How To Build Good Habits That Stick - Maneesh Sethi talks to Charisma on Command

Yo, what's up, everybody? This is Charlie from Charisma on Korrand. I'm here today with Maneesh from hackthesystem.com also recently of Pavlok, which we'll be talking about in a second. How are you doing, man?

Pretty good, man. I'm pretty excited. I haven't seen you since you were in my office a few months ago.

That's right. I actually wanted to start with that story. So the first time we met was in Bolt, which is in Boston, and it's unlike anything I'd ever seen. It's like a hardware superstore. It's like an accelerator for people who are building cool hardware things. And at the time, you were sort of in the beginning stages of what you're calling Pavlok. So we're going to talk a lot about habits, but start with, like, what was the inspiration for Pavlok and where are you guys at now with it?

Yeah. So the inspiration for Pavlok was a blog post I wrote on my blog. In October 2012. I wrote this article about an experiment I ran on my own productivity. So I discovered over time that when you have a deadline to get something done, you're just more effective at getting it done. I had a few tasks that I wanted to do but didn't have deadlines. So I decided to get it done. Finally. It was a blog post on a guest. It was a guest post for a website. I decided to get it done. And so I hired somebody to sit down next to me and basically be my accountability buddy. And her job was to slap me every time I used Facebook or whenever I was not in Microsoft Word, she would just yell at me. I found that when she sat down next to me, I tracked my productivity based on minutes in the correct app. And usually I spend about 22% of my time, 28% of my time in productive apps. And when she sat down next to me, it was 98. So the fact of having this deadline and this person forcing me to work quadrupled my productivity. I took that as an idea. I said, well, what if I could build, like, a dog shock collar that would shock me every time I used Facebook? And my friend looks at me and he says, let's go to Radio Shack. So we did. We went to Radio Shack and we put together this dog shock collar that every time I used Facebook, it would shock me. And we did it in four hours. It was kind of like a joke prototype. And then I was about to put this video online, and I thought to myself, Actually, this is pretty interesting. Like a device that doesn't just track what you do, but also changes what you do. A device that is not just like quantified self, but also behavior change, like real psychological shift. How can we turn this into something real? So I formed the company Pavlok. I submitted the idea to a few incubators. Bolt accepted my application. I guess out of 800 people who applied, they chose seven companies. We were one of them. We were lucky enough. And ever since I've been here, I've been here, I guess, eight or nine months now, since August. And now we have a full working prototype. Very cool.

That is so different from the thing that I saw previously.

Yeah, I mean, you're thinking probably the one that was shaped like this.

Yeah, yeah. Star Trek.

Yeah. So this is just a prototype and it's not at all our final design. You can see it's a little bit large, but it is working. It shocks, it vibrates, it makes loud noises. And it works with your app. And you can set commitments like going to the gym or, or taking photos with Instagram or learning languages, practicing languages. And the interface is set around both positive and negative reinforcement. So it's along the lines of if you don't go to. If you don't go to the gym, you get charged money and shocked. And if you do go to the gym, you actually earn money as well as points and lottery tickets.

That's awesome. So you mentioned you've got a couple cool mechanisms in here. The things that you said were gym, Instagram and what was the other thing that you had mentioned?

The example I said was Duolingo, learning languages.

Got it. So what things is it best for? Because obviously specific habits are going to be more in line with what it can do.

It's really, really effective at getting you to do something at a specific time. So habits are best formed based on triggers, and triggers that happen at the same time are even better. So if you have it focused on, like every day after I leave my house, I will go directly to the gym. So you say that I will be at the gym by 11am or 10am, depending on when you leave the house, then you can focus on making sure you get there by that time. And we focus on a lot of education, so it's not always about working out at the gym. It's sometimes more important to just go to the gym. Just go in, swipe your card, walk out. It's not as important to floss your teeth, but to floss one tooth is often the hardest Part. So we try to focus our device on forming that base case initial habit that will make you start becoming the person you want to be.

Yeah. And it is worth saying, I mean, I've read the research that shows you put your running shoes on in the morning. You don't often just stop there. In fact, once you do that first step, you find yourself running. And once you've lost the first tooth, you wind up finishing the other 32. So I'm sure that it's got those downhill effects as well.

Yeah, I mean, I had a video editor flew in here to help me out with some stuff, and I was like, oh, man, I gotta leave for one minute. I gotta hit this commitment. I gotta go to the gym today. I'm just gonna swipe my card. I'll be right back. I was wearing this. I was wearing this shirt as well as my jeans. A function of being entrepreneur is I have exactly one shirt, and I get to the gym wearing my jeans, and I'm swiping my card, and I'm like, okay, good. I'm gonna go back. And then I'm like, you know, actually, I could just use a quick stretch. Let me just go for one second. I'll just do a stretch. By the time I get to the stretching machine, my trainer walks over. He's like, hey, man, what's up? And starts talking to me. And I'm doing a full set now in jeans and a shirt. I ended up being late for my meeting, but I got the workout in. That's awesome. You'll find that once you're there, doing the next step is just natural.

Yeah. So I'm curious. It sounds like you've added some new functionality to. When we last spoke, you said it's got positive and negative feedback, gaining and losing money. I've heard about the losing. How do you earn it back?

So it's like a pot of money. This is not our final design. We're just playing around with the variables. I think that we're finding that positive reinforcement instantaneously is really powerful. So it's like, if you don't go to the gym, you know, you get charged 10 bucks or something. If you do go to the gym, you make 70 cents. That's the model that Gym Pact has been using. They're a pretty cool app where you can make bets about that. If I don't go to the gym, I get charged money. If I do go to gym, I earn money.

Interesting.

We're trying to do it on a grander scale and adding the haptic feedback to really solidify the habit in your brain.

So how bad? I say bad. Good. Bad is the haptic feedback at this point. I mean.

Jim, what's our max on voltage for high voltage? Yeah, it's around 300 volts. That's. I think we got to 340 last time.

Right.

We measured it at about like the high numbers get, between 300, 350 volts.

What is that like to a basic person on your.

It's not like the. It's not. Did I get you the dog collar last time?

You showed the dog collar last time? Yeah, yeah.

So it's not like that. It's not that powerful. It's enough that you will be startled like that. I can do it. I'll do it right now if you want to see.

Yeah, let's do it live.

Actually, hang on. I think that you can. I was going to say you could shock me from across the Internet. You actually can, but I need to turn on the server.

With great power comes great responsibility. Right?

Yeah, I know. So right now you'll see. I have actually. Can I show you my screen? Does that work here? Let's see. Can you see my screen right now?

Yeah. Oh, man, this is so meta. I'm looking at myself.

Oh, my God. Sorry about that. So what I'm going to do right now is you're going to see. You're going to see this little LED screen thing going on. Do you see that?

Yes.

So these are some of the people who have the app on it. I'm going to go ahead and just make sure this is working, see if it works. So anyway, I'll tell you about it as I do it. What we found is that we just pulled out this functionality a couple days ago. So the ability to actually shock here. You'll see. I can't show you that camera. Anyway, I'm going to set it up to go ahead and shock me at 255. So I guess I should turn it on to me now. That is not voltage. Oh, you can do both. It is not volts. It is power strength. It goes. That's about 340 volts. I'm going to go ahead and hit the shock button.

Let's do it.

All right. Three, two, one. Every time.

So it's a bitch. It's not fun.

Yeah. I mean, it's not designed around hurting you, but it does get your attention.

And you certainly don't want to avoid that. That's awesome.

Yeah, you certainly do. In fact, we've been playing around with Some other cool use cases for it, like being able to notify you when you are doing something you don't want to do. So if you start to bite your nails, shock you if you start to smoke a cigarette, like we don't know. Very cool. Very cool. We realize we have the technology in here to measure that, so we haven't implemented that yet. But it's something that we're trying to do is not just form good habits, but break bad habits as well.

Interesting. And I was going to ask. So I'm sure you've done a ton of research around positive versus negative, generally how habits are deformed and broken. Pavlok is not out yet. For those of us who don't have it. What has been some of the most interesting things that you've learned and been able to implement even without necessarily this technology on your wrist that has helped you develop habits that you've been working on?

Yeah, I found that negative reinforcement is extremely powerful for getting a habit started. So your brain has. You can measure the amount of willpower a task takes using a glucose meter. Basically every decision you make every day takes more and more time. And if you think about it, the trick to getting more done is not to be to have more willpower. It's to make them so automatic that they just happen. And so I focused on studying a lot deep into habits in your brain. And we found that for easy habits, things like drinking water after breakfast, it'll take 30 days in a row of doing that at the same time to form the habit. That makes it harder for you to not drink water than to drink water. And for harder habits like doing 50 sit ups, it can take up to 66 days. But that said, if you do something for 66 days in a row, anything for 66 days in a row, you will become the kind of person who can't not do that. Which sounds really powerful.

So fascinating because I mean I think of it now and for reason some. For some people I've been going to the gym since I was 17, 18 and it's true at this point, if I don't go four times a week, I don't like the way that I'm behaving. And I get this stick mentality that drives me into the gym versus other people to get there. It's something that is painful for them. And that 66 day thing is super fascinating.

Yeah. The biggest things I've found are focusing on triggers and focusing on easy cases. So I met a Lyft driver who had had lost 80 pounds and then gained back 80 pounds. Lyft is like Uber. And I met him and I was like fascinated. I was like, tell me what happened. What was the big change? And it was exactly what I thought. He started doing it because he had a friend and they were driving to work together. So they would get together in the morning, drive together to the gym, workout, and then go to work. Then his friend fell off the bandwagon, but he kept going until he had lost 80 pounds and then his job had changed and now suddenly his schedule was like not always in the same hours. And most importantly, his gym was just across. It was like a couple blocks away from his work. So now rather than being drive from home to the gym, gym to work, it became drive from home to if I take a left, it's the gym. If I take a right, it's the work. And the idea was, oh, I'll just drop my bag off and then go straight to the office and then go straight to the gym. He never would go to the gym. Right. So what I've noticed, I noticed, I heard that story and I immediately canceled my gym, that's one block past my office and switched it to one gym. That's three times the price. But on the way to my work. And I went to the gym 15 out of 17 days. But then I switched, I had to move my apartments. Until now I would live across the street from my work and I've gone like twice since. So that having a trigger on the way, like having a trigger, that's like kind of a path. So from home to gym to work is much more powerful than I'm going to go to the gym sometime today. Also doing it in the morning, your willpower is strongest in the morning. So if you're able to force yourself to do it for five days, having a bet, like, if I don't go to the gym, I get charged money. Followed by multiple days of if I go to the gym, I don't have to work out, I just have to walk in and swipe a card. It's on the way to work anyway. If I go for five days, I get to buy myself a massage on Friday or I get to, to go see a movie or whatever. That's really powerful for getting that habit to cement. And again, you don't even need to work out, you just need to walk in.

Yeah. And I will say, I mean I've heard this not so research backed, but just in my own anecdotal experience, if I do my hardest thing first in the day. Like, I don't let myself check email till after I accomplish that first big task. Everything else throughout the rest of the day is so much better because I get that thing done and then it's all downhill from there. There. Right. So you were talking about those triggers and I'm curious, certain triggers for the things like the gym occur once a day. Right. And. Or, you know, as you're walking to work. What about things that are more general goals, like say I want to be more thoughtful in conversations or I want to, you know, just be more positive in my day to day existence. Have you found anything that can help for that sort of stuff?

You know, like, those are really difficult because they're not really definite goals that you're trying to solve. They're like, I want to be more thoughtful. What does that mean? Can you define what being more thoughtful means?

So say that being more thoughtful meant going out of my way to do something for another person that would make them happy, that I. That has no immediate impact on my happiness or life.

Yeah, I mean, let's see, how would you go about doing that? I'm thinking to myself, is that, well, is that similar to when I did like a no commitment, no complaint challenge where it was like 30 days of no complaining?

Yeah, I think it is.

So I think it's along the lines of, I mean, a lot of this stuff has to do with really actionable items. You can't just be more thoughtful. Going out of your way to do something is an actionable item. So you might say, okay, well, for the next five days, I promise that I will, number one, write down the name of at least five people that I interact with that day. And number two, execute on at least one action that generally benefits their life. And put this in a piece of paper or online or on some kind of document that other people can see, such that it's like, I did it. I said I was going to do this. I did do this. The trick is if you consistently do that, if you can get yourself to think about it in the moment, which is hard, getting yourself to think about, how can I be thoughtful to this person in the moment is hard. But as you do it more and more of the time, just kind of forcing yourself, with a few days, you'll start to naturally do it. You'll see the world in a different way.

Yeah. And the thing that you mentioned, the no complaint challenge, I know what people have done and I found useful is you get one of those Livestrong bands or even just a rubber Band. Right. And it's sort of. And you tie in your mind. All right. This to me means compliment someone, do something out of my way that helps other people. So by paying attention to that band, it serves as a trigger that is consistent throughout the day that you don't always remember, but you are consistently reminded of. And sometimes you need to switch up the color. But I also did the no complaint challenge. Really, really helpful for that was just having something on my wrist, I found.

And, like, the wrist is a really good place because you see it so often that, like, oh, that's right. I'm supposed to go to the gym. Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to be thoughtful. And the vibration is even better because if you're not, you know, if you. It's hard to figure that out. Exactly. Obviously, with a vibrating wristband, how are you going to describe thoughtfulness? But you could have something along the lines of vibration every hour just to remind you to think about it.

Yeah. It also sounds like with these holistic goals you're saying, I mean, like you said, you cannot be more social, be more thoughtful, be more positive. But you can go out of your way to start five conversations with strangers or go out of your way to give five compliments and then write them down and send them to a friend.

Yeah. It's a lot about breaking it down into actionable items. It has to be actionable. So you can't just. You can't just not complain. You have to say, if I complain, then this is the definition of a complaint. This is like, it's really important that you're not going to learn a language in a month. You're instead going to learn 30 words a day and succeed on a test or finish one duolingo phrase, one duolingo course a day. It's also more important. Direction is more important than results. Habits are not about quick success. In fact, BJ Fogg, habit Professor guy, says that the longer it takes for you to lose the weight, the longer the weight will stay off, which I found interesting. He's like, he's a big Weight Watchers fan, and I'm a big fan of Weight Watchers. I've never been to a meeting, but I think that they do amazing work. They do amazing work and they focus on small changes over time. It might take, like, if your goal is to lose £50, it might take you a year. It might take you even more. It might take you two years. But if it took you two years, you formed not major life shifts, but small little changes. That are much easier to consume in.

Your daily life and maintain over a period of time.

That's all you can do.

So when, I mean, this is the big question. When are you guys expecting to have more public release of Padlock?

So the app is currently working and you as well as any of your readers who are interested in joining us for the trial testing of the app, just shoot me an email anishapavlock.com and happy to introduce you guys to an iPhone and the app itself. The prototype is ready. So if any of your readers are based in Boston and want to use the wristband to form habits, I'd love to meet them. If any of your readers are not based in Boston but are still interested, get in touch and talk. And then lastly, the wristband will likely be able to be pre ordered early next month from Hack the System. Kind of like a private thing. You have to be on my list. So sign up over at pavlok.com or@hackthesystem.com and you'll be notified about the pre orders. It'll be available for a big launch in September, not in stores, but pre order.

That's awesome.

Crowdfunding.

Yeah. And I would love to, I mean once this thing is out or if I can get my hands on one of them when we're back in the States, I would love to on the blog, just run almost a lift Pavlok thing where you've got groups of people trying to hit a common goal with smartly and crowdsourced designed triggers, anchors, all that sort of stuff. So I mean, I'm very excited for it. It sounds like it's going to be awesome.

Cool, man. Well, anyway, does that answer everything that I can do to help you or do you have any other questions?

Yeah, sure. No, I mean, and I just wanted to talk, see where you were at with Pavlok, get an idea of this sort of research. I think that big takeaways for me personally are that 66 day things should transform your identity is incredibly impressive.

30 days for the easy one, the 66 days was based on doing 50 sit ups. But getting somebody to do one sit up or getting somebody to drink a glass of water only took 30 days. And that's the most important part.

Yeah, that's awesome. And the second one for me is that I am guilty of having vague, obscure, non actionable goals. Things that I'd like to be, not things that I'd like to do. So breaking them down into concrete things I can do, I think is going to be very, very helpful, but cool stuff, man. All right, good talking to you. I will forward people your way. If they are interested in doing the beta test. I'll tell them to email you, get on your list, and otherwise I'll be looking out for it come September or whenever the presale goes up.

Cool, man. Can't wait to talk to you then.

Good stuff. All right, Take care, man.

Take care.