3. How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps
A habit is a behavior repeated enough times to become automatic.
A habit develops when you encounter a problem for the first time.
First, you spend efforts to find out how to solve it through trial and error.
Then you solve it.
Then there is a reward for solving it. Your brain learns that it feels good, so you want to do it again.
The sequence is: try -> fail -> learn -> try differently.
As time goes by, you improve, until the action becomes automatic (eg: driving).
The more you practice, the easier it gets for your brain.
Habits are built in four simple steps.
- Cue: it triggers your brain to initiate a behavior (smelling food triggers the expectation of eating).
- Craving: it’s the desire to get to reward, the force that gets us to act. You don’t chew and swallow: you crave the nice feeling food gives you.
- Response: what you do. If it demands more effort than you are willing to expand, then you won’t do it.
- Reward: what you get after you acted. We chase rewards because they satisfy us and teach us.
Your brain repeats the actions that reward it, and disregards those that don’t (or worse, trigger pain).
Any habit that misses one of these four stages won’t become a habit.
To summarize:
This is the habit loop.
It’s constantly happening as your brain is constantly looking for cues.
In a way, the habit loop can be divided into two parts: the problem phase, and the solution phase.
The problem phase is when you realize you have a problem (cue, craving), and the solution phase is when you’re looking and finding a solution (response, reward).
The Four Laws of Behavior Change
The Four Laws help you create good habits and break the bad ones.
How to create a good habit
- Cue: make it obvious.
- Craving: make it attractive.
- Response: make it easy.
- Reward: make it satisfying.
How to break a bad habit
- Cue: make it invisible.
- Craving: make it repulsive.
- Response: make it hard.
- Reward: make it painful.
The 1st Law: Make it Obvious
4. The Man Who Didn’t Look Right
One day, a nurse looked at her father-in-law and told him to go to the hospital right away despite that the man was feeling fine. The nurse had noticed he was about to have a heart attack as working with patients for years had trained her brain to look for cues and patterns.
The brain constantly does this. This is why experienced people can say and act in a way that themselves cannot explain. It just”feels” right, due to experience.
Learning is always happening, whether you want it or not.
The unconscious part of ourselves handles a lot of stuff. Sometimes, you notice cues and act on them without noticing (smoking).
This is what makes habits both useful (spotting an opportunity) and dangerous when it’s a bad habit.
Before you build new habits, you need to be aware of your current ones.
The Habits Scorecard
The more you repeat a habit, the less aware you become.
If you want to change a habit, you need to bring back awareness to it.
This is where the Habits Scorecard comes in.
It’s a list of all of your habits. Write them all down, then decide for each of them whether they are positive, negative, or neutral.
Eg:
- Wake up =
- Check phone –
- Take shower +
You should remove checking your phone.
Overall, the habits you should keep are the habits that are helping you become who you want to be.
The habits you should discard are those that aren’t.
5. The Best Way to Start a New Habit
The best (and only) way to start a habit is to plan it.
If it’s the gym, plan that you will go to the gym on Tuesday and Thursday, for example.
The cues most likely to trigger a habit are time and location.
The equation is the following: when X happens, I will do Y.
“When Tuesday at 17h happens, I will go to the gym.”
These are called implementation intentions. It is simply writing stuff on your calendar to implement the habit.
Most people fail to implement habits because they are not clear in their goals. If they want to eat healthier, they haven’t decided what or when they will eat.
Implementation intentions help you clarify by specifying what you will say “no” to and what you will say “yes” to.
Habit Stacking
The Diderot Effect states that people’s decision to buy something is based on what they previously bought.
Eg: if you buy a pink dress, you feel the need to buy the bag that goes with it.
You can use this hack for your habits.
- Identify a habit you already have.
- Stack another habit you want to develop on top.
Eg: After brushing my teeth, I will meditate.
The key to creating a successful stack is to get the right cue.
6. Motivation Is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More
If the basket of donuts sits on your desk, it will be hard not to eat one.
-> environment shapes our behavior.
Eg: In a church, you whisper.
In a mathematical equation, it gives B = f (P,E) -> Behavior is a function of a Person in their Environment.
The environment is extremely important when it comes to your behavior. The most important cues are visual (the brain spends half of its power on vision alone).
Change what you see -> change what you do.
Environment is capital.
How to Design Your Environment for Success
It’s all about making the cues more visible. If you want to remember to take your medicine, put them next to your toothbrush.
Since cues are mostly visual, it means that:
- Bad habits are easier to escape in a new environment.
- Good habits are harder to follow in a new environment.
In the meantime, if you need a new routine, you may try to go to a new place to establish it as that place will be free of association with anything.
Eg: If you need to be more creative, go to a big room, or a rooftop.
In anyways, avoid mixing the environment of one habit with another.
Sleep in your bedroom, work in your office, and chill in your living room. Don’t mix them.
7. The Secret to Self-Control
9/10 US soldiers addicted to heroin stopped using it when they went back home. The change in environment had been enough for them to stop their addiction.
Once a habit has been encoded, it’s difficult to ignore the cues (unless you erase them altogether).
This is why some behavior techniques can backfire.
Eg: the picture of black lungs on a cigarette pack can stress smokers that then smoke…to chill.
You can break a habit, but you are unlikely to forget it. Going back to an old environment will send you back to your old habits.
-> willpower doesn’t work.
Your success will be dependent on your environment. You can’t work seriously in a room filled with televisions.
-> To eliminate bad habits, design or move to the perfect environment.
Summary
How to create a good habit:
- Fill out the Habit Scorecard
- Use implementation intention (a calendar to say what you will do and when).
- Use habit stacking: link one habit to another
- Make the cues for good habits visible and the ones for bad habits invisible.
How to break a bad habit:
- Make the cues invisible
The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive
8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible
Marketing in the food industry has managed to make food extremely attractive. As a result, people overeat and become obese.
You need to do the same thing for your habits. Let’s have a look at how craving works.
The Dopamine-Driven Feedback Loop
Dopamine drives us. When dopamine was blocked in rats’ brains, they let themselves die of hunger. They no longer wanted to do anything -> dopamine drives everything we do.
Habits are dopamine-driven feedback loops. Those that stick are associated with high levels of dopamine.
However, dopamine is not only released when you experience pleasure, but when you anticipate it.
Eg: addicts have a dopamine spike when they see cocaine.
Dopamine is in the brain when craving happens. It is the anticipation of a reward that gets us to take action, not its fulfillment.
Eg: The night before Christmas is more exciting than unpacking the gift. Dreaming about a holiday can feel better than actually being on holiday. This is the difference between wanting VS liking.
The brain has much more firepower for wanting than for liking. It’s the craving and the anticipation of a reward that gets us to act, not the reward itself.
-> your habits must be attractive.
How To Use Temptation Bundling To Make Your Habits More Attractive
Temptation bundling is about linking a habit you don’t like with one you like.
Eg: Netflix doesn’t work until you pedal on your bike.
Temptation bundling applies the Premack principle. It states that “more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.”
9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
One of our most innate desires is to belong. To do so, we imitate the habits of our parents, friends, neighbors, and culture.
-> Our habits aren’t chosen. They’re copied.
We get our habits from three groups:
1. The people that are close to us
Your chances to become obese increase by 57% if one of your friends becomes obese. You will be more likely to be fit if your friends are also fit.
We soak up the behavior and habits of people around us.
If you want to learn or do something, join a group that already does it. Belonging to a group is powerful and motivating.
2. The majority
The more people we are surrounded by, the more likely we are to copy their behavior.
The problem is that often, the behavior of the group contradicts the desire of the individual. But the individual still bends in.
We’d rather be wrong with everyone else than be right by ourselves.
3. Powerful people
Humans constantly seek power and status. To do so, we copy the successful people, hoping to become successful ourselves.
10. How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
Every craving has an underlying motive.
Hunger’s motive is to survive. Sex’s motive is to reproduce.
Our motives often are:
- Spare energy
- Connect with other people
- Get approval from others
- Decrease uncertainty
- Achieve status and prestige
Your habits are solutions to ancient desires. You smoke because you associate cigarettes with decreasing stress. If you manage to decrease stress in another way, you’ll stop smoking.
If you manage to associate cigarettes with something you don’t like, you’ll also stop smoking.
-> Life is predictive, not reactive. When the light is green, we assume we can cross the road. We predict our decisions based on the cues we get from our environment.
A craving is the feeling that something is missing. It compels you to act.
Whenever a habit helps you address a motive, you’ll repeat it.
How To Reprogram Your Brain To Enjoy Hard Habits
You just have to associate them with a positive experience.
Stop saying “I have to go to the gym”. Say instead “I get to go to the gym”.
Have to -> get to.
It helps you see opportunities where you saw problems. Benefits, where you saw drawbacks.
Summary of the 2nd Law
How to create good habits
- Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
- Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
- Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.
How to break bad habits
- Highlight the benefits of avoiding bad habits.
The 3rd Law: Make it Easy
11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
An experiment showed that the people instructed to take a lot of pictures made better pictures than those instructed to take the best picture. The first group experimented and practiced, while the latter sat and thought.
In that case, a focus on quantity produced better quality than a focus on quality did.
This is the difference between motion VS action. Motion is research and thinking. Action is doing.
Motion won’t lead to a result, so why do we do it? Because we want to feel we are progressing without taking the risk to fail.
The truth is that motion is a form of procrastination.
If you want to start a new habit, you don’t have a choice. You need to practice.
How Long Does It Actually Take To Form A New Habit?
You establish a habit by repeating an action. The more you repeat, the more your brain will develop itself to ease the habit, the easier the habit will be.
-> Practicing is the best thing you can do!
-> a habit is not formed after some time, but after the number of repetitions!
12. The Law of Least Effort
Energy is expensive and humans are lazy. This is the Law Least Effort. When you look at your bad habits, they often require no energy to practice.
This is why you should make your habits easy.
How To Achieve More With Less Effort
All you need to do is to remove friction in the environment. If your gym is on your way to work, you’ll be more likely to go than if it’s far.
The author calls this “addition by subtraction“.
It is doing more by removing obstacles or friction to action.
