but you need to express more gratitude: After I get my morning coffee, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened yesterday (need). After I say one thing I’m grateful for, I will read the news (want). If you want to watch sports, but you need to make sales calls: After I get back from my lunch break, I will call three potential clients (need). After I call three potential clients, I will check ESPN (want). If
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that “a person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese.” It works the other way, too. Another study found that if one person in a relationship lost weight, the other partner would also slim down about one third of the time.
One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
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One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.
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At a deep level, you simply want to reduce uncertainty and relieve anxiety, to win social acceptance and approval, or to achieve status.
In time, you learn to predict that checking social media will help you feel loved or that watching YouTube will allow you to forget your fears.
The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.
Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.
motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.
Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism. It doesn’t feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.
When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.
You don’t actually want the habit itself. What you really want is the outcome the habit delivers.
Rather than trying to overcome the friction in your life, you reduce it.
People think I work hard but I’m actually really lazy. I’m just proactively lazy. It gives you so much time back.”
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Whether we are approaching behavior change as an individual, a parent, a coach, or a leader, we should ask ourselves the same question: “How can we design a world where it’s easy to do what’s right?”
Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.
Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.
You check your phone for “just a second” and soon you have spent twenty minutes staring at the screen.
Everything that follows—driving to the gym, deciding which exercises to do, stepping under the bar—is easy once I’ve taken the first step. Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact. I refer to these little choices as decisive moments. The moment you decide between ordering takeout or cooking dinner. The moment you choose between driving your car or riding your bike. The moment you decide between starting your homework or grabbing the video game controller. These choices are a fork in the road.
The difference between a good day and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moments.
We are limited by where our habits lead us. This is why mastering the decisive moments throughout your day is so important.
Each day is made up of many moments, but it is really a few habitual choices that determine the path you take.
“Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.”
In modern society, many of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately. If you do a good job at work, you’ll get a paycheck in a few weeks. If you exercise today, perhaps you won’t be overweight next year. If you save money now, maybe you’ll have enough for retirement decades from now. You live in what scientists call a delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.
The human brain did not evolve for life in a delayed-return environment.
Behavioral economists refer to this tendency as time inconsistency. That is, the way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time.
With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.
the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.
The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful—even if it’s in a small way. The feeling of success is a signal that your habit paid off and that the work was worth the effort.
Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.
Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.
Lost days hurt you more than successful days help you.
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
We repeat bad habits because they serve us in some way, and that makes them hard to abandon. The best way I know to overcome this predicament is to increase the speed of the punishment associated with the behavior. There can’t be a gap between the action and the consequences.
To be productive, the cost of procrastination must be greater than the cost of action.
People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them.
Until you work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.
FIGURE 15: Maximum motivation occurs when facing a challenge of just manageable difficulty. In psychology research this is known as the Yerkes–Dodson law, which describes the optimal level of arousal as the midpoint between boredom and anxiety.
He mentioned the factors you might expect: genetics, luck, talent. But then he said something I wasn’t expecting: “At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.”
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us.
Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life. David
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.
However, the benefits of habits come at a cost. At first, each repetition develops fluency, speed, and skill. But then, as a habit becomes automatic, you become less sensitive to feedback. You fall into mindless repetition. It becomes easier to let mistakes slide. When you can do it “good enough” on autopilot, you stop thinking about how to do it better.
In fact, some research has shown that once a skill has been mastered there is usually a slight decline in performance over time.
