Brian Johnson breaks down how to eliminate bad habits by inverting James Clear's rules: make them invisible, hard, and terrible. He walks through reducing phone use before bed with specific tactics like setting an alarm, burying your phone, or giving it to someone else, then adding painful consequences to stick it out.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one, we had fun tweaking James Clear's four laws of Behavior change as we applied the three laws of creating a Great Habit pop quiz. A, do you remember the three laws? And more importantly, B, did you do the theoretical work of dropping your habit into that model? And most importantly, C, did did you do the practical work and get to work on building that habit? Answers to the Pop quiz A, the three laws of creating a great habit. Number one, make it obvious. Number two, make it easy. Number three, make it awesome. And B, if yes to that question, high fives if not needs work that's not like you. And C, if yes, high fives if not needs work that's not like you. Today, as promised, we're going to have fun deleting a bad habit. Enter the three laws of breaking a bad habit. Number one, make it invisible. I love that word invisible. Number two, make it hard rather than easy. And number three, make it terrible rather than awesome. And of course, the invisible was the opposite of making it obvious. So. So for our purposes, let's assume the habit you'd like to break is to use your phone less specifically to quit blowing your brain up with blue bits late at night. Now, of course, insert your preferred habit here. First question is, how do we make it invisible? Well, how about we set an alarm for the time we want to put our phones away? Science says at least 30 minutes to an hour before our ideal bedtime. Then when that alarm goes off, we shut down our phone and bury it in our closet. That's a solid way to make it invisible. Note the same game works in the morning and anytime when you want to crush some deep work. Second, how do we make it hard? Well, we don't make it easy. Put the phone way back in your closet. Or better yet, to use a Dan Millman story, put it in a safe in your garage behind a bunch of luggage and other stuff so you have to climb through all that just to get to it. Or maybe give it to your spouse or roommate or kids or whatever and tell them to hide it somewhere or whatever you think you need to do. You get the idea on making it hard. And finally, how do we make it terrible? If you do this habit, you don't break it. What's the terrible consequence? James offers some fun tips here. You could make a commitment to a trusted friend that if you break your commitment to stop doing whatever it is you want to stop doing, you'll send an ouch the size of that dollar amount hurts. Check to your least favorite charity. Make it really painful to fail. That's a good way to succeed. So is the social support and accountability. By the way, in that little example, double bonus there. So, three laws, your number one habit you want to break. Number one, make it invisible. Number two, make it hard. And number three, make it terrible. Today's plus one. Your turn again. Three laws, your number one habit. Check out the worksheet. Make it invisible, make it hard, make it terrible. Break your bad habit.
