Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(71)
Does this always work? No. But does logging calories require more mental effort than mindlessly eating? Yes. And that’s one reason it can work.
5. MAKE THE HABIT CONFLICT WITH IMPORTANT ROUTINES
The final factor in the Ability Chain is routine. This is the subtlest of the bunch, and it is one of the hardest to apply. But it’s worth considering. Look for ways to make your unwanted habit conflict with an important habit, a routine you value more than the habit you want to stop.
Surfing at daybreak became an important habit for me, and it’s part of my identity now. My new surfing routine made some of my old habits harder to do in the evening because I had to be alert and ready to face the waves early in the morning. I started eating dinner earlier. I avoided blue light from screens, and I went to bed early. These were all good changes that came from creating a morning routine that conflicted with my unhealthy evening habits.
So far, we’ve focused on changing prompt and ability to disrupt specific unwanted habits. But if you’re stuck on a habit where redesigning prompt and ability isn’t enough, there’s more you can do.
Next up in the masterplan: adjusting motivation.
Adjust Motivation in Order to Stop a Habit
Many people start with trying to influence motivation when they want to stop a habit. In most cases, this is a mistake. Why? Because adjusting motivation levels for Downhill Habits can be difficult (and almost impossible for Freefall Habits).
That’s why you don’t want to mess around with motivation if you can solve the problem by focusing on prompt or ability. You try to adjust motivation only if these previous steps didn’t resolve your bad habit.
Consider this example: If you can reduce your craving to smoke, then you might be able to quit smoking entirely. Let’s say you get a nicotine patch, or convince all your friends to quit at the same time, or maybe even find success with hypnosis. Doing these things is worth the old college try and sometimes they work.
OPTION A: REDUCE MOTIVATION TO STOP A HABIT
Another example: Let’s say you drink too much in the evening because you are stressed from work. In this case, you might be able to change what happens during the day so you don’t have such a strong motivation to drink in the evening. Perhaps you can meditate before leaving work to regain emotional balance. Or perhaps you can listen to calm music on the way home from work to reduce your stress so you aren’t motivated to drink all that wine later.
Here are a range of examples that show how a behavior can reduce the motivation for a habit.
Going to bed earlier can reduce your motivation to hit the snooze button
Putting on a nicotine patch can reduce your motivation for smoking
Eating healthy food before going to a party can reduce your drive to eat bad food at the party
Getting acupuncture once a week can reduce your motivation to use painkillers
An intriguing example of reducing motivation comes from my former student Tristan Harris, who has urged people to stop using technology mindlessly. One way to do this, he says, is to change our phone screens to show only grayscale. When you don’t see vivid colors on your screen, his hypothesis goes, those Internet memes and social media posts become much less exciting and less motivating to your brain.
OPTION B: ADD A DEMOTIVATOR TO STOP A HABIT
The second approach is to add a demotivator, but I do not advocate taking this path. It might work in some cases, but I think that it often does more harm than good.
Here are some examples of behaviors that could decrease your overall level of motivation by adding a demotivator.
Promise on Facebook that you will never drink again
Pledge to give $1,000 to a corrupt politician if you ever smoke again
Visualize how miserable your life would be if you continued playing video games all night
Note how these actions don’t address the root cause of your behavior. You are only adding a conflicting motivation that might get you to stop doing your habit.
Motivation versus demotivation is a battle, and this tension creates stress and leads to frequent failures, making you look bad on Facebook, leaving you $1,000 short, or vividly burning into your brain how miserable your future is likely to be.
And demotivators can push us into self-criticism. If you want to cut down on calories, putting a note on your fridge that says, STOP! YOU’RE OVERWEIGHT would certainly be demotivating, but it’s also demoralizing. We change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad, so make sure your attempts at demotivating behavior don’t morph into guilt trips.
Creating demotivators is easy. That’s probably why it’s such a popular technique. But if this was a winning plan, then very few people would have bad habits. In most situations, punishing or threatening yourself is a bad way to stop a habit because the shrapnel you’ll take is not worth the risk, especially when you have other options. We’ll talk more about this in the next chapter when we look at the ethics of helping other people to change.
Scaling Back the Change
If the approaches we’ve discussed so far don’t stop your specific habit, don’t give up. You have more options. The next step in the masterplan is to scale back your ambitions, and you can do that in the following ways.