The Inevitable and Impossible Habits
This is about making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.
Commitment device
A commitment device doesn’t have to be a physical device. It’s a choice that you make that helps you control your actions in the future.
It’s a choice that you make in the present, but it helps you control your future actions and lock in future behavior.
It will bind you to good habits and restrict you from bad habits.
There are many ways to create a commitment device.
For example, if you overeat, one of the ways you can help yourself is to avoid buying your food in bulk, but buy them in individual packs.
Another example: gamblers can stop gambling by making the decision to tell casinos to ban them from their list. This will make it very hard to gamble.
Again, these are choices or things that you have to do to help yourself in the future so that you don’t end up falling into a bad habit.
Automate your habit
Automation can help you repeat good habits without you thinking about it.
As an example, if you want to reduce your caloric intake, get a small plate to eat.
Getting a small plate automatically helps you eat less.
If you want good sleep, buy a good mattress.
Get curtains that can block out light.
Take away the television from your bedroom.
Doing these three things can help you get a good sleep.
To avoid back pain, buy good shoes and buy a supportive chair or a standing desk.
For your finances, you can do automatic savings.
Technology is also important when we want to automate habits. Use apps.
Balancing technology
Using technology to automate habits is also better for things you have to do once in a year or once every month.
It’s good to automate things, but there is a bad side to technology.
As we use technology to make our lives easier, what we need is creating a balance. We should not forget to do difficult things.
The social media story
This is the story of a man that couldn’t control himself from social media.
What he does is that he tells his Personal Assistant to change the password to his social media account every Monday.
By the time he comes to work on Mondays, he cannot remember his passwords. He has no choice but to focus on work.
Weekend is the only time he gets the new passwords so that he can enjoy social media on weekends.
You can do the same. You can tell your friends or anyone.
You can change each other’s passwords so that you all can reduce the time you spend on social media.
On average, people spend two hours on social media every day. In a year, it’s about 600 hours.
Can you think of something else that you can spend that time to do?
As much as technology is good, get a balance. In what other things can you put that time?
Time wasted on bad habits can be channeled to form some good habits.
Share this with everyone who haven’t gotten a chance to read Atomic Habits but would be interested in a book summary.
Catch you in the next one.
I plan to do this as a 13-day series. So, in 13 days, you can learn all about the book like you read it yourself.
This is Day 9.
Make your comments, ask your questions and let’s start a conversation in the comments section.
