The 1st Law
Make It Obvious
Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness. One of our greatest challenges in changing habits is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing. This helps explain why the consequences of bad habits can sneak up on us.
If a habit remains mindless, you can’t expect to improve it. As the psychologist Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them. The process of behavior always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a non-conscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions.
Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action.
Implementation Intention: It is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. That is how you intend to implement a particular habit.
The cues that can trigger a habit come in a wide range of forms but the two most common cues are time and location. Implementation intentions leverage both of these cues.
Format for implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y”
People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.
Habit Stacking :-
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 behaviour on top. This is called habit stacking. Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit.
The habit stacking formula is: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”
Unlike an implementation intention, which specifically states the time and location for a given behavior, habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it.
Motivation is overrated: Environment often matters more.
People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. The most common form of change is not internal, but external: we are changed by the world around us. Every habit is context dependent.
For example, customers will occasionally buy products not because they want them but because of how they are presented to them. Item at eye level tend to be purchased more than those down near the floor.
Many of the actions we take each day are shaped not by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option.
The most powerful of all human sensory abilities. A small change in what you see can lead to big shift in what you do. As a result, you can imagine how important it is to live in environments that are filled with productive cues and devoid of unproductive ones.
Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behaviour over time.
Every habit is initiated by cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stands out.
Make the cues of good habits oblivious in your environment
Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behaviour. The context becomes the cue.
It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old ones.
The Secret of Self-Control
Addiction could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment.
Disciplined people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In the other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least.
It’s easier to avoid temptation than resist it.
The inversion of the 1st Law of Behaviour Change is make it invisible.
One a habit is formed; it is unlikely to be forgotten.
One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.
