Zheng Shenghui Learning and Thinking Day 2384
"The Psychology of Habit," the subtitle of the book is, "How to Achieve Lasting Positive Change."
Continuous progress is the desire of many of us. And when it comes to changing themselves, many people think of a strong will. For example, some people will say that a person who has not changed much is because he does not really desire. Many celebrities look back on their past and believe that the most important factor in their success is that they have found what they really desire. Because he really wants to achieve that goal, he will show a strong will, and he will do it without hesitation, and then continue to persevere and create remarkable achievements.
But today's author argues that while it is true that individual will can help us make some short-term changes, if we want to make long-term changes, the role of individual will is less obvious. In fact, in addition to our usual conscious self, there is an unconscious habitual self that deals with repetitive matters. In order for a person to make positive and lasting changes, one needs to adjust the habitual self's behavior patterns. In other words, the key to long-term change is not will, but habit.
The author of the book is Wendy Wood, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California in the United States, who has studied habits for more than 30 years and is an expert in this field. This book is the culmination and essence of her years of research. In this book, we can not only read about the different ways to understand habits, but also learn a lot about practical ways to form them.
In the first part, let's take a look at, in the author's eyes, why is it a habit that makes people change positively and continuously? What exactly is a habit? In the second part, what practical methods does the author give in the book to form habits?
Part I
What is the key to self-control?
Let's start with such a scenario. After a long time, a person finally made up his mind to lose weight. He posted a circle of friends, which counted all kinds of troubles brought by obesity to himself, and at the same time made up his mind, saying that he must lose weight well, and then lose 5 pounds every month, and usher in a new self after a year. Friends from all walks of life also liked and left messages, expressing their belief in him and he would definitely be able to do it.
In our lives, if someone is willing to do this, we may also cheer them on, but at the same time, we may not take it too seriously. It's not that he doubts his determination to lose weight, it's that the failure rate is really too high. The plot is often, in the first month of the beginning, the effect is really good, this person posted a circle of friends, saying that he lost 7 pounds, congratulations on overcompleting the task. Everyone praised and celebrated. In a few more months, there will be no then. This person has never posted any moments again, and everyone has tacitly agreed that they have never mentioned this matter again. It's as if it hadn't happened.
Many people will have similar experiences on their way to changing themselves. At first, I was full of ambition and thought that I would definitely be able to achieve a certain goal, but after a few days, I lost my motivation, and even if I gambled on my face and personal image, there was a high probability that I would not succeed in the end. It's really hard to make lasting positive changes through self-control.
Self-control is difficult, but it is necessary. The book mentions the famous marshmallow experiment in psychology to illustrate the importance of self-control. The psychologist gathered a group of children for an experiment, gave each of them a marshmallow, and told them that after 15 minutes, if they could hold back from eating, they would be given another marshmallow. As a result, the children who were able to resist eating marshmallows in the experiment generally achieved higher life achievements later. This experiment shows that people with strong self-control are more likely to have a good life.
In the past, many people achieved self-control through self-denial. For example, some people who are losing weight, in order to dispel the idea of snacking, they may say to themselves, look at how fat you have become, and still eat. You can't even control your weight, what else can you do. The motivation for this is understandable, they want to achieve self-control by self-denial to strengthen their desire to change.
From the above examples, it is easy to conclude that self-control relies on a strong will. According to this conclusion, then those who have strong self-control should be very strong-willed, especially good at restraining their messy thoughts, and focusing on what must be done. However, the author found through research that people with good self-control are not because they can better restrain distracting thoughts, but because they rarely produce distracting thoughts.
The book gives an example of exercise, a person who is not very athletic can have a lot of effort when exercising. Before exercising, he will be at war with heaven and man in his heart, repeatedly weigh and entangle, and in the process of exercising, he will often feel uncomfortable and want to give up. Many people will lament that their willpower is not enough, does that mean that a person who exercises regularly can persevere because he can better control himself? The author says that no, people who exercise regularly do not need to convince themselves when exercising, they just go to exercise without entanglement. And in the process of exercising, they have almost no distractions and no thoughts. Therefore, if a person who exercises regularly goes to exercise with a beginner, and the beginner can't stick to it, and the person who exercises regularly doesn't blush and panting, it's not because the latter is more tolerant of pain, but because he has less resistance throughout the process.
The key to self-control, the authors say, is not a strong will, but the establishment of stable patterns of behavior. In our familiar words, it's about developing good habits.
There may be some people who disagree with this statement. In their opinion, without a strong will, how can we persevere every day and develop good habits? Now the author tells us that what matters is not will, but habit, and that there is no cause or effect.
This brings us to the author's different understanding of habits. In the author's view, habit is not an inertia of action that we form with our willpower, but a way of working for another self.
We have two different selves within ourselves, one is conscious and is responsible for making choices and making decisions, while the other is unconscious and is responsible for doing a lot of repetitive work. The author refers to the latter as the habitual self.
Let's go back to the weight loss scenario. A person works hard to lose weight, hoping that his persistence day after day can make it a normal life for him to eat less and move more, but after persisting for a while, suddenly one day, he unconsciously picked up potato chips while watching TV and began to eat, and when he reacted, a pack of potato chips had already eaten most of it. In this scene, no one else is encouraging him to eat, so what is it that makes him lose weight?
Yes, it's himself, but not the conscious part of himself. In the past, we generally said that this was the inertia of human nature, or the bad behavior pattern in ourselves. But the author reminds us that the unconscious act of eating potato chips is only the tip of the iceberg, and behind it is a whole system of autopilot within us, which is the habitual self.
Have you ever had the experience that when you went to work, you hadn't woken up yet, but when you came back to your senses, not only were you already sitting at your desk, but you had already done most of today's work? It's been a long time since we've spoken in tongues or ridden a bike, but by the time we started doing it, our bodies seemed to be self-aware and acting on their own?
It's our habitual self that plays a role behind this.
We are not easily aware of the existence of this habitual self, but it is a huge part of our lives. How big is this part? The book gives such a set of numbers. In daily life, habitual behaviors account for 88% of hygienic behaviors, 55% of work behaviors, 44% of physical exercises, and 48% of our rest and relaxation. In other words, nearly half of the actions in our lives are actually controlled by our unconscious selves, in a state of autopilot. Our conscious self is actually only aware of a small part of it, and whether it is in line with our own goals is called good habits, and those that do not are called bad habits.
In the past, because we were not aware of the existence of the habitual self, we would often attribute its actions to the conscious self, for example, we could easily insist on doing something, and we would often feel that it was self-discipline. And if you don't stick to it, you will feel that your self-discipline is too poor, you can't resist the temptation, and you can't effectively control yourself. But you don't have to. According to the authors' survey, in fact, most very self-disciplined people don't think about anything, they are just driving autonomously, which is no different from eating potato chips unconsciously. It's not that they're working harder, they're better at working with their alter ego.
It may sound strange that we have two selves, but brain science can explain this phenomenon. There are two different neural circuits in our brain. One is called the associative circuit and the other is called the sensorimotor circuit. There is a clear difference in the division of labor between the two circuits. When we start doing repetitive actions in a familiar environment, we can easily switch to the associative circuit, the pattern of the habitual self. The benefit of this is straightforward, and that is to save energy. In fact, the author says, conscious action is very energy-intensive, so our brains will delegate a significant part of the repetitive work to the habitual self. This explains why it is often difficult for us to make up our minds to control our behavior for a long time, which is equivalent to keeping us in a state of consciousness for a long time, and the energy consumption is too high, which is resisted by our body.
If we look at the past from the perspective of different egos, we will find that to achieve long-term and effective self-change, it is not as simple as forming good habits, but requires the two selves to form an effective mutual cooperation.
Our learning to drive is a prime example. When they first start on the road, many people feel very nervous and feel that they are on the verge of life and death. Every time I go out to practice, I am very nervous. But after becoming proficient, many veteran drivers don't even realize that they are driving. This is the handover between the two selves, the handover of the task of driving from the conscious self to the unconscious self.
If the two selves do not work together, they are prone to all sorts of problems. The failure of weight loss mentioned above is actually our attempt to completely replace the unconscious self with the conscious self to complete the task of losing weight. But as soon as there is a familiar repetition scene where the unconscious self takes over the body again and begins to act according to the previous pattern, we find that many bad habits begin to recur.
Since it is the cooperation of the two egos, of course, it is not always the conscious self as the main thing, and the habit self as the supplement. There are situations where we need to let our habitual self-ownership work, such as in high-stress environments.
Stress can affect our conscious playfulness, but the habitual self can remain stable. Therefore, when athletes are training, many coaches will actually focus on the cultivation of habits. The author interviewed USC head football coaches who believe that the key to playing is to dispel confusion, which can make people hesitate. So his goal is to experience different situations as he trains. In this way, in the official game, whether the opponent rushes over, someone stretches out an arm to intercept, or the whole team on the opposite side is trying to grab their clothes, the players can concentrate on doing what they have to do. To achieve this, the coach needs to train the players repeatedly for a variety of situations, so that each muscle of the player remembers how to react.
The authors found that firefighters make decisions in such a complex environment without consciously inspecting, evaluating and analyzing, but taking knee-jerk actions based on key cues at the scene, such as the layout of the house, the color of the smoke, or the direction of the wind.
Therefore, in the author's opinion, it is not a good way for us to want to develop a habit by relying only on a strong will. In addition to our conscious self there is another unconscious habitual self, and habit is actually the result of this habitual self. Therefore, cultivating a habit and establishing a stable pattern of behavior requires us to constantly push ourselves so that the conscious self and the habitual self cooperate well and act together.
Part II
Since the key to habit is the habitual self, how can we make good use of this to form habits? That's what Part II is about. The author gives three key factors, which are environment, repetition, and reward.
At first glance, these three elements are no different from our usual habits. If we want to develop a habit, isn't it just to keep persisting and repeating this behavior in a stable environment, and strengthen this behavior with appropriate rewards. It is true that the elements are all of them, but the author's order of importance of these three things is different from what many people have previously thought.
For example, if we want to use willpower to form a habit, then repetition is the most important action. We need to use our willpower to repeat an action again and again until we get used to it and forget that it exists. How many times should I repeat this? We can often see the number 21 days, so some people think that as long as they can repeat 21 days, then everything will be fine, and as long as there is a break in the middle, all the work will be lost.
But the author reminds us that this is actually problematic. First of all, the occasional break in the habit will not lead to the loss of the previous work, as long as you keep doing it. Second, the 21-day argument is problematic. The phrase 21 days comes from a 1960 best-selling book, Psychocybernetics. In this book, author Maxwell Maltz speculates that it takes about 21 days for a person to adapt to such a change. Not to mention that this speculation itself is not supported by rigorous science, there is still a huge difference between adapting to changes in appearance and physical exercise. The authors say that current research shows that different habits take different times, and that it takes an average of 66 days for a simple act to reach the level of unthinking.
The bottom line is that the importance of repetition itself is not as high as it is stated. The author believes that the most important thing to form a habit is the environment, and we have built a suitable environment, just like a runway that has fixed habits, and what we have to do repeatedly is just a process of continuous adjustment and polishing on this runway. Many people put too much emphasis on the subjective will, and incidentally ignore the importance of the environment.
How important is the environment to habit formation? The author argues that the environment can be said to be a trigger for habit. Because our habitual self is an automatic response to certain circumstances and conditions.
For example, the book talks about the smoking cessation campaign in the United States. In the 50s of the 20th century, the U.S. government officially recognized that smoking is harmful to health and that the smoking habits of the American people need to be changed. At that time, nearly half of the population in the United States smoked. The U.S. government tried to publicize the dangers of smoking, such as putting the words "smoking is harmful to health" on cigarette packs, but the effect was not satisfactory, and by 1973, about 40% of the smokers in the United States still accounted for about 40%.
The authors say that the reason why smoking rates remain high is because of the addictive nature of nicotine. Sixty-eight per cent of smokers say they are willing to quit smoking, but less than one in 10 of them do so. Many people quit smoking repeatedly, failing repeatedly. So how can they change their smoking habits? The U.S. government has taken a different approach, and that is to change the smoking environment.
In 1970, then-U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Smoking Act, which restricted smoking places. If a person wants to smoke, he needs to take the elevator to the first floor and go outside to smoke. Just restricting the smoking environment has had a pretty good effect. The number of smokers in the United States dropped dramatically in the following period.
Some people will question when they read this, at that time, smoking cessation in the United States was a multi-faceted combination of punches, how can we be sure that this bill played a huge role? The authors explain that in the United States, different states have different laws, so some states have bans on smoking cessation and others do not. As a result, none of the three states with the highest smoking rates in the U.S. have implemented similar bans, while nine of the ten states with the lowest smoking prevalences in the U.S. have implemented bans. Such a horizontal analogy can show that simply changing the smoking environment will inhibit people's smoking behavior.
Why is this so? The author says that it is still necessary to return to habit. Our habitual self operates simply by "perceiving signals and reacting". So a lot of people sit in a bar and naturally start smoking. There will also be many people who come to the shop and buy a pack of cigarettes without even thinking about it. Now, after the implementation of the law, when they smoke and buy cigarettes, they will be given additional reminders, and their natural habitual reactions will be broken, and people will have an extra time to react.
The inconvenience felt in the process of forming a habit is what the author calls "friction". Nowadays, many tech companies design their apps with a special focus on the user's smoothness, which is actually the same reason. As long as there is no friction in the environment that hinders behavior, it is easy for users to use it all the time. The author argues that when we develop habits, we should also take care to control our environment, remove all friction that may prevent us from forming habits, and strive to do what we want to do without thinking about it.
If a person doesn't want to cook and finds it very troublesome to prepare the ingredients and wash the dishes after cooking. The author's advice would be to prepare the ingredients and put away the utensils in advance. And wash the dishes as soon as you finish eating, and don't pile up in the sink. This way, it will be easier to get into the habit of cooking for yourself.
The environment not only provides friction to hinder our bad habits, but it also provides the driving force that shapes our behavior. For example, when we are in the library or café, it is easier to calm down and read.
Mr. Chen Haixian, the director of "Self-Development Psychology", calls this kind of environment "field". According to him, a field is an environment that contains a lot of cues that motivate you to behave in a particular way. For example, when we get to the bedroom, we want to sleep, when we get to the office, we want to work, and when we get to the restaurant, we want to eat.
If we want to develop a habit, we just need to shape the corresponding field, or enter the corresponding field. Many college students report that it is difficult to concentrate on their studies in the dormitory, so it may be much better to change the study environment than to pressure yourself in the dormitory.
Of course, the environment alone is not enough, we need to reward feedback for specific behaviors to form a closed loop of behavior. We are no strangers to this. Many people know that when we perform a certain behavior and receive a reward, our brain secretes dopamine, which makes us feel very happy and happy, and then repeats the behavior more often.
However, some people don't realize that rewards for behavior need to be timely. For example, some people hope that they can pass the exam in three months, so they agree with their friends that if they pass, their friends will invite them to dinner; If you don't pass, invite a friend to dinner. When this person agreed, he thought to himself that if he won, he could have a meal, which was a direct reward. If you lose, you have to pay for the meal, which is a loss. Isn't this all about motivating yourself to study hard? The book's authors say that such feedback is simply too far away from our own behavior, not timely enough to form an effective reward.
The authors give a more effective reward than simple timely feedback, which is uncertainty feedback. What really excites our brains and secretes a lot of dopamine rewards is not the expected result, but the unexpected reward.
The unexpected rewards are huge. Not to mention the gambling that makes many people crazy, the author says that many of us can't put down our mobile phones because they provide uncertain rewards. Every time we pick up our phones, we don't know what kind of content we will see, is it a message from a good friend? Is it a discount message from a merchant? Or is there any news? It's because we're not sure when we're going to receive something on our phones that we can't help but pick it up and take a look.
If we know that uncertainty feedback is so appealing to us, why don't we consider being proactive and using it for habit building?
In addition to helping us form a habit, rewards can also be used to measure whether we have developed a habit or not. The author says that there is a very simple criterion for judging whether we develop a habit, that is, if there is no reward, we will continue this behavior, then this means that this behavior has become a habit.
And until we get to that point, the author says, we need to adjust the environment and rewards to make sure that we keep repeating a particular behavior until it becomes part of our habitual self.
These are the three elements of habit formation, environment, repetition, and reward. With all that said, let's take a final look at a practical case to see how these three elements work together to support us in developing a stable habit. For example, I like to look at my phone very much now, and I can't help but glance at it every once in a while, so how can I develop a good habit of not looking at my phone and concentrating on work?
First, I looked at my environment, and I found myself often working alone. In this way, once you start playing with your phone, you can't stop at all. So I should first let myself go to a place where there are more people and work with everyone. That way, I can have an environmental pressure, and I'm working there and only doing work-related things. This first switched me from the previous environment.
But that's not enough, I need to add a corresponding amount of friction to my mobile behavior. For example, every time I take out my phone, it is very natural, so I can wear a pair of pants with a zipper, or put my phone in my bag, so that every time I take my phone, it will be more inconvenient. This is not enough, for example, I like to read all kinds of news and gossip on Weibo, then I can uninstall the Weibo app and use a browser instead, so that every time I open Weibo, it will add extra steps.
That's not enough, I use my phone to check the time or check the work group to see if there's anything worth paying attention to. Then I can buy a mechanical watch and log in to the work group with my computer, so that I have no reason to turn on my phone.
But I also need to set up a reward system for myself, and the way I think of it is to call relatives and friends every time I want to play on my phone. I usually don't have time to care about their lives, but now every time I have the idea of playing with my mobile phone, I call them. On the one hand, it further increases the friction on my phone; On the other hand, every time I talk to someone, I don't know what I'm going to get, and I might often get unexpected results. This constitutes a reward for uncertainty.
epilogue
In the author's view, in order to achieve long-term effective change, we cannot rely on our own willpower, but need to rely on the power of habit. Habit is not the behavioral inertia that we rely on self-denial and strive to persist in, it is actually the habitual self-action. We need our conscious self and habitual self to work together to truly achieve lasting change. To change the habitual self and develop a good habit, the author makes three suggestions, which are to build an environment, add friction to our unwanted behaviors, and provide a driving force for the behaviors we want. After that, we want to reward the desired action and repeat the process until we develop a new habit.
Finally, I would like to share a little bit of my own experience and feelings. In the past, when we talked about change, we often talked about an action to expand the upper limit, hoping to do better, faster, and more. But after reading this book "Habitual Psychology", I realized that there is another important dimension of change, which is to constantly raise the lower limit of our behavior. Large companies are constantly emphasizing processes and norms internally, and a professional athlete will repeat the basics over and over again, not because doing so will push them beyond their limits, but to try to make sure that no matter what the situation, they don't make low-level mistakes. We generally call the high upper bound a genius and the high lower bound a professional. Genius is hard to find, and because of the constraints of our energy, physical strength, and creativity, our ceiling tends to reach its own peak at a young age, and then irreversibly begins to decline. However, raising the lower limit is a process that we can continue to optimize and improve. May we start today, the sun arches and the time will live up to it.
Written by: Zhang Bolei; Brain Map: Moses Brain Map Studio; Source: Get APP Listening Book Column
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