How to Start 2021 Right, With Charles Duhigg
This week we get tips on how to keep our New Year’s promises with the help of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg. Hear Charles share some evidence-based strategies we can use to improve habit formation, turn bad habits into good ones, and how mental models can help us achieve our goals.
Charles is the author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business and Smarter, Faster, Better: The Transforming Power of Real Productivity , and is also the host of the How To! Podcast . With Charles Duhigg .
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Highlights from this week’s series
From an interview with Charles Duhigg:
How to maintain the good habits you developed during quarantine:
The first thing you need to do is write down, for example, literally take out the pen and paper and write down the habits that you have right now, that you like, that the pandemic has given you, that you want to keep because otherwise you will forget them. Once life starts again, you will forget. So write down what habits you want to maintain, and write down what is the signal and reward that I get right now from dining with my children, from spending more time with my children, from going to jogging. .. Because as soon as life begins again, you will forget what it is like. You will forget what these awards are. The second thing you should do is try to find out to what extent they are in line with my values? Because one of the things we know is that the behaviors we find easiest to reinforce are considered the foundation of our identity, which usually means they offer something that aligns with our values.
On the importance of making concrete plans for your new habits:
The main thing is not to just write goals, make plans and make these plans determinative depending on the situation. Tied to the situation you are in. Saying, “I want to lose weight” is a bad New Year’s decision, [but] saying, “I’m going to try to lose ten pounds by August, and the way I’m going to do it is: I’ll train twice a week and stop eating cookies.” This is a much better New Year’s solution because it is a plan.
How to actually get rid of a bad habit:
So there is a part of our brain known as the basal ganglia that exists primarily to form habits. And every animal has it. This is one of the most important things that allows every animal to develop. Thus, the basal ganglia work like this: when they find a sequence of signals and rewards, they kind of combine them in a neural pathway and make it easier to activate that pathway. And so, when this path exists, it will never go away … So, instead of thinking of it as breaking a bad habit, using willpower to extinguish this routine signal and reward, we should think of it as a change. this habit. because it is much more efficient. So you say, “Okay, let me define and diagnose the routine reward cue that drives this behavior. Now I’m going to find a new, better behavior that is triggered by this old signal, and I wanted to deliver something similar to this old reward. But I’m going to try to sort of squeeze this new behavior into him. ” And as a result, it will be much, much easier, because there is a way that you can take it.
To learn more about Charles’ genius tricks and ideas, we recommend listening to the entire episode.
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