Make Habits, Not Goals

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” –Richard Feynman

Tis the season for our commitments to better ourselves for the upcoming year. We love new beginnings and chances to reinvent ourselves as it signifies a rebirth. After all, nobody imagines himself or herself fatter, poorer, older, or lonelier this year – we always visualize a better future, even though it rarely happens. History tends to repeat itself, and it is because of one reason…habits.

Any outcome in your life is a lagging indicator of your habits. However, thinking about them all the time is a recipe for disaster as the conscious mind is the bottleneck of the brain. Imagine if you had to make a deliberate decision every morning about your hygiene regimen or had to consult a map on how to get to work. It would be paralyzing.  We know habits are just a series of automatic solutions that are reliable and repeatable, so how do we make these changes easier?

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, has the solutions for making those New Year’s Resolutions stick. Forget about goals and instead focus on systems. Winners and losers all have the same goals, and our conclusions about them tend to suffer from survivorship bias (we only hear from the winners). After all, achieving a goal is only a momentary change, and the striving towards them actually restricts happiness. “I can’t be happy until…” becomes a rallying cry. Most of all, goals are at odds with long-term progress. We don’t necessarily want to win the game as much as we want to keep playing the game.

Key concepts:

·        The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last. “That’s not who I am.” 

·        Identity emerges out of habit, as it’s how you embody your identity. Every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you wish to become. For example, do not have a goal to read a book, but rather, aspire to be a reader.

·        Change WHAT you do and you will begin to trust yourself. “Who is the type of person that would…” or “what would they do in this situation?”

·        The cue and the craving present the problem, while the response and reward offer the solution. Make good habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. Conversely, to eliminate bad habits, eliminate the cue, make it difficult to perform, and do not reward its completion.

·        People do not lack motivation; they lack clarity. Being specific about your intentions helps you say “no” to things that will derail you. When “x” arises, I will “y”. It gives you a game plan about what should come next. Habits thrive under predictable circumstances.

·        Behavior is a function of the person in their environment (B=f (P,E)) Your receptors pick up a wide range of stimuli (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste), and half of the brain’s resources are used on vision. Visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior.

·        Habits can be easier to change in a new environment, as it is easier to associate a new routine with a new context. Objects=Relationships. One of the problems with smartphones are that they provide a mishmash of cues (phone, camera, social media).

·        “Disciplined” people are simply better at structuring their lives in a way that doesn’t require heroic willpower and self-control. Bad habits are autocatalytic – the process feeds itself (you feel bad, so you eat junk food, which makes you feel bad). Unfortunately, once the mental grooves of habit have been carved into your brain, they will always be there. Therefore, you have to cut bad habits off at the source – make them invisible.

·        Habits are dopamine fueled feedback loops. The chemical releases when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. In fact, it’s the anticipation of a reward, rather than the fulfillment of it, that gets us to take action. Since your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than liking them, engage in “temptation bundling” – pair an action you want to do with one you have to do (I will check my phone when I am on the treadmill). 

80% of New Year’s Resolutions fail by February, and only 8% see them through the year. We can conclude that goal setting is not the solution, but rather building a system that ensures success. Work with your brain rather than against it, and the system’s base has to build around your identity. Human beings have an innate need to be consistent, and that starts with finding evidence within yourself that you have become the person that is required to achieve your goals. Make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.