by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Habits, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Time, Tools
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 1
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 2
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 3
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 11 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 4
— From Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
In the past three posts (1, 2, 3) we’ve been learning how to cue and stack our new habits to ensure we’re successful in making them last. Today, we will learn one more great technique from James Clear, habit guru, in his book Atomic Habits.
Clear tells the story of Ronan Byrne, an electrical engineering student in Ireland who knew he needed to exercise more but loved to binge-watch Netflix. Trying to connect these two seemingly opposite activities, he hacked his stationary bike in such a way that it would allow him to watch Netflix only if he was pedaling beyond a certain speed.
Clear says that what Byrne was doing is called temptation bundling, and this is a method to make the new habits we want to build more attractive and desirable. “Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do,” and the latter may not always be something that’s easy or that you’re too keen on… “In Byrne’s case, he bundled watching Netflix (the thing he wanted to do) with riding his stationary bike (the thing he needed to do).”
“You’re more likely to find a behavior attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things at the same time. Perhaps you want to hear about the latest celebrity gossip, but you need to get in shape. Using temptation bundling, you could only read the tabloids and watch reality shows at the gym. Maybe you want to get a pedicure but you want to clean your email inbox. Solution: only get a pedicure while processing overdue work emails.”
Temptation bundling is one of the tactics used to apply a psychology theory known as Premack’s Principle. It states that “more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors,” thus we can condition ourselves to do the less probable or desirable behavior if it’s tied to doing something enjoyable and that we really want to do.
So far so good. Here’s where it gets better: What if we combine temptation bundling with habit stacking? Hmmmm, now we’re talking!
Clear gives us the formula to set the rules to guide our behavior and make our new habits stick:
- After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED].
- After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
Here are some examples to illustrate it.
If you want to watch sports, but you need to make sales calls:
- After I get back from my lunch break, I will call three potential clients (need).
- After I call three potential clients, I will check ESPN (want).
If you want to check Facebook, but you need to exercise more:
- After I pull out my phone, I will do ten burpees (need).
- After I do ten burpees, I will check Facebook (want).
“The hope is that eventually you’ll look forward to calling three clients or doing ten burpees because it means you get to read the latest sports news or check Facebook. Doing the thing you need to do means you get to do the thing you want to do. […] Engineering a truly irresistible habit is a hard task, but this simple strategy can be employed to make nearly any habit more attractive than it would be otherwise.”
ACTION
TODAY: Make a list of things you need to do and one of the things you want to do. Crosscheck them for bundling opportunities.
FUTURE: Whenever you find yourself resisting something that you need to do, try pairing it with a very attractive opportunity to do something you want. The more anticipation you build the better and more motivated you’ll be to act.
Know someone who would benefit from temptation bundling to set up a new habit? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Productivity, Time, Tools
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 1
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 2
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 58 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 3
— From Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
In the two previous posts in this miniseries, we’ve learned how to use The Diderot Effect in a positive way to our advantage, and how to create a chain of new habits by stacking them all together.
Since the secret to success lies in the selection of the right cues to kick things off, today we’ll be talking all about cues.
First, as obvious as it may seem, it’s important to realize that the timing of the cue must be relevant and realistic to the new routine you want to create. James Clear writes:
“When and where you choose to insert a habit into your daily routine can make a big difference. If you’re trying to add meditation into your morning routine but mornings are chaotic and your kids keep running into the room, then that may be the wrong place and time. Consider when you are most likely to be successful. Don’t ask yourself to do a habit when you’re likely to be occupied with something else.”
Second, the frequency of the cue should be the same as of the new habit you want to instill. “If you want to do a habit every day, but you stack it on top of a habit that only happens on Mondays, that’s not a good choice.”
To find the right trigger for creating your new habit stack, the author suggests brainstorming a list of your current habits. You can download a free “Habit Scorecard” from his website, or simply create a list with two columns.
On the first column, you write the habits that you do every day, no matter what. For example, “get out of bed, take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, brew a cup of coffee, eat breakfast, take the kids to school, start the work day, eat lunch,” etc. Your list is going to be much longer than that, but you get where this is going.
On the second column, you write the things that happen to you always. For example, “the sun rises, you get a text message, the song you are listening to ends, the sun sets,” etc.
With your two-column list handy, then you can start looking for the best places to insert the cues to form your new habits. It’s important to note that the cue must be highly specific and immediately actionable, says Clear, otherwise, you run into ambiguity, which is certain to derail your habits. Let’s learn a lesson from the author:
“Many people set cues that are too vague. I made this mistake myself. When I wanted to start a push-up habit, my habit stack was ‘When I take a break for lunch, I will do ten push-ups.’ At first glance, this sounded reasonable. But soon I realized the trigger was unclear. Would I do my push-ups before I ate lunch? After I ate lunch? Where would I do them? After a few inconsistent days, I changed my habit stack to: ‘When I close my laptop for lunch, I will do ten push-ups next to my desk.’ Ambiguity gone.”
And there you have it. The more specific, precise, and clear on your cues and your instructions to act, the more the new habit will stick, as there won’t be room for inconsistency or confusion. “The specificity is important… After I close the door. After I brush my teeth. After I sit down at the table… The more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue, the better the odds are that you will notice when the time comes to act.”
Leave yourself no choice but to act in favor of establishing your new habits by setting up specific, timely, and relevant cues where they will give you the highest possibility of success.
So, what cue will you use to trigger the action for your new habit? Where will you stack it? Let me know in the comments here. As for myself, just as the author, I’m developing a push-up habit, so my cue will be “when I take a long break from my pomodoros, after setting the break time in my timer, I will do 12 push-ups right next to my desk.”
ACTION
TODAY: Make your two-column list of habits and things that happen so that you can figure out where you can insert your cues to trigger the new habit you want to build.
FUTURE: Set cues and stack habits where you will have the biggest possibility of success. Og Mandino said, “If I must be a slave to habit, let me be a slave to good habits.”
Know someone who would benefit from learning about cues and habit stacking? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Productivity, Tools
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 1
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 3
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 13 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 2
— From Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Yesterday we learned about The Diderot Effect: how to use it positively to create new habits and to make sure they stick via habit stacking.
But I told you there was more to this, and this is what I want to share today. The concept is simple: if habit stacking increases the likelihood that your new habits will stick, then you can actually create a chain of new habits by stacking them all together, using one habit to cue the next one for the whole routine you want to implement.
The author offers the following routines as examples.
Morning routine:
- After I pour my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for sixty seconds.
- After I meditate for sixty seconds, I will write my to-do list for the day.
- After I write my to-do list for the day, I will immediately begin my first task.
Evening routine:
- After I finish eating dinner, I will put my plate directly into the dishwasher.
- After I put my dishes away, I will immediately wipe down the counter.
- After I wipe down the counter, I will set out my coffee mug for tomorrow morning.
You get the idea. Very simple but immensely powerful.
There are also a few iterations of this basic stacking principle to further help you achieve a particular goal. One of those iterations, says Clear, is to “insert new behaviors into the middle of your current routines.”
For instance, he points out to a routine like this:
Wake up > Make my bed > Take a shower.
What if you wanted to instill in you the habit of reading every night? You could modify your habit stack by adding the following:
Wake up > Make my bed > Place a book on my pillow > Take a shower.
That one change would mean you’d have a book waiting for you to enjoy in the evening before you go to bed.
Another tip that Clear shares is that of creating rules to guide your future behavior. “It’s like you always have a game plan for which action should come next.” And he gives the following examples to illustrate this point:
- Exercise. When I see a set of stairs, I will take them instead of using the elevator.
- Social skills. When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to someone I don’t know yet.
- Finances. When I want to buy something over $100, I will wait twenty-four hours before purchasing.
- Healthy eating. When I serve myself a meal, I will always put veggies on my plate first.
- Minimalism. When I buy a new item, I will give something away. (“One in, one out.”)
- Mood. When the phone rings, I will take one deep breath and smile before answering.
- Forgetfulness. When I leave a public place, I will check the table and chairs to make sure I don’t leave anything behind.
The most important thing is picking the right cue to initiate the action. Over time and repetition, the habit will be built. And by virtue of having stacked it, it has no choice but to stick.
And just as I promised that there would be more info on new habits today, tomorrow this miniseries will continue with how to set the cues for best results. So, please come back to continue learning about creating new habits and creating the optimal conditions for them to stick.
ACTION
TODAY: Look at your routines and determine when would be the best step to stack that new habit.
FUTURE: Start a document with your own set of rules to guide your behavior. As you run into a situation where you’d like to stack a habit, make a note of it in your document, so that you can have one repository of all these rules. You’ll eventually have them in your mind, yet initially, having this document as a backup will come in very handy.
Know someone who would like to read this?? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Habits, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Tools
Links to other parts of this miniseries:
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 2
New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 3
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 41 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: New Habits: How to Ensure They Stick – Part 1
— From Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
As this year comes to an end, I’ve started thinking about the New Year, and the new habits that I want to establish for myself. With that in mind, I’ve taken a dive into books about habit formation.
I came across a new term, The Diderot Effect, via a story that James Clear, habit guru and author of Atomic Habits, tells in his book. In a nutshell, it goes like this: French philosopher, Denis Diderot, was the co-founder and writer of Encyclopédie, during the time of the Enlightenment. Despite this, he lived in poverty most of his life. His daughter was about to be married and, seeing that he could not pay for the wedding, he struck a deal with Russian Empress Catherine the Great, who bought his personal library for an enormous sum at the time and paid him a salary to act as her librarian.
Suddenly Diderot had money. He paid for his daughter’s wedding and bought himself a scarlet robe. His robe, apparently, was so beautiful, that it made every other one of his common possessions seem even more humble and out of place. Thus, he started replacing and upgrading his stuff: rugs, sculptures, furniture, etc.
“Diderot’s behavior is not uncommon. In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect… [and it] states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. You can spot this pattern everywhere. You buy a dress and have to get new shoes and earrings to match. You buy a couch and suddenly question the layout of your entire living room. You buy a toy for your child and soon find yourself purchasing all of the accessories that go with it.”
However, this does not necessarily have to be seen in a negative light. Clear writes, “Many human behaviors follow this cycle. You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing. Going to the bathroom leads to washing and drying your hands, which reminds you that you need to put the dirty towels in the laundry, so you add laundry detergent to the shopping list, and so on. No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior.”
Why is this important?
Because, “when it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top.”
The author calls this habit stacking, and offers the following formula for it:
“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
Here are a few examples from Clear that will make it clear (Ha! I couldn’t resist…):
- Meditation. “After I pour my cup of coffee each morning, I will immediately meditate for one minute.”
- Exercise. “After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes.”
- Gratitude. “After I sit down to dinner, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened today.”
- Marriage. “After I get into bed at night, I will give my partner a kiss.”
- Safety. “After I put on my running shoes, I will text a friend or family member where I am running and how long it will take.”
“The key,” the author says, is to “tie your desired behavior into something you already do each day.” And this is how you ensure that the new habits you create will stick.
But there is more to this! Come back tomorrow for Part 2, as we will see the augmented, edited, and revised version of new-habit formation for even better results. You’ll love it!
In the meantime, what are some new habits that you’d like to establish in the New Year? Let me know in the comments here!
See you tomorrow. 🙂
ACTION
TODAY: Think about how The Diderot Effect can work in your favor. What new habits would you like to establish?
FUTURE: Whenever you want or need to establish a new habit, try habit stacking to ensure that it sticks. Come back for the next installments in this miniseries, as I will share some of Clear’s simple-yet-effective methods to make this happen.
Know someone who wants to make sure the new habits stick? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Goals, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 54 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Leaders take initiative
— From The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow by John C. Maxwell
A trait in leaders is that they always take initiative. In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, leadership guru John C. Maxwell pointed out that it is a leader’s responsibility to initiate a connection with his or her followers.
Yet, “that’s not the only area where leaders must show initiative,” says Maxwell. “They must always look for opportunities and be ready to take action.”
Maxwell is a genius when it comes to distilling the characteristics of every aspect of leadership. And in this case, his brilliance comes through again in The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, with four qualities that he believes enable leaders to take initiative and make things happen.
1. Leaders know what they want. Clarity and vision are the keys here. Maxwell points to Napoleon Hill who said that the starting point of all achievement is desire. “If you are going to be an effective leader, you’ve got to know what you want [and where you’re going]. That’s the only way you’ll recognize opportunity when it comes.”
2. Leaders push themselves to act. “There’s an old saying, ‘You can if you will.’ Initiators don’t wait for other people to motivate them. They know it is their responsibility to push themselves beyond their comfort zone. And they make it a regular practice.”
3. Leaders take more risks. “When leaders know what they want and can push themselves to act, they still have one more hurdle. That’s willingness to take risks. Proactive people always take risks. But one of the reasons good leaders are willing to take risks is that they recognize there is a price for not initiating too.” Maxwell shares a quote from President John F. Kennedy:
“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
4. Leaders make more mistakes. “The good news for initiators is that they make things happen. The bad news is that they make lots of mistakes. […] Even though initiating leaders experience more failure, they don’t let it bother them. The greater the potential, the greater their chance for failure. […] If you want to achieve great things as a leader, you must be willing to initiate and put yourself on the line.”
As Maxwell reflects on these traits, he asks, “When was the last time you initiated something significant in your life?” I’ll leave you with that thought to ponder today and a quote by former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca who said, “Even the right decision is the wrong decision if it is made too late.”
Where do you need to jump-start your initiative?
ACTION
TODAY: Think about something that you’ve wanted to do for some time but have been putting it off. Why is that? Analyze your mindset and determine why you’re hesitant. Ask why five times so that you can get to the bottom of it and take initiative today—even if it’s just a tiny little step—towards making it happen.
FUTURE: Opportunity is everywhere. That is a wonderful thing, but it can also be overwhelming. Cultivate a mindset of discernment so that you can take initiative and act only on those opportunities in which you can succeed. That’s where your time and efforts will be rewarded.
Know someone who is constantly taking initiative? Please share this post with that person, he or she deserves recognition for being an initiator, hats off! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 6 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: What’s the difference between performance goals and learning goals?
— From Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success–and Won’t Let You Fail by Keith Ferrazzi.
When setting goals, it’s important to understand the difference between performance goals and learning goals. “Not knowing the difference can harm the way you think about the future,” says Keith Ferrazzi, author of Who’s Got Your Back.
“Certain goals, known as ‘performance goals,’ imply a finite result, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow… far more important is developing a process and a roadmap that help you achieve that income in a given time. In other words, you should be thinking about the rainbow, not just the pot of gold.”
The process and the roadmap that the author is referring to are the learning goals. And when setting goals he recommends having both types.
Performance goals are the goals that we normally think of: specific outcomes such as losing 10 pounds, getting a new job, traveling to Hawaii, getting married, etc.
Learning goals “emphasize acquiring new skills and knowledge to push and expand your skills and career forward.” Learning goals are key to accomplish our performance goals.
Here are a few examples that the author offers to make even clearer the distinction between these two goals:
| PERFORMANCE GOAL |
LEARNING GOAL |
| Lose 10 pounds |
Learn to cook healthier meals |
| Increase Web traffic by 50 percent |
Find five new marketing tactics |
| Boost sales 10 percent |
Learn how to hone your best pitch |
Ferrazzi goes on to say that “performance goals can be motivating [but the] flip side is that, set inappropriately, they can be intimidating and sometimes debilitating when we fall short.”
Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA states a similar thought in this post.
Kaufman says that when we set performance goals that are not directly under the control of our efforts we may become terribly disappointed if something happens that prevents us from attaining our goal.
For instance, he notes that if we set a performance goal of losing 20 pounds, and something happens that makes our weight fluctuate on any given day, we might feel very frustrated. Instead, if we make our performance goal something that we can indeed control, such as 30 minutes of exercise every day, we can then be satisfied with the outcome once we’ve performed the task(s) needed to fulfill our goals.
Further—and this is probably the most important thing to take away from today’s idea—Ferrazzi says, “With learning goals, failure is an impossibility.” He explains:
In the course of creating and carrying out your goals, of course you are going to make some mistakes. It’s part of learning. No one with ambitious career or life plans gets ahead without experiencing glitches and setbacks. […] But once you switch your attention to learning goals, the whole idea of “failure” starts to make less sense.
When you are constantly learning from everything you do, failure ceases to be an option.
With learning goals, since you are learning, putting into action, tweaking and adjusting to make the outcome better, and repeating often, you are naturally moving into the direction of your performance goal with actions that are under your control. That is why I love it when the author says that failure is an impossibility—it truly is!
ACTION
TODAY: What performance goal are you working towards where you’ve had mixed or variable success? Examine what you are doing and determine what learning goals and actions under your control you need to add to the mix so that you can get the results you desire.
FUTURE: When setting goals in the future, create the habit of doing so incorporating performance goals that you can control and learning goals that will make it impossible to fail.
Know someone who could benefit from reading this post? Please share it! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
