How to create a habit: With Charles Duhigg and Ramit Sethi

There's been a lot of experiments that have looked at how unrelated the reward has to be from the activity or should be. One of the interesting things about eating chocolate is that it's actually a similar type of reward to working out because they're both these very physical sensations. The same areas of your brain essentially light up when you're exercising as when you're eating chocolate. So although it seems like very dissimilar reward, it's actually very similar from a neurological perspective. Now, what happens over time is that chocolate is this extrinsic reward, right? You're eating it and it tastes good. Over time, your brain will learn that there's intrinsic rewards from exercise. There's endorphins, there's endocannaboids, these neurotransmitters that are released by physical activity. And your brain will begin to learn that you don't need the chocolate. In fact, what this German study found is that about half the people who use this started exercising habitually three months later. And about a month later, I, almost 60% of them had stopped eating the chocolate just on their own. And that's because their brain had essentially learned there's an intrinsic reward from physical activity that makes me feel good. But to jumpstart that process, sometimes you need an extrinsic reward, like chocolate.

So many things to unpack. In what you just said, we typically think that attitude first, then behavior. In other words, I need to really.

Let me just.

Okay, I know this is important now. I'm going to do it this month and we need to get our attitude and sort of marshal those resources and then the behavior will follow. What you're saying is actually think of it as a system. Cue rewards and a routine and behavior first and then the attitude will follow.

Absolutely. We know that that's true. Like this fake it until it becomes real.

For some reason, it almost seems like a little off putting. Like there's no way that could work. But I love the system that you're describing, which is in whatever it takes to get you to the gym and to do it consistently. Do that and your attitude will follow. In fact, you may not even need that chocolate a month down the line.

That's exactly right. And we know that in psychology, as you know, there's this whole field called essentially self fulfilling mental image, right? If I behave that I'm a good person, eventually I actually start thinking like a good person. Similarly, if I can convince you to smile more each day, even if you're not happy, you're gonna end up Actually being happier. We look to ourselves for clues as to who we are. And if you can create the habit. One of the things that's interesting about habit is that we know from studies that habits themselves tend to inform our self image very little. You take a shower every morning, you don't even think about what that really means.

I'm a clean person, right?

Come on, you don't walk around thinking I'm the cleanest guy on earth. I'm so proud of that. Right people? Because we tend to discount habits in terms of what they say to ourselves about ourselves. And yet the cumulative net effect of the behavior spills over into everything else in our lives. It changes our self image. And that's when the habit becomes self fulfilling. That's when it creates a chain reaction that causes other habits to start to change.

So in other words, I'm the kind of person that gets things done or I'm the kind of person that has a smooth running life and therefore I can apply that to my finances or my health or whatever it may be.

That's exactly. If you can target and change the right habit, then you can set off a chain reaction. And we've seen this happen in hundreds of studies. If I decide ahead of time, I'm only going to check my email every 10 minutes, right? That's still potentially distracting. But there's something that seems to happen when I make that choice that even if I'm looking at the email constantly, I feel like I have locus of control over my behavior. And so my focus remains very, very high.

It's that old saying, if you don't decide, someone will decide for you.

Exactly, yeah.

And I like the idea of deciding ahead of time. Like when I'm at my best, maybe when I'm in the shower, maybe in the morning, maybe I'm a nighttime person.

Whatever.

I know that, I admit it. One of the things we found in our research was people feel guilty that they're not morning people. Right? And yes, there are techniques and ways to become a morning person. But one of the things that we just discovered is look, acknowledge it. If you're not a morning person, that's fine, you're a nighttime person. Let's be honest with ourselves instead of beating ourselves up for 10, 20 years.

That's exactly right. In fact, I was interviewing a guy yesterday, I called his office at 10:30 in the morning and they were like, well, he doesn't come in till 3 o'. Clock. This is a guy who works on campaigns. And I was like, he doesn't come in until 3 o'.

Clock.

And they were like, yeah, well, he works till 4 in the morning. And so that's just how he works. And I was thinking, it's driving me crazy.

Yeah, maybe tough in the world of business, but I like the idea that I, I can make a decision about what I'm doing tomorrow or at some point ahead of time, in the comfort of my own room, plan it out.

And the point of the story with this guy is this guy is a very, very sought after political consultant. Like the fact that he was able to recognize how he works best and accommodate his life to that, that's really important.

So back to focus. So I get to work, I turn off the distractions, let's say I just say, you know what, for seven days I'm gonna turn off distractions, I'm turn off my phone, I'm gonna hide the ding on my email. What else do I need to be thinking about?

So the other two things that you need to do is you need to practice. We know that focus basically increases with practice. And you need to recognize, you need to keep track of that so that you're convincing yourself that you're getting better and better. Because you're going to get better in very small increments, right? It's kind of like training for a marathon. You get faster in such small increments that you have to keep track. You have to keep a running log so that you're convincing yourself that you're actually getting better.

So how do I keep track of my focus?

What do I do? There's a whole bunch of ways to do it. I mean, one thing is to actually just set your alarm and say, and this is the other thing that you have to do is you have to give yourself breaks. You have to give yourself time to not be focused, right? Don't sit down and try and power through three hours of work if you usually can only do 45 minutes. Instead say, I'm gonna do 45, 47, 50 minutes and then I'm give myself 10 minutes and then I'm gonna time those 10 minutes. And you can even just keep track of how, how easy was it to work? Did the alarm catch you off guard? Were you waiting for that alarm to go? Or when the alarm went off and says, now you have 10 minutes to screw around, did it surprise you? And you'll see this gradual process, right, that you're expecting it less and less. It seems like time is going by faster and faster. You're convincing yourself that your practice is working and you're allowing yourself small, iterative practices. I don't know if you know Dan Coyle's work. He wrote this book called the Talent Code. Yes, great guy. Great book. And one of the things that he says is the way that you practice is you practice in small iterations, and you do something that is hard. You practice to your point. Practice shouldn't always be fun. And just because it's not fun doesn't mean that you give up.

Tiger mom knows this very well.

Exactly.