Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. Habits are only
Speaker 1: good or bad in relation to your goals. Every year,
Speaker 1: the New Year approaches all across America, millions of us
Speaker 1: take a look at our lives and think about making changes,
Speaker 1: changes in how we exercise, the money we say, the
Speaker 1: hours we spend on the internet. We always think of
Speaker 1: discipline a sort of self denial. It's the kind of
Speaker 1: white knuckling it through. We're going to make ourselves do it.
Speaker 1: So that's a high effort sort of a process. For
Speaker 1: those of us who actually make fresh goals, fewer than
Speaker 1: half of us will stick with them. Many of us
Speaker 1: won't even get through January. But research psychologists Wendy Wood
Speaker 1: thinks that's because we're thinking about our goals upside down.
Speaker 1: A lot of goals aren't about making fresh habits. So
Speaker 1: we really are trying to change a habit that we've
Speaker 1: already formed, and that requires different strategies than willpower and motivation.
Speaker 1: Doctor Wendy Wood is Provost Professor of psychology and Business
Speaker 1: at the University of Southern California, and she thinks persistent
Speaker 1: behavior change is solvable. Just to start out, Wendy to
Speaker 1: ask for perhaps obvious question, what is a habit? A
Speaker 1: habit is Actually it's an answer, it's a solution. It's
Speaker 1: a way that people stick with behavior. It's a way
Speaker 1: they persist. Habits. You can think of as a sort
Speaker 1: of learning mechanism. Something good happens, some good outcome happens.
Speaker 1: You form habit memories that allow you to repeat it
Speaker 1: again in the nature. So when we talk about bad habits,
Speaker 1: and just about everybody I know I think would say
Speaker 1: they have some bad habits, however hard they're trying or
Speaker 1: not trying to change them. Is it that you're somehow
Speaker 1: getting rewarded or you've gotten into a pattern of being
Speaker 1: rewarded for that bad habit. Bad habits are habits that
Speaker 1: are inconsistent with our goals. They conflict with our goals.
Speaker 1: So there are things that we don't want to do
Speaker 1: and they got rewarded in the past. Rewards are really
Speaker 1: important for forming a habit. They're not quite so important
Speaker 1: once you've formed one. And that's the real challenge. We
Speaker 1: keep doing what we did in the past that was rewarding,
Speaker 1: but right now we've changed our mind and we want
Speaker 1: to be doing something else. But the habit memory sticks,
Speaker 1: and so it keeps us doing that thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you've reminded me. I grew up in Chicago and went
Speaker 1: to a school that was across the street from a zoo,
Speaker 1: and as a result, we had a course that I
Speaker 1: took which was called Patterns in Animal Behavior. And what
Speaker 1: we did was we went over to the zoo and
Speaker 1: watched animals for a long time, like an hour or two.
Speaker 1: And what you saw was repetitive habits. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you call them habits when they're animals and not humans,
Speaker 1: but these animals just did the same thing again and again.
Speaker 1: And it might have been a complicated routine, but over
Speaker 1: tom you would see the repetitive behavior. And it's always
Speaker 1: made me think that, well, humans are animals and we
Speaker 1: do the same thing. We just have these repetitive grooves
Speaker 1: that we get into exactly what a great class. You're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. Habits are a form of learning that we
Speaker 1: share with all mammals. I mean, because it's how your
Speaker 1: dog learns, right, It's how you train your dog, giving
Speaker 1: them rewards for doing the same thing over and over.
Speaker 1: The challenge for humans, though, is that we have this
Speaker 1: very elaborate, more thoughtful decision making parts of our brain
Speaker 1: as well as the habit systems that we share with
Speaker 1: all mammals, and those sort of more elaborate, thoughtful areas
Speaker 1: are what makes us decide geez, I wish I didn't
Speaker 1: do this, and that's where we get into conflict with
Speaker 1: the habits system. So it's that time of year when
Speaker 1: lots of people make New Year's resolutions, and I think
Speaker 1: the evidence suggests that most people won't keep most of
Speaker 1: those resolutions. So what's your advice for changing habits that
Speaker 1: we want to change and having the change stick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right that most people don't stick with them.
Speaker 1: At best, about half of us will be successful at
Speaker 1: keeping our New Year's resolutions. Most people say if I fail,
Speaker 1: I didn't have enough willpower. We tend to ascribe it
Speaker 1: to ourselves and our own limitations. But keep in mind
Speaker 1: that most of the resolutions we make are changing and
Speaker 1: existing behavior. So we really are trying to change a
Speaker 1: habit that we've already formed, and that requires different strategies
Speaker 1: than willpower and motivation, because you're not going to stay
Speaker 1: motivated as long as your habit memory is going to persist.
Speaker 1: The best way to change a habit is to alter
Speaker 1: the cues in the environment what is activating that response.
Speaker 1: And let me give you an example. So I get
Speaker 1: up in the morning and I walk into my kitchen
Speaker 1: and I make coffee and I do so I don't
Speaker 1: ask myself do I want coffee this morning? Am I
Speaker 1: tired enough? I just make it automatically without thinking about
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. You might have had this experience when
Speaker 1: you get in your car, right you just automatically put
Speaker 1: your seatbelt on. You don't think about all of the
Speaker 1: reasons why you should or shouldn't. It's something that's automatic.
Speaker 1: So that's what keeps us repeating behavior, and we want
Speaker 1: to change up those cues so that the old pattern
Speaker 1: isn't activated. Well, that's an interesting example about seatbelts because
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who didn't use seatbelts
Speaker 1: when it was purely a matter of choice. But we've
Speaker 1: actually taken that discretion away from people, at least for
Speaker 1: cars made and I don't know the last however many years,
Speaker 1: because legislation requires that there's that annoying beeping noise if
Speaker 1: you don't have your seatbelt on, and so you no
Speaker 1: longer have the option of having a bad habit. Does
Speaker 1: that point the way to creating systems that take our choice,
Speaker 1: the element of will or willpower away from us when
Speaker 1: it comes to habits that we should want to change
Speaker 1: or break. Well, I wouldn't say so much. It takes
Speaker 1: our willpower away from us as encourages us to do
Speaker 1: the right thing. And we've done this already in public
Speaker 1: health campaigns with anti smoking. Right, we have changed the environment,
Speaker 1: the smoking environment, to actually make it more difficult to smoke,
Speaker 1: and that's involved removing cues. So there are no longer
Speaker 1: cigarettes on shelves and stores, we don't get advertising for cigarettes,
Speaker 1: there aren't cigarette vending machines anymore. So they've taken away
Speaker 1: a lot of the queues to purchasing. But they've also
Speaker 1: made it more difficult to smoke, smoking bands and public places,
Speaker 1: taxes on cigarettes make it harder to buy them. So
Speaker 1: that's sort of a two pronged approach here. One is
Speaker 1: changing the cues that kept people smoking, and the second
Speaker 1: is making it more difficult to smoke, adding friction on
Speaker 1: the behavior so it's more difficult, and our habits are
Speaker 1: very responsive to that. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: talk about smoking because obviously that's a behavior that involves
Speaker 1: an element of addiction. Nicotine's an addictive chemical. And it's interesting,
Speaker 1: first of all, that changing the scenarios and the way
Speaker 1: you talk about still has an effect even though it's addictive.
Speaker 1: But for some people it doesn't because they're addicted to
Speaker 1: the chemical of nicotine and change Trying to do all
Speaker 1: the things you're talking about isn't going to get you
Speaker 1: across the line of quitting. Well, let me point out
Speaker 1: that in the middle of the last century, fifty percent
Speaker 1: of Americans smoked, and now only fifteen percent do so. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm not denying the effects of nicotine, but I'm saying
Speaker 1: that these forces on our behavior are very powerful, maybe
Speaker 1: more so than many of us want to admit. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I could be the guinea pig here for a minute,
Speaker 1: let me tell you about a habit, a bad habit
Speaker 1: I would like to break that I've had a really
Speaker 1: hard time breaking, which is having my phone in bed.
Speaker 1: I definitely as a result of having the phone. I
Speaker 1: don't do have it there every night, but when I do,
Speaker 1: I don't sleep as well. If I wake up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, I'm inclined to reach for
Speaker 1: the phone, and then I'm less likely to go back
Speaker 1: to sleep, And just in general, when I don't have
Speaker 1: the phone there, I feel better about things. But I
Speaker 1: keep having my phone in bed for you know, I
Speaker 1: have various reasons and excuses, but honestly, I think the
Speaker 1: bottom line is I want to check my phone like
Speaker 1: it's something. You know, it's pleasurable or important or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. But even if I get in the groove
Speaker 1: of putting it in another room for a while, I
Speaker 1: somehow break the good habit and go back to the
Speaker 1: bad one. Can you help me, Well, you're responding to rewards.
Speaker 1: The phone is designed to keep you using it in
Speaker 1: a very habitual way if you use much social media.
Speaker 1: Social media comes in a big scroll, and every once
Speaker 1: in a while you get this wonderfully interesting tidbit from
Speaker 1: a friend or something else that just keeps you scrolling.
Speaker 1: So what you have to do is you have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to reverse engineer those cues. You need
Speaker 1: to figure out how to change them or to put
Speaker 1: friction on them. Maybe you just need a little bit
Speaker 1: more practice repetition in leaving the phone in a specific
Speaker 1: place before you go to bed, so that it starts
Speaker 1: to become automatic. I would say, probably just haven't practiced
Speaker 1: it enough. Well, that term friction you talked about is
Speaker 1: really interesting. You know, our company makes a podcast with
Speaker 1: doctor Lory Santos at Yale called The Happiness Lab, and
Speaker 1: she's done a number of episodes that have touched on
Speaker 1: this question of, you know, how you can create friction
Speaker 1: around the things you don't want to do. But then
Speaker 1: I guess a kind of you know less friction or
Speaker 1: a system of rewards around the things you do want
Speaker 1: to do. And the thing about friction is we don't
Speaker 1: give it a whole lot of credibility simply because most
Speaker 1: of us think we're in charge right as you said earlier,
Speaker 1: We think we have free will. We think we are
Speaker 1: making decisions and doing things all the time. We're not
Speaker 1: aware of how much of the time we're simply responding
Speaker 1: to the environment around. My favorite study right now on
Speaker 1: friction is one that was done in an office building
Speaker 1: as a four story office building, and it was done
Speaker 1: with researchers who wanted people to take the stairs and
Speaker 1: stop using the elevator. And it's a four story building,
Speaker 1: so that's possible. So what they started with is sort
Speaker 1: of how we start with our New Year's resolutions. They
Speaker 1: started off trying to convince people right, motivate them, get
Speaker 1: them to do the right thing. So they put up signs, first,
Speaker 1: take the stairs, it uses many more calories than the elevator,
Speaker 1: good for your health. That had no effect. So they
Speaker 1: tried a different approach. They tried take the stairs, saves energy,
Speaker 1: good for the environment, save our planet. No effect. So
Speaker 1: what they did is they slowed the clothes closing of
Speaker 1: the elevator door by sixteen seconds, and that was enough
Speaker 1: to reduce elevator trips by a third. So just the
Speaker 1: simple friction of having a slow door closing stopped people
Speaker 1: from taking the elevator. And the cool thing about the
Speaker 1: study is that four weeks later, when the researchers set
Speaker 1: the elevator door back to its normal speed, people kept
Speaker 1: taking the stairs. They still avoided the elevator because they
Speaker 1: had formed habits to take the stairs. See, and that's
Speaker 1: maybe four weeks every day it would be enough practice
Speaker 1: for you, Jacob in keeping your cell phone out of
Speaker 1: the bedroom. Yeah, well, well that's a good example of
Speaker 1: adding how adding a tiny bit of invisible amount of
Speaker 1: friction health. So we'll give me some friction examples around exercise.
Speaker 1: For example, I have pretty good habits around exercise. I've
Speaker 1: aloys been a runner, and I get pleasure from doing it,
Speaker 1: so you know, but I know a lot of people,
Speaker 1: just especially this time of year when it's cold and
Speaker 1: most of the country, it's just really hard to get motivated.
Speaker 1: How can you remove friction that will make it easier
Speaker 1: to get out and exercise. Well, I think that the
Speaker 1: motivation would come from finding ways to make it reboarding.
Speaker 1: I used to be a runner too. It's not easy
Speaker 1: for me to do. So I started using an elliptical
Speaker 1: and if you've ever used an elliptical machine, it is
Speaker 1: the most boring thing in the world. So hated it
Speaker 1: for a while until I figured out I can watch
Speaker 1: really stupid TV shows that I would never normally watch,
Speaker 1: read trashy novels that I would never normally spend the
Speaker 1: time reading, just when I use the elliptical. And since
Speaker 1: I started doing that, which is about four years ago,
Speaker 1: five years ago, now I of it. I look forward
Speaker 1: to it, and I look forward to it because it's
Speaker 1: that combined experience. I've been able to figure out how
Speaker 1: to add a reward to it that makes it rewarding.
Speaker 1: I mean that reward in another context might be a
Speaker 1: bad habit. Right, Watching trashy TV might be a habit
Speaker 1: you would want to break or change is part of
Speaker 1: your UNI Year's resolution. But why is it it's okay
Speaker 1: in the context of using it to create a good habit,
Speaker 1: or because it's limited by the good habit of What's
Speaker 1: how do you think about that? Habits are only good
Speaker 1: or bad in relation to your goals. So my goal
Speaker 1: is to get myself exercising, and I'm going to spend
Speaker 1: the time exercising anyway, So what does it matter what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about when I exercise? That's how I think
Speaker 1: of it. My priority is exercise how to get myself
Speaker 1: to do it. It's interesting what we think of as
Speaker 1: discipline versus a habit. I mean, I have in a
Speaker 1: few books, and I always just thought of it as
Speaker 1: a button chair problem. You know, if I was in
Speaker 1: if I had my button the chair from nine to
Speaker 1: one every day, the book got written, and if I didn't,
Speaker 1: it didn't. So I guess I built the habit. But
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, I disciplined myself to sit
Speaker 1: there six days a week from nine to one, and
Speaker 1: when you thought about it. You know, nine to one,
Speaker 1: it's only four hours a day, So it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like you could have a life outside of
Speaker 1: doing that. The problem was if you didn't have the
Speaker 1: discipline of doing that, you'd have to be kind of
Speaker 1: doing it all the time exactly. But you know, you've
Speaker 1: touched on an interesting point I think, which is, so,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between a habit and discipline or willpower?
Speaker 1: How can we understand that? We always think of discipline
Speaker 1: a sort of self denial. It's the kind of white
Speaker 1: knuckling it through. We're going to make ourselves do it.
Speaker 1: So that's a high effort process. And up until very recently,
Speaker 1: psychologists thought some people have high self control, like that
Speaker 1: they're just able to do that better than others. And
Speaker 1: what we've learned instead from observing people is people who
Speaker 1: self report who say they have high self control, they
Speaker 1: actually know how to form habits. So they start as
Speaker 1: you did. If they want to write a book, they
Speaker 1: figure out what time of day they're best at writing,
Speaker 1: or how many pages. Some people who are prolific writers
Speaker 1: write a certain number of pages every day. Some people
Speaker 1: write for a certain number of hours every day. I
Speaker 1: mean the habit itself that they're forming has to do
Speaker 1: with those markers. Of course, writing itself isn't a habit.
Speaker 1: The habit is getting there and making yourself do it effortlessly,
Speaker 1: and that is the automaticity of habit. Of course, then
Speaker 1: you have to do the cognitive work of writing on
Speaker 1: top of that, but that's a whole different thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does it change with age? I mean, given that this
Speaker 1: is this is you're looking at what's happening inside our brains,
Speaker 1: and our brains change as we get older. You know,
Speaker 1: does it get easier or harder to change your habits
Speaker 1: as you get older? Everything gets harder as you get older.
Speaker 1: Taker that was sort of an obvious question, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: But I did. But but on the other hand, there
Speaker 1: is sort of the habit of having habits, and you know,
Speaker 1: the confidence that if you've changed habits in the past,
Speaker 1: you know you can do it. And I often do
Speaker 1: observe that it may be more settled when you're older,
Speaker 1: but it may be more settled in a positive direction. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there's pretty good data that all of our brains,
Speaker 1: all parts of our brains, all parts of our neural
Speaker 1: systems do age, and they get a little less efficient,
Speaker 1: a little less effective as we get older. Research shows
Speaker 1: that older people have a harder time of forming new habits.
Speaker 1: That might seem like it is inconsistent with our observations
Speaker 1: of a lot of older people who seem to do
Speaker 1: things out of habit a lot. And the thing is
Speaker 1: is that as you get older, you have a harder
Speaker 1: time learning new habits, but you're still relying on all
Speaker 1: of the old ones that you learned earlier in life.
Speaker 1: And that may be where your sense of older people
Speaker 1: are more stable, more sort of routine in their behavior.
Speaker 1: They may be relying more on older habits and they
Speaker 1: just had less variability in their behavior in general. So
Speaker 1: let's wrap up with some advice for listeners who presumably
Speaker 1: do have some habits they want to change. And it's
Speaker 1: a little after New Year's now, so we don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about the deadline. But what are three things
Speaker 1: to think about just to get started. Is one of
Speaker 1: them applying or removing friction? Yes, one of them is
Speaker 1: identifying the behaviors. First, you have to know what behaviors
Speaker 1: are giving your problems and have a very clear sense
Speaker 1: of what new behaviors you want to become part of
Speaker 1: your habits, and then figuring out how to repeat those
Speaker 1: on a regular basis those new behaviors, understanding the cues
Speaker 1: that drive behavior, and understanding how to make the behaviors
Speaker 1: you want easier. So we talked about friction getting in
Speaker 1: the way of behaviors you don't want, but the friction
Speaker 1: in your life can also help you repeat behaviors that
Speaker 1: you do want. So, for example, there was a study
Speaker 1: done with cell phones, tracking cell phones how far they
Speaker 1: traveled to a paid fitness center. What they found is
Speaker 1: that if you travel five point one miles to a
Speaker 1: gym on average, you only go once a month, but
Speaker 1: if you travel three and a half miles on average,
Speaker 1: you go five times a month. So figuring out ways
Speaker 1: to streamline it so it becomes easier, make it more rewarding,
Speaker 1: so that you'll do it more. Those are the keys
Speaker 1: to forming a new habit. And when it's when you're
Speaker 1: not thinking about doing it anymore at the habit, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, when does it become a habit Exactly when
Speaker 1: the struggle ends and it's just cued by the environment
Speaker 1: around you and you're not even noticing that you're doing it,
Speaker 1: that's when it's a happen. So you cite these examples
Speaker 1: of friction that's mostly invisible to people, But then there
Speaker 1: is friction that is visible, fure friction you create. How
Speaker 1: can you be conscious of friction and the way that
Speaker 1: it's affecting your habits if so much of it is
Speaker 1: like the increment on how long it takes the elevator
Speaker 1: door to clothes, something we're not aware of at a
Speaker 1: conscious level. That is a challenge that many of us
Speaker 1: have because we believe in our own agency, right, we
Speaker 1: think that we are making decisions, and so that leads
Speaker 1: us to overlook many of the things that are actually
Speaker 1: influencing us in our environment. But I do think people
Speaker 1: can answer the question what would make it easier for
Speaker 1: me to do something and what would make it more difficult,
Speaker 1: Like if you want to save money taking your credit
Speaker 1: card out of automatic pay sites like Amazon or other
Speaker 1: sorts of online retailers. That makes sense, and most of
Speaker 1: us would be able to predict that that would make
Speaker 1: it a little harder for us to buy things. So
Speaker 1: once we start noticing these things, and once we're willing
Speaker 1: to say, okay, maybe I'm not completely in charge. Maybe
Speaker 1: there are a few things around me that also influence
Speaker 1: my behavior, and are they helping me. Once we start
Speaker 1: noticing them, I think that we can start to identify
Speaker 1: what they are for us personally. For you, Jacob, I
Speaker 1: would say, you already know your phone has this impact
Speaker 1: on you. You just keep hoping you're going to follow
Speaker 1: through on your best intentions and not take it with
Speaker 1: you tonight to bed. But over time, you'll probably learn
Speaker 1: how to keep your phone regularly in another room, put
Speaker 1: the charger in another room, do something to make it
Speaker 1: easier for you to remember to leave it there before
Speaker 1: you go to bed, and that's going to help you
Speaker 1: form that habit. Doctor Wendy Wood is Provost Professor of
Speaker 1: Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California. Solvable
Speaker 1: is produced by Joscelyn Frank, booking by Lisa Donne. Our
Speaker 1: managing producer is Katherine Girardell and Pushkin's executive producer is
Speaker 1: Mia Lobell. I'm Jacob Weisberg.