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Why is it so hard for us to keep our promises to ourselves? Very often we scold ourselves for lack of will. In fact, we fail precisely because we rely on willpower. Researcher Sean Achor offers a much more effective way to develop good habits.
Sean Achor, one of the world’s leading experts on human potential. Founder and CEO of research and consulting company Aspirant. Achor’s lectures received coverage in The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, as well as on CNN and NPR.
The work week is coming to an end and we are dreaming of the weekend. How many things can and should be done: go to an exhibition, take a walk in the park, finally sort out that dump in the wardrobe. But now the weekend is over, and I don’t even want to remember how mediocre we spent it: we spent hours on social networks, watched stupid programs on TV, and all our walks were reduced to going to the supermarket. Well, nothing, we think, next time we need to mobilize willpower and fulfill everything planned. However, history repeats itself over and over again, and we keep going in circles. What is the reason why we constantly fall into the same trap and how to avoid it? Explanation from Sean Achor, author of a number of studies on human potential.
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Is it possible to reprogram your brain and form a new habit by doing the same thing every day for several weeks? Achor conducted such a home experiment. Once he started playing the guitar, but now the instrument was gathering dust in the pantry. Why not start exercising daily again? Because it takes 21 days to form a habit, Achor drew a 21-column chart to check off each day he played the guitar. After three weeks, in disgust, he ripped off the table from the wall, in which there were only four ticks.
Why did he fail his own experiment? Because he made a typical mistake – he tried to force himself. Whether it’s a strict diet, exciting ideas for the weekend, or the intention to play the guitar every day, we fail because we tend to rely on willpower. As psychology professor Roy Baumeister and other researchers have shown, our willpower is limited, and the more we use willpower, the weaker it becomes. Therefore, it is not surprising that we so easily return to old habits, that is, to the easiest and most comfortable path, or the path of least resistance.
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What can some seconds mean?
In order to carry out our plans, we need some initial effort, or, in the words of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, activation energy in order to overcome inertia and give rise to a new habit. Where can we draw it from?
Sean Achor reanalyzed his experiment. He kept the guitar in the closet, out of sight and out of reach. However, it took only some 20 seconds to get to this closet and get the guitar, but it was this tiny period of time that turned out to be a serious deterrent.
But what if we reduce the required activation energy to zero? Sean bought a special stand and placed the guitar on it in the living room. Now the guitar was not 20 seconds away from her, but right at hand. Three weeks later, the table, again hung on the wall, had a checkmark in each of the 21 boxes.
In essence, he simply translated the desired behavior into the path of least resistance. As a result, picking up a guitar and playing it took less energy than avoiding practice.
Sean calls this the “20 second rule”. Of course, sometimes we need a little more, sometimes a little less time to implement a change, but this strategy, he believes, has a universal value: decrease the activation energy for the habits you would like to have, and increase it for the habits you want to break.
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Create barriers to bad habits
Sean recalls giving a training session at a large company’s office in Hong Kong and finding time to work with one of the top marketing executives, Ted. It was very difficult for Tom to cope with his workload. His working day continued until late in the evening, and still Ted was chronically short of time. As Sean delved into his routine, he realized that Ted a) worked all the time and b) hardly ever worked. The fact was that he was endlessly distracted either by reading the news, or by new letters coming to the mail, or by social networks, or by viewing stock quotes. The working day of a huge number of people around the world looks about the same. For example, according to Sean Achor, London clerks look at quotes about 35 times a day.
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And it’s not just a waste of time for all these activities. Another problem is even more serious. Every time we get distracted, our attention suffers. Studies show that the average worker has to take a break from work every 11 minutes, and it takes about the same amount of time to regain focus and momentum.
Working with Ted, Achor realized that the main problem was not the number of distractions, but that they were easily accessible. Therefore, it is necessary to complicate access to them as much as possible. So, they deactivated the option to remember the login and password for his account, removed the Outlook shortcut from the computer desktop, placing it in an empty folder located in another empty folder, which, in turn, was in another empty folder. That is, they actually created an electronic version of the Russian nesting dolls. They also came up with “barriers” for viewing quotes.
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At first, Ted was skeptical and even annoyed because of these innovations, which complicate, as it seemed to him, his already difficult life, but after a few days he saw how much more work he was now doing, and recognized that Sean was right.
So, our main weapon in the fight against bad habits is the creation of barriers that make it difficult to automatically follow these habits.
For more details, see Sh. Achor “The Advantage of Happiness. 7 principles of success based on the results of a study of companies from the Fortune list” (Eksmo, 2014).