Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(45)
You can hack into this reward system by creating an event in your brain that neuroscientists call a “reward prediction error.” Here’s how it works: Your brain is constantly assessing and reassessing the experiences, sights, sounds, smells, and movements in the world around you. Based on previous experiences, your brain has formed predictions about what you will experience in any given situation. Your brain predicts what will happen when you drop your phone on concrete (oh no!), and your brain predicts the taste of clam chowder at your favorite restaurant (yum). When an experience deviates from the pattern your brain expects (oh, my phone didn’t break after all), that’s when you get a “reward prediction error,” and neurons in your brain adjust the release of dopamine in order to encode an updated expectation.
Suppose you have a habit of writing daily in a journal. One morning you pick up a new pen that has purple ink. As you begin journaling you notice how smoothly the pen flows over the paper; it’s effortless, like you have superpowers. Then you notice your handwriting is so much better. You feel unusually successful writing with the purple pen, which is a surprise to your brain—a reward prediction error. The emotions in that moment cause your neurons to release dopamine, which quickly encodes this new behavior as something you should repeat. The same thing happens when a parent squeals with delight as a baby learns to walk. The baby’s brain dishes out the dopamine and encodes “walking” as something good, something that she should definitely do again.
Emotions Create Habits
There is a direct connection between what you feel when you do a behavior and the likelihood that you will repeat the behavior in the future. When I unearthed this connection between emotions and habits in my research on the Tiny Habits method, I was surprised I had not seen this truth before. Like an answer to a riddle, it was suddenly so obvious. I wondered why this insight was not already common knowledge.
For too long people have believed the old myth that repetition creates habits, focusing on the number of days it requires. Some of today’s popular habit bloggers still talk about repetition or frequency as the key. Just know this: They are recycling old ideas. They have not done groundbreaking research.
In my own research, I found that habits can form very quickly, often in just a few days, as long as people have a strong positive emotion connected to the behavior. In fact, some habits seem to get wired in immediately: You do the behavior once, and then you don’t consider other options again. You’ve created an instant habit. For example, if you give your teenage daughter a mobile phone, her emotional response to using the device will wire in a habit very quickly. No need for repetition.
When I teach people about human behavior, I boil it down to three words to make the point crystal clear: Emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions.
When you are designing for habit formation—for yourself or for someone else—you are really designing for emotions.
Consider how Instagram, for better or worse, taps into this dynamic. Once you take a picture, the app makes it easy to apply filters. As you try out different filters, you see your photo transform before your eyes like magic, and your photo isn’t merely a photo anymore. You feel like you are sharing a unique artistic creation. You might even be surprised or impressed by your skills. When that happens, your brain releases dopamine, and you seek opportunities to use Instagram again because it feels good.
When it comes to behavior, decision and habit are opposites. Decisions require deliberation, habits do not. You probably decide what to wear to work every morning. But most people don’t decide if they will take their phone when they leave the house. They just take it with them, without deliberating. It’s autopilot.
I’ve created a simple model to explain the difference between decisions and habits. I call this the Spectrum of Automaticity.
How automatic is the behavior?
On the left-hand side of the spectrum, you have behaviors that are not automatic. They are decisions or deliberate choices. On the right end of the spectrum, you have strong habits—behaviors you do without thinking, like holding a pencil or tying your shoes. The circle in the middle of the spectrum represents a behavior where you deliberate a little bit, so it’s not completely automatic. If you do that behavior in the middle of the spectrum and have an emotional reaction to it—a positive feeling as you’re doing the behavior or immediately after—then that behavior shifts to the right on the spectrum and becomes more automatic.
Emotions make behavior more automatic
Consider this example: using Uber versus getting a taxi. The first time you select Uber, you’re probably analyzing the benefits and drawbacks of doing this instead of hailing a taxi. And then you decide. Let’s say you choose Uber and have a great experience. They have, after all, made it so easy, you almost feel as if you’re getting away with something. The first time I used Uber, I was delighted. I pushed a few buttons, and it seemed like a magic carpet had pulled up to whisk me away in luxury. Wow. It exceeded my expectations, that’s for sure.
The next time I needed a ride, I barely thought about how I’d get to my destination. I didn’t even consider a regular taxi. No decision needed. I just fired up the Uber app and pushed some buttons. Yes, the habit formed that fast: one and done. Most behaviors take more time than this to morph from decision into habit, but I hope you see my point.