Freedom from habits. Myth or fiction?

You want to be effective at work and in life, but there are a couple of bad habits that you cannot get rid of? Relax, get rid of the habit is impossible.

Not enough willpower to start a new life, and you fail every time? Calm down, you have lost, you cannot change life by will.

However, it is unthinkable to put up with it, something needs to be done about it, and I want to talk about it.
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Today's post is written under the influence of the useful book by Charles Dahigg, The Power of Habit .

Materiel

The human brain during hard work spends up to 20% of the body's energy. It is not beneficial for the body, so that we think, it is beneficial for it, so that we work automatically. Therefore, all that is possible is stored in a kind of biological brain cache - the basal ganglia. This is the case from a physiological point of view.

From the point of view of psychology, habit is a process divided into three stages, the so-called loop of habit . The first stage is a sign . This is a signal to start a habit. Sound, smell, movement in space - the habit can include any external or internal event. The second stage is actually a familiar action . Habitual action can also be anything, action, thought or emotion. And the third stage is the reward . It is through reward that conscious action becomes a habit. The brain understands that action is useful and needs to be remembered.

Dahigg refers to a study that shows that actions performed automatically account for 40% of all our activities. It is, in fact, very much - 24 minutes of every hour we act like cars. Surely, this figure is averaged and varies greatly from person to person. However, be that as it may, habits are the basis of our life, and in order to manage life, we must be able to manage habits.

The bad news

It is impossible to overcome the habit.

Studies show that habits are not forgotten. Once having learned to ride a bike, we do not forget this skill. Once having calmed ourselves with a cigarette, we will be thinking about it all our life at the moment of stress. A sign event will trigger a loop of habit each time the brain is made.

However, you can develop another habit that runs the same trigger as the first, and leads to the same reward. The new habit will override the second one and will be launched instead.

“Tomorrow I am starting a new life!”

Now that we know that habits can be replaced by others, we can calmly begin to act right from tomorrow morning. Early lifting, charging, douche, no sticking in the comp. In transport reading useful literature. If you are a smoker, not a single cigarette. If you're fat, your new breakfast is low fat kefir. If you are a fat smoker, add a run on the stairs. We have a new life!

After 5 hours of new life, we already hate everyone around, we cannot work, and in the evening we smoke, eat and hate ourselves.

Bad news again

The fact is that our willpower ends pretty quickly. Studies show that will is not an innate quality of character, but something like a muscle is a finite psychological resource. And if the usual actions do not require the use of willpower, then the unaccustomed spend our will, and often quite quickly, as in the example with the new life.

So, there is no way out?

There is an exit

The will is compared to a muscle because, like a muscle, it can be trained. Here, as with real muscles, you need to build up weight gradually and avoid unhealthy over-training.

Dahigg describes an experiment in a group on savings courses. People who wanted to learn to be more careful with money were offered a simple practice - you need to record your expenses every day. You do not need to limit yourself, highlighting budget items and sticking to them, you do not need to look after yourself in the store, so as not to make impulse purchases - you just need to record. After some time, the practice of the group began to change not only in the field of economy, but also in the rest of life.

Knowing the structure of habits, you can understand what happened to them. Writing down, they trained the will. The recording process itself and the self-control associated with it became a habit. What the forces used to do was now done automatically. They not only automatically saved, but also controlled themselves in other areas of life.

My own experience

For me, such a key step was time tracking. As a manager, I began to work hard on my planning and control skills, tried different techniques. My boss gave me the idea of ​​a detailed record of time, which, in essence, repeats the example from the book. I started recording everything I did at work, including lunch breaks, coffee and chatter, with an accuracy of 15 minutes. Since the main goal was to structure my own time, I did not have the incentive to deceive myself and draw additional working time.

Just as the experimenters in the example from the book, after a while I discovered that I was closely following my own time, I didn’t waste time talking, I didn’t take long breaks, I plan better and stick to plans better.

The habit of looking after yourself and the time has spread beyond work. I managed to realize a lot of ideas, which, as I understand now, were previously unrealizable due to the lack of a control tool. I continue to record, and plan to start recording non-working hours. Let there be records like “21: 30-00: 45 - stupid in the computer”, I know that it works.

Pros, cons, pitfalls

- It turns out, you can still get rid of the habit by replacing it with a new one?
- Yes, but only to a certain extent. At the moment of severe stress, the body will take control and start an older, more reliable loop of habit from its point of view. By the way, Dahigg says with some bewilderment that, according to the research, faith does not help to break down. And it does not matter what to believe, the fact of the ability of the brain, despite the obvious facts, to bend one’s own is important.

- You say that you have changed a simple time tracking?
- He really helped, but it was hardly a panacea, rather, the last straw.

- Will the recipe you suggest help me?
- Each has its own key habit, so I do not know. But you will not find out until you try. And if you fail, do not quit, just try something else.

Notes.

The factual material for the article is almost entirely taken from the book “The Power of Habits” by Charles Daigig. Its actual base is supported by a 50-page section of notes containing detailed explanations, as well as links to scientific papers and studies.

additional literature

Charles Dahigg - The Power of Habits
Basal Ganglia - Wikipedia
I also recommend reading a cycle of notes by Art-Director of the Studio Lebedev Ludwig Bystronovsky about his struggle (successful) with 30 kilograms of excess weight.