How to Trick Your Brain to Like Doing Hard Things – Atomic Habits by J... (2)

warren buffett so he's had a very

successful career

and he came to warren buffett one day

and he said warren i would like to fly

this particular type of plane

i think whenever we upgrade we should

get this new one and he said mike

you know if you're working for me in 10

years when we buy a new plane

then i probably have failed you as a

boss so here's what i'd like you to do

and this exercise that i'm about to

share

you can do on any level you can do it

for your career

you can do it for the things that you or

your team need to get done this month

you can do it for the things you need to

work on today or this week

and he said i'd like you to take the 25

things that you want to achieve in your

career and write them down on a list

so mike flint goes away writes down 25

things

he gets done and he says all right great

i want you to circle the top five things

on that list

so spend some more time he circles the

top five priorities

he says all right tell me what your

strategy is at this point

mike flynn said well i have my top five

things so

i'm gonna work on those first and he

said great what about the other things

on your list

uh he said well those will be the things

i do on nights or weekends or when i get

tired or bored or you know a project

stalls i'll work on that

and warren buffett said mike you got it

all wrong

the things that you have circled are

your priorities the other items on your

list number six

through 25 this is your never do under

any circumstance list

and the reason is because it's so easy

for us to rationalize

spending time on things that are good

uses of time but not great uses of time

it's items that six through 25 on your

list that take up time and space and

energy because we can justify why we

need to do them they're on the list for

a reason

they just don't happen to be the best

uses of our time

[Music]

i call this the three r's of habit

formation but the basic idea is that

no matter what habit you're working on

there are three main steps

based on the research the first step is

the prompt or the cue

or the trigger it's like a reminder the

thing that signals that we should do

something so

if my phone buzzes for example that's a

trigger

the next piece is the routine this is

the behavior itself the actual habit

that you're going to perform so my phone

buzzes that's the trigger

i answer the phone that's the routine

the third piece is the reward

so this is the benefit that you get for

doing the behavior and it's important to

note

that all habits good or bad have some

kind of benefit

or reward associated with them take

smoking for example people will often

label smoking as a bad habit so what's

the benefit what's the reward of it well

there's some kind of physiological

reward there's a hit of nicotine that's

associated with it

and then there are often social rewards

right you get to share smoke with a

friend or a colleague something like

that

so regardless of how we label habits or

behaviors

the important thing is to note that all

of them have some kind of benefit

neurologically associated with them now

so my phone rings that's a reminder

i answer the phone that's the routine

and then i get to satisfy my curiosity

or find out who's calling that's the

benefit

and what ends up happening is that if

that reward is positive

then it tells your brain hey remember

next time this reminder happens next

time this trigger comes along

we should repeat that pattern and once

you make it through the cycle enough

times

it becomes a habit it becomes ingrained

so

how can we leverage the first part of

this the trigger or the reminder

let's say that i wanted to start

meditating i could say

all right in the morning i make a cup of

coffee and so for this new behavior i

could say

when i make my morning cup of coffee i

will meditate for 60 seconds

and so the current behavior the things

that you're already doing

become the trigger for the new behavior

that you're trying to build

and the reason that this is important is

that your current behaviors things that

are already habits

have this neurological network built

into your mind

they already have like an on-ramp in

your brain and so you're just kind of

tapping into that

so you can tag the new behavior and link

it to something that's already strongly

correlated in your mind

[Music]

the two-minute rule there is no habit

that we're going to work on

that takes less than two minutes to do

but nearly any habit

can be started in under two minutes so

if you take exercise for example

you know often people get home from a

long day of work and they say i'm too

exhausted to go for a run or to try to

exercise

so i never get around to doing it

because i think about oh i have to run

five kilometers or whatever some long

distance that seems overwhelming to me

so rather than focus on the whole thing

that you need to do i would encourage

you to focus on just the first two

minutes

so what's the first two minutes of that

habit i put my running shoes on i get

out the door and i lock the door

and if you do just that it doesn't

matter if you take another step

but what you find is that motivation

often comes after starting

not before we often think that

motivation is something that we're

supposed to have before we do work

but motivation will come as a result of

doing some small bit of work

and then we can trust that the rest of

the process will flow easily

but the point here is that the

motivation needed to complete a habit is

at its peak

at the beginning of a behavior the

greatest amount of friction

for any type of task is that in the

beginning is in the starting

so the key idea is make it so easy that

you can't say no

here's another way to do this it's a

concept called pre-commitment it's been

very well researched

and i call these kind of like instant

willpower improvements they're things

that seem very simple

but we often ignore or don't put into

practice and if we do put them into

practice

they result in immediate boosts in

willpower here's one study

random sample of a business with 3 272

employees

the business wanted their employees to

get their annual flu

shot now to do this they sent them

a flyer that said you need to get your

flu shot but then they sent another

version

and that other version said you need to

get a flu shot

your appointment has already been

scheduled for april 22nd

click here or you know right send us a

message here

to choose the time that you want to

attend and what they found was just by

selecting a date

just by picking the day when people

would get it they were 2.4 times more

likely to follow through

but then they sent a third version and

they said

you need to get your flu shot you've

already been scheduled for 1pm

on april 22nd if you need to change the

time you can click here and do so

and the people who had the exact time

and date scheduled for them were four

times more likely to follow through

simply because they were pre-committed

and we often think oh we should give

people more options we should let them

choose whatever they want to do

but if we're trying to incentivize

behavior of trying to make it more

likely for people to follow through

pre-commitment is a great device for

doing this

implementation intentions is another

method very similar to pre-commitment

but slightly different and this is the

study that i like that shows this so

there was a study that looked at

different groups and their

motivation and ability to stick with

exercise so there are three groups in

this study

the first group they brought in and they

said we want you to track

how often you exercise over the next two

weeks

so that's group one group two we want

you to track how often you exercise

and we're going to show you this

motivational video about the benefits of

exercise

why you should do it so group two was

the motivated group

then there was group three group three

got the exact same treatment as group

two

they were told to track their exercise

they were given the motivational speech

they were equally motivated

but they did one thing differently and

that one thing is they filled out this

sentence

that said during the next week i will

partake in at least 20 minutes of

vigorous exercise

on this day at this time at this place

and what they found when they looked at

all the analysis at the end of the study

is this is what happened group one 38

of them worked out over the next two

weeks the control group no motivation

group two remember they were the

motivated group and the motivation

faded almost immediately as soon as they

walked out of the research lab

so 35 of them worked out and group three

it was almost double or even triple the

odds that they would work out over the

next two weeks

91 of them stuck to exercise and the

only difference was that they filled out

this little sentence

and it seems so basic but by

pre-committing ourselves to things we

make it much more likely that we fall

through

implementation intentions which is what

this is called this is an implementation

intention

there are over hunt there are hundreds

of studies on this so it's been proven

in a bunch of different contexts

it's very simple and something that

actually leads to real results

now you may be saying all right that's

great i should just pick times and

places for everything i want to work on

but in fact we can get really overloaded

by the amount of things that we want to

improve

there are all sorts of things you may

want to improve upon so how do you

decide where to start

again i'm big on simplicity i'm big on

eliminating

most of the choices that you can focus

just on the very best uses of your time

and if you're thinking how do i decide

what to focus on after this presentation

i would say focus on the keystone habit

and a keystone habit is a routine or

ritual that ripples

into the rest of your life it creates a

cascade of good behavior

so for myself my keystone habit is

working out i know that if i work out i

get

the benefits of exercise sure but i also

tend to focus better i have this period

of like high focus the post workout high

for an hour or so afterward

i sleep better that night because i am

tired and exhausted and have worked

myself physically

which means i wake up the next day with

better energy which means i focus better

then

and i also tend to eat better just

because i feel like i worked out so i

don't want to waste it so i actually eat