My wife was recently involved in a car accident.
She was driving down our neighborhood street when a distracted driver went through a stop sign and hit the passenger door of our car.
The cause of the accident is a habit many of us have trouble controlling — texting while driving. The other driver never saw the stop sign. Fortunately for our family, they were both driving at a slow speed.
Raise your hand if you ever texted or checked your phone while driving.
Why do we allow ourselves to engage in a behavior that we know is dangerous?
How can we stop this?
Sometimes, instead of ending a bad habit, we want to encourage consistency in a positive routine.
Let’s consider exercise.
In the last month, how many of you have exercised less than you should?
A few months ago, I would be the first to raise my hand.
Not any more.
Many of us are faced often with this impossible task of attempting to change a stubborn habit.
How do you stop doing something that you know is dangerous?
How do you start doing something beneficial to you?
My Desired Habit — Exercising Every Morning
For years, I tried to get myself to exercise in the morning.
I tried reading about the benefits of regular exercise, setting my alarm early, sometimes getting up — often sleeping in.
But I was not getting consistent traction, until I made a significant change in my approach.
I used the power of behavioral science to create a lasting difference, which I will describe below.
My experience taught me what doesn’t work: Educating myself. Simply gaining more information is not sufficient to change habits.
So what works?
The behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely says that we have to change our environment if we want to change behavior.
Simply telling people that what they are doing is bad will not change that behavior.
It’s not the information but the environment in which decisions are made that counts.
— Dan Ariely
A Mental Model for Behavioral Change That Sticks
Dan suggests thinking about behavioral change in the same way we think about sending a rocket to space.
When scientists plan to launch a rocket, they focus on at least these two main goals:
Step One — Reduce Friction
The first one is to reduce friction. Scientists do this by making the rocket as aerodynamic as possible.
In terms of behavior change, we want to closely examine the desired habit and see where the little things are where we can remove friction.
For example, for my daily exercise, I have found that if I set my exercise clothes the night before, this sets me up for success. By the time I roll out of bed, half-asleep, and put on my exercise clothes, I am much more likely to follow through with exercising.
Step Two — Add Energy and Motivation
The second thing scientists do is load the rocket with as much fuel as possible to overcome the force of gravity.
In behavior change terms, we want to give ourselves the most energy and motivation to do the desired task.
To achieve this, we want to ask:
What other motivations can I bring in?
These could be money or loss aversion. We need to try many things as we don’t know in advance what will work.
How I Created Motivation to Exercise Daily
Recently, I discovered an unexpected insight that motivates me to want to exercise daily:
I save my best podcast episodes to listen to only when I am riding my bike in the morning.
Because I like these shows so much, I look forward to my morning exercise time when I get to enjoy them.
In this way, I have introduced positive reinforcement to my morning routine.
How to End an Undesired Habit
What if instead, we want to stop an undesired habit, such as texting and driving?
In this case, we need to reverse the above two steps:
- introduce more friction, such as putting our phone in the glove compartment, and
- reduce motivation by examining the consequences of texting and driving, such as reading accident statistics
In the end, we need to approach each behavior change, such as preventing “texting while driving” or exercising more, through many angles.
Using the behavioral science framework of adjusting friction and motivation, you may create lasting behavior change, as I did.
