May 26, 2020 ~ June 8, 2020, 13 days total
- Reading speed is slow, about 20 pages per hour, I subvocalize while reading.
- For practical books, finding three points to apply in life is enough.
- When unable to focus on reading, just read it out loud - reading aloud often has magical effects.
Three Immediately Usable Insights
- To develop a habit, make things obvious. For example, place a water glass near your mouse, put books on your desk. To quit a habit, make it invisible. For example, don’t keep snacks at home.
- Change your perspective. Don’t say “I need to go running,” say “It’s time to become strong and healthy.”
- The two-minute rule. When starting to develop a habit, only do it for two minutes. Memorize vocabulary for two minutes, run for two minutes, meditate for two minutes.
The Four Elements of Habit Formation
cue, craving, response, and reward
- cue: hint, clue, trigger. The cue leads to behavior, for example, seeing french fries in a movie → wanting to eat them
- craving: for example, smoking is to relieve stress, watching TV is to escape boredom
- response: the specific behavioral action
- reward: the brain is constantly seeking rewards, so it pays close attention to cues, finding a cue equals an opportunity for reward. Human needs, such as wanting to eat enough, wanting to gain social status
For example, in life, seeing a cake, wanting to eat it, eating the cake, satisfying the appetite, the brain will continuously seek carbohydrates in the future, this is a loop It’s actually the same loop as training a dog to do tricks
- cue - snacks
- craving - want to eat
- response - command: hands
- reward - snack reward
How to Develop Good Habits and Break Bad Ones
Four laws corresponding to the four elements
How to Create a Good Habit The 1st law (Cue): Make it obvious. The 2nd law (Craving): Make it attractive. The 3rd law (Response): Make it easy. The 4th law (Reward): Make it satisfying.
How to Break a Bad Habit Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible. Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive. Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult. Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying.
Part One: Make it Obvious
The importance of environment During the Vietnam War, 20% of American soldiers used drugs. After returning home, only one in ten soldiers relapsed. This conflicts with our usual thinking that “drug addiction is hard to quit.” The author believes that in Vietnam, many soldiers used drugs because drugs were easily accessible and filled with drug cues, but after returning home, these naturally disappeared, so the environment is important. However, 90% of people who quit drugs through rehabilitation centers relapse after returning home because the home environment hardly changes.
Disciplined people are not “naturally disciplined” - they just organize their lives to make discipline easier, without spending mental energy resisting temptation.
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Implementation Intentions (time, place, behavior) I will do xx thing at xx time in xx place Don’t say “I want to start exercising,” but say “I will run in the park at eight o’clock in the evening.” Write down the specific time, place, and what to do, then set an alarm
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Environmental Factors Humans are visual creatures, environmental factors are more important than determination If you want to drink more water, place the water glass next to your mouse If you want to read more, place books in conspicuous places around the room
Part Two: Make it Attractive
Combine things you want to do with things you need to do For example, do a few squats while watching TV
Change perspective The reason for not wanting to exercise is that we associate exercise with pain (sweating, fatigue, muscle soreness) Don’t say “I need to go running” Say “It’s time to become strong and healthy”
When we associate behavior with terrible experiences, the behavior directly leads to terrible things. For example, being nervous during interviews/on stage, then in the future we’ll treat going on stage as a natural enemy, so we need to change our thinking, “nervousness makes me focus,” to switch thinking modes
When starting to do something, first take five deep breaths, like a pattern, when the deep breathing is complete, the brain immediately switches to focus mode.
Part Three: Make it Easy
Give up ambitious goals, start with one squat
People always tend to do easy things - this sounds so stupid. But when we make plans, we want to memorize 10,000 words in 30 days, run 3 kilometers a day, achieve in one year what others take three years to do.
The Two-Minute Rule During the habit formation stage, only do it for two minutes Don’t make plans like running 3 kilometers, meditating for half an hour every day, memorizing 100 words, but only do it for two minutes, and stop immediately when time is up
The best way to quit bad habits is to make things incredibly difficult For example, if you watch too much TV, unplug it after watching, remove the remote’s batteries and hide it For example, don’t put the alarm clock by your bed, hide it in some cabinet For example, turn off your phone after each use He Tongxue uses the same strategy, every time after posting on Weibo, he uninstalls Weibo, and reinstalls it when he needs to use it
When Hugo faced a submission deadline, he had his assistant take away all his clothes, making it impossible to go out To reduce social media use, the author has his assistant change all account passwords weekly, only accessible at fixed times
Part Four: Make it Satisfying
What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided. The repetition of behavior necessarily involves dopamine; inability to form habits necessarily means the behavior is painful.
Make progress visible A trader’s habit: every day when arriving at the company, place two bottles on the desk, one containing 120 paper clips, the other empty. When making a sales call, if successful, move one paper clip to the empty bottle. Progress itself brings pleasure.
Make things costly If you fail to wake up early/exercise, send a 100 yuan red packet
Other Points
- find something that fits you
- showing up despite boredom
Don’t force it Most human behavior preferences are determined by genes. Some people naturally don’t like reading or running, but there are many alternatives - you can listen to audiobooks, watch videos, take online courses, swim, work out. Don’t fight against human nature.
Do force it Liu Weipeng encountered a psychologically nauseating pit during translation, feeling his scalp tingle when seeing materials. He mentioned the solution is to persist through the scalp tingling until you pass that stage. Don’t be a mood worker, don’t skip setting up shop just because you’re in a bad mood. keep showing up
Should you force it or not? The best method is to set a goal or deadline, then consider whether to quit For example, should you quit your job because you don’t like this job, or because you don’t like all jobs? Set a goal, reach a certain position, if you still want to quit then, quit. If after two weeks you still can’t like it, then switch to another.
