S2 E9 | How to Make Habits Stick

Most of my adult life, I've been very large, right? Almost 250, 280, 290 at some points and back and forth and always trying to do some things, but always focused on, to be honest, building businesses and not worry about myself. And though I knew I needed to lose weight, it's like it could never stick with it. And so part of it was being able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and make it not about weight, but what can I do? And so part of this is really framing out, kind of seeing the future, but also talking about connecting the past and the future in terms of, like, if I didn't have the weight, what could I do?

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of innovation and new product development. We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired Group and I'm one of your co hosts and we're joined by Greg Engel, who is my co founder and chief, Bob Interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize, and recharge your brain to build better products.

Hey, Bob.

Hey, Greg. What's up?

So today we're going to talk about something that is, you know, similar to a lot of things we've talked about in the past, but I just want to focus and slow it down. So, and I've picked the topic and we're, you know, depending on when this thing drops for sure, where we're two months to three months into the new year. But, but I want to talk about why New Year's resolutions or why new habits are hard to stick. Right? So I want to. And the reason why I want to talk about that is because I think we have tools to help with that from some of our frameworks. But then also I think change is very important to humans as a whole, and we have to get used to change. And change is hard. And that's what new resolutions or new ideas are or change. So I want to frame it up, basically thinking about how do people, let's say New Year's resolutions, and a lot of times that's diet, exercise, those types of things, goals, how do we make them more sticky? How do we make sure that we can attain that new thing instead of making it so abstract or whatever that we can't attain?

So this is where, again, we go back to our big Tool of the forces of progress, right? And so as we start to think through the forces of progress, the first thing is you have to really understand why you want to change, right? And it gets back to there's a difference between the output and the outcome. And a lot of people say, oh, I want to lose weight. And if you only frame this from I want to lose weight perspective, the reality is like, you're probably going to be unsuccessful. And part of this is because you need to actually anchor it in the outcome, in what you can do or you can't do or what you couldn't do before and you can do now or you want to be able to do. And it's, it's this aspect of being able to kind of frame the future with by achieving these outcomes, right? As a, you know, and so the notion is, is most people set goals that are either too, too specific or too close, and they end up having one metric. And it's when, when they don't, when they go a couple of weeks without losing any weight, it's like, oh, this is horrible. But it's like, yeah, but look at the progress you've made. You've been able to do this or you can do that now that you couldn't do before. And so part of this is one, being very clear on your forces, but two, also being clear on the outcomes and not necessarily just the output.

And I want to talk a little bit about. There's notions that we talk about, which is aspirational goals and progress. And they're two totally different things in our heads, right? And I think it's something that can help people, which is aspirational to us is when I just say, hey, wouldn't it be great if. And that's what a lot of times we do when we say we want to lose weight or we want to exercise more. Wouldn't it be great if I started doing this and there's no meat behind the what would be great? And that's usually when you know you're doing something that's aspirational. And what we say is you haven't put the work in to actually understand the progress. And from your perspective, what is. If that's the definition of aspiration. What's the definition of progress in your mind? What is the definition of helping people see the progress?

So that gets back to, I mean, for pretty much most of my adult life, I've been very large, right? Almost 250, 280, 290 at some points and back and forth and always trying to do some things, but always focused on, to be honest, building businesses and not really worried about myself. And though I knew I needed to lose weight, it's like I could never stick with it. And so part of it was being able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and make it not about weight. But what can I do? Wow, I'm sleeping a lot and I'm tired and all these other things, and I can't think. And then the other part is, what am I missing out on? And so part of it was framing all the things that I was either missing out on or not being able to be part of or things that I would want to do that I couldn't do because I was that large. Right. And so part of this is really framing out kind of like, kind of seeing the future, but also talking about connecting the past and the future in terms of, like, if I didn't have the weight, what could I do? And so part of it gets back to.

So I want to stop you there for a second, because I want to. You gave this story, and I want to give the definition because I want people to understand what we're talking about here in progress to us. And it's a rewired thing again, or a Bob Messeda thing. Progress is. And we're going to put this in the. In the show notes. And you have to picture the force of progress.

Push, pull, anxiety, habit.

And the. And progress is actually when F1 and F2 are greater than F3 and F4. So pushes and pulls are greater than habits and anxieties. And the reason why we say that is because there's a notion of that force of progress is stagnant. And force of progress is actually not stagnant. It's actually dynamic and it's living and breathing, and you have to be thinking about that all the time. So when you do your forces of progress, when you want to make a change, you have to talk about those things you just talked about, which is what's going on today? And that was, you can't sleep as well. You're tired. Maybe you. You know, in our line of work, we can't think fast enough.

Can't think fast enough. Exactly.

And then the outcomes are things like, if I do that, I can kind of mitigate those things and maybe even.

More, or I can do more. And I. There's a lot more I want to do. And if I. If I. If I have all this weight, I can't actually get.

But you also have to think about the Things underneath that watermark.

That's right.

Right. Because your habit is to. Well, for you is to drink. It was. It was to. Yeah, to. To maybe drink, maybe. Maybe graze. Instead of eating a big meal, you might graze.

I realized I ate a thousand calories of almonds a day.

And then the anxieties are if you have to give up some of that stuff and you have to go out on a client meeting, you can't socialize. Right. Because you're worried about those things. So you have to get all those things out. That's why we say it's F1 and F2 have to be greater than F3 and F4. And you have to always think about them. And it's not a snap decision of you do it one time. It's. You have to actually go back to those forces of progress over and over and over again and then not only identify them, be okay with short failures.

That's right.

Because you're.

What did you learn from it?

You're going to go out and you're going to go out and drink, maybe too much, or you're going to go out and. Or you're going to have a stressful day and you're going to have that candy bar or something's going to happen. Right. But then you have to reground yourself into, okay, that happened. But why am I doing this again? How do I not fall back into that bad habit?

Well, and what's the consequence if I don't do it? There's another part of this of being able to say, like, what happens if I slide back? And what am I. What's really going to happen?

So the first step in making stickies, what we're saying is really identify those.

Forces of progress and be clear on the change and why you want to make the change and why the change is so hard.

And then the second part of it is, once we do that, is keep that in mind all the time and remind yourself and forgive yourself and maybe even change those forces of progress. Because as you make some, like you lose your first £15, it might change a little bit. And you have to keep making those dynamic, that change dynamic, because otherwise it becomes habit and then habits status quo.

That's right. I think BJ Fogg talks about a lot in terms of there's motivation and ability. And the fact this is what happens is in January when you set the resolution, you're highly motivated, right. You put on a few pounds over Christmas and what's going on. And the thing is, as real Life kind of comes back in. Your motivation is lower. All of a sudden you fall off. And so part of this is actually understanding your motivation for the change and making sure that you're designing the degree of change to match the level of motivation you have. Because if you have too much, I.

Want to get to that. So I want to get to that. But I want to get to that. Very. So the first step. No, very directly the first step is you have to identify what's going on, and you have to know that it's going to be dynamic, and you have to be able to change and tweak as you go. But now what are strategies? Because you started getting into strategies. So what are strategies to help you through this change as you go? Yeah, so the first strategy we're trying to do is.

Yeah, so there's a couple strategies. One strategy is to. Is to make the change a little smaller, as opposed to making it so big and so divided into smaller pieces. So it actually, you know, your motivation doesn't have to be so high. So it's not like, hey, I want to get to 200 pounds. It's like, I want to go from 280 to 260, and like, what can I do now with 260? And like, now that I'm at 260, what can I do next? And so part of it is you might have this bigger goal, but the thing is, you have to actually kind of make it more attainable. Because if the reference point is 200 and it's starting at 280, it's like, okay, I'm 280. Okay, I'm 260 or 270, 260. Like, I'm still a long way away. But if I say I started 280 and now I'm down to 260 and I've lost 20 pounds, it's like, that's pretty good. And so you start to realize. So part of his reference point and part of it is making it smaller.

Yeah, so I think the word you used was attainable, and I think that's the right thing. And. And know that you can write your force of progress of trying to get down to the 200, but you just need to break them up. You just need to break it up. So we're not saying. We're not saying cheat yourself. We're saying reward yourself. And those metrics should be rewarding, not unattainable, not penalizing.

Like, oh, gosh, I still got £60 to go. It's like, no, I've lost this much weight. So the other thing, I think there's another strategy which is the aspect of kind of building a time wall and being able to artificially create a date of what you have to do it by that then forces you to kind of have that push. And so it's kind of like it's a combination of attainable and with a time deadline of some sort that allows you to kind of realize that there's trade offs you have to make to get to that. If there's no deadline, there's no time wall. I prefer the word time wall because it's like as I get closer and closer to the wall there's more and more pressure to get it done. And so I don't think about it as a drop dead, but more like that pressure forces me to make trade offs of what I can do and can't do. So those are some of the things that I do to kind of help this make, make the change stick is make it smaller, make it have, have some metrics and also have basically ways in which to make sure that it's time bound so I can actually figure out kind of what to do next.

Yeah, I think what we're talking about there with both those strategies are we're just trying to, to frame it and frame it, frame it to be attainable and then also measurable. Because a time wall to me, you know, it's, it's artificial with time wall because if you're like, you're. Well no, it depends on your personality. If you're a person that gets very anxious, a time wall could be. Yeah, something's too much pressure. Right. So you just have to figure out what, where you're coming from. But you're talking about a metric, right? And time is a metric. If when we think about wall it might throw a little bit more anxiety in it. So make it something else to make it a goal. I don't, it doesn't matter to me what you call it but have it.

But have a, have a deadline somewhere in it. So it enables you to kind of make, you need to be able to make trade offs. You need to be able to give up something and get something and you have to be able to make that very, very tangible and conceptual in terms of what are you going to do.

So the first step was. So what we're, what we're really talking about is we're talking about strategies here and there's also the strategy of you could, which in most cases is not possible but in some it is you can actually get rid of the old way completely.

Yeah. So I was going to say there's two more strategies that I have to kind of make change stick. One is, is this notion of firing the old. Like, to be honest, I got rid of all my clothes that were too big. Like, the first thing I did, actually, is I wore the clothes that were too big for long enough for people to go like, wow, you lost a lot of weight. Right?

What was that for? Was that fishing for compliments or what was it for you, really?

I think part of it was, is, like, to be honest, I wasn't sure whether it was going to stay off or not. And so it's like, I'm not willing to invest or not.

There was anxiety.

There was anxiety around it. And so the thing is, I wore it. But thing is, as I got more people saying I lost weight, and then I'm saying, like, okay, can I sustain this? Then I said, all right, now I'm going to start getting rid of the clothes. And as I bought new clothes, I bought them at a smaller size. And the thing is, what it is, okay. And then those got bigger. They got too big. And so then I added another pair. And so part of it was this whole notion of, like, okay, I've had to revamp my entire closet. But at the same time, that's kind of the. I did not anticipate that going into this. At the same time, what it is, is it's the way in which to say, I can't go back because I don't have those. I don't have the fat pants anymore, where you gain a few pounds, like, oh, I can put those on. Nope, don't have that. And so part of it was firing the old. The other is actually having metrics that are in place that help remind me that I'm still on track. So I have two major metrics that I have. One is a continuous glucose monitor that literally taught me how to eat and when to eat and how to make sure I didn't spike my blood sugar and a lot of those kinds of things. And so I don't wear one all the time, but I wear 1 for two weeks on and one week off. The one week off is so I can have a little fun. But for the most part, I understand what alcohol and peanut butter and bagels and all these things do to me and when to eat. And then the other is an OURA ring, which actually helps me understand how my sleep is going. And if I have those two metrics and those things are in, in line. It makes sure that I maintain the changes that I've been putting in play.

So I think to recap, what we're really talking about is the first step to make things sticky is you really have to think about your force of progress and you really have to discover the things that are going to hold you back, which are the habits and anxieties. The second part of it is to make goals or metrics. And you can't just make the metrics, the big ones. You have to think about long term, midterm and short term goals that way. It's, it's in that and that's, in that way. It's, it's attainable, but it still gives you that, that sense of there's something bigger out there, right? So you have to break it down. And the other is then build your life for success. Use some strategies. And it's not use all the strategies we talked about. And there's way more strategies than what we talked about.

These are, these are our default kind of ones and I'm sure we have kind of derivatives, but those are the main.

But everybody has them, right? Everybody has some strategies or they've read about them and put the right ones in place for you. If you're somebody that thrives on pressure, then time wall's great. If you're somebody that has a little more anxiety, then maybe you have to make something a little softer. Know yourself and make those, use those strategies in the right way to, to be able to attain.

Got it. So what's the assignment?

So today the assignment basically is just to again get used to using the force to progress and, and think about if you made a resolution and you're. And you're not. I'm not going to say failing. You're not reaching that thing.

The progress isn't being made.

Reexamine it. Did you actually. Is it aspirational or is it actually progress?

Do you have the right metrics?

And then go through the steps and I want you to go through the steps and don't make it anything that's going to be a year or more, maybe, maybe something that's small, but just go through it and really practice that. Using the forces of progress to, to set it and then using that input to create metrics that are attainable. And that's really the assignment for this week. All right, see you guys next time.

Thanks for listening to the Circuit Breaker podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe so you won't miss an episode. If you know somebody who's stuck on the Innovation Treadmill, please share it. If you'd like to learn more information, Visit us@therewiregroup.com to find out how we work, how we can help. Some resources Resources some books, some software Join us next time as we trip the circuit breaker to help you recharge, re energize and refocus your new product development.