20 19- 10-04 12:00
Author: Li
Source: Late Night Desk (ID:shenyeshuzhuo)
A 9000-word hard-core long article clearly explains the underlying principle of behavior change at one time. This methodology is applicable to the formation of any habit and ensures that it is not boring. I think what I get can last a lifetime, and I hope it can help you.
I have been writing for several days, and friends who can't finish reading will meet in the message area.
Speaking of the word "habit", what's your reaction?
Two months ago, my reaction was: "I'm bored", "I don't want to listen", "Don't preach" and "You just want to say some self-management rhetoric".
The first time I experienced the power of habit, it was completely unintentional.
I opened a diary number on a whim, and I also set up a flag on a whim: If I break my watch, I will punish myself for sending you 500 yuan Alipay password red packets every day. Although there are not many 500 yuan, I can't bear to spend 500 yuan. So, I got into the habit of keeping a diary every day.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that every night 10, I would push everything away, sit in front of the computer and write a diary wholeheartedly. Because I need to update before 12, if I start writing after 10, I will probably be too late.
Apart from brushing my teeth, to be honest, I have never experienced this feeling. As soon as I arrived, I did it without hesitation, without any psychological construction and without saying anything to convince myself. Writing an article every day is beyond my imagination.
I realize that I have always underestimated the power of habit and its ability to control human behavior.
So I decided to abandon my self-righteous prejudice and start using habits to manage my work and life.
My goal is to get used to the things that are most important to me and the behaviors that need to be repeated, such as reading, writing and fitness.
In order to better develop good habits, quit bad habits, and better shape my behavior, I made a small reading around "habits", among which the book "Mastering Habits" surprised me very much.
In particular, I introduced the four rules of habit formation, which helped me break the curse of "knowing everything, just not doing it".
I know for the first time that we can't force ourselves, but conform to our nature and shape our behavior in many ingenious ways.
0 1
Why is it so easy to form bad habits?
Is it so difficult to form a good habit?
The reason is simple, because bad habits have no requirements, no indicators, and will not be accompanied by any psychological pressure. You will ask yourself to exercise for an hour every day and read 50 pages of books, but you will not ask yourself to play games for two hours every day and stay in bed for more than 1 hour;
Secondly, bad habits can get instant pleasure and delayed punishment. For example, if you play mobile phones too much, the troubles in reality will be temporarily forgotten, but the punishment for wasting time will only appear as time goes by.
Good habits are not easy to form, because they usually don't give you immediate returns.
Just like fitness to lose weight, you lose weight after a few days without running. You need to persist for several months before you can make a significant change. The same is true of reading. I can't read a few books, but I'll learn it soon. You need to accumulate slowly, and quantitative change will lead to qualitative change.
There are two kinds of animals in nature. One is the blue whale, which eats several tons of food a day. Some people say that one bite is 500 thousand calories.
One kind of animal is the silkworm, which spins silk. It eats a piece of mulberry leaves slowly, so little that you can't see what it eats at all, but when you come back later, you will find that the leaves are missing a big bite, and then the silkworm grows up slowly and begins to spin silk.
We all want to make progress by swallowing whales, and we can't wait for rapid progress in a short time.
We don't pay much attention to small changes, because at least at that time, they don't seem great:
You saved 2000 yuan this month, which is far from the down payment on buying a house. You have been going to the gym for a week, but your figure has not changed. You practiced oral English for an hour today, but you still haven't mastered the language.
You read 50 pages and didn't immediately become knowledgeable, talkative, promoted or raised. Life seems to have not changed.
What usually happens then?
We made some changes, but we didn't see the expected effect, so we lost the motivation to improve and went back to our usual practice.
I have read a few books, or a month or two. Well, nothing has changed, so I won't watch it. I'd better play with my mobile phone, I'd better play games, and I'd better follow the drama.
Bamboo can hardly be seen in the first five years of its growth, because it has been building an extended root system underground until it jumps 90 feet in six weeks. The cultivation of habits is similar. You will not feel its influence for a long time, until one day, you break through the critical point and enter a new realm.
In fact, in the early and middle stages of any exploration, there is usually an unsatisfactory trough. You expect rapid changes and immediate results. But to your dismay, in the first few days, weeks or even months, you can hardly see any obvious changes. You think everything is in vain.
As long as the idea of wasting time prevails, we can easily abandon good habits.
But the key point is that if habits want to achieve meaningful changes, they need to persist for a long time to break through the "potential accumulation period" without obvious changes. You don't seem to see any progress in this process. In fact, you have made progress, only subtle progress, so subtle that you can't feel its changes, but you have gradually changed because of these subtle changes.
When you finally break through the potential savings period, people will call it overnight fame, because the outside world only sees the most dramatic outbreak moment and ignores the long accumulation process before.
These are the difficulties in forming good habits, and we must be soberly aware of this.
But I didn't write this article to tell you: "You should persist and show your willpower. Persistence is victory. " It doesn't make sense. What should you do if you close this article?
The key point of habit formation is to find constructive ways to get us through the "potential saving period" without obvious progress. This is what this article wants to provide.
02
Four laws of behavior change
The four laws of behavior change are the core concepts in mastering habits.
This book holds that there are four stages in the occurrence of habits: prompt, craving, reaction and reward.
What do you mean?
Let's talk about ordinary living habits:
Hungry, this is a hint, and a hint is a signal that triggers behavior, because with a hint, behavior will begin;
You want to fill your stomach, which is a kind of desire. If there is a gap between your present situation and your expectations, you will have a desire. The essence of longing is longing for the change of inner state, in this case, it is to eliminate hunger and change yourself from hungry to not hungry.
You ordered takeout, which is a kind of response, and response is an act that can satisfy your desire.
You are full, you burp, and you are satisfied. This is a reward. Rewards are the result of your actions. If your response is not reciprocated, this behavior will not be repeated.
I remember one year I lived in a small county in Yunnan for a period of time. One day, I was very hungry, so I habitually turned on the takeaway software. As a result, there were few takeout options, and finally I chose different brands of hamburgers. As a result, I waited an hour to arrive, so I forgot. The food is already cold. If it is cold, I will forget it. The food still tastes terrible and has a strange taste.
My reaction didn't quench my thirst. I won't order takeout next time I'm hungry in this small town. Because there is no reward, ordering takeout will not happen again.
Let's take another more common example:
When you encounter problems in your work or study, you feel a lot of pressure, and you feel upset and anxious. This feeling of uneasiness and anxiety is to get hints;
You want to get rid of this feeling of anxiety and anxiety, and you want to escape the pressure. This is a desire. The essence of desire is longing for the change of inner state. You want to get rid of anxiety and get rid of anxiety.
You drive Weibo, brush hot topics, brush hot Weibo, this is a response, brush Weibo is your means to escape pressure;
You are relaxed in the information flow composed of news information, gossip entertainment, funny jokes, chicken soup for the soul, wonderful stories and beautiful pictures, and forget your anxiety. This is a reward.
Because of the reward, this behavior will be repeated in the future. As long as you feel stressed and anxious, in order to eliminate this feeling, you will take out your mobile phone and start playing. Anxiety, stress and playing mobile phones are related.
Once the behavior is repeated enough times, it will form a habit.
So how to use the process of behavior to form good habits and quit bad habits?
First, in the "get tips" link, make good habits obvious and make bad habits disappear.
Second, in the "craving" link, make good habits attractive and make bad habits unattractive.
Third, in the "reaction" link, make good habits simple and easy, and make bad habits difficult to implement;
Fourth, in the "get rewards" link, let good habits bring immediate rewards and bad habits bring immediate punishment.
Our general idea is to redesign our behavior according to our inner needs and our thinking habits.
How to do it specifically?
03
First Law: Obviously.
First, you can use the time prompt. Set a fixed period for your habit and do it at that time.
For example, my habit of keeping a diary, every night at ten o'clock, I will push everything away and sit in front of the computer and start writing a diary.
The two hours from 10 to 12 in the evening are the fixed time for me to write my diary, typeset my official account on wechat and push my diary.
Ten o'clock in the evening is a very strong reminder for me.
Good habits are usually important but not urgent things, such as fitness and reading. If you don't set a fixed time period, they are easily squeezed out of the schedule by other urgent things.
Secondly, bind existing habits and use old habits to prompt new habits.
Many people can't do something accurately in a certain period of time because of various force majeure factors. What should we do?
The second tip is to bind existing habits and use old habits to prompt new habits.
For example, the time when we get up is often not fixed, but we always brush our teeth after getting up or before breakfast.
We always have to get up, don't we Then we just need to tie the matter of brushing our teeth to getting up, and we will get together in bed and immediately know that we need to brush our teeth.
New habits may also be associated with old habits.
Take reading as an example. You take a shower every night, and you feel refreshed after taking a shower. You can tie up reading and bathing, and stipulate reading after bathing.
Otherwise, you will walk the dog every night. You can combine reading with walking the dog and stipulate that you should read after walking the dog.
The advantage of habit binding and overlapping is that reading can be more naturally integrated into your life, become your routine, and the time is more flexible;
The third method is to transform the environment and let it prompt.
We always tend to overestimate the role of willpower and internal driving force and underestimate the role of environment. In fact, the environment is sometimes more important.
There is a case in Control Habits that inspires me a lot.
There is a health care doctor in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She has successfully improved the eating habits of thousands of hospital employees and visitors, making them eat healthier, but she doesn't have to change their willpower and motivation at all. She didn't convince these people at all She changed everyone's eating habits without even mentioning it.
How did she do it?
By changing the environment.
For example, she wants everyone to drink bottled water instead of soda, so she puts bottled water on the most conspicuous table and mineral water on every table. In the next three months, the sales of soda dropped significantly, while the sales of bottled water increased significantly.
People choose products not because of what they are, but because they are there.
If you want to get into the habit of reading, fill your house with books. If you want to develop the habit of fitness, let your sportswear, sports shoes and yoga mats appear in front of you.
To make good use of the influence of the environment, compared with enhancing psychological motivation and using willpower, the influence of the environment is silent and powerful.
Fourth, combine the place with a habit through the place prompt.
In one study, scientists instructed insomniacs to go to bed only when they felt exhausted. If they couldn't sleep, they would sit in other rooms until they felt sleepy. Over time, these insomniacs began to associate bed with sleep behavior. When they climb into bed, they fall asleep easily.
Because their brains realize that that room is not a place to play mobile phones, watch TV or stare at time, but just a place to sleep.
This is how our brains work. Psychologically, we will assign our habits to different places, such as sleeping in the bedroom and exercising in the gym.
How can we make use of this? We should arrange special places for our good habits.
If you are used to electronic reading, you'd better buy another kindle or tablet to read.
Don't mix the place and environment of good habits with the place and environment of doing other things. Because once you start mixing different habits, those habits that are easier to achieve will prevail.
If your mobile phone is used to play games as well as reading books, then playing games will easily get the upper hand. In this way, your reading environment will become an environment full of other temptations. It is very energy-consuming to refuse temptation and resist interference. We should take the initiative to avoid temptation.
Let's analyze the habit of brushing your teeth again. We have to brush our teeth every day, and the time, place and way of brushing our teeth are obvious, so this habit is easy to be triggered. If we want good habits to be easily triggered and started, we should make them obvious when, where and how to do it.
What is the state of opposition?
When, where and how to do it are all up in the air, so good habits will not happen stably in your life. Make good habits obvious, just for reading to happen steadily in your life.
04
Second Law: Make it attractive.
Making a good habit obvious in your life is only the first step. Step two, make it attractive to you, otherwise you will turn a blind eye even if it is obvious in your life.
Let me give you an example, and everyone will know the difference.
I studied in Wuhan when I was in college. There are two special snacks in Wu Hanyou, one is Regan Noodles, and the other is duck neck. These two things can be seen everywhere in the streets and lanes, and the locals like them very much.
But Regan Noodles, I ate it once and decided never to eat it again, because it was not to my taste, and I thought it was the worst noodle in the world. So no matter how frequent and obvious Regan Noodles appears in my life, I turn a blind eye.
Duck neck is different, Zhou Heiya or Jason Wu duck neck. I fell in love with it once. Eating with roommates in the dormitory and then inhaling in the dormitory feels so spicy. Every time I see someone eating, or pass by their shop, I feel very, very hungry. So I have to buy it every now and then.
Duck neck attracts me, but Regan Noodles doesn't. I will have a longing for duck neck, but I will never have a longing for Regan Noodles.
Does this mean that the obvious is not important? No, I went to work in Haikou later, and the taste of Hainan people was very weak. I can't see Zhou Heiya and Jason Wu duck necks every day, so I gradually stopped buying them, and I even gave up spicy food.
Then how to make good habits become duck necks in our lives, not Regan Noodles?
First of all, make it a pleasant and interesting thing, not a hard job.
Take learning English as an example. The child of a university teacher is studying in England. He said that his son learned English without memorizing words. He learned it by watching the English version of Harry Potter. Think about it. When we learn our mother tongue, we always learn words in articles. How can I memorize words and idioms?
Reciting words alphabetically or out of order, whether useful or not, has turned learning a language into a chore, and this learning method has no effect at all.
Secondly, combine good habits with the most important goals in life.
It may be more appropriate to put it another way: build good habits around the most important goal in life.
You see others recite words every day, and you recite words every day. However, people learn English only because they have to take IELTS to study abroad, and your future plan doesn't need English at all. English is not just what you need. It's harmless to learn it, but it has nothing to do with your most important goal in life, so it's not that attractive to you.
Third, use the influence of others on us.
Although we all shout "Go our own way and let others talk", we are group animals and are very easily influenced by others, especially those whom we admire, envy, look up to and think are very successful.
Sometimes one thing attracts all of us at once, for no other reason than that our idols and role models have done so.
A young man who aspires to be a best-selling novelist and idolizes Stephen King, when he sees that "the golden rule of writing is to read more and write more" in his writing, he reads everywhere except writing, so reading may immediately attract this ambitious young man.
05
The third law: simplify the complex.
People have an overwhelming behavior tendency: how to save trouble and how to do it. Because human nature is eager for comfort.
If there are two choices before us, people will naturally be more inclined to ask for the one with less workload and the one with simpler and easier labor.
If we want to form a good habit, we must make it simple.
The first method is to use the two-minute rule to stop procrastination.
The hardest thing to keep a habit is to start. Everything is difficult at the beginning, and the most feared thing is that it is delayed. Once we start, we will follow it.
There is a story in Control Habits that inspires me very much.
There is a very successful dancer who goes to the gym for two hours every morning, but she has developed a habit of calling a taxi instead of saying that I go to the gym for two hours. Every morning when she wakes up and changes her clothes, she will call a taxi and tell herself to go to a gym at the intersection of 9 1 street and First Avenue.
It is much easier to get into the habit of calling a taxi early than to get into the habit of exercising for two hours, both in sound and execution. But as long as you call a taxi, you will definitely go to the gym, so it is natural to exercise for two hours.
In fact, what really determines our behavior is the moment when we make a choice.
Habit is actually the starting point, not the end point.
There is a secret to forming habits. Pay attention to the behavior in the first two minutes and find the entrance habit of this habit.
What is a portal habit? That is, as long as you realize the portal habit, you will launch the behavior you really want. The point is not to do one thing, but to catch the bud of one thing.
For example, calling a taxi is a portal habit, and fitness for two hours is a really wanted behavior.
In this way, reading a book before going to bed every night becomes reading a page, doing yoga for 30 minutes becomes taking out my yoga mat, and running for 3 kilometers becomes putting on my running shoes.
Some people may say, I'm sure I won't just read a page or sit at my desk and open a book. Isn't that self-deception
This is not self-deception, but step by step. Just because we start with the 2-minute portal habit doesn't mean that we will only do things for 2 minutes forever.
Don't expect to form a perfect habit from the beginning. Our strategy is to start with portal habits and gradually increase the difficulty.
The second method is to be prepared and make the next action simple and easy.
I have a habit. Every night after using my desk, I will tidy it up, put it on my reading shelf, and spread out the books I want to read tomorrow morning, as well as pens and notes I need to read.
This action is very simple, it only takes a minute or two, but it greatly reduces the difficulty for me to keep reading. Because everything is ready, as long as I sit at the table at a certain time, I can start reading.
What are you most afraid of? You are most afraid of studying, but you have to clean up the messy desk first and look for pens everywhere.
Being prepared for space can make habits spread very easily.
Finally, we should pay attention to avoid the environment of high resistance and high temptation, and be wary of bad habits expelling good habits.
People are lazy. You have two hours now. You have two choices. One is learning, which requires your concentration. You have to understand and remember, and you have to work hard. The other is to play mobile phones. Don't use your head. Just sit on the sofa and watch.
Which one would you choose? Few people can resist the temptation of mobile phones, even if they do, the process of resisting the temptation is also a very energy-consuming thing. So the best way is to let yourself not spend energy to resist temptation.
06
The fourth law: let it bring immediate returns.
The result of an action is rewarding, so we will repeat it.
The so-called good habit is to make that thing repeat, and the bad habit is to make that thing not repeat.
In this article, we make a big fuss about the result of behavior.
The logic of human behavior, in a word, is actually very simple: repeat reward behavior and avoid punishment behavior.
But there are two kinds of returns: delayed returns and immediate returns;
There are also two kinds of punishment: deferred punishment and immediate punishment.
Our ancestors were originally apes roaming the African savannah. On any given day, most of their decisions are immediate, such as what to eat, where to find water, and how to avoid predators. So they are always concerned about the present or the near future. This kind of life is called an immediate reward environment by scientists, and your actions will immediately produce unmistakable results.
In the modern society we live in, many choices we make today will not benefit us immediately. If you do well, you will get a bonus at the end of the year and be promoted in a year or two. You start exercising today and lose weight next year. You start studying today, and it may take three to five years to feel the obvious impact. This kind of life is called a delayed return environment by scientists, and it takes you a long time to see the expected return.
This is the problem. Our brains didn't evolve in a delayed regression environment. Just like the late Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago, we prefer quick returns to long-term returns, and we are afraid of immediate punishment rather than delayed punishment.
When we eat snacks or other delicious things, our appetite is immediately satisfied, which is a quick return. We like it very much. A good figure after a long period of exercise is a long-term reward, and it is difficult for us to stick to it.
We were scalded when we touched the boiling water in the glass. This is a direct punishment. We will be careful to avoid such a thing from happening again. After smoking for decades, our lungs will get sick. This is a kind of delayed punishment, so it is difficult for people to quit smoking.
Good habits often delay returns, but you can't just expect long-term returns. We should conform to our nature and evolutionary instinct, create instant rewards and instant satisfaction for good habits, and create instant punishment for bad habits.
So how can we create instant satisfaction?
The book introduces two methods:
Use a visual habit tracking method to track your habits.
I have a deep understanding of this method, because it is the method I have used in reading for many years. I stick a big piece of paper on the wall and use orthography to track the books I have read. After reading a book, I add a stroke to the orthography with a thick pen, and then mark the title and reading date with a thin pen. After writing a "positive", I will write another one.
The first is the principle of "uninterrupted".
Some time ago, a fan chatted with me and said that she had a sense of failure. Her original words were: "I feel very proud. I have never been able to insist on doing one thing."
Sticking to one thing all the time will bring a very strong self-confidence, because you are proud of your actions and have a sense of control over your life.
So my suggestion is: establish an "uninterrupted" principle.
American comedian Jerry Seinfeld kept the habit of writing jokes in this way. The only goal he set for himself is to "never stop" and insist on writing jokes every day.
He doesn't care about the quality of a joke, nor is he inspired, but focuses on doing it every day.
When I first realized the benefits of this matter, I kept a diary.
I shared it with you before. I wrote a diary of the official WeChat account to share my thoughts every day. I set up a never-ending flag. I found that never stopping this matter will bring a stable sense of accomplishment.
What are the precautions of the principle of never stopping? You should evaluate your ability and don't set an unrealistic and difficult goal, otherwise continuous failure will only make you feel depressed; Secondly, allow yourself to paddle occasionally, because bad persistence is better than giving up.
07
Quit bad habits,
This is just the opposite of forming good habits.
We have summarized the train of thought before:
In the "get tips" link, make good habits obvious and make bad habits disappear.
In the "craving" link, make good habits attractive and make bad habits unattractive.
In the "reaction" link, make good habits simple and easy, and make bad habits difficult to implement;
In the "reward" link, let good habits bring immediate rewards and bad habits bring immediate punishment.
But because of space, I didn't talk about how to quit bad habits.
Let me give up my mobile phone as an example to explain how to use the four laws of behavior to quit bad habits.
I don't know if you have noticed the time of using your mobile phone every day. I didn't notice before. Later, I found that the mobile phone has its own screen usage time statistics. I didn't read it. I don't know. I was shocked at first sight.
In the past seven days, I spent an average of 7 hours and 54 minutes on the screen every day, and the average number of times I picked up my mobile phone every day was 73 times. Excluding the eight hours of sleep, in the remaining 16 hours, I picked up my mobile phone 4.5 times per hour on average, which means I picked up my mobile phone every 13 minutes on average.
I realized that the chief culprit affecting my work efficiency was cell phone addiction, so I made great efforts to quit cell phones. My goal is to control the use time of mobile phone screen within 3 hours every day.
First, when you get a hint, keep it out of your sight.
I turned off all notifications from the mobile app. Major apps spare no effort to grab users' attention resources. Information notification and prompt tone are their ways to enhance user stickiness, and we should do the opposite;
When I need to concentrate every day, I will turn off my mobile phone and hide it out of sight;
Secondly, in the process of producing desire, make it unattractive.
I uninstalled all the apps used for entertainment and relaxation, especially during meals. Weibo, Zhihu, Bili Bili, Tik Tok and major video apps occupy my time the most. Mobile phones are not that attractive to me.
I have two deeper psychological needs when I use my mobile phone frequently. First, pay attention to feedback. I keep checking my mobile phone, reading articles, leaving messages, fan growth and other feedback information on the official WeChat account. The other is to escape stress. Once you encounter difficulties or time constraints at work, you will feel anxious. In order to avoid this anxiety, I will get temporary peace by playing with my mobile phone.
I need to find a substitute. Another option is to stop and do some exercise or meditation. With the substitution, playing mobile phone is not the only solution, and its appeal is further reduced.
Third, it is difficult to implement the reaction in a chain.
Shut down, put away, uninstall common entertainment software, run to the next room if necessary, turn it on, and download the software again. These steps are too troublesome, so I often give up.
Fourth, the "reward" link, let it bring immediate punishment.
The punishment for using mobile phones for too long is delayed, so I introduce public supervision and punishment. I send screenshots to my friends circle every day. If the use time of the mobile phone is not controlled within 3 hours at the end of the day, I will send a red envelope of 100 to my sixth friend who likes private messages.
I quit my mobile phone very well, and the screen use time is often controlled within 2 hours every day. This is the lever point of my self-management, so my work efficiency has been greatly improved.
Summary:
In the process of forming good habits and giving up bad habits, I always hear a tune: "If you can persist, you can persist; if you can't, you can persist.". It's no use repairing these superficial things. "
Please don't be influenced by this statement, because things are not what they say. Starting from scratch, it is necessary to form good habits or quit bad habits. Smart people will find smart ways to shape and manage their behavior.
I know that the good habits that everyone wants to develop are different from the bad habits that they want to quit, and everyone's personality is different. Therefore, in the specific implementation stage, the methods are also different, but the four laws of behavior remain unchanged. People who are willing to use their brains can of course develop countless ingenious methods on the basis of basic principles.
It takes about three months to quit a bad habit and an addiction. To quit a bad habit, you must first cultivate a good habit, a hobby to replace this bad habit, otherwise when you quit this bad habit,