E027: Habits

now on to this episode.

Hello. This is James and this is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. What are we talking about today? Well, today we're talking about something really close to my heart. Oh, yeah, at heart. We're talking about the power of habits. Okay, cool, and particularly how you can be more deliberate in your habits, maybe change. Remember, this is in the context of a series about behavior change. Yeah. So this is all about giving people some tools and some information about how they can influence their own behavior. Yeah, right. So habits are a huge part of behavior. So we've got a habit of recording podcasts, and it's almost beginning to feel like a normal part of our behavior. Yeah, I'm not sure about that one silent. I know certainly I am

currently uh, sitting on my sofa, uh, in a pair of socks that I put on every day that I know I'm not going out for the day. Yeah, my house socks, habit. House socks. I know that makes me sound like a such an old lady, because we've got really cold, Woody clothes. Yeah, I've got my special leaving the house socks on today, but I've never, but I don't remember putting them on, right? Yeah? You just kind of just must have put them on every day. Something happens. You just sort of have an automated thing. Yeah, okay, cool. So let's, we'll get on to that. Um, but should we start with talking about how people can get in touch and all that kind of we should start. Yeah, you'd think that would become a habit as well doing that, wouldn't you? Yeah, I like to be spontaneous, yeah? So lots of ways to get in touch. The most obvious is to find us on our website, www dot the WoW podcast.org, where you can also sign up for our Wow mail. Yeah, but we also like a bit of social media, don't we? James, yeah, we do. We like Twitter, we do. So how do people find us there? They check out at the WoW podcast, that's us, and we're also on LinkedIn and Instagram, yeah, places like that. Just check it out. Yeah, oh, email. JJ, at the WoW podcast, yeah, we always forget that. I always forget that one. We actually read the emails as well. We just don't always talk about it. I'm always surprised when people email us as well. It's nice. It's like people email us. Hey, I was listening to your show, and it's like I had this thing, and I thought you might be interested because I read about this. Yeah, here's an article you might like that they've listened to my favorite. We get some really interesting stuff. I mean, we get we get people talking about their research, and we get people sharing ideas, ideas for topics, ideas for content, potential guests, all that stuff. So it's always great to get this. Yeah, I must admit, I feel quite privileged a couple of them. There's a couple of academics and a couple of other practitioners who have sent us sneak previews of some research or shared it with us. And that's lovely, yeah, and we are gonna, we are gonna speak about that stuff in more detail. Yes, definitely, because there's quite a lot of it. Yeah, it's just getting onto it cool. So that's a little bit around how you can get in touch with us in all the usual ways. Shall we run through the format just first? Yeah, okay, cool. So well, it's gonna confuse everyone because and at some point why we sound like we don't know who's speaking. Because today I'm picking up research. We've done this once before. It didn't bomb. No, it's good. So we'll see how we go. And so as always, we'll start with some definitions that will we think will be relevant to you for your listening the rest of the episode. I'll then dive into a research round up. And then we've got a couple of lists of the week. Yeah, some stories from the keyboard, which is an interesting one today, some top tips, and then we will close ourselves off. Yeah, so, but before we do, how you doing? Yeah, I'm good. It's, you know what? It's springtime. I am full of the joys of sparkling springtime. So we should explain listeners, as always, we're recording in Edinburgh, and for the first time in quite a while, it is glorious sunshine outside, which has made us both a little bit yeah, we're both a little bit and a little bit distracted. And it's also a bank holiday or a national holiday, yeah? So although everyone else is cutting their grass and out in sunshine, we are in here feeling a bit giggly, yeah, yeah. Just in terms of context, right? I just thought you guys might like to know this, particularly anyone who lives anywhere, actually worm it's made it up to 57 degrees Fahrenheit so far today, which I'm gonna say the same thing to you that I say to you every time I'm gonna flip it, please put it in Centigrade. Yeah, no, I'm just gonna find the high though, as well. So today's high is going to be 65 degrees Fahrenheit. I literally don't know what that means. Okay, so what that means is, at the minute, it's 14 degrees C and it's getting up to 90.

18 degrees? Is it 19 today? That's what says 4pm today, right? I'm gonna get my sunblock on. I'm gonna get a special hat. I'm gonna get some sunglasses. Your letters people all over the south, southern states. That's why we're calling in London today. Oh, we've got a whole new podcast on the weather, psychology of the weather, and

they're in the 20s. Yeah, London's 21 at the minute, but their high is only 22 for those of you who don't know Britain, well, the first sunny day that people are happy in in the year tends to be a completely ridiculously over the top occasion, where suddenly everyone's really happy and everyone's loaded. Every country kind of stops, right? Like, in terms of work wise, yeah, absolutely. Anyways, as we've just stopped anywhere moving on, bad habits, uh,

before we kick off, I just wanted to share something to give a bit of frame, um, Benjamin Franklin, that well known American said,

purportedly, said, your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones. It's

pretty good. I think that that pretty epically frames the importance it does, doesn't it? Yeah, your net worth is a product of your habit. Your net worth the world. Well, yes, network to the world, right? And that's pretty impressive, isn't I like that? So I just wanted to put that out there, because I think, whilst it is very grandiose, yeah, but there's something really true about it, right? I mean, this is your habits affect how you influence others, how you appear in the world, what you can tell, what you have left in the tank, and what you're able to do. It's just, it's, it's, I'm fascinated by the habits that I've picked up and haven't been able to change, and things like that. Good ones, bad ones. I mean, it just shapes your life. If you really think about you are really the sum of it all. Okay, so are you gonna kick us off this time with some definition? I thought about saying no, just to see what would happen if it would throw you, but if you said no, there would have been some panic scrolling and some throwing a paper round and some glare. Could have been funny. All right, so definition, definition. Discussion section, we're going to talk about a few things going to run through a definition of habit. A bit around habit formation, a bit around the biggest word of the day, which is automaticity.

Keep an eye out for that one, folks. We'll try not to say it too much. I'll talk about the word cue self regulation, and then I'll just touch on habitualization, because it's something a little bit different. But, you know, we're not going to focus on it, but it's worth reflecting on it. So if we start off a habit, what is a habit? Well, the Merriam Webster Dictionary says a habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and that tends to occur subconsciously, right? So this is kind of a stuff that you do semi automatically, right? It just happens regularly. You're not really paying attention to it. It's just what you do, either in a situation or a location or a time or whatever, just stuff that happens. The next definition is habit formation. Now this is from a psychology journal

by a group which was Lali et al, and it says that habit formation is the process by which a behavior through regular repetition becomes automatic or habitual. So basically, what it says is that you can form habits and have actions and behaviors transfer into this sort of subconscious form of repetition by doing certain things that make those actions or behaviors become habits. You know, you can form them into habits, basically, right? Here's the big one, automaticity. I don't know why that's so hard.

It is like it's missing a syllable or two. Automaticity is the ability to perform tasks without conscious thought. So to some extent, automaticity is the mechanism, or the sort of mechanics that sit within habits. It's the word that's used to describe that ability of doing things without using your conscious brain. You use forms of memory. You use your subconscious, but you're really not necessarily in the moment of doing those things. It can happen automatically. So once again, for all you fans out there, automaticity,

gosh. Anyway, all right, so those are the first three definitions that are fairly core to what we're going to do. The next two are cue and self regulation, and these are definitions that pop up in some of the research that we're going to do. So cue not the type of thing you line up in and not the type of thing that you use to hit balls around a table, but from a psychology wiki, cues are internal or external events which have a signaling signal.

Applicants to an organism which subsequently affects learning and behavior. Cues may be verbal or non verbal, right? So if you think about a cue, it's kind of something that starts a process of action. So it's a signal that results in something else happening. And cues can be emotional cues. They can be verbal cues, they can be activities. They could be all kinds of different things, but whatever starting points of subsequent effects,

self regulation, then, is from a website. The definition we've got from a website called move with me. And they say that self regulation is the ability to monitor and manage your energy states, emotions, thoughts and behaviors in ways that are acceptable and produce positive results, such as well being loving relationships and learning.

Self regulation is how we deal with the stressors, and as such, it lays the foundations for our other activities. So self regulation is really your ability to behave in certain ways, in certain environments, in certain situations, and to manage yourself through the vagaries and variations of life as things appear and as you know, existing cues that you've seen before affect you and as new cues come in and all that stuff, you know? I mean, despite the viterbitude of the world, how do you manage yourself through those different things?

And that leaves us with habitualization, which is a slightly different word, and we just want to bring it out, because it's not really what we're speaking about. But we just want people to be clear that it's a different thing. The definition we're going with here is from the the open education sociology dictionary and habitualization in this context says that, or is the idea that behaviors, norms and values that an individual learns are picked up from their social situation and ingrained into them Due to prolonged exposure to such social situations.

So what this is really meaning is that the way we think about things, and the way that we consider things to be acceptable and normal and just the way things are around here, you know, our sense of what that is is influenced by the world around us and those around us. And what this means is our sort of, our belief structures and, you know, maybe our relationships with others, the way that we see different people in different groups, or of a way that we see, you know, sort of constructs that exist within society are of a result of how much we're exposed to that kind of stuff around. So if we're exposed to lots of certain types of thinking, we kind of take it on board and exposed amongst our own. Yes. Oh, yes. So it's about, what does our social group do? You know, it's about the fact that when you emerge from certain number of years living at home and school, you realize just how many ideas you've inherited, yes, right? How many concepts about the world you inherited? And you go out there and you're like, this isn't, this isn't how they said, Yeah. So by being habitually around this stuff throughout your developmental period of your life, or whatever it is, you kind of absorb it, and you think that's normal, and that's kind of what you take it on as your own, yeah, so, um, so that's my take on our definition discussion. Um, hopefully that works for everybody out there. What do you think? I think, I think you did excellent. Thank you. Do I get to go again? Wendy, no, you get to say automaticity.

I think it's probably worth mentioning that this subject could be incredibly scientific, really complex, really sociological, or we can go at it from a very practical approach, and that's what we've done. So I'm going to move on to research round up a minute. And it's just important to know, we know there's a load of other neuroscience, sociological understanding. There's massively multidisciplinary, and it informs huge amounts. And there's, there's huge, very controversial experiments went on years ago about how habits are created. Yeah,

it's a high level for us. This is about there are things that happen during your day that either you haven't automated or habitualized, and therefore they're taking up energy. And there are things that you're doing you don't want to be doing, that you'd like to be changing, and there are things you're not doing that you'd like to be doing, right? And that's what we're talking there's kind of like personal habits for you as an individual, looking after your own life, it's Yeah, absolutely, or it might be in your work life and how you interact with people, yeah, it's largely about things that are,

are relatively straightforward, yeah. So why are we talking about it? And I thought would be a really useful way to kick off the research. Well,

I guess, I guess, from my perspective, they're really useful. I think it's impossible to run your life or your body or your brain without habits. And I think what's really important to understand is they automate our routine activities, and they conserve our energy. Yeah. So. So if you and they can be detrimental. So if you think about

Benjamin Franklin's net idea of what they what bad habits take away from the good, yeah, and you think about that in energy terms and brain power terms, yeah, I think it's quite a helpful thought. You know, if you've got bad habits that they're constantly taking away, yeah, from your time, your energy, your ability, your reputation, loads of stuff. And if you've got good habits and habits that are helpful to you, you're conserving energy, you're getting things done quickly. You're not having to do it consciously, and people will perceive you as a effective person, right? Like in the one of the earlier episodes when we started on this, we talked to a little bit about dual process theory and the fact that, you know, your brain's got two systems. It's system one, system two. And, you know, with the system one, you're kind of automatic, and you just do it. And then with system two, you're like, you invest emotional, or, you know, like intellectual energy to make stuff happen. And they're just different ways, yeah. And the concept really is that if you use too much of within this is if you are using to the other the more intense one, too often you're leaving less in the bank, right? And if you're having to use that system for things, you could make habits and automate then, then that's wasteful, yeah? But I also think it's about when you have created habits that are unhelpful, yeah? Well, we are, and we do because we're really unconscious in the way we develop them, we learn them. That your definition around habitualization, lots of what we've picked up, you know, generally, really simple stuff, like, do you put your plates away after your dinner is a learned thing? Yeah? From from the what was habitual in your household? Yeah? So I think it's useful. And why am I interested? Well, because, on a personal level, I have some habits I don't like Yeah, and I found Yeah, and I found it really hard to shift some of them, and I found others surprisingly easy. What was the hardest? Hardest? The hardest is an ongoing battle, and it's it's having a it sounds ridiculous. When I open my laptop, I am trying to ensure that I have a routine of what I do, okay, and when I close my laptop, I'm trying to ensure I have a routine of what I do, so that I don't open my laptop with 400 different tabs that are open from last time and that I have done my accounts because I finished a piece of work and it's been registered how many hours I've done, and so that I have a little routine in the same with some people, have a morning and an afternoon routine. I have a routine when I turn my laptop on and off, which is like, I open my laptop and I go to my email and I check what's in, and then I turn it off,

yeah, and I automate without thinking. Because the problem is, at the moment, I'm, I'm really engaged in it, and I'm like, Oh, look, this has come in. And then I'm like, Oh, I had this out last time, and it's very reactive. And similarly, I tend to work until I've got nothing left in the tank, and then shut my laptop, and then I'm left with, I don't know how many hours I've spent on what was project or client. Yeah, I don't. And so for me, that startup pens up pens, downtime becomes and it shouldn't matter, yeah, and it probably wouldn't, except I found it almost impossible to change them. Yeah, and that, therefore, that automatically triggers my curiosity about, why is that yeah? And why have I found that one difficult versus,

I have never made my bed for 30 years, wow. And I decided, like, like, I have, I have when I've needed so genuine, Wow. I've never made my bed in the morning, right? Okay, okay, okay. And I decided when I went freelance, that was the thing I was going to do to make me feel like I like I read a thing about a military general, an American military general in the US Army. We talked about when he left service and he used to make his bed like a military general or whatever. However it works, you know, hospital corners, yeah. And he talked about how that gave him some sense of purpose, so that, if you do nothing else, and he was living to his standards, and he was, he was behaving in a way that is congruent with who he is. And I was like, right? I'm doing that. I'm not making hospital corners clear up, do they, but I'm gonna make my bed every day great. And it was just instant, and it was so simple, and I was trying to unpick why it was just so easy, but I never done it before, yeah? And I realized those are two very different examples, but for me, there's lots to do with cues and motivation and and I just thought, interesting. Yeah, great.

So the way I've approached this is to introduce some ideas and some context concepts. So we're going to start off by talking about automaticity and how that manifests in people's lives, and look at some of the different ways that you see automaticity, and then talk a little bit about how you can sort of nudge those things in certain directions. So again, auto mode.

Yeah, that word that's all about, like, the different ways that things can become automatic is all right, yeah. So automaticity is, in its simplest form, being able to do something without conscious, right? Okay, yeah, so different ways, so, and there's lots of ways that happens, physical, mental, emotional, and we're going.

Go through some of those and give you some really interesting examples of things that they people will recognize from their daily lives. And some of them are good, some of them not so much. Then we're gonna have a little bit talk about, like, there's some myths. There's a myth, particularly out there, about how long it takes to change habits, which I would like to talk about a little bit. And then we're gonna talk about probably the most common piece of theory, which is the habit loop and habit replacement, and the concept that you don't you know why cold turkey is so hot, fine, so that's a bit of a practical, yeah. So we're gonna start off with automaticity, which we could pronounce it. Yeah? We're gonna talk about a Mac, I don't know,

definitely not that is not happening. Got to try something. So it's typically it comes from either learning practice or knowledge you have that adapts the brain to a task such that it limits the amount of mental resource you need, right? So it's something where there is an opportunity for your brain to conserve energy or to be able to do other things. So it's looking for ways in your terms of the two, two ways, yeah, system, one system. It's looking for ways to get stuff over to that, that non consumptive? Yeah, simplistic. So I just really liked these because I think they are they instantly make you understand what we're talking about. So the examples of automaticity might be muscle memory, so that could be typing on a keyboard, riding a bicycle, playing a musical instrument.

It's a physical task, muscle memory, and it requires conscious effort when you first do it, but quite often falls into the background. So like typing, maybe typing is absolutely, yeah, okay, okay, so when you first type, you have to really, right, doing the chopsticks, yeah? And maybe, maybe younger people don't know this, and it's really interesting, because that's built in, right? Yeah, until I remember it, but certainly riding a bike, right? You when you when you can't do it, swimming and riding a bike feel like the hardest thing in the world? Yeah. Oh, that coordination. What is going on for me, serving in tennis is the best example, because it is so hard until it isn't, and then the minute you get it. It's like, even if you're bad at it, you'll never know what the movement is

language. So language skills, like reading, writing, fluency, translation, become automatic. And so the classic I would give you is that people who truly are fluent quite often dream in, and that is the ultimate subconscious, right? So you absolutely are not putting any effort in, and yet you are able to do something cool.

Highway hypnosis, which I have been I have experienced, is the concept when you're driving, you are apparently safe. Well, you're safe in the context of nothing changing. You're obeying the rules, but you don't remember driving any of it. And it is, it's the example of where someone crosses over a pedestrian crossing and yeah, or, I think they call them crosswalks, yeah, and you don't remember stopping for them, yes, because you're just on autopilot. Yeah, we should have called it autopilot. Um, there is definitely

a level of highway hypnosis not being safe. But how not safe is to identify, and it is likely that your brain is is managing risk without knowing it, yeah? Saying, Oh, you don't need to be fully conscious, yeah, because it's only gonna drop the risk of it. Yeah, you go have a chat, listen to the radio. Absolutely, it's also interesting. We might explain. I've no idea why. When I have the radio on, I actually am able to concentrate more, yeah, maybe because my brain is engaged, yeah, it's not drifting. So then there's the concept of unconscious competence. Yeah, this is really interesting for me. So the example they talk about is in sport, where as soon as

you become conscious of something, you start not doing it as well. So the example that they use, for example, is basketball, free throws, okay, as soon as someone starts thinking about it too much, it starts going horribly wrong, yeah? And you hear about that in, like, putting and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So there's this amazing stories really like, so one of my all time favorite players associate Garcia, who had terrible problems with this short game because he would end up regripping The club and have all of those habits developed. And

the idea really about this, this conscious, unconscious competence is that your your brain or something, or your body, has created a process, and if you start being too conscious, you're interfering with it, yeah. And so there is, there is a routine. You just don't know about it because it's in your subconscious, yeah? And then as soon as you start thinking about it, we're not.

Do your brain and body's going, Hey, we got this. Yeah, no, no, no, I'm gonna micromanage this. I know. And I always, I've always,

literally always, think of my brain as a micro manager. So I go, No, no, no, hey, hey, back off. Yeah, I'm doing this 15 years. Yeah, you've suddenly shown up. Yeah, big game, now you're interested. Where were you? A big game? It's important to you. So the last two are centipedes dilemma, which I'd never heard of before,

which is originates in some poetry 1970 poetry by a lady called Catherine Christer, Yeah, apparently. So effectively,

it's about a story where a toad asks a centipede how it walks, and this throws the centipede into a state of confusion such that she can no longer walk. Okay? The concept is, the minute that someone asks you how you're doing something, and you can't explain it, you no longer are able to do it

because you don't understand how it's happening. Yeah, it's automatically. It's quite similar. I think I suspect the whole conscious unconscious, yeah? It feels like it, yeah, but I just that's a nice little

analogy. And finally, intuition, which I know you and I have talked about great length, intuition is the ability to people talk about gut feel, yeah, or guesstimating, yeah. I love guesstimating. I think it's a much better explanation. It's the ability to judge a situation without consciously thinking about it. Yeah, and

it can appear, certainly, the output is that people can often make decisions much quicker without thinking about it. It can appear to other people, but they're not giving it due thought. Yeah, actually. Or it might feel like a bit fluffy, like they're not really doing it grounded in evidence or data. Data drives me crazy, right? Data can include a load of experiences that you've got that internalize, that you've got in the background, in your subcontractor totally. And data can also be things that you take in, but you don't even know that you've taken in. I mean, there's some amazing stories around that kind of so quite often intuition, yeah? And if you watch um Darren Brown, yeah, he's a great example of someone who manipulates your environment around you such that you pick up keys, yeah, realize that he can play them back. And so intuition is all about so

the example they gave, there's loads of sport metaphors, which wasn't sport website now the surfer may intuitively know which particular wave is trouble and let it pass. Yeah, right. And people be like, Oh, he's like, got special skills. No, he doesn't, you just read micro signal. He's Yeah, and he's done. He's looked at so many waves that the process of analyzing if that wave is safe, yeah, is no longer there. So he calls it intuition, because he doesn't know what's going on, yeah, but he's got the data. He's like, basically, he's a big piece of data analysis. He knows what's good. He knows it's bad. I mean, he doesn't know. I suspect intuition is one of those things that, as we start to unpick neuroscience more and more and more overcome. And it really is. I mean, there are lots of studies out there about how a lot of this stuff is just data recognition at a subconscious level. Yeah. So I wanted to, I really wanted to share that list, because I really liked it, and I think it brings home,

kind of the context of habit, rather than what we all think about, which is biting our nails, not answering a phone on social media too much, yeah? But actually starts to ground it in some concepts and constructs around how we act and how we behave, and all the habits, the millions of habits that make us up, yeah, because we talk, right? And that's a habit that is something that automated that Autumn Well, for me, and particularly have it I see you smiling, I know. Try and finish that sentence right now.

Moving on. So there's the list about automaticity. I'm here all day. So the next thing I just wanted to talk about a little bit was a piece of research that you mentioned in the definitions by Philip Lally and a few others in 2010 where they investigated the formation of habits. And really the biggest thing they did was blur part the myth that a habit is formed in 21 days. And there's, I've been parts of programs

used it. I at one point a really brilliant idea to design a diary that you could purchase that was delivered because I believed it and and, you know, they just really expertly go now, not true.

What they find is that probably an average of 66 okay, but that that's extrapolated from a shorter study. So who knows? Yeah, I mean, the maths might be good, but really, how confident can you be? And also that, you know, there is a whole host of variables, how complex the task is, how much that task is something that you've ingrained and had a lot of been exposed for very long time. Where does it come from? All of this stuff, and who are you as an individual? I mean, people are broadly homogeneous. Well, you're able to do it. But what they also find interestingly, which is something that I have always advocated, I have always believed, is that if you occasionally deviate from the habit, that's okay. It doesn't affect your ability to take it on, okay? So all of this idea that you have to start from scratch, okay? Finally, it's relapses. Yeah, it's like a brand new star, which I've always.

Really uncomfortable, because I think it gives people an excuse to relapse forever. Yeah. So the example I would give is around smoking. So I used to be a smoker, and the way I cracked it was, and particularly when it was no longer nicotine, things, I was down to quite, quite a small number, and it was, it felt less nicotine, yeah, it felt much more about a ritual that I had to take myself outside of my work environment and some time for myself. And you know, there are two things from from the research that really struck, struck with me. One is, I used to count the number of days in that year that I hadn't smoked. Yeah, every day was just one more day. And if I, if I did, if I smoked that day, that was just one day I had smoked, not done it the way I wanted to. And so what you end up with is, you end up with a calendar full of green dots and the occasional rod, which is completely different from having to start the day after red as a zero, yeah? And then it feels like, oh, well, I'm zero again, and I had 200 days. Yeah, I've lost. I might just not bother. I clearly can't do this. It's too hard because recreating 200 feels impossible. Yeah, just saying, Oh, it's one day. And the irony is, as soon as I switched that, I found it really helpful. Yeah, that's good. So, so, and there's some evidence from from the learning research around that, which is really, really helpful. So I just wanted to bring that one out, because I think it's really important. There's loads of other stuff in it. And actually, there's a couple of really good articles on the internet that I'll link to on the WoW mail, because I really enjoyed reading that piece of research, and I think it's got places to go. I think there will be more things to come from it that will be useful for people as they move forward with their research. So I liked that. And then the last thing that I want to talk about in research Roundup is around the habit loop and have it where it's diagram. So audio media, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's a diagram in the sense that I like it diagram, but it's a really simple process, and the habit loop argues that

you there are cues which you mentioned in your definition. There are cues, there are sensory signals

which trigger you executing a routine. Okay, that provides a reward gotcha, and that that whole process is bumped up by craving. The concept of craving, okay, so craving that reward. So the example that quite often gets pushed out is social media checking, okay, so there is a beep on your phone

to let you know that to stick a trigger, a routine, you should pick up your phone, to open it up, got to look at what's there such that you are seeking a reward, a message from someone you like, yeah. And the more you do that, the more that there is a a habit of doing that, and also that there is a craving, yeah? If it's something you really want, it will start to be like, Oh, well, I might just check and then what happens if you start checking your phone before the queue, because there's a routine that you can execute that usually gives you a reward. Yeah? Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. I was thinking like, um, you know, I used to smoke as well. So for me, things like, whenever I'd have a coffee, I'd really want to have a cigarette. So I guess that craving was always there to smoke, and then you have, like, a nice cup of coffee, and it kind of links into the same thing, and I get my reward. And yeah. And interestingly, for me, I don't miss smoking. Generally. There are specific signals that really trigger me,

and one of them is seeing people smoke in movies. All right? And it is because I'm absolutely convinced, with no evidence whatsoever, that it is because, as I was growing up and I started smoking, everyone smoked on telly, and for me, it was a real like, I'm one of those people, fine, okay, this is when I was a really young teenager. But there is an element of that, and I think, and I see it, and it reminds me of not necessarily enjoying smoking, because ultimately it tasted disgusting, yeah, but my body learned to like it, yeah. And but it reminded me of moments of extreme peace and happiness. And so I think there is Yeah, and then you're like, hang on, there's a well, there's a reward, yeah? So the craving has gone yeah, I believe now for my smoking, but I still am occasionally reminded of the reward I get. Yeah, or got interesting, which I think is really, really interesting. Now the replacement the they call it the golden rule of habit change.

And the argument is that it's easiest to change habits when you keep the same cue and reward and change the routine or behavior. Okay, so, and this is when I mentioned earlier about cold turkey. So it goes some levels to explain why cold turkey is not the way to change reward. I guess you haven't. You have nothing. Yeah, you have nothing. You have a vacuum. You don't get the reward. Yeah, you have a vacuum, so there's cue, and it's much harder to do nothing than to do something. Yeah, because there's no routine, you've got a void, like you said, and and,

yeah, to me, it makes total sense. And it's one of those things. Where is it? Is it a piece of research that's just so comfortable that maybe they're not vital?

Yeah, with dangerous. But the idea is, you keep your cue Yeah, because there is either muscle memory. So for example, smoking, there may even be some muscle remember. Languages behavior. I remember someone talking about stopping swearing, okay? And for them, they realized there were massive cues, and it was easier for them to replace words. And so the parents do it all the time, right? So my mom had an F word that wasn't the F word was another F word, yes, and she was, I think it was Fudge, fudge. Oh, fudge sugar. Although my favorite situation, sorry Mom, is when she replaced a swear word with another swear word which didn't know was a swear word. Swearing like a bunch of we were all like, Why did my mom swear? That's not a swear word, yes, um, but so replacing it is much easier than saying nothing, because your body is already going towards or your brain is already processed. It's that, you know, maintaining a state where you're using that reduced amount of mental, emotional energy. You're just doing it with a different thing. You're working with what you've got already. You're keeping that process. So what I really love about it, on a philosophical level, philosophical concept level, maybe, is that you're working with who you are already, yeah, and you're working with the systems that your body has built and your brain has built, and you're saying, I don't like the product of those systems, but I accept that the pathways and the processes are there, and I'm going to work with them cool. So I really like that concept, and I think it's a really useful way of thinking about it.

And I think especially when you start to understand what cues look like in your life, yeah, and when you start to recognize them and become aware of them and understand what's happening, I always talk about it with my habits and changing them around, trying to hack my brain. I've mentioned this, yeah. And so for me, the concept of a habit replacement a habit loop and replacing a habit helps me think about how to hack my brain. It's like saying, okay, brain, I get what you're doing. I'm on to you, and I'm going to trick you into doing something a little bit different. But it's not so different that it's going to take massive conscious thought. Gotcha. So that is my very top level introduction to the concept of habits. Habit changing, as I said at the beginning. There are huge, huge other areas around this stuff and very complex neuroscience, but I thought it was a really good place to start. What do you think? I think it's great. I mean, I really enjoy the overall topic. I like the idea of the loop. I think it, it brings it to life really well. And, you know, someone that we started saying that we might try and do another episode on a bit later on, was about sort of habit forming and products, and, like, creating addictive products, and how product designers and sort of customer experience designers are trying to bring some of this stuff into actually creating interactions with consumers. So I think this is great in terms of, yeah, I'm so I'm absolutely fascinated with old school video games, yeah, and how that was, how that was done without really realizing it. I know now they get it, but if you look at Tetris, yeah, those many, many people out there will not talk about many of you won't because a very simplistic

logic game that had very, very compelling music, yeah, to the point where I used to dream about it, yeah. And I would dream the music, and the music would make me want to play the game. And it was, it was just, I'm not sure how much they knew what they were doing. No, it's like, at that point, a lot of stuff is sort of learned by experimentation. But it totally worked. Yeah, totally worth I mean, it was, it was nuts. It was absolutely, I didn't know anyone who didn't play that game, yeah? And I'm assuming the modern equivalent would be Candy Crush. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I played it for three months. I got to level, like 100 or something, and then I realized, and then I realized this is a really unhealthy thing, because the habit I formed was telling on my phone and going straight, yes, yes, yes, we can chat about that. Overall,

really, great. Really, really, like the topic. Me too. Actually, it makes me really, really want to explore it quite a lot more. And you could do like a, like a habit audit on yourself. That sounds like a really boring thing to do, but you know what I mean, you know? And there's, you know, one of the things I was going to mention at some point, maybe not the research, is there are loads of apps out there that help you. There's one called, I think, streak, loads of different apps that help you choose which habit you'd like to change and help you start to record it. Fine. What it's also made me realize sharing probably too much is like we started handling what? How long ago? Two months ago. Yes. And James totally won me over on the huddles. We all know Jane went into the episode criticizing them, kind of revelation off I threw that she really liked them and had been using them for years, and then felt embarrassed,

but it's made me realize one of the reasons that I'm struggling with getting our huddles right, for me, is that they are not habitual. Yeah, so the con they are habitual to do. So the time is a trigger for me to always speak to you, but the process is still has to be driven, yeah, by one of us. And I think that's made me really think about, how can I construct the beginning of our opening such that it is a habitual thing of tick, tick, tick, tick, and we're still working through all of that totally, yeah, but it's, I mean, if nothing else, even this podcast no use 20.

Else, it's helped me. Yeah, there we go. Thumbs up. Okay, so that's our research round up. Cool, we've shoehorned some extra research into the lists, I think a little bit. Yeah, and you're gonna take us through, I think maybe two lists if we've got time. Yeah, I think we've got time. So we're gonna give it a go. I got two lists for you, like you said, they're both from Psychology Today, and they both really focus on kind of changing your habits and practical things that you can do as an individual that will help you get rid about habits, create new habits, all that kind of good stuff. So the first one is from Susan cross whitbourne, and it's a piece called five steps to Breaking Bad habits. And as it says, that's really what it's about. So these are five steps that you could use to break some habits that maybe are unhelpful for you. So the first step is to decide what you really want to change and convince yourself that you can do it right. So a lot of this is about understanding what your starting point is and where you want to end up and what it is that you want to change. You know, when we spoke about coaching a couple weeks ago, or in the episode that we had with Gillian, one of the roles of coaches is to help people determine what they want to change, and help guide people through that process and help people understand what they want to do. So it's interesting to kind of reflect on that here. So step one is deciding what you really want to change, convincing yourself that you can. Step two, then is around, gaining insight on what's causing the habit, right? So if you're doing something that's a negative habit, you probably want to step back and reflect on what are some of the triggers for it, where are some of the drivers for that habit coming from? What's really the sort of structure around it that causes you to behave in that way. So getting that understanding is helpful, and once you've got that understanding, step three is to start your to set yourself reasonable goals in relation to the habit. So you know, you might not want to have a goal that is to completely stop something Jane spoke earlier, when you were telling Jane, you talked about about going cold turkey, right? And maybe that's not a reasonable goal. Maybe a reasonable goal isn't to completely eliminate a habit. Maybe your first reasonable goal might be to reduce something or do something only in certain circumstances, or whatever it happens to be. So having clarity and useful goal setting is helpful. Then step four in this process is to measure your progress and not be discouraged by occasional slips, right? So, so this measurement is, in itself, some sort of reward for good behavior. So you want to measure things. You want to know where you're going. You want to be clear on what you're doing. And that point about occasional slips is really important as well. You know, when you spoke about forming habits earlier, and you talked about, you know, 21 days as a myth, and 66 days and whatever, people tend to think that you need to be perfect throughout that process to really have created a habit and to achieve the goal. But that's not really the case. You know, occasionally slipping on something isn't the end of a world. When we were speaking earlier, you said that if you've done something nine out of nine days, that's great. If you've slipped the next day, then you've still done nine out of 10, and that's a good achievement in itself. And from there, you just want to pick up and keep going. And you want to get 10 out of 1111, out of 12, and to make sure you measure that progress and to continue to be pleased with it and celebrate your successes as you do. And then the last of the five steps in terms of breaking habits here is to seek additional support if your habits are proving hard to change. So you know, nobody's an island. We are social beings, and we benefit from support. So if you're in a position where you're struggling with something, getting some support is a really helpful thing. So a quick recap. Those five points are, decide what you really want to change and convince yourself that you can gain insight into what's causing the habit that you want to change, set reasonable goals that are, you know, achievable, all that kind of stuff. Measure your progress and don't be discouraged by the occasional slip, and then seek additional support if things are proving hard. So, so that's a useful framework as list one of a week, the next list of a week is kind of similar, you know, it's trying to do the same thing, but in a different perspective. And this is seven steps of habit replacement loop training. So again, the goals are the same in terms of replacing and changing habits, but it's got some different things in here, which I kind of like. So it starts by talking about awareness, and it says that even though it's really simple being consciously aware of how habit replacement works, and then starting to consciously recognize the cues that exist in your world and the sort of triggers that lead you to behaving in certain ways is an important starting point. So once you become mindful and present and conscious about what's driving your behaviors, it becomes easier to look at ways to change those so that first point is awareness, the next point then is around intentionally looking to replace negative habits, right? And doing that by choosing or substituting a positive routine when when something happens to trigger a habit, so you understand your negative habit.

It you start to introduce positive habits to replace them, and this can be both thinking habits as well as maybe physical or behavioral habits as well. So you know, the field of cognitive behavioral therapy is around helping people find more useful and helpful ways of thinking about things in certain situations. So you have maybe an emotional cue, a behavioral cue, where in the past, you would have responded with some negative thinking patterns. Instead, you try and replace those with more positive thinking patterns. So step two is around intentionally replacing a negative habit with a positive habit. Then the third point in here is around eliminating your negative triggers. So is it possible to identify the things that trigger you, the cues that exist out there that are triggers or cues that lead to negative behaviors? Can you change those and replace them with triggers that will lead you to positive behaviors? And that can be done through things like changing your built environment, changing you know, your routines, doing things like pre committing to things. So for example, if you always eat a chocolate biscuit when you Well, I don't know the bell goes at five o'clock, you might decide that actually, you're going to get rid of a bell, or you're going to not buy chocolate biscuits, right? I mean, that's a kind of a silly, made up thing, but it kind of works. Point four here is buddying up. So looking for social support, working with other people, joining forces with people, can make it easier to

have a replacement of a negative habit with a positive. 1.5 this one, I think, is really powerful. This is about picking your friends, you know, and this says, surround yourself with people who behave the way you want to behave, and use the power of a group. So if you live with people who maybe have habits that you don't want, you might want to move away from that friend group or that environment towards a group that embodies the behaviors that you want to embody, because that'll help you, right? I mean, if, for example, you don't exercise, and nobody around you exercises, but you want to exercise. If you move to maybe a location or a neighborhood where everybody's out running and jogging and playing sports all the time, and for people that you socialize with do those things, then it's more likely that you'll do that, and that relates really well to that definition right at the beginning of the show about habitualization, right? Totally having that understanding of what you are absorbing and taking from your environment, peers and surroundings. Yeah, yeah. It just bleeds through into your behaviors. So that picking your friends is powerful. Step six here is visualizing. So make sure that you can see yourself succeeding with a new habit in that sort of future world you're trying to create. If you can do that, then you're more likely to achieve it. So focusing on that is helpful. And then the last point here is around being persistent. You know, this is something we touched on in the earlier one about slips and stuff as well. But if you practice your routine, if you practice your habits, even if you miss a repetition opportunity, keep focusing on the behavior, and eventually it'll stick. And that's the point, right? Like nine out of 10 is fine. It's much better than none out of 10, right? And then maybe one day you'll get to 10 out of 10, but it's about that incremental build up. Yeah. I think for me, that's probably the most powerful part of all of it. I think if you offered someone who's trying to change a habit 300 out of 365 days they were getting it right? Oh,

totally Yes, I'll take that. Yeah, so again, just quick recap the seven steps of habit replacement loop training are. Number one, awareness. Be aware of how habit habits work. Number two, replace negative habits by choosing a positive substituted routine. Number three, eliminate your negative triggers. Number four, buddy up. Work with people. Get some help. Number five, pick your friends, be surrounded by the people who do the things that you want to do. Number six, visualize and make sure that you can see yourself succeeding. And number seven, be persistent and keep going right. Practice it. Celebrate your successes and you'll get there. So that's our two lists of the week. Like you said, almost a bit of research in there, but there are two lists of practical, helpful things that people can do to to change their habits and form new ones. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's good, but it's good. And I like the fact that both those lists are kind of trying to do the same thing, but coming at it with some different points. And, you know, we could kind of amalgamate them into one mega lesson be fair on the people. But also, I think, you know, there is a, there is deep level of pragmatism within what I do, in my work, and what I think a lot of people have to absorb, there is theory, and there are lots of evidence about what works, yeah, but there is a level of pragmatism about how you apply that and what is available to you, and the more you know about what might work, yeah, the better chance you have of figuring out what's going to help you work, yeah, because the whole point of this stuff is it's a mass information from lots and lots of people, but there's anyone you, so those steps might not be quite right for you, yeah, but there might be enough information to figure out what is Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you can experiment with them and see that's good. Cool. All right, so that's list of a week stories from a key. Board. I mean, have you got any stories from making the bed one

check my bed is astonishing how easy that was. Yeah, so probably there's quite a lot I've talked before about my smoking. I think probably for me, the the biggest, the biggest consciousness of me, of my habits, is making things,

doing the prep work. Okay, so, for example, I'm really untidy, but if my house is designed such that there is a place for everything, okay, then I'm not really untidy, because if there's only one place for things. I will put it in that place, yeah? And so for me, that environment, and how I design my own environment, and how I make sure that things are right, yeah, such that they are making it easy for me to stick to those habits when I have poor self regulation, yeah. Is massive, yeah. And that's a lot of those sort of pre commitment stuff, right? I mean, you do your stuff. I have no cake in the house. I have no crisps in the house because my willpower is such as self regulation is such that I will eat those crisps, but I do have long term regulation, able just not to buy them, yeah. So you use that, yeah. And I guess, I guess my point, my point would be, I couldn't do that without the corporation of other people. So making it clear how important changing my behaviors around, for example, eating or smoking was to the people around me, yeah? Because I'm highly influenced about what's going on without me. So I tried to quit smoking twice, but all my friends were still smoking, yeah, and it was only when most when the tipping point had happened, I found it so much easier. Well, I became a Herbert. Herbert, a herbit. I became a hermit. I'm still a hermit. I became a hermit around the time that I actually successfully stopped smoking, and I just didn't socialize with groups of people for about six months. I just kind of stopped seeing certain groups of people, yeah, and then you appear with these new habits, and people are really confused, yeah, but by that point, you feel confident about Yes. You know where you are. Yes, you're confident, yeah. So I've got one little story, like, totally stupid, but it's about brushing my teeth. What do you know? Is it exciting? Isn't it so well, my dad was a dentist, so, oh well, yeah, okay, so, um, so my teeth are in a pretty good state, right? Despite some of the things I do, but generally, they're in a good state. And what happened was, I went, I go for six monthly checkups, yeah. And what I noticed was that a couple times, I was getting sort of watches on the same part of my mouth. So the upper left part of my mouth was, was the one that seemed to be most at risk. It was a bit of a pattern, and the rest of my mouth was fine. And I I brushed my teeth in quadrants. This is so exciting for everyone anyway. So what I used to do is I used to start on, I think, the bottom right, bottom left, upper right, upper left. So it was the area that I was brushing last which was one that was most at risk. And I was like, Oh, well, I don't even think about how I'm brushing my teeth, but I bet you that towards the end, I'm getting a bit lazy. I'm like, time's running down. I'm going to get out of here. I was using a manual toothbrush at the time when this was going on, so I thought, well, I'm going to change it, and now I want to brush the top left first. Yeah, you're shaking ahead of me. I'm just impressed. I'm impressed how conscious you are of how we brush your teeth. I couldn't tell you where I start, yeah, but, but it's because it was there, so, so what I did is I started saying, Well, you know what, I'm going to try and consciously start brushing in the upper left, okay, and I'll probably do a best job at the beginning. So I did that, and it was, it's so automatic, but it actually took a while. And I don't know how long it took me, but now I'm at the stage where I'm like, I just brush upper left first, and I just do it without even thinking about it. So total, silly example. It's not really great. No, no, no. It's brilliant. It is literally my favorite example. I am now going to brush my teeth tonight and figure out where. Yeah. So anyway, so that was kind of helpful. So that was a little sorry, but, but, but, you know, but, but, you know, being conscious about it, having a replacement plans in there, having an external reference point from a doctor, sorry, dentist, and some goals on it, and trying to do it every series of time. So I did it. So, yeah, I've achieved a change in habits from where I start, yeah. So that's good. Okay, yeah, so that's good. So from that probably useful to segue onto top tips, yeah. What are you clearly, have been successful in your changing of behaviors, both yourself and with people you work with. Yes. What are your top tips? Well, I'm a toothbrush. I bought an electric toothbrush, and that means that I get unique timing across each of my, oh, my quadrants now, so that, I would say, is a pretty powerful, powerful thing. But, I mean, like, that's kind of flippant, but there's something about having it's funny. So interestingly, that was going to be my top tip, not, not my although I would recommend them as a dentist daughter.

No, which toothpaste would you whenever I've and I've said this before. I said this in our goal setting episode. I think when you want to change something about your life, think about what you're prepared to sacrifice, either financially or in time terms, and then find out if there's a solution that can help you. So for me, if, if you're thinking about changing a job and you don't know how to start, think about how much money you would pay to change job if you actually.

Fingers. That's your coaching budget. Go and get some career coaching if you want to change your habit around brushing your teeth, and you find out that for 100 pounds, you can have something that will help you regulate that do it. So for me, when I changed my eating habits, the rule I made myself was that for one year, I was not gonna ever, ever not spend money on food

if it was the right food for me to eat. And that, I think I mentioned last time, it involved me sitting alone in an Italian restaurant in the middle of Soho, paying 25 pounds for lunch one day. But that I had made that pre commitment, I had said, this is going to cost me a fortune, but this is too important to my health not to sort out. And it's that that process of contracting with yourself is huge, yeah. And that you know that goes back to some of the things that we talked about in the list, which is almost starting with that awareness piece, right? Like being aware of what drives your behaviors and what drives your habits, and starting to be conscious of how your behaviors motivation work is a really powerful thing in both those examples, yeah, if you really struggle, right? Diary, it really helped. Not like a journal about it, no, but not even that. Just literally, have a diary where you write down when things happen, yeah, well, so I had a big spreadsheet. Of course, I thought I was spreadsheet queen, and then I met James, so I had, like, I mean, I had all kinds of crazy stuff on there, but, like, number of hours slept, the amount of alcohol, drunk, exercise and different varieties, walking distance, running, whatever, sleeping at one point you are literally the sum of your habits. Yeah, yeah. But I've changed a lot of them. And, like, I did that every about a five year period. And it was kind of fun in some ways, to see columns disappearing. So the smoking column is not even there anymore, because, you know, obviously I've stopped. So I did my insurance quote today, okay? And they they said, Don't you smoke. And I said, No. They said, How long? And I was like, oh, oh, I don't know. And they were like, What is it the last year? I was like, No, last year. And I realized that I didn't even know how long it was, because it has been so long, yeah, I still occasionally watch a movie and think

cool. So that was a fun episode. I think we covered some good stuff. I think you did an excellent research around that. I think I did different from the way you did. It's good. We each have our own right, yeah? And we both managed to say the a word very well. Automaticity. Automaticity. Yeah, I've just done a fist bump, people. So I'm so proud of myself. All right, so that's the end of that. That's a little bit of thinking about habits, as you said earlier. I mean, it's a hugely complex I can see us coming back to some of the science around habits and habitualization particularly, yeah, but this was just a sort of overview.

So if you've got any thoughts on it, get in touch with us. Check us out at the WoW podcast is for Twitter, handle, Instagram, LinkedIn, wow. Mail, cool. So that's us. I guess it's just time to say until the next time it's over and out. Check it out. Check it out. We're off to I'm off to walk the dog in the sunshine. Have a lovely weekend, everyone, and enjoy the rest of the what's left of your week as well.