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{"columns":["r"],"data":[{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"0","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"9636e991-2fe4-40d2-ac23-515b55445ba0","title":"Repositioning your perspective to achieve goals","slug":"repositioning-your-perspective-to-achieve-your-goals","subtitle":"Cognitive constructs to maintain goals","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,goals","content":"            <p>Sebastian Marshall wrote a great article about a way to <a href=\"http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/self-destruction-is-generally-counterproductive\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.sebastianmarshall.com']);\">prevent yourself from “giving in” when you’re working towards a goal</a>. Often times, I say “screw it, I finished such-and-such medium-sized project, let’s dig into some steak/these brownies/some dessert… I haven’t in a long time.” Not only is it dangerous, but you eventually lower the criteria for “event for celebration”, and it’s so easy to give in.</p>\r\n<p>One way to suppress this urge to give in, says Sebastian, is thinking the following: “Self destruction is generally counterproductive.” It’s smart. The idea is that, all things considered, giving in is almost always net negative. So why do it?</p>\r\n<p>The thought goes from appealing to counterintuitive—usually, at least. Sometimes those brownies just smell <em>too good</em>.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*  *  *</p>\r\n<p>It’s important to think about why this works, since that could tell us what makes it so effective, and maybe we could apply this thinking elsewhere. When you get into a stage where you’ve done away with something and used your self-control to do so, you eventually fatigue of doing the correct, but enormously less satisfying thing. (At least, that’s what dieting tastes like.) Rewarding yourself is now appealing and your self-discipline is weak.</p>\r\n<p>So how does it work? My thought is: getting this reminder triggers a subconscious memory of when you first decided to set the goal, and reminds you of why you did it and what you imagined the end result to be. With this perspective floating in your mind, the urge to do better and be better, because indulging does mean a net negative, overpowers the nagging thought of the satisfaction of indulgence. <strong>This reminder gets you into the perspective and mindset from when you set your goal.</strong></p>\r\n<p>Another method for reconsidering the decision to indulge (or in this case, to drop the ball) is the well-known <a href=\"http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://lifehacker.com']);\">Seinfeld rule of “don’t break the chain”</a> for keeping habits. I think there are a lot of ways this can be triggered.</p>\r\n<p>However, rewards are definitely important, and sometimes indulging is the right thing to do. The problem lies with that it’s too easy to get into a habit of bad rewards. The idea of repositioning your perspective to see things from a past mindset can help set better, net-positive rewards. It’s powerful because one thing that is incredibly hard to hold on to is a mindset you had in the past, which you used to set a goal. Sometimes, after a short while of inspiration and discipline, it deteriorates, while the urge to defect becomes stronger. Being in the original mindset is a good way to hold fast to your original goal.</p>\r\n","created_at":1427607300,"updated_at":1427607782}},{"id":"2","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"15df7aa2-f471-45c5-a688-44e434010ab1","name":"goals","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"2","type":"TAG","startNode":"0","endNode":"2","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"0","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"9636e991-2fe4-40d2-ac23-515b55445ba0","title":"Repositioning your perspective to achieve goals","slug":"repositioning-your-perspective-to-achieve-your-goals","subtitle":"Cognitive constructs to maintain goals","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,goals","content":"            <p>Sebastian Marshall wrote a great article about a way to <a href=\"http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/self-destruction-is-generally-counterproductive\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.sebastianmarshall.com']);\">prevent yourself from “giving in” when you’re working towards a goal</a>. Often times, I say “screw it, I finished such-and-such medium-sized project, let’s dig into some steak/these brownies/some dessert… I haven’t in a long time.” Not only is it dangerous, but you eventually lower the criteria for “event for celebration”, and it’s so easy to give in.</p>\r\n<p>One way to suppress this urge to give in, says Sebastian, is thinking the following: “Self destruction is generally counterproductive.” It’s smart. The idea is that, all things considered, giving in is almost always net negative. So why do it?</p>\r\n<p>The thought goes from appealing to counterintuitive—usually, at least. Sometimes those brownies just smell <em>too good</em>.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*  *  *</p>\r\n<p>It’s important to think about why this works, since that could tell us what makes it so effective, and maybe we could apply this thinking elsewhere. When you get into a stage where you’ve done away with something and used your self-control to do so, you eventually fatigue of doing the correct, but enormously less satisfying thing. (At least, that’s what dieting tastes like.) Rewarding yourself is now appealing and your self-discipline is weak.</p>\r\n<p>So how does it work? My thought is: getting this reminder triggers a subconscious memory of when you first decided to set the goal, and reminds you of why you did it and what you imagined the end result to be. With this perspective floating in your mind, the urge to do better and be better, because indulging does mean a net negative, overpowers the nagging thought of the satisfaction of indulgence. <strong>This reminder gets you into the perspective and mindset from when you set your goal.</strong></p>\r\n<p>Another method for reconsidering the decision to indulge (or in this case, to drop the ball) is the well-known <a href=\"http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://lifehacker.com']);\">Seinfeld rule of “don’t break the chain”</a> for keeping habits. I think there are a lot of ways this can be triggered.</p>\r\n<p>However, rewards are definitely important, and sometimes indulging is the right thing to do. The problem lies with that it’s too easy to get into a habit of bad rewards. The idea of repositioning your perspective to see things from a past mindset can help set better, net-positive rewards. It’s powerful because one thing that is incredibly hard to hold on to is a mindset you had in the past, which you used to set a goal. Sometimes, after a short while of inspiration and discipline, it deteriorates, while the urge to defect becomes stronger. Being in the original mindset is a good way to hold fast to your original goal.</p>\r\n","created_at":1427607300,"updated_at":1427607782}},{"id":"1","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"1d065a3a-d351-476c-94f7-5340f82764b8","name":"psychology","central":true,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"0","type":"TAG","startNode":"0","endNode":"1","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"1","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"1d065a3a-d351-476c-94f7-5340f82764b8","name":"psychology","central":true,"public":true}},{"id":"3","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"2ab81123-2c21-4a9f-9b21-c891daad17e5","title":"‘Always choose to be happy’ is toxic advice","slug":"always-choose-to-be-happy-is-toxic-advice","subtitle":"It prevents you from changing yourself","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"personal,psychology","content":"            <p>I hear about the idea of ‘choosing to be happy’ frequently. When we talk about improving our lives during our short existence, it’s oft-repeated advice.</p><p>Here’s the idea: when you’re not happy, or when you’re not satisfied, or even when you’re depressed, you can make the decision to be happy instead. You have the choice to be happy or sad – and, given the fact that you only have limited time on Earth, which one do you want to pick? Happy, of course.</p><p>So, ‘always choose to be happy.’</p><p>I find this approach to be extremely ineffective. Although it’s nice to acknowledge that you always have the choice to be happy or not when dealing with a situation, I think that there is less value in simply ‘choosing to be happy’ and <strong>more value in choosing to be unhappy and doing something about it</strong>.</p><h3>Choosing to be unhappy</h3><p>In my personal life, changes have often stemmed from my unhappiness with something and making a decision to change it. I’ve made positive changes because I chose to be unhappy (or even angry) about something that needed to change.</p><p>I feel like the idea of ‘choosing to be happy’ is simply a temporary escape, a band-aid that treats the surface, but not the root cause. It solves the symptom of unhappiness, but not the problem itself. That mindset <strong>robs us of the anger and impetus we need</strong> to make a change and attack the root of the problem.</p><p>For example, you might not be happy because you’re out of shape, which is making dating difficult. In that instance, you can choose to reject being unhappy and be happy instead, which allows you to relax and feel not so bad about the problems you’re facing.</p><p>But what does that change? What progress have you made? In this instance, choosing to be happy is only a temporary solution to the symptom, not the actual root cause, of your unhappiness. Here, choosing to be happy only solves, “<strong>I’m unhappy</strong> because I’m overweight”, the symptom, not “<strong>I’m overweight</strong>, and need to start exercising and eating better”, the problem.</p><p>Being unhappy is difficult, and it’s far from satisfying. However, I think some of the most important developments in your life can come from being unhappy and choosing to do something about it. Choosing to do something about the root cause of your unhappiness isn’t the same as choosing to solve the symptom of unhappiness itself. Lasting happiness comes from <strong>understanding that root cause and making something happen</strong>, not from numbing the resulting unhappiness by ignoring it.</p><h3>When you’re unhappy, there are three things you can do</h3><ol><li><strong>You can choose to be happy</strong>, but that only solves the symptom temporarily and doesn’t result in any long-term resolution – it just makes you feel better for the moment.</li><li><strong>You can choose to continue being unhappy</strong>&nbsp;and wallow in sadness (which is addictive), but that also will change nothing – and it will continue to make you more and more unhappy.</li><li><strong>You can change something</strong>&nbsp;that actually attacks the cause of your unhappiness, not just the effect of unhappiness itself, and try to eliminate the reason you are unhappy.</li></ol><p>Conquering the root causes of unhappiness is very difficult to do, because it requires so much willpower, and the alternative options – wallowing in sadness, or choosing to be happy for the short-term and treating the symptom – are so much easier to do (and are so much more tempting) than working to cure the true underlying issue.</p><p>But choosing to be unhappy and doing something about it is the only way that you will solve the actual problem. It’s the only way you can make progress in your life, by solving the real problems that are holding you back.</p>\r\n","created_at":1427607960,"updated_at":1427607960}}],"relationships":[{"id":"6","type":"TAG","startNode":"3","endNode":"1","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"3","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"2ab81123-2c21-4a9f-9b21-c891daad17e5","title":"‘Always choose to be happy’ is toxic advice","slug":"always-choose-to-be-happy-is-toxic-advice","subtitle":"It prevents you from changing yourself","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"personal,psychology","content":"            <p>I hear about the idea of ‘choosing to be happy’ frequently. When we talk about improving our lives during our short existence, it’s oft-repeated advice.</p><p>Here’s the idea: when you’re not happy, or when you’re not satisfied, or even when you’re depressed, you can make the decision to be happy instead. You have the choice to be happy or sad – and, given the fact that you only have limited time on Earth, which one do you want to pick? Happy, of course.</p><p>So, ‘always choose to be happy.’</p><p>I find this approach to be extremely ineffective. Although it’s nice to acknowledge that you always have the choice to be happy or not when dealing with a situation, I think that there is less value in simply ‘choosing to be happy’ and <strong>more value in choosing to be unhappy and doing something about it</strong>.</p><h3>Choosing to be unhappy</h3><p>In my personal life, changes have often stemmed from my unhappiness with something and making a decision to change it. I’ve made positive changes because I chose to be unhappy (or even angry) about something that needed to change.</p><p>I feel like the idea of ‘choosing to be happy’ is simply a temporary escape, a band-aid that treats the surface, but not the root cause. It solves the symptom of unhappiness, but not the problem itself. That mindset <strong>robs us of the anger and impetus we need</strong> to make a change and attack the root of the problem.</p><p>For example, you might not be happy because you’re out of shape, which is making dating difficult. In that instance, you can choose to reject being unhappy and be happy instead, which allows you to relax and feel not so bad about the problems you’re facing.</p><p>But what does that change? What progress have you made? In this instance, choosing to be happy is only a temporary solution to the symptom, not the actual root cause, of your unhappiness. Here, choosing to be happy only solves, “<strong>I’m unhappy</strong> because I’m overweight”, the symptom, not “<strong>I’m overweight</strong>, and need to start exercising and eating better”, the problem.</p><p>Being unhappy is difficult, and it’s far from satisfying. However, I think some of the most important developments in your life can come from being unhappy and choosing to do something about it. Choosing to do something about the root cause of your unhappiness isn’t the same as choosing to solve the symptom of unhappiness itself. Lasting happiness comes from <strong>understanding that root cause and making something happen</strong>, not from numbing the resulting unhappiness by ignoring it.</p><h3>When you’re unhappy, there are three things you can do</h3><ol><li><strong>You can choose to be happy</strong>, but that only solves the symptom temporarily and doesn’t result in any long-term resolution – it just makes you feel better for the moment.</li><li><strong>You can choose to continue being unhappy</strong>&nbsp;and wallow in sadness (which is addictive), but that also will change nothing – and it will continue to make you more and more unhappy.</li><li><strong>You can change something</strong>&nbsp;that actually attacks the cause of your unhappiness, not just the effect of unhappiness itself, and try to eliminate the reason you are unhappy.</li></ol><p>Conquering the root causes of unhappiness is very difficult to do, because it requires so much willpower, and the alternative options – wallowing in sadness, or choosing to be happy for the short-term and treating the symptom – are so much easier to do (and are so much more tempting) than working to cure the true underlying issue.</p><p>But choosing to be unhappy and doing something about it is the only way that you will solve the actual problem. It’s the only way you can make progress in your life, by solving the real problems that are holding you back.</p>\r\n","created_at":1427607960,"updated_at":1427607960}},{"id":"4","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6bf2236c-a8c9-4cb6-ae1d-ffc4a8b50bfd","name":"personal","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"4","type":"TAG","startNode":"3","endNode":"4","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"4","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6bf2236c-a8c9-4cb6-ae1d-ffc4a8b50bfd","name":"personal","central":false,"public":true}},{"id":"5","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"f34a0444-d801-4a7e-aef3-af8aab179123","title":"The void of losing someone you don’t know","slug":"the-void-of-losing-someone-you-dont-know","subtitle":"On Aaron Schwartz.","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"personal","content":"            <p>I didn’t know Aaron Swartz personally. We never spoke, not in person nor by email.</p><p>Yet, <a href=\"http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html\" data-mce-href=\"http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html\">his suicide today</a> has left a big hole in the world for me.</p><p>I found my own sadness baffling. I didn’t know the guy. Why did I, deep down, feel such a void in the world?</p><p>The reason was: I felt a rare connection to Aaron because of his thoughts and actions. An invisible connection that only existed at the intellectual level, not a social one, through his writing, technology, politics, and his willingness to show humanness.</p><p>His writing and thoughts connected with me, especially his <a href=\"http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve\" data-mce-href=\"http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve\">Raw Nerve</a> series on how to become better at being human. His writing showed me that other people were thinking about the same things I was, in terms of the “backstory” of being human, the inner. I felt like I was on the same wavelength with another human that was thinking and devoting time to these inner pursuits.</p><p>His code and contributions to software were inspiring, in Python, RSS, and elsewhere. Relentlessly making progress and thinking about the macro game of software and technology. Same wavelength.</p><p>His JSTOR incident? Not exactly the same wavelength. But fighting for progressive policies in government, liberating information in science and law, using the closer-to-democracy tool of the Internet to do that? Absolutely.</p><p>His <a href=\"http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/verysick\" data-mce-href=\"http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/verysick\">writings on depression</a> showed that, like all of us, he was human, and, like all of us, he suffered. But few of us show vulnerability and humanity. Many of us hide behind facades of <em>“how are you?” “great!”</em>, smiling photos, and upbeat Facebook statuses, preferring not to talk about what really goes on inside our heads.</p><p><strong>Here’s a guy who I felt a deep connection to</strong>, because we were on the same wavelength – through openly showing humanity, a devotion to improving oneself, using technology for change, and changing the macro political environment. There aren’t a lot of people that I feel a multi-faceted intellectual connection with, but Aaron was one of them.</p><p>And despite not knowing him at all, his death left me feeling a void in the world. Because the world lost a brilliant person, but also because the world lost someone whose ideas I believed so much in, whose ability to put those thoughts into action was admirable, whose willingness to show vulnerability and humanness was something I feel like the world desperately needs more of.</p><p><strong>But good often comes from bad.</strong> And the good, in this case, is the realization that we should aim to connect with more people, on a deeper wavelength. We should all be working relentlessly to put our feelings into words and into action, and not be afraid to show that, yes, we are actually human, and yes, we do have things we really believe in but haven’t yet acted upon, and we do have moments where we feel on top of the world and also the moments where we feel absolutely hopeless.</p><p>And we should all be working to make the most of our time in the world, to make sure we don’t squander our most limited resource, and instead maximize it, to connect to and affect more lives in this world.</p><p><strong>We might not all be socially connected, but the work that we do connects us as a community. And our collective work makes history.</strong></p><p>Thanks, Aaron.</p>","created_at":1427608020,"updated_at":1427608020}}],"relationships":[{"id":"8","type":"TAG","startNode":"5","endNode":"4","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"2","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"15df7aa2-f471-45c5-a688-44e434010ab1","name":"goals","central":false,"public":true}},{"id":"6","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"6aff8d13-0b9b-436e-bc57-c137ee591b29","title":"Building Sustainable Habits: Why We Make Excuses and Resist Habit Change","slug":"building-sustainable-habits-why-we-make-excuses-and-resist-habit-change","subtitle":"Understanding and removing inner resistance to habit change.","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,habits,goals","content":"            <p>Why do we have so many goals in our lives that we never do? Why do people know that exercise is good for them, and will make them healthier, but never do it? Answering this question is core to figuring out how to change people’s behaviors and help people execute on the goals and habits they’ve been trying to build.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The answer lies in the idea that we know that it’s good for us, but the instinctive and impulsive part of our mind&nbsp;doesn’t want to carry out the habit because <em>it</em> doesn’t know that it’s good for us. Why is that? And how do we change this and build sustainable habits using as little willpower as possible?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Interactive: Think of a habit or goal you’ve been trying to build, but haven’t gotten around to doing. For many people, the top one is exercising and losing weight; for others, it’s writing more, or reading more, or focusing on work. I’ll be using an example throughout the article, and for me, my main habit that I’m trying to cultivate is exercise. As you read this article, see if you can apply the concepts herein to that habit that you’re working on.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>We know that it’s good for us</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>We consciously know that our habit that we want to build is good for us and that it will improve our life. We know that exercising every day will allow us to be healthier, feel better, and improve both how long we live and the quality of our life. Those sound like amazing advantages—who wouldn’t like to work towards that? Or, if you’re trying to build a writing habit, you know that writing will allow you to express yourself better, be better and communication and persuasion, and it pays dividends for many areas of your life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So if we know that it’s good for us, why don’t we do it? The fact that logical reasoning alone can’t change our behavior in many cases suggests that there’s something other than logical reasoning that controls our behavior and what we decide to do and pursue. When we want to start every morning with a workout routine, or write for fifteen minutes a day, what’s stopping us?</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">Figuring out the reason why we <em>know</em> we should be doing a habit (like exercising or reading or focusing at work) but don’t do it is critical to figuring out what’s holding us back, and how to break through that glass ceiling that prevents us from building habits.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>We know that it’s good for us, but we don’t do it</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>Your conscious side has reasoned out the benefits, and knows, rationally, that exercising is a good idea and will greatly improve your quality of life, or that writing will pay dividends over the entire period of your life by helping you communicate better. But there’s another side that sometimes differs in opinion with the conscious side, and it’s the side that resists change and pushes back on us when we want to build new habits: the instinctive side.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When I get up and contemplate doing a morning run or hitting the gym for an hour to do a workout, the resistance from my instinctive side kicks in. My conscious side knows that it’s a good idea to go for a run or go to the gym and get it done, for all the reasons I already know: better health, feel great during the day, higher mental performance, etc. But my instinctive side says that it’ll be difficult and painful, and I just don’t <em>feel</em> like doing it… it’s just so much work, and I’d rather just go and get my day started.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My conscious side might agree that exercising is a good idea, but my instinctive side resists.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Knowing is conscious, doing is mostly instinctive</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>There are two different systems that we use to think, according to the dual process theory popularized by Daniel Kahneman. System 1 is the fast, instinctive, and automatic method of thinking, and some functions include fast reactions, skills, and other instinctive actions. System 2 is the slow, calculated, logic-based method of thinking, which relies heavily on rationality. It turns out that System 1 is the one that decides most of our actions, though System 2 is consulted from time to time for when a decision requires more thought and deliberation.<a href=\"#note-1\" name=\"return-1\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>1</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Our conscious side is the one that <em>knows</em> what the right thing to do is. Using rational explanations and reasoning, we know that exercise is better for us. But our instinctive side is the one that is deciding a lot of the <em>doing</em>. And we’re naturally opposed to pain and difficulty, so the instinctive side is naturally against doing new things and implementing new habits. The way that we’re able to persuade ourselves to go and do new things is by allowing our conscious side to win over the instinctive side when we’re at the point of decision.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">When we think about whether we want to carry out a new habit, the thing in our minds that is making excuses to avoid carrying it out and saying “I don’t feel like doing it today” is the instinctive side creating resistance. We are instinctively and impulsively opposed to carrying out the habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/articles/building-sustainable-habits/visualizing-the-gap.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 470px;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Sit back and think for a minute</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>This might help you go from <em>reading</em> the idea that I’m writing about, to <em>feeling</em> what I mean. I think it’ll lead to a better understanding of this article, and going beyond “just reading” to having a real connection and spark in your mind where you’ll really get it, which I think will be beneficial.</p>\r\n\r\n<p> Sit back and think about the habit you’ve been trying to do, and think about the conscious side. Logically, why is it good to do that habit? What are the benefits? Why do we want to pursue it—for health, or better work, or for learning?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s strange that despite those benefits, we still don’t do it.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Then, think about the instinctive side, and be honest with yourself. What were the excuses you gave last time you considered doing that habit and didn’t? </p>\r\n\r\n<p>What if I told you to do that habit right now? Pause on reading this article, and exercise, right now. Or meditate, or write, or pursue your dream project, right now. What’s going through your mind? Do you notice your conscious side knowing you <em>should</em> be doing that thing, and the instinctive side resisting against it, and the excuses it’s giving? <a href=\"#note-0\" name=\"return-0\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>0</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>That’s the conscious side and instinctive side at odds, and that’s why we feel resistance when we try to build new habits.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>And in my experience, most of the time, the instinctive side wins.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Conscious vs. instinctive value systems</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>Let’s step back and take a closer look at the two sides.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">My theory is that our conscious and instinctive sides differ in what they want because they have different value systems. They value habits and behaviors in different ways.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I believe that <strong>the conscious side assigns value using logical reasoning and rational explanations.</strong> From what we know about health, exercising is the most important thing that we can do to keep in good health, physically and mentally. We’ve read the articles, we’ve had the conversations with friends, and we’ve seen the scientific evidence. It makes sense to us, <em>consciously</em>, that exercising is crucial for our well-being and for living well.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The instinctive side assigns value using past experience and past evidence.</strong> It distills past experience and builds evidence to value a certain behavior. In contrast to the conscious side’s logic-based approach, if our past experience of exercise has shown that it’s difficult and painful and stressful, then we’re going to avoid doing it. We expect it to continue being difficult and painful and stressful, so we are instinctively against doing it since that’s what we expect.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">Conscious values are made up of logical evidence, whereas instinctive values are made up of experiential evidence.<a href=\"#note-2\" name=\"return-2\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>2</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>For some behaviors, the conscious and instinctive values match. This is the case for those core day-to-day things that we do, like brushing your teeth. In these cases where it matches, such as brushing your teeth, <strong>the conscious side, through reason,</strong> knows that it’s beneficial for good health, looking good, and social acceptance, and <strong>the instinctive side, through past evidence and experience,</strong> agrees that this is true and that it’s worth doing. The values match.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>However, in the cases that it doesn’t match, where our conscious values are at odds with our instinctive values, it results in resistance where the instinctive side doesn’t want to go through with the habit. In some cases, like with exercise, the instinctive side is partially right. Exercise <em>is</em> painful and difficult and stressful. But what the instinctive side doesn’t understand is that it’s for the better. The instinctive side isn’t good at calculating long-term benefit<a href=\"#note-3\" name=\"return-3\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>3</sup></a>, whereas our conscious side knows that it does have an immense long-term benefit. What we need to do is to impose our conscious values on our instinctive side, to try to override what our instinctive side wants to do, and try to convince our instinctive side using logical reasoning and awareness of long-term benefit from the conscious side.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>At the point of decision, we have two choices. We can decide to put on workout shorts and hit the gym, or otherwise carry out the habit that we consciously want to do. Or we can make excuses, say “I don’t feel like it” and procrastinate it to the eternal tomorrow. Resistance is created between the two sides. The way that we decide to go forward with the habit is by imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side. The way that we decide to skip the habit and say “I’ll do it tomorrow” is by succumbing to our instinctive side and its excuses, and letting it win.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>There’s a gap that exists between our conscious value and instinctive value of that habit. It’s what I call a decision gap, and it defines whether or not the conscious and instinctive side are in accord with its decision to do something. The gap is bigger if the habit is more difficult or unattractive, such as exercising, because the more difficult the habit, the more the instinctive side doesn’t want to do it, creating a bigger gap.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">We cross that gap and execute on the habit by imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory on the way that we do this is through <strong>willpower</strong>. Willpower is what allows us to put in the work to do an action, even though we don’t feel like doing it. We use willpower to force ourselves to ignore what we <em>feel like</em> doing, and instead we do what we <em>should</em> be doing. We use willpower to get ourselves to the gym when we don’t feel like it, and when we do that, we override our instinctive values and what it <em>wants</em> to do, with our conscious values and what we <em>should</em> be doing, and bridge the gap between them, resulting in doing the right action.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>If the habit is more difficult, the gap is bigger, and more willpower is needed. A small gap would be doing 3 pushups; a large one would be doing 100 in a minute. You’d need a lot more willpower to be able to convince yourself to try to do 100 pushups in a minute than you’d need to do 3.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So now, we’ve talked about the two different ways of thinking that sometimes create resistance with new habits, why they create resistance, and conceptually, how we overcome that. Time to put it together. How do we start building sustainable habits?</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Building sustainable habits</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>We know that the difference between how much we consciously value and instinctively value a habit creates a gap. We bridge that gap using willpower, which is imposing our conscious values on our instinctive values for that habit. And instinctive values are derived from experience and evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory on developing sustainable habits is based on two ideas:</p>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>The main thing that will allow us to make a habit automatic is by having our instinctive values and conscious values be in accord, and both want to carry out an action. <strong>So, we should work towards matching our instinctive values with our conscious values.</strong> We do so by giving our instinctive side evidence to match and agree with the conscious values.</p>\r\n    <p>We can’t rely on willpower forever, so it’s best if we try to close that gap, which requires willpower to bridge. This is the point where a habit becomes habitual, since you find value in it, and carry it out without resistance.</p>\r\n  </li>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>In order to work towards building evidence for the instinctive side, <strong>we carry out the habit, which results in developing evidence for the habit, but aim to use as little willpower as possible to do so.</strong> If possible, we have to stop relying on willpower and assume that we have close to zero willpower. If we design it so that it takes very little willpower to carry out an action, extra willpower is a bonus.<a href=\"#note-4\" name=\"return-4\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>4</sup></a></p>\r\n  </li>\r\n</ol>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">The idea is to eventually match our instinctive values with our conscious values, so that they can be in accord and make the habit automatic. The way that we do that is to build up evidence for our instinctive side, while using as little willpower as possible to build up that evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Applying this model to an exercise habit</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>This is how I’d do it, in the context of exercising:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Setting the goal.</strong> I’d like to exercise every morning. I’ll narrow the scope of the exercise to focus on pushups; to put a quantitative metric on it, I’ll say that I want to do 100 pushups a day; and anchor it to my living routine, I’ll say that I want to get in the habit of doing 100 pushups every morning.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Right now, going from zero to 100 pushups is very, very difficult, and I’m bound to have a lot of resistance to doing 100 pushups, especially right after waking up and needing coffee. The gap there is huge, and it would take a lot of willpower, every morning, to try to achieve that goal. So instead, I’ll apply what we know about willpower and how it takes a lot more to bridge a large gap, and reduce the gap.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Starting out.</strong> The way to use as little willpower as possible is to start out really, really small. I’ll start out with 3 pushups. The gap of required willpower to do just 3 pushups is considerably smaller. My conscious side thinks it’s a good idea to get some exercise, and my instinctive side, while it would still prefer to not do pushups, has far less resistance to just doing three pushups because of the ease of doing so. It only requires a bit of willpower to get myself to drop down and do just those three pushups.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>After doing those three pushups, I add a little bit of evidence to my instinctive side. “That wasn’t so bad. I could do that. And I feel good about accomplishing the habit, even though it was small.” And the fact that I did carry out the habit creates momentum for the next time I consider doing the habit, and I’ll be more inclined to do that habit in the future since there’s evidence that I’ve done it in the past.<a href=\"#note-5\" name=\"return-5\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>5</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Tomorrow, I might continue doing three pushups. I’m continuing to build evidence on the instinctive side, and it becomes easier and easier to do, and requires less and less willpower. I’m also continuing to <em>make doing the pushups themselves habitual</em>, and get in the habit of doing pushups at all, which is an essential foundation to scale up from.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Scaling up.</strong> Once I’ve made that habit stick and the instinctive side has that evidence, I’m set to scale the intensity up a bit. I’ll scale up to five pushups, continuing to focus on using as little willpower as possible. Now that my instinctive side has more evidence, I can convince myself using little willpower to do two pushups. Then I’ll continue building evidence until I’m comfortable with two pushups and that it becomes easy to do, and then I can scale up again when two becomes easy. As I build more evidence up, I can do 5, then 8, then 12, then 16, then 20, then 30, then 50.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/articles/building-sustainable-habits/scaling-up.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 470px;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The important part to scaling up is to be mindful of how much willpower I am using, and use that as feedback on how much I should scale up and when.</strong> I need to make sure that I’m not overstepping my bounds, and that I’m building the habit with a good success rate that’s not too low and not too high. If I’m not succeeding enough, then it means that the gap is too large and I need to use more willpower than necessary, and I need to scale back. If I’m succeeding all the time, that means that I’m not scaling up fast enough. Being at a biased balance<a href=\"#note-6\" name=\"return-6\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>6</sup></a> of a point where it’s only a bit of a stretch is the optimal position, in my opinion, since you’re making progress on the stretch part while keeping yourself emotionally grounded by having some success.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Contrast this with the usual method of doing this, which is to set an arbitrary habit and try to will ourselves to do it, like setting up a habit of 50 pushups a day. That’s not sustainable, since we have to will ourselves into doing 50 pushups a day, and I believe the success rate, both short-term and especially long-term, is low, because we’re relying on having a lot of willpower every day, which is not always the case. As we try to do this habit, we might succeed for the first few days or the first week on willpower and being inspired, but the gap is still large, and it still requires a lot of willpower to execute at the end. After the first week, we’re bound to drop it one day when we don’t have time, or just don’t <em>feel</em> like doing it (i.e. not having the willpower to do it). Now we’re at risk of dropping the habit altogether since we’ve missed a day, and the willpower gap is still large, and we might miss another, and end up thinking a few weeks later, “whatever happened to that habit?” This is the stumbling around that many people do with new habits that they do, and seems to be a textbook model of failure for new year’s resolutions.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In this method, at each stage, I’m making sure I’m using as little willpower as possible to reach success for that particular level. And at each stage, I’m simultaneously building up evidence for those levels on the instinctive side. Hopefully, the instinctive side is seeing benefits, continuing to build up evidence, and at some point, I might notice real benefits. Maybe I feel better during the day, or maybe I feel like I’m performing better mentally, or, if I’m doing more intense exercise, maybe the pounds on the scale are decreasing instead of going the other way. These act as additional pieces of evidence that really make a big difference on us, to keep going and continue doing this habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is more sustainable. We are building up real value on our instinctive side instead of always trying to use willpower to convince our instinctive side to do the habit and adopt the conscious viewpoint. We can start small, scale up, and constantly be at the point where it’s enough of a stretch for us to make progress, but not difficult enough that there’s a big gap and we have to constantly have to use a lot of willpower to carry out the habit. Over time, we build real evidence for the instinctive side to value the habit and eventually do it automatically.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>And eventually, and sustainably, I reach 100 pushups every morning. Not by willing myself to do it for weeks—no, I would have quit way before reaching 100 pushups. Instead, it’s by building up real evidence for doing 3, 5, 8, 12 pushups, and scaling up.<a href=\"#note-7\" name=\"return-7\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>7</sup></a> And one December 3rd, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, I reached 100 myself.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Sustainable habit development, summarized</h3>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n  <li>Define the habit or goal. Focus (pushups, not just exercise), and be specific (100 pushups, every morning). Keep in mind that the idea is to build instinctive evidence so that it matches your conscious desire to develop the habit, which leads to the point where the habit is truly habitual, and is done automatically.</li>\r\n  <li>Start incredibly small, at the point where you’ll feel almost no resistance to doing it. In my example, this was starting out with just 3 pushups to get yourself into the habit of doing <em>something</em>. This will allow you to sustainably execute the habit, to build instinctive evidence.</li>\r\n  <li>Keep doing the habit, while keeping in mind how much willpower that you require to carry out the habit. While you do the habit, the instinctive side is developing evidence for you to continue doing that habit.</li>\r\n  <li>Scale up when you’re comfortable with the current level. Aim towards doing what you can do and then some (a ‘stretch’ goal). Scale down when it feels too difficult, but make sure it’s still at a stretch level.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n\r\n<h3>The real end game</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>When we try to develop habits, we’re trying to get to the point where we’re doing something habitually—when we’re doing it automatically. The critical point where a habit truly becomes habitual is when your conscious and instinctive values are in line with each other. That’s when you feel like you rationally know that it’s a good thing to do, and the instinctive side agrees. That’s when you feel weird when you <em>don’t</em> do it. Like the compulsion you have to brush your teeth, because it would be weird not to. And the compulsion that people who are used to exercising every day to do their workout or their run or whatnot. Those people feel weird when they don’t do it. They’re happy to do the habit and they <em>want</em> to—and it doesn’t take much work or self-convincing to do so. It’s automatic.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>This means that after you get through the difficult stage of habit formation, you get to the point where you’re automatically doing the habit and it’s paying dividends in your life. You get to the point where exercise feels natural, writing is enjoyable, or eating well is something you do normally—just like how brushing your teeth is just natural and habitual—and it continues to improve your life, automatically, from then on. Amazing how that works, and it really inspires me to get the right habits in place so that they can improve my life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So let’s get to it. Engineer your habit building to work towards developing a sustainable habit. Keep in mind that the resistance you feel is the instinctive side lacking evidence. Build that evidence, and use the easiest pathway to do so: by using as little willpower as possible. Scale up and adjust. See the results, and feel good about them. The initial investment is immense, but the long-term benefit of building a sustainable habit is creating a habit that will improve the quality of your life, automatically, for the rest of your life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>My primary work at the moment is research on habit formation and how we can use technology to assist in it. This is part of my theory of habit formation, which is constantly changing, and I present this as a possible explanation about the role of the two minds in habit formation and the source of resistance.</em></p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d also love to chat if you’re in the space. Drop me a line at mark@markbao.com.</em></p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-section\">\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-section-marker\"></div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-0\" name=\"note-0\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">0</a> — “In summary, most of what you (your System 2) think and do originates in your System 1, but System 2 takes over when things get difficult, and it normally has the last word.” I agree that System 2 does deliver input when things get difficult, but I feel that whether it can <em>override</em> System 1 depends on whether System 1 can answer the question in the first place. It can offer input and be the final say in situations of complex thinking, like difficult math problems, since System 1 doesn’t have a way to figure out the problem and doesn’t have a say in the issue. But when System 1 and System 2 both believe something, I don’t think System 1 defers to System 2. In that case, System 2 overriding System 1 is not so easy (and requires willpower). Kahneman seems to touch on this later: “One of the tasks of System 2 is to overcome the impulses of System 1. In other words, System 2 is in charge of self-control.”</p>\r\n\r\n  <p><em>Kahneman,&nbsp;D. (2011). Two Systems – Plot Synopsis. (24-26) In Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.</em></p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-1\" name=\"note-1\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">1</a> — Sometimes, I think the excuses we’re giving ourselves are post-rationalizations, where we decide instinctively that we don’t want to do something, then we try to rationalize that by saying we have too much work or we don’t “feel like it” that day. It seems that rationalization is not leading to a decision, but the decision leads to rationalization to try to convince ourselves retroactively on why that decision is right.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-2\" name=\"note-2\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">2</a> — One interesting way to look at conscious values and instinctive values is to look at what they’re made up of. Assuming that conscious values are made up of logical evidence, and instinctive values are made up of experiential evidence, the ‘units’ of evidence differ. I think logical evidence is made up of bits of information gained externally, and bits of reasoning which is done through thought internally using external information, which all combine somehow to result in some degree of value. (External information: “Exercise is good for losing weight”; internal information: “I’m overweight, so I need to lose weight, by using exercise.”)</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>On the other hand, I believe that experiential evidence is made up of singular events and our rationalizations about those events (that was awesome, that was stressful, that was disappointing, etc.) and those similarly combine to result in a degree of value. (Exercise event: “Worked out for half an hour yesterday.” Resulting rationalization/feelings: “It was painful.”)</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>It’s interesting to think about the ‘bits’ that go into creating a singular metric of how we value something. Is there a linear scale for value, or is it more complicated than that? Now we’re treading the line between psychology and philosophy.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-3\" name=\"note-3\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">3</a> — Kahneman presents the idea of WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is), which essentially says that the instinctive side uses limited evidence to jump to conclusions, making it difficult for that side to make long-term decisions. I believe that it still tries to make long-term decisions when emotionally charged.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p><em>Kahneman,&nbsp;D. (2011). Two Systems – What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI). (85) In Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.</em></p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-4\" name=\"note-4\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">4</a> — At some point, I’d like to research if <em>matching</em> willpower works even better, meaning matching the amount of willpower that someone actually has (or that we predict that they have). I wonder if that allows someone to perform better since it matches their current inherent motivation to do something. People who are more disciplined (see next note) might be able to apply more willpower to a goal, and might be frustrated with the slow movement of a regular path that assumes less willpower.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-5\" name=\"note-5\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">5</a> — I came up with a preliminary idea of ‘momentum’, which seems to be an interesting way to look at if our minds tend to believe that simply <em>doing</em> something in the past is enough evidence for doing it in the future, and other evidence like your current performance with that habit (such as weight already lost or other dividends already paid) are just bonuses. A habit becoming easier and easier and requiring less willpower to carry out might be partly the result of it being done in the past and you having the momentum to keep carrying out that habit.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>After some thinking, I’m inclined to believe that momentum is simply a subset of instinctual evidence (experiential evidence) that contributes to the whole of instinctual value, not something that acts on its own in the decision-making process.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-6\" name=\"note-6\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">6</a> — <em>Biased balance</em> is a concept that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The idea is that there are rarely instances where we should be on either extreme of something. Working all the time and having zero time to relax is a recipe for burnout and disaster. Believing something 100% and not being flexible to seeing the other sides of it is a recipe for ignorance. So we should be in balance: enough work, enough play. Enough belief, but also being flexible to seeing other viewpoints. Being in balance means that we can find the best parts of both extremes and apply them.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>But in many cases, we should be biased in that balance, to make progress on one side or the other. For me, it’s making sure that I’m working and relaxing, but I’m having the biased balance of focusing on working. It’s also making sure that I’m getting out of my comfort zone and experiencing new things, and also having time to be comfortable and enjoying that, but leaning on the side of getting out of my comfort zone more often than not. A balance allows us to be sustainable in what we do, and avoid burnout; a biased balance allows us to use balance as a good foundation, while making progress towards one side or the other.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-7\" name=\"note-7\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">7</a> —  Interestingly, we might see the ability to apply willpower and ‘will’ ourselves to do something as equivalent to discipline. The more discipline you have, the more able you are to use willpower to make yourself do something, and the bigger of a gap you can potentially attack. (In that, while normal people might scale up from 2 to 4 pushups successfully, highly-disciplined people might be able to scale up from 2 to 8 since they have a higher tolerance for using willpower, and can deal with larger gaps successfully.)</p>\r\n</div>\r\n</div>","created_at":1427608260,"updated_at":1427608260}}],"relationships":[{"id":"14","type":"TAG","startNode":"6","endNode":"2","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"6","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"6aff8d13-0b9b-436e-bc57-c137ee591b29","title":"Building Sustainable Habits: Why We Make Excuses and Resist Habit Change","slug":"building-sustainable-habits-why-we-make-excuses-and-resist-habit-change","subtitle":"Understanding and removing inner resistance to habit change.","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,habits,goals","content":"            <p>Why do we have so many goals in our lives that we never do? Why do people know that exercise is good for them, and will make them healthier, but never do it? Answering this question is core to figuring out how to change people’s behaviors and help people execute on the goals and habits they’ve been trying to build.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The answer lies in the idea that we know that it’s good for us, but the instinctive and impulsive part of our mind&nbsp;doesn’t want to carry out the habit because <em>it</em> doesn’t know that it’s good for us. Why is that? And how do we change this and build sustainable habits using as little willpower as possible?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Interactive: Think of a habit or goal you’ve been trying to build, but haven’t gotten around to doing. For many people, the top one is exercising and losing weight; for others, it’s writing more, or reading more, or focusing on work. I’ll be using an example throughout the article, and for me, my main habit that I’m trying to cultivate is exercise. As you read this article, see if you can apply the concepts herein to that habit that you’re working on.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>We know that it’s good for us</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>We consciously know that our habit that we want to build is good for us and that it will improve our life. We know that exercising every day will allow us to be healthier, feel better, and improve both how long we live and the quality of our life. Those sound like amazing advantages—who wouldn’t like to work towards that? Or, if you’re trying to build a writing habit, you know that writing will allow you to express yourself better, be better and communication and persuasion, and it pays dividends for many areas of your life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So if we know that it’s good for us, why don’t we do it? The fact that logical reasoning alone can’t change our behavior in many cases suggests that there’s something other than logical reasoning that controls our behavior and what we decide to do and pursue. When we want to start every morning with a workout routine, or write for fifteen minutes a day, what’s stopping us?</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">Figuring out the reason why we <em>know</em> we should be doing a habit (like exercising or reading or focusing at work) but don’t do it is critical to figuring out what’s holding us back, and how to break through that glass ceiling that prevents us from building habits.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>We know that it’s good for us, but we don’t do it</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>Your conscious side has reasoned out the benefits, and knows, rationally, that exercising is a good idea and will greatly improve your quality of life, or that writing will pay dividends over the entire period of your life by helping you communicate better. But there’s another side that sometimes differs in opinion with the conscious side, and it’s the side that resists change and pushes back on us when we want to build new habits: the instinctive side.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When I get up and contemplate doing a morning run or hitting the gym for an hour to do a workout, the resistance from my instinctive side kicks in. My conscious side knows that it’s a good idea to go for a run or go to the gym and get it done, for all the reasons I already know: better health, feel great during the day, higher mental performance, etc. But my instinctive side says that it’ll be difficult and painful, and I just don’t <em>feel</em> like doing it… it’s just so much work, and I’d rather just go and get my day started.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My conscious side might agree that exercising is a good idea, but my instinctive side resists.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Knowing is conscious, doing is mostly instinctive</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>There are two different systems that we use to think, according to the dual process theory popularized by Daniel Kahneman. System 1 is the fast, instinctive, and automatic method of thinking, and some functions include fast reactions, skills, and other instinctive actions. System 2 is the slow, calculated, logic-based method of thinking, which relies heavily on rationality. It turns out that System 1 is the one that decides most of our actions, though System 2 is consulted from time to time for when a decision requires more thought and deliberation.<a href=\"#note-1\" name=\"return-1\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>1</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Our conscious side is the one that <em>knows</em> what the right thing to do is. Using rational explanations and reasoning, we know that exercise is better for us. But our instinctive side is the one that is deciding a lot of the <em>doing</em>. And we’re naturally opposed to pain and difficulty, so the instinctive side is naturally against doing new things and implementing new habits. The way that we’re able to persuade ourselves to go and do new things is by allowing our conscious side to win over the instinctive side when we’re at the point of decision.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">When we think about whether we want to carry out a new habit, the thing in our minds that is making excuses to avoid carrying it out and saying “I don’t feel like doing it today” is the instinctive side creating resistance. We are instinctively and impulsively opposed to carrying out the habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/articles/building-sustainable-habits/visualizing-the-gap.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 470px;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Sit back and think for a minute</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>This might help you go from <em>reading</em> the idea that I’m writing about, to <em>feeling</em> what I mean. I think it’ll lead to a better understanding of this article, and going beyond “just reading” to having a real connection and spark in your mind where you’ll really get it, which I think will be beneficial.</p>\r\n\r\n<p> Sit back and think about the habit you’ve been trying to do, and think about the conscious side. Logically, why is it good to do that habit? What are the benefits? Why do we want to pursue it—for health, or better work, or for learning?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s strange that despite those benefits, we still don’t do it.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Then, think about the instinctive side, and be honest with yourself. What were the excuses you gave last time you considered doing that habit and didn’t? </p>\r\n\r\n<p>What if I told you to do that habit right now? Pause on reading this article, and exercise, right now. Or meditate, or write, or pursue your dream project, right now. What’s going through your mind? Do you notice your conscious side knowing you <em>should</em> be doing that thing, and the instinctive side resisting against it, and the excuses it’s giving? <a href=\"#note-0\" name=\"return-0\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>0</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>That’s the conscious side and instinctive side at odds, and that’s why we feel resistance when we try to build new habits.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>And in my experience, most of the time, the instinctive side wins.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Conscious vs. instinctive value systems</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>Let’s step back and take a closer look at the two sides.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">My theory is that our conscious and instinctive sides differ in what they want because they have different value systems. They value habits and behaviors in different ways.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I believe that <strong>the conscious side assigns value using logical reasoning and rational explanations.</strong> From what we know about health, exercising is the most important thing that we can do to keep in good health, physically and mentally. We’ve read the articles, we’ve had the conversations with friends, and we’ve seen the scientific evidence. It makes sense to us, <em>consciously</em>, that exercising is crucial for our well-being and for living well.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The instinctive side assigns value using past experience and past evidence.</strong> It distills past experience and builds evidence to value a certain behavior. In contrast to the conscious side’s logic-based approach, if our past experience of exercise has shown that it’s difficult and painful and stressful, then we’re going to avoid doing it. We expect it to continue being difficult and painful and stressful, so we are instinctively against doing it since that’s what we expect.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">Conscious values are made up of logical evidence, whereas instinctive values are made up of experiential evidence.<a href=\"#note-2\" name=\"return-2\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>2</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>For some behaviors, the conscious and instinctive values match. This is the case for those core day-to-day things that we do, like brushing your teeth. In these cases where it matches, such as brushing your teeth, <strong>the conscious side, through reason,</strong> knows that it’s beneficial for good health, looking good, and social acceptance, and <strong>the instinctive side, through past evidence and experience,</strong> agrees that this is true and that it’s worth doing. The values match.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>However, in the cases that it doesn’t match, where our conscious values are at odds with our instinctive values, it results in resistance where the instinctive side doesn’t want to go through with the habit. In some cases, like with exercise, the instinctive side is partially right. Exercise <em>is</em> painful and difficult and stressful. But what the instinctive side doesn’t understand is that it’s for the better. The instinctive side isn’t good at calculating long-term benefit<a href=\"#note-3\" name=\"return-3\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>3</sup></a>, whereas our conscious side knows that it does have an immense long-term benefit. What we need to do is to impose our conscious values on our instinctive side, to try to override what our instinctive side wants to do, and try to convince our instinctive side using logical reasoning and awareness of long-term benefit from the conscious side.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>At the point of decision, we have two choices. We can decide to put on workout shorts and hit the gym, or otherwise carry out the habit that we consciously want to do. Or we can make excuses, say “I don’t feel like it” and procrastinate it to the eternal tomorrow. Resistance is created between the two sides. The way that we decide to go forward with the habit is by imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side. The way that we decide to skip the habit and say “I’ll do it tomorrow” is by succumbing to our instinctive side and its excuses, and letting it win.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>There’s a gap that exists between our conscious value and instinctive value of that habit. It’s what I call a decision gap, and it defines whether or not the conscious and instinctive side are in accord with its decision to do something. The gap is bigger if the habit is more difficult or unattractive, such as exercising, because the more difficult the habit, the more the instinctive side doesn’t want to do it, creating a bigger gap.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">We cross that gap and execute on the habit by imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory on the way that we do this is through <strong>willpower</strong>. Willpower is what allows us to put in the work to do an action, even though we don’t feel like doing it. We use willpower to force ourselves to ignore what we <em>feel like</em> doing, and instead we do what we <em>should</em> be doing. We use willpower to get ourselves to the gym when we don’t feel like it, and when we do that, we override our instinctive values and what it <em>wants</em> to do, with our conscious values and what we <em>should</em> be doing, and bridge the gap between them, resulting in doing the right action.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>If the habit is more difficult, the gap is bigger, and more willpower is needed. A small gap would be doing 3 pushups; a large one would be doing 100 in a minute. You’d need a lot more willpower to be able to convince yourself to try to do 100 pushups in a minute than you’d need to do 3.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So now, we’ve talked about the two different ways of thinking that sometimes create resistance with new habits, why they create resistance, and conceptually, how we overcome that. Time to put it together. How do we start building sustainable habits?</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Building sustainable habits</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>We know that the difference between how much we consciously value and instinctively value a habit creates a gap. We bridge that gap using willpower, which is imposing our conscious values on our instinctive values for that habit. And instinctive values are derived from experience and evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory on developing sustainable habits is based on two ideas:</p>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>The main thing that will allow us to make a habit automatic is by having our instinctive values and conscious values be in accord, and both want to carry out an action. <strong>So, we should work towards matching our instinctive values with our conscious values.</strong> We do so by giving our instinctive side evidence to match and agree with the conscious values.</p>\r\n    <p>We can’t rely on willpower forever, so it’s best if we try to close that gap, which requires willpower to bridge. This is the point where a habit becomes habitual, since you find value in it, and carry it out without resistance.</p>\r\n  </li>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>In order to work towards building evidence for the instinctive side, <strong>we carry out the habit, which results in developing evidence for the habit, but aim to use as little willpower as possible to do so.</strong> If possible, we have to stop relying on willpower and assume that we have close to zero willpower. If we design it so that it takes very little willpower to carry out an action, extra willpower is a bonus.<a href=\"#note-4\" name=\"return-4\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>4</sup></a></p>\r\n  </li>\r\n</ol>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">The idea is to eventually match our instinctive values with our conscious values, so that they can be in accord and make the habit automatic. The way that we do that is to build up evidence for our instinctive side, while using as little willpower as possible to build up that evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Applying this model to an exercise habit</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>This is how I’d do it, in the context of exercising:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Setting the goal.</strong> I’d like to exercise every morning. I’ll narrow the scope of the exercise to focus on pushups; to put a quantitative metric on it, I’ll say that I want to do 100 pushups a day; and anchor it to my living routine, I’ll say that I want to get in the habit of doing 100 pushups every morning.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Right now, going from zero to 100 pushups is very, very difficult, and I’m bound to have a lot of resistance to doing 100 pushups, especially right after waking up and needing coffee. The gap there is huge, and it would take a lot of willpower, every morning, to try to achieve that goal. So instead, I’ll apply what we know about willpower and how it takes a lot more to bridge a large gap, and reduce the gap.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Starting out.</strong> The way to use as little willpower as possible is to start out really, really small. I’ll start out with 3 pushups. The gap of required willpower to do just 3 pushups is considerably smaller. My conscious side thinks it’s a good idea to get some exercise, and my instinctive side, while it would still prefer to not do pushups, has far less resistance to just doing three pushups because of the ease of doing so. It only requires a bit of willpower to get myself to drop down and do just those three pushups.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>After doing those three pushups, I add a little bit of evidence to my instinctive side. “That wasn’t so bad. I could do that. And I feel good about accomplishing the habit, even though it was small.” And the fact that I did carry out the habit creates momentum for the next time I consider doing the habit, and I’ll be more inclined to do that habit in the future since there’s evidence that I’ve done it in the past.<a href=\"#note-5\" name=\"return-5\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>5</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Tomorrow, I might continue doing three pushups. I’m continuing to build evidence on the instinctive side, and it becomes easier and easier to do, and requires less and less willpower. I’m also continuing to <em>make doing the pushups themselves habitual</em>, and get in the habit of doing pushups at all, which is an essential foundation to scale up from.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Scaling up.</strong> Once I’ve made that habit stick and the instinctive side has that evidence, I’m set to scale the intensity up a bit. I’ll scale up to five pushups, continuing to focus on using as little willpower as possible. Now that my instinctive side has more evidence, I can convince myself using little willpower to do two pushups. Then I’ll continue building evidence until I’m comfortable with two pushups and that it becomes easy to do, and then I can scale up again when two becomes easy. As I build more evidence up, I can do 5, then 8, then 12, then 16, then 20, then 30, then 50.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/articles/building-sustainable-habits/scaling-up.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 470px;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The important part to scaling up is to be mindful of how much willpower I am using, and use that as feedback on how much I should scale up and when.</strong> I need to make sure that I’m not overstepping my bounds, and that I’m building the habit with a good success rate that’s not too low and not too high. If I’m not succeeding enough, then it means that the gap is too large and I need to use more willpower than necessary, and I need to scale back. If I’m succeeding all the time, that means that I’m not scaling up fast enough. Being at a biased balance<a href=\"#note-6\" name=\"return-6\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>6</sup></a> of a point where it’s only a bit of a stretch is the optimal position, in my opinion, since you’re making progress on the stretch part while keeping yourself emotionally grounded by having some success.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Contrast this with the usual method of doing this, which is to set an arbitrary habit and try to will ourselves to do it, like setting up a habit of 50 pushups a day. That’s not sustainable, since we have to will ourselves into doing 50 pushups a day, and I believe the success rate, both short-term and especially long-term, is low, because we’re relying on having a lot of willpower every day, which is not always the case. As we try to do this habit, we might succeed for the first few days or the first week on willpower and being inspired, but the gap is still large, and it still requires a lot of willpower to execute at the end. After the first week, we’re bound to drop it one day when we don’t have time, or just don’t <em>feel</em> like doing it (i.e. not having the willpower to do it). Now we’re at risk of dropping the habit altogether since we’ve missed a day, and the willpower gap is still large, and we might miss another, and end up thinking a few weeks later, “whatever happened to that habit?” This is the stumbling around that many people do with new habits that they do, and seems to be a textbook model of failure for new year’s resolutions.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In this method, at each stage, I’m making sure I’m using as little willpower as possible to reach success for that particular level. And at each stage, I’m simultaneously building up evidence for those levels on the instinctive side. Hopefully, the instinctive side is seeing benefits, continuing to build up evidence, and at some point, I might notice real benefits. Maybe I feel better during the day, or maybe I feel like I’m performing better mentally, or, if I’m doing more intense exercise, maybe the pounds on the scale are decreasing instead of going the other way. These act as additional pieces of evidence that really make a big difference on us, to keep going and continue doing this habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is more sustainable. We are building up real value on our instinctive side instead of always trying to use willpower to convince our instinctive side to do the habit and adopt the conscious viewpoint. We can start small, scale up, and constantly be at the point where it’s enough of a stretch for us to make progress, but not difficult enough that there’s a big gap and we have to constantly have to use a lot of willpower to carry out the habit. Over time, we build real evidence for the instinctive side to value the habit and eventually do it automatically.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>And eventually, and sustainably, I reach 100 pushups every morning. Not by willing myself to do it for weeks—no, I would have quit way before reaching 100 pushups. Instead, it’s by building up real evidence for doing 3, 5, 8, 12 pushups, and scaling up.<a href=\"#note-7\" name=\"return-7\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>7</sup></a> And one December 3rd, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, I reached 100 myself.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Sustainable habit development, summarized</h3>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n  <li>Define the habit or goal. Focus (pushups, not just exercise), and be specific (100 pushups, every morning). Keep in mind that the idea is to build instinctive evidence so that it matches your conscious desire to develop the habit, which leads to the point where the habit is truly habitual, and is done automatically.</li>\r\n  <li>Start incredibly small, at the point where you’ll feel almost no resistance to doing it. In my example, this was starting out with just 3 pushups to get yourself into the habit of doing <em>something</em>. This will allow you to sustainably execute the habit, to build instinctive evidence.</li>\r\n  <li>Keep doing the habit, while keeping in mind how much willpower that you require to carry out the habit. While you do the habit, the instinctive side is developing evidence for you to continue doing that habit.</li>\r\n  <li>Scale up when you’re comfortable with the current level. Aim towards doing what you can do and then some (a ‘stretch’ goal). Scale down when it feels too difficult, but make sure it’s still at a stretch level.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n\r\n<h3>The real end game</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>When we try to develop habits, we’re trying to get to the point where we’re doing something habitually—when we’re doing it automatically. The critical point where a habit truly becomes habitual is when your conscious and instinctive values are in line with each other. That’s when you feel like you rationally know that it’s a good thing to do, and the instinctive side agrees. That’s when you feel weird when you <em>don’t</em> do it. Like the compulsion you have to brush your teeth, because it would be weird not to. And the compulsion that people who are used to exercising every day to do their workout or their run or whatnot. Those people feel weird when they don’t do it. They’re happy to do the habit and they <em>want</em> to—and it doesn’t take much work or self-convincing to do so. It’s automatic.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>This means that after you get through the difficult stage of habit formation, you get to the point where you’re automatically doing the habit and it’s paying dividends in your life. You get to the point where exercise feels natural, writing is enjoyable, or eating well is something you do normally—just like how brushing your teeth is just natural and habitual—and it continues to improve your life, automatically, from then on. Amazing how that works, and it really inspires me to get the right habits in place so that they can improve my life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So let’s get to it. Engineer your habit building to work towards developing a sustainable habit. Keep in mind that the resistance you feel is the instinctive side lacking evidence. Build that evidence, and use the easiest pathway to do so: by using as little willpower as possible. Scale up and adjust. See the results, and feel good about them. The initial investment is immense, but the long-term benefit of building a sustainable habit is creating a habit that will improve the quality of your life, automatically, for the rest of your life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>My primary work at the moment is research on habit formation and how we can use technology to assist in it. This is part of my theory of habit formation, which is constantly changing, and I present this as a possible explanation about the role of the two minds in habit formation and the source of resistance.</em></p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d also love to chat if you’re in the space. Drop me a line at mark@markbao.com.</em></p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-section\">\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-section-marker\"></div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-0\" name=\"note-0\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">0</a> — “In summary, most of what you (your System 2) think and do originates in your System 1, but System 2 takes over when things get difficult, and it normally has the last word.” I agree that System 2 does deliver input when things get difficult, but I feel that whether it can <em>override</em> System 1 depends on whether System 1 can answer the question in the first place. It can offer input and be the final say in situations of complex thinking, like difficult math problems, since System 1 doesn’t have a way to figure out the problem and doesn’t have a say in the issue. But when System 1 and System 2 both believe something, I don’t think System 1 defers to System 2. In that case, System 2 overriding System 1 is not so easy (and requires willpower). Kahneman seems to touch on this later: “One of the tasks of System 2 is to overcome the impulses of System 1. In other words, System 2 is in charge of self-control.”</p>\r\n\r\n  <p><em>Kahneman,&nbsp;D. (2011). Two Systems – Plot Synopsis. (24-26) In Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.</em></p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-1\" name=\"note-1\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">1</a> — Sometimes, I think the excuses we’re giving ourselves are post-rationalizations, where we decide instinctively that we don’t want to do something, then we try to rationalize that by saying we have too much work or we don’t “feel like it” that day. It seems that rationalization is not leading to a decision, but the decision leads to rationalization to try to convince ourselves retroactively on why that decision is right.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-2\" name=\"note-2\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">2</a> — One interesting way to look at conscious values and instinctive values is to look at what they’re made up of. Assuming that conscious values are made up of logical evidence, and instinctive values are made up of experiential evidence, the ‘units’ of evidence differ. I think logical evidence is made up of bits of information gained externally, and bits of reasoning which is done through thought internally using external information, which all combine somehow to result in some degree of value. (External information: “Exercise is good for losing weight”; internal information: “I’m overweight, so I need to lose weight, by using exercise.”)</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>On the other hand, I believe that experiential evidence is made up of singular events and our rationalizations about those events (that was awesome, that was stressful, that was disappointing, etc.) and those similarly combine to result in a degree of value. (Exercise event: “Worked out for half an hour yesterday.” Resulting rationalization/feelings: “It was painful.”)</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>It’s interesting to think about the ‘bits’ that go into creating a singular metric of how we value something. Is there a linear scale for value, or is it more complicated than that? Now we’re treading the line between psychology and philosophy.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-3\" name=\"note-3\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">3</a> — Kahneman presents the idea of WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is), which essentially says that the instinctive side uses limited evidence to jump to conclusions, making it difficult for that side to make long-term decisions. I believe that it still tries to make long-term decisions when emotionally charged.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p><em>Kahneman,&nbsp;D. (2011). Two Systems – What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI). (85) In Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.</em></p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-4\" name=\"note-4\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">4</a> — At some point, I’d like to research if <em>matching</em> willpower works even better, meaning matching the amount of willpower that someone actually has (or that we predict that they have). I wonder if that allows someone to perform better since it matches their current inherent motivation to do something. People who are more disciplined (see next note) might be able to apply more willpower to a goal, and might be frustrated with the slow movement of a regular path that assumes less willpower.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-5\" name=\"note-5\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">5</a> — I came up with a preliminary idea of ‘momentum’, which seems to be an interesting way to look at if our minds tend to believe that simply <em>doing</em> something in the past is enough evidence for doing it in the future, and other evidence like your current performance with that habit (such as weight already lost or other dividends already paid) are just bonuses. A habit becoming easier and easier and requiring less willpower to carry out might be partly the result of it being done in the past and you having the momentum to keep carrying out that habit.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>After some thinking, I’m inclined to believe that momentum is simply a subset of instinctual evidence (experiential evidence) that contributes to the whole of instinctual value, not something that acts on its own in the decision-making process.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-6\" name=\"note-6\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">6</a> — <em>Biased balance</em> is a concept that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The idea is that there are rarely instances where we should be on either extreme of something. Working all the time and having zero time to relax is a recipe for burnout and disaster. Believing something 100% and not being flexible to seeing the other sides of it is a recipe for ignorance. So we should be in balance: enough work, enough play. Enough belief, but also being flexible to seeing other viewpoints. Being in balance means that we can find the best parts of both extremes and apply them.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>But in many cases, we should be biased in that balance, to make progress on one side or the other. For me, it’s making sure that I’m working and relaxing, but I’m having the biased balance of focusing on working. It’s also making sure that I’m getting out of my comfort zone and experiencing new things, and also having time to be comfortable and enjoying that, but leaning on the side of getting out of my comfort zone more often than not. A balance allows us to be sustainable in what we do, and avoid burnout; a biased balance allows us to use balance as a good foundation, while making progress towards one side or the other.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-7\" name=\"note-7\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">7</a> —  Interestingly, we might see the ability to apply willpower and ‘will’ ourselves to do something as equivalent to discipline. The more discipline you have, the more able you are to use willpower to make yourself do something, and the bigger of a gap you can potentially attack. (In that, while normal people might scale up from 2 to 4 pushups successfully, highly-disciplined people might be able to scale up from 2 to 8 since they have a higher tolerance for using willpower, and can deal with larger gaps successfully.)</p>\r\n</div>\r\n</div>","created_at":1427608260,"updated_at":1427608260}},{"id":"7","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"3fea8d46-5ae3-4c71-a1ce-64c65871b51d","name":"habits","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"12","type":"TAG","startNode":"6","endNode":"7","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"1","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"1d065a3a-d351-476c-94f7-5340f82764b8","name":"psychology","central":true,"public":true}},{"id":"6","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"6aff8d13-0b9b-436e-bc57-c137ee591b29","title":"Building Sustainable Habits: Why We Make Excuses and Resist Habit Change","slug":"building-sustainable-habits-why-we-make-excuses-and-resist-habit-change","subtitle":"Understanding and removing inner resistance to habit change.","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,habits,goals","content":"            <p>Why do we have so many goals in our lives that we never do? Why do people know that exercise is good for them, and will make them healthier, but never do it? Answering this question is core to figuring out how to change people’s behaviors and help people execute on the goals and habits they’ve been trying to build.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The answer lies in the idea that we know that it’s good for us, but the instinctive and impulsive part of our mind&nbsp;doesn’t want to carry out the habit because <em>it</em> doesn’t know that it’s good for us. Why is that? And how do we change this and build sustainable habits using as little willpower as possible?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Interactive: Think of a habit or goal you’ve been trying to build, but haven’t gotten around to doing. For many people, the top one is exercising and losing weight; for others, it’s writing more, or reading more, or focusing on work. I’ll be using an example throughout the article, and for me, my main habit that I’m trying to cultivate is exercise. As you read this article, see if you can apply the concepts herein to that habit that you’re working on.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>We know that it’s good for us</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>We consciously know that our habit that we want to build is good for us and that it will improve our life. We know that exercising every day will allow us to be healthier, feel better, and improve both how long we live and the quality of our life. Those sound like amazing advantages—who wouldn’t like to work towards that? Or, if you’re trying to build a writing habit, you know that writing will allow you to express yourself better, be better and communication and persuasion, and it pays dividends for many areas of your life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So if we know that it’s good for us, why don’t we do it? The fact that logical reasoning alone can’t change our behavior in many cases suggests that there’s something other than logical reasoning that controls our behavior and what we decide to do and pursue. When we want to start every morning with a workout routine, or write for fifteen minutes a day, what’s stopping us?</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">Figuring out the reason why we <em>know</em> we should be doing a habit (like exercising or reading or focusing at work) but don’t do it is critical to figuring out what’s holding us back, and how to break through that glass ceiling that prevents us from building habits.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>We know that it’s good for us, but we don’t do it</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>Your conscious side has reasoned out the benefits, and knows, rationally, that exercising is a good idea and will greatly improve your quality of life, or that writing will pay dividends over the entire period of your life by helping you communicate better. But there’s another side that sometimes differs in opinion with the conscious side, and it’s the side that resists change and pushes back on us when we want to build new habits: the instinctive side.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When I get up and contemplate doing a morning run or hitting the gym for an hour to do a workout, the resistance from my instinctive side kicks in. My conscious side knows that it’s a good idea to go for a run or go to the gym and get it done, for all the reasons I already know: better health, feel great during the day, higher mental performance, etc. But my instinctive side says that it’ll be difficult and painful, and I just don’t <em>feel</em> like doing it… it’s just so much work, and I’d rather just go and get my day started.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My conscious side might agree that exercising is a good idea, but my instinctive side resists.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Knowing is conscious, doing is mostly instinctive</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>There are two different systems that we use to think, according to the dual process theory popularized by Daniel Kahneman. System 1 is the fast, instinctive, and automatic method of thinking, and some functions include fast reactions, skills, and other instinctive actions. System 2 is the slow, calculated, logic-based method of thinking, which relies heavily on rationality. It turns out that System 1 is the one that decides most of our actions, though System 2 is consulted from time to time for when a decision requires more thought and deliberation.<a href=\"#note-1\" name=\"return-1\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>1</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Our conscious side is the one that <em>knows</em> what the right thing to do is. Using rational explanations and reasoning, we know that exercise is better for us. But our instinctive side is the one that is deciding a lot of the <em>doing</em>. And we’re naturally opposed to pain and difficulty, so the instinctive side is naturally against doing new things and implementing new habits. The way that we’re able to persuade ourselves to go and do new things is by allowing our conscious side to win over the instinctive side when we’re at the point of decision.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">When we think about whether we want to carry out a new habit, the thing in our minds that is making excuses to avoid carrying it out and saying “I don’t feel like doing it today” is the instinctive side creating resistance. We are instinctively and impulsively opposed to carrying out the habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/articles/building-sustainable-habits/visualizing-the-gap.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 470px;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Sit back and think for a minute</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>This might help you go from <em>reading</em> the idea that I’m writing about, to <em>feeling</em> what I mean. I think it’ll lead to a better understanding of this article, and going beyond “just reading” to having a real connection and spark in your mind where you’ll really get it, which I think will be beneficial.</p>\r\n\r\n<p> Sit back and think about the habit you’ve been trying to do, and think about the conscious side. Logically, why is it good to do that habit? What are the benefits? Why do we want to pursue it—for health, or better work, or for learning?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s strange that despite those benefits, we still don’t do it.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Then, think about the instinctive side, and be honest with yourself. What were the excuses you gave last time you considered doing that habit and didn’t? </p>\r\n\r\n<p>What if I told you to do that habit right now? Pause on reading this article, and exercise, right now. Or meditate, or write, or pursue your dream project, right now. What’s going through your mind? Do you notice your conscious side knowing you <em>should</em> be doing that thing, and the instinctive side resisting against it, and the excuses it’s giving? <a href=\"#note-0\" name=\"return-0\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>0</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>That’s the conscious side and instinctive side at odds, and that’s why we feel resistance when we try to build new habits.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>And in my experience, most of the time, the instinctive side wins.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Conscious vs. instinctive value systems</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>Let’s step back and take a closer look at the two sides.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">My theory is that our conscious and instinctive sides differ in what they want because they have different value systems. They value habits and behaviors in different ways.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I believe that <strong>the conscious side assigns value using logical reasoning and rational explanations.</strong> From what we know about health, exercising is the most important thing that we can do to keep in good health, physically and mentally. We’ve read the articles, we’ve had the conversations with friends, and we’ve seen the scientific evidence. It makes sense to us, <em>consciously</em>, that exercising is crucial for our well-being and for living well.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The instinctive side assigns value using past experience and past evidence.</strong> It distills past experience and builds evidence to value a certain behavior. In contrast to the conscious side’s logic-based approach, if our past experience of exercise has shown that it’s difficult and painful and stressful, then we’re going to avoid doing it. We expect it to continue being difficult and painful and stressful, so we are instinctively against doing it since that’s what we expect.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">Conscious values are made up of logical evidence, whereas instinctive values are made up of experiential evidence.<a href=\"#note-2\" name=\"return-2\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>2</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>For some behaviors, the conscious and instinctive values match. This is the case for those core day-to-day things that we do, like brushing your teeth. In these cases where it matches, such as brushing your teeth, <strong>the conscious side, through reason,</strong> knows that it’s beneficial for good health, looking good, and social acceptance, and <strong>the instinctive side, through past evidence and experience,</strong> agrees that this is true and that it’s worth doing. The values match.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>However, in the cases that it doesn’t match, where our conscious values are at odds with our instinctive values, it results in resistance where the instinctive side doesn’t want to go through with the habit. In some cases, like with exercise, the instinctive side is partially right. Exercise <em>is</em> painful and difficult and stressful. But what the instinctive side doesn’t understand is that it’s for the better. The instinctive side isn’t good at calculating long-term benefit<a href=\"#note-3\" name=\"return-3\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>3</sup></a>, whereas our conscious side knows that it does have an immense long-term benefit. What we need to do is to impose our conscious values on our instinctive side, to try to override what our instinctive side wants to do, and try to convince our instinctive side using logical reasoning and awareness of long-term benefit from the conscious side.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>At the point of decision, we have two choices. We can decide to put on workout shorts and hit the gym, or otherwise carry out the habit that we consciously want to do. Or we can make excuses, say “I don’t feel like it” and procrastinate it to the eternal tomorrow. Resistance is created between the two sides. The way that we decide to go forward with the habit is by imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side. The way that we decide to skip the habit and say “I’ll do it tomorrow” is by succumbing to our instinctive side and its excuses, and letting it win.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>There’s a gap that exists between our conscious value and instinctive value of that habit. It’s what I call a decision gap, and it defines whether or not the conscious and instinctive side are in accord with its decision to do something. The gap is bigger if the habit is more difficult or unattractive, such as exercising, because the more difficult the habit, the more the instinctive side doesn’t want to do it, creating a bigger gap.</p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">We cross that gap and execute on the habit by imposing our conscious values on our instinctive side.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory on the way that we do this is through <strong>willpower</strong>. Willpower is what allows us to put in the work to do an action, even though we don’t feel like doing it. We use willpower to force ourselves to ignore what we <em>feel like</em> doing, and instead we do what we <em>should</em> be doing. We use willpower to get ourselves to the gym when we don’t feel like it, and when we do that, we override our instinctive values and what it <em>wants</em> to do, with our conscious values and what we <em>should</em> be doing, and bridge the gap between them, resulting in doing the right action.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>If the habit is more difficult, the gap is bigger, and more willpower is needed. A small gap would be doing 3 pushups; a large one would be doing 100 in a minute. You’d need a lot more willpower to be able to convince yourself to try to do 100 pushups in a minute than you’d need to do 3.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So now, we’ve talked about the two different ways of thinking that sometimes create resistance with new habits, why they create resistance, and conceptually, how we overcome that. Time to put it together. How do we start building sustainable habits?</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Building sustainable habits</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>We know that the difference between how much we consciously value and instinctively value a habit creates a gap. We bridge that gap using willpower, which is imposing our conscious values on our instinctive values for that habit. And instinctive values are derived from experience and evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory on developing sustainable habits is based on two ideas:</p>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>The main thing that will allow us to make a habit automatic is by having our instinctive values and conscious values be in accord, and both want to carry out an action. <strong>So, we should work towards matching our instinctive values with our conscious values.</strong> We do so by giving our instinctive side evidence to match and agree with the conscious values.</p>\r\n    <p>We can’t rely on willpower forever, so it’s best if we try to close that gap, which requires willpower to bridge. This is the point where a habit becomes habitual, since you find value in it, and carry it out without resistance.</p>\r\n  </li>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>In order to work towards building evidence for the instinctive side, <strong>we carry out the habit, which results in developing evidence for the habit, but aim to use as little willpower as possible to do so.</strong> If possible, we have to stop relying on willpower and assume that we have close to zero willpower. If we design it so that it takes very little willpower to carry out an action, extra willpower is a bonus.<a href=\"#note-4\" name=\"return-4\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>4</sup></a></p>\r\n  </li>\r\n</ol>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"journal-entry-normal-pullquote\">The idea is to eventually match our instinctive values with our conscious values, so that they can be in accord and make the habit automatic. The way that we do that is to build up evidence for our instinctive side, while using as little willpower as possible to build up that evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Applying this model to an exercise habit</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>This is how I’d do it, in the context of exercising:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Setting the goal.</strong> I’d like to exercise every morning. I’ll narrow the scope of the exercise to focus on pushups; to put a quantitative metric on it, I’ll say that I want to do 100 pushups a day; and anchor it to my living routine, I’ll say that I want to get in the habit of doing 100 pushups every morning.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Right now, going from zero to 100 pushups is very, very difficult, and I’m bound to have a lot of resistance to doing 100 pushups, especially right after waking up and needing coffee. The gap there is huge, and it would take a lot of willpower, every morning, to try to achieve that goal. So instead, I’ll apply what we know about willpower and how it takes a lot more to bridge a large gap, and reduce the gap.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Starting out.</strong> The way to use as little willpower as possible is to start out really, really small. I’ll start out with 3 pushups. The gap of required willpower to do just 3 pushups is considerably smaller. My conscious side thinks it’s a good idea to get some exercise, and my instinctive side, while it would still prefer to not do pushups, has far less resistance to just doing three pushups because of the ease of doing so. It only requires a bit of willpower to get myself to drop down and do just those three pushups.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>After doing those three pushups, I add a little bit of evidence to my instinctive side. “That wasn’t so bad. I could do that. And I feel good about accomplishing the habit, even though it was small.” And the fact that I did carry out the habit creates momentum for the next time I consider doing the habit, and I’ll be more inclined to do that habit in the future since there’s evidence that I’ve done it in the past.<a href=\"#note-5\" name=\"return-5\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>5</sup></a></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Tomorrow, I might continue doing three pushups. I’m continuing to build evidence on the instinctive side, and it becomes easier and easier to do, and requires less and less willpower. I’m also continuing to <em>make doing the pushups themselves habitual</em>, and get in the habit of doing pushups at all, which is an essential foundation to scale up from.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Scaling up.</strong> Once I’ve made that habit stick and the instinctive side has that evidence, I’m set to scale the intensity up a bit. I’ll scale up to five pushups, continuing to focus on using as little willpower as possible. Now that my instinctive side has more evidence, I can convince myself using little willpower to do two pushups. Then I’ll continue building evidence until I’m comfortable with two pushups and that it becomes easy to do, and then I can scale up again when two becomes easy. As I build more evidence up, I can do 5, then 8, then 12, then 16, then 20, then 30, then 50.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/articles/building-sustainable-habits/scaling-up.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 470px;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p><strong>The important part to scaling up is to be mindful of how much willpower I am using, and use that as feedback on how much I should scale up and when.</strong> I need to make sure that I’m not overstepping my bounds, and that I’m building the habit with a good success rate that’s not too low and not too high. If I’m not succeeding enough, then it means that the gap is too large and I need to use more willpower than necessary, and I need to scale back. If I’m succeeding all the time, that means that I’m not scaling up fast enough. Being at a biased balance<a href=\"#note-6\" name=\"return-6\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>6</sup></a> of a point where it’s only a bit of a stretch is the optimal position, in my opinion, since you’re making progress on the stretch part while keeping yourself emotionally grounded by having some success.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Contrast this with the usual method of doing this, which is to set an arbitrary habit and try to will ourselves to do it, like setting up a habit of 50 pushups a day. That’s not sustainable, since we have to will ourselves into doing 50 pushups a day, and I believe the success rate, both short-term and especially long-term, is low, because we’re relying on having a lot of willpower every day, which is not always the case. As we try to do this habit, we might succeed for the first few days or the first week on willpower and being inspired, but the gap is still large, and it still requires a lot of willpower to execute at the end. After the first week, we’re bound to drop it one day when we don’t have time, or just don’t <em>feel</em> like doing it (i.e. not having the willpower to do it). Now we’re at risk of dropping the habit altogether since we’ve missed a day, and the willpower gap is still large, and we might miss another, and end up thinking a few weeks later, “whatever happened to that habit?” This is the stumbling around that many people do with new habits that they do, and seems to be a textbook model of failure for new year’s resolutions.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In this method, at each stage, I’m making sure I’m using as little willpower as possible to reach success for that particular level. And at each stage, I’m simultaneously building up evidence for those levels on the instinctive side. Hopefully, the instinctive side is seeing benefits, continuing to build up evidence, and at some point, I might notice real benefits. Maybe I feel better during the day, or maybe I feel like I’m performing better mentally, or, if I’m doing more intense exercise, maybe the pounds on the scale are decreasing instead of going the other way. These act as additional pieces of evidence that really make a big difference on us, to keep going and continue doing this habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is more sustainable. We are building up real value on our instinctive side instead of always trying to use willpower to convince our instinctive side to do the habit and adopt the conscious viewpoint. We can start small, scale up, and constantly be at the point where it’s enough of a stretch for us to make progress, but not difficult enough that there’s a big gap and we have to constantly have to use a lot of willpower to carry out the habit. Over time, we build real evidence for the instinctive side to value the habit and eventually do it automatically.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>And eventually, and sustainably, I reach 100 pushups every morning. Not by willing myself to do it for weeks—no, I would have quit way before reaching 100 pushups. Instead, it’s by building up real evidence for doing 3, 5, 8, 12 pushups, and scaling up.<a href=\"#note-7\" name=\"return-7\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-jump-link\"><sup>7</sup></a> And one December 3rd, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, I reached 100 myself.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Sustainable habit development, summarized</h3>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n  <li>Define the habit or goal. Focus (pushups, not just exercise), and be specific (100 pushups, every morning). Keep in mind that the idea is to build instinctive evidence so that it matches your conscious desire to develop the habit, which leads to the point where the habit is truly habitual, and is done automatically.</li>\r\n  <li>Start incredibly small, at the point where you’ll feel almost no resistance to doing it. In my example, this was starting out with just 3 pushups to get yourself into the habit of doing <em>something</em>. This will allow you to sustainably execute the habit, to build instinctive evidence.</li>\r\n  <li>Keep doing the habit, while keeping in mind how much willpower that you require to carry out the habit. While you do the habit, the instinctive side is developing evidence for you to continue doing that habit.</li>\r\n  <li>Scale up when you’re comfortable with the current level. Aim towards doing what you can do and then some (a ‘stretch’ goal). Scale down when it feels too difficult, but make sure it’s still at a stretch level.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n\r\n<h3>The real end game</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>When we try to develop habits, we’re trying to get to the point where we’re doing something habitually—when we’re doing it automatically. The critical point where a habit truly becomes habitual is when your conscious and instinctive values are in line with each other. That’s when you feel like you rationally know that it’s a good thing to do, and the instinctive side agrees. That’s when you feel weird when you <em>don’t</em> do it. Like the compulsion you have to brush your teeth, because it would be weird not to. And the compulsion that people who are used to exercising every day to do their workout or their run or whatnot. Those people feel weird when they don’t do it. They’re happy to do the habit and they <em>want</em> to—and it doesn’t take much work or self-convincing to do so. It’s automatic.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>This means that after you get through the difficult stage of habit formation, you get to the point where you’re automatically doing the habit and it’s paying dividends in your life. You get to the point where exercise feels natural, writing is enjoyable, or eating well is something you do normally—just like how brushing your teeth is just natural and habitual—and it continues to improve your life, automatically, from then on. Amazing how that works, and it really inspires me to get the right habits in place so that they can improve my life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So let’s get to it. Engineer your habit building to work towards developing a sustainable habit. Keep in mind that the resistance you feel is the instinctive side lacking evidence. Build that evidence, and use the easiest pathway to do so: by using as little willpower as possible. Scale up and adjust. See the results, and feel good about them. The initial investment is immense, but the long-term benefit of building a sustainable habit is creating a habit that will improve the quality of your life, automatically, for the rest of your life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>My primary work at the moment is research on habit formation and how we can use technology to assist in it. This is part of my theory of habit formation, which is constantly changing, and I present this as a possible explanation about the role of the two minds in habit formation and the source of resistance.</em></p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d also love to chat if you’re in the space. Drop me a line at mark@markbao.com.</em></p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-section\">\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-section-marker\"></div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-0\" name=\"note-0\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">0</a> — “In summary, most of what you (your System 2) think and do originates in your System 1, but System 2 takes over when things get difficult, and it normally has the last word.” I agree that System 2 does deliver input when things get difficult, but I feel that whether it can <em>override</em> System 1 depends on whether System 1 can answer the question in the first place. It can offer input and be the final say in situations of complex thinking, like difficult math problems, since System 1 doesn’t have a way to figure out the problem and doesn’t have a say in the issue. But when System 1 and System 2 both believe something, I don’t think System 1 defers to System 2. In that case, System 2 overriding System 1 is not so easy (and requires willpower). Kahneman seems to touch on this later: “One of the tasks of System 2 is to overcome the impulses of System 1. In other words, System 2 is in charge of self-control.”</p>\r\n\r\n  <p><em>Kahneman,&nbsp;D. (2011). Two Systems – Plot Synopsis. (24-26) In Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.</em></p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-1\" name=\"note-1\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">1</a> — Sometimes, I think the excuses we’re giving ourselves are post-rationalizations, where we decide instinctively that we don’t want to do something, then we try to rationalize that by saying we have too much work or we don’t “feel like it” that day. It seems that rationalization is not leading to a decision, but the decision leads to rationalization to try to convince ourselves retroactively on why that decision is right.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-2\" name=\"note-2\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">2</a> — One interesting way to look at conscious values and instinctive values is to look at what they’re made up of. Assuming that conscious values are made up of logical evidence, and instinctive values are made up of experiential evidence, the ‘units’ of evidence differ. I think logical evidence is made up of bits of information gained externally, and bits of reasoning which is done through thought internally using external information, which all combine somehow to result in some degree of value. (External information: “Exercise is good for losing weight”; internal information: “I’m overweight, so I need to lose weight, by using exercise.”)</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>On the other hand, I believe that experiential evidence is made up of singular events and our rationalizations about those events (that was awesome, that was stressful, that was disappointing, etc.) and those similarly combine to result in a degree of value. (Exercise event: “Worked out for half an hour yesterday.” Resulting rationalization/feelings: “It was painful.”)</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>It’s interesting to think about the ‘bits’ that go into creating a singular metric of how we value something. Is there a linear scale for value, or is it more complicated than that? Now we’re treading the line between psychology and philosophy.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-3\" name=\"note-3\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">3</a> — Kahneman presents the idea of WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is), which essentially says that the instinctive side uses limited evidence to jump to conclusions, making it difficult for that side to make long-term decisions. I believe that it still tries to make long-term decisions when emotionally charged.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p><em>Kahneman,&nbsp;D. (2011). Two Systems – What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI). (85) In Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.</em></p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-4\" name=\"note-4\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">4</a> — At some point, I’d like to research if <em>matching</em> willpower works even better, meaning matching the amount of willpower that someone actually has (or that we predict that they have). I wonder if that allows someone to perform better since it matches their current inherent motivation to do something. People who are more disciplined (see next note) might be able to apply more willpower to a goal, and might be frustrated with the slow movement of a regular path that assumes less willpower.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-5\" name=\"note-5\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">5</a> — I came up with a preliminary idea of ‘momentum’, which seems to be an interesting way to look at if our minds tend to believe that simply <em>doing</em> something in the past is enough evidence for doing it in the future, and other evidence like your current performance with that habit (such as weight already lost or other dividends already paid) are just bonuses. A habit becoming easier and easier and requiring less willpower to carry out might be partly the result of it being done in the past and you having the momentum to keep carrying out that habit.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>After some thinking, I’m inclined to believe that momentum is simply a subset of instinctual evidence (experiential evidence) that contributes to the whole of instinctual value, not something that acts on its own in the decision-making process.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-6\" name=\"note-6\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">6</a> — <em>Biased balance</em> is a concept that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The idea is that there are rarely instances where we should be on either extreme of something. Working all the time and having zero time to relax is a recipe for burnout and disaster. Believing something 100% and not being flexible to seeing the other sides of it is a recipe for ignorance. So we should be in balance: enough work, enough play. Enough belief, but also being flexible to seeing other viewpoints. Being in balance means that we can find the best parts of both extremes and apply them.</p>\r\n\r\n  <p>But in many cases, we should be biased in that balance, to make progress on one side or the other. For me, it’s making sure that I’m working and relaxing, but I’m having the biased balance of focusing on working. It’s also making sure that I’m getting out of my comfort zone and experiencing new things, and also having time to be comfortable and enjoying that, but leaning on the side of getting out of my comfort zone more often than not. A balance allows us to be sustainable in what we do, and avoid burnout; a biased balance allows us to use balance as a good foundation, while making progress towards one side or the other.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote\">\r\n  <p><a href=\"#return-7\" name=\"note-7\" class=\"journal-entry-normal-footnote-return-link\">7</a> —  Interestingly, we might see the ability to apply willpower and ‘will’ ourselves to do something as equivalent to discipline. The more discipline you have, the more able you are to use willpower to make yourself do something, and the bigger of a gap you can potentially attack. (In that, while normal people might scale up from 2 to 4 pushups successfully, highly-disciplined people might be able to scale up from 2 to 8 since they have a higher tolerance for using willpower, and can deal with larger gaps successfully.)</p>\r\n</div>\r\n</div>","created_at":1427608260,"updated_at":1427608260}}],"relationships":[{"id":"10","type":"TAG","startNode":"6","endNode":"1","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"8","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"773ac9ec-0512-43a6-a876-a9c5606414fd","title":"Time constraints can increase efficiency","slug":"time-constraints-can-increase-efficiency","subtitle":"When less time leads to better results","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"productivity","content":"            <p>In design, constraints can actually be beneficial in the creative process. For instance, designing for a specific size or form factor, such as a small mobile phone, can make you think in ways that bring about new design concepts that would never have emerged without the constraint.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So too are constraints sometimes beneficial in other parts of life. Putting a time constraint (also known as a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeboxing\"><em>timebox</em></a>) on a task can make you focus on that task more effectively. Conversely, having a lax timebox can result in <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law\">Parkinson’s law</a>, that is, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I’ve been hustling at college for the past few months, and they have easily been one of the busiest months of my life. Every day, my calendar was filled from wake to sleep, and I worked to optimize the amount of time I spent eating and filling in gaps between classes.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>At the same time, I still found time to sit down and do a few minutes of journaling on the day, as well as a nightly end-of-day review and a Sunday end-of-week review. I also found time to read the blogs that I wanted to follow, usually during the 15 minutes per day that I allocated to relaxing, and doubled up lunch and dinner time with reading the <em>New York Times</em>.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Since I had the constraint of not having much time, I was able to allocate a timeboxed amount of time to carry out these pretty important activities. I assumed that once the term ended, I would be able to relax and write more intricate journal entries, think about how to improve my review procedure, keep up with the three or four blogs I follow regularly, and read the news a lot more.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Not so. I haven’t written a journal entry in two weeks nor an end-of-day review, despite the fact that they take 5 minutes a day to do. I haven’t kept up with those blogs, and I haven’t read the news in a while.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It turns out that used my time more effectively when I had more constraints than when I had fewer. Put another way, <strong>having constraints actually let me use my time more effectively</strong>.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When talking to Dan Shipper about balancing college and work, he says that despite school taking up a bulk of his time, he finds that he sometimes gets more done with the 2 hours of focused time between classes than when he has a full day free.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s easier to sit down and say “okay, I need to get this, this, and this done” when you only have 2 hours. When you have 12, things are a bit more fuzzy, and forces such as overestimation of the amount of time you have, and micro-practices such as letting yourself get distracted can add up to actually make you less effective.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In other words, without constraints, work expands to fill the time, and having more time does not necessarily mean a better output—it might actually decrease output.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Toward a theory of constraints</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>One theory is that having constant constraints and demands helps define the value of the activities that you have little time for, since by contrast they become more important to you since the time to do them is scarce. Another theory might relate to Taleb’s “<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile\">antifragile</a>” concept, where systems actually benefit from uncertainty and stress.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>More abstractly, it may be that as a resource increases in amount (such as more time), other forces come into play that sometimes introduce inefficiencies and secondary effects that are not present when that resource is less abundant; when the resource is constrained, doing so might actually eradicate inefficiencies to reduce the impact of a constraint, break even, or even go as far as <em>increase</em> efficiency with a decreased resource. More work should be done to figure out what these inefficiencies are.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In any case, it seems that constraints are not always detrimental, and, at least in the case of time management, can actually be beneficial for efficiency.</p>\r\n","created_at":1427608320,"updated_at":1427608320}},{"id":"9","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6c4e11c9-bda4-4f2e-8b1d-5014239e4dc8","name":"productivity","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"16","type":"TAG","startNode":"8","endNode":"9","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"4","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6bf2236c-a8c9-4cb6-ae1d-ffc4a8b50bfd","name":"personal","central":false,"public":true}},{"id":"10","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"0dbf0a4e-b8ea-476b-a129-491b00a6ea3d","title":"Things vs. experiences: two sides of the same coin","slug":"things-vs-experiences-two-sides-of-the-same-coin","subtitle":"A few words on minimalism","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"personal","content":"            <p>I’ve had an peculiar experience with minimalism. I’ve spent most of my (short) adult life living out of a suitcase or a backpack, always ready to <em>pack, zip, lock</em> to go to the next destination, whether that was a city or a stage in life. After doing long-term travel for nearly a year, I recently came back to New York, signed a lease, and started accumulating <em>stuff</em>. Stuff, like headphones, blenders, sofas, laundry hampers, flatware, and coffee tables.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Part of me isn’t used to this and—despite the rather liquid furniture market on Craigslist—wants to not be burdened by all this stuff. But while my stint with minimalism was mostly freeing, it was limiting in a different way: I didn’t have access to the <em>stuff</em> that seems superflouous—like a blender—that actually can end up increasing my quality of life.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>A common blog post title that I see in the subculture of minimalism goes along the lines of “my experience with minimalism: less stuff equals more experiences.” And this makes a lot of sense: by cutting out a lot of the <em>stuff</em> we’ve accumulated over the years, we can be more free, and focus our spending on experiences, not things.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Yet things and experiences aren’t mutually exclusive. Rather, they seem to me like both sides of the same coin. Stuff isn’t bought to lay around and exist. It’s meant to <em>enable experiences</em>. It doesn’t always get in the way of experiences, but instead it can enable experiences or make them more accessible.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>A blender is probably the quintessential “I’m settled down and enjoying the domestic life” thing. But it enables the ability to use it to make, for example, healthy food. Having a blender now means that I can start my day with a kale–raspberry shake, making me eat more greens—something that I couldn’t really do while traveling or avoiding owning things—and makes eating healthier more accessible.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Sometimes, certain things can be more experience-rich than individual experiences. Individual experiences, like travel, happen once, and you gain some benefit from them once. (However, these benefits could be huge, and could multiply over time if your experiences from travel cross-pollinates into, say, gratitude, or other parts of your life.) Things, on the other hand, can enable experiences over and over, like a blender making healthier eating easier day after day. Certain things can pay dividends over time in a way that some experiences can’t. (This is rare, though, and generally experiences matter more.)</p>\r\n\r\n<p>So the question shouldn’t be a rejection of things, nor should it be saying that all things are useful. The consumerism that has driven a lot of people to think about minimalism is unhealthy—but the answer seems to be not a rejection of things, but rather <strong>a stronger awareness in considering what kind of experiences something is enabling or making more accessible, and gauging whether those experiences are beneficial or not</strong>.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Three caveats. — Certain things run a larger gamut in terms of what kind of beneficial experiences they can enable. It’s unlikely that a blender might enable unproductive experiences. But a TV can either make watching interesting movies and TED talks more accessible, or it can be a black hole of <em>Breaking Bad</em>. It would be useful to point to past evidence on how the thing in question was actually used, and either make your decision on that evidence, or resolve to use it in a more productive way.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Further, it’s easier to have a clearer view on what things are necessary when you’re starting out with less and accumulating, than starting out with a lot and needing to cut down. The experience of deciding which apps to delete and thinking “well, it could come in handy one day” is a perfect analogue to our rationalizations to physical items. In these cases, it makes sense to, again, look at historical evidence: have you been regularly using it for its purpose, or just waiting for the day you get around to it? Owning a juicer enables useful experiences, yes, but have you actually used it? If not, then it’s not only taking physical space, but also the mental space of the burden of needing to find the time to use it one day.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Finally, certain things can have strong benefits but are also a huge burden to maintain, like owning a car in a city. It’s important, then, that things don’t just enable beneficial experiences, but do so commensurate to its cost.</p>","created_at":1427608380,"updated_at":1427608380}}],"relationships":[{"id":"18","type":"TAG","startNode":"10","endNode":"4","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"2","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"15df7aa2-f471-45c5-a688-44e434010ab1","name":"goals","central":false,"public":true}},{"id":"11","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"22bc7e90-3fe7-430e-bb4d-983d81786533","title":"A technique for starting new habits and maintaining motivation: Attack Doses","slug":"a-technique-for-starting-new-habits-attack-doses","subtitle":"Riding motivation waves to build instinctual evidence","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,habits,motivation,goals","content":"            <meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<link rel=\"image_src\" href=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<style type=\"text/css\">\r\nh4 {\r\n\tfont-family: \"WeblySleek UI\", Helvetica, sans-serif;\r\n\tfont-size: 1.2em;\r\n\tfont-weight: bold;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-top: 0;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\tbackground-color: #F5F5ED;\r\n\tborder-radius: 4px;\r\n\tpadding: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n}\r\n\r\n@media only screen and (min-width : 768px) {\r\n\tsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\t\tmargin: 20px -20px 20px -20px;\r\n\t}\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 10px !important;\r\n\tfont-size: 15px;\r\n\tline-height: 26px;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p:last-child {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 0 !important;\r\n}\r\n</style>\r\n<p>I’ve always had a nagging feeling (since writing <a href=\"http://markbao.com/journal/building-sustainable-habits-why-we-make-excuses-and-resist-habit-change\"><em>Building Sustainable Habits: Why We Make Excuses and Resist Habit Change</em></a>) that sometimes building habits using small steps isn’t always the right way to go. There are people who are able to start a new habit, ramp up fast, build a self-reinforcing loop of motivation, and continue to execute over and over—without the need for small steps. So, which one is the right way to build a new habit? Using small steps, or using the fast-track approach of getting motivated and going hard on the new habit?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>One argument is that most people won’t be able do the fast-track approach. We might hear about the cases where this was successful, but there are many where the fast-track approach didn’t work, and we don’t hear about those cases.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Another argument might be that we can combine both of them to match the different levels of motivation that we have, such as the high motivation we have in the beginning of a habit and the sometimes declining motivation we have in the middle of one. In this article, I’ll introduce a hybrid approach, which takes advantage of both high motivation and sustainable habit development, and I’ll outline some example habit development plans  that incorporate the attack dose technique. While this is wholly empirical and strictly a theory, it may be a useful concept to incorporate into your habit development, especially as you implement new goals for 2015.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Motivation waves</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>BJ Fogg, the director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, and Tiny Habits, a habit development program, introduced the idea of <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqUSjHjIEFg\"><em>motivation waves</em></a>, stating that we have different levels of motivation at different points during the development of a habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/fogg-motivation-wave.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Fogg argues that during these high motivation points, we have a temporarily higher ability to engage in habit-building tasks. We might have higher willpower during these points, which would allow us to follow through on doing the habit, which we can apply to dual-process habit development.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>A recap of dual-process habit development theory: the goal of habit development is to close the gap between “what you want to do” and “what you actually do”. Let’s take exercise: you <em>know</em> that you should exercise to be healthy, maintain a good appearance, increase confidence, and other reasons of that sort. This is the <em>conscious</em> side, which has reasoned out the benefits. But—a lot of people don’t actually do it, because they feel like it’s annoying, painful, don’t have enough energy, and other reasons, which is their <em>instinctual</em> side thinking about why they don’t want to exercise. These two&nbsp;sides are often in opposition. The goal of sustainable habit development is to build <em>instinctual evidence</em>—such as seeing results, weight loss, better health, etc.—so that “how much you know you <em>should</em> exercise” matches “how much you <em>want to</em> exercise”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we’re almost always in a high motivation state: either it’s a new year, or something just gets us Mad As Hell and we have enough energy to change it.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>For me, that’s certainly getting up earlier, which has been a challenge for, I dunno, 22 years or so. In my daily writing exercise for today, I noted my frustration for not being able to develop the waking-up-early habit for so long. For me, the key problem with waking up late is going to sleep late. Right now, I’m in a high motivation state, and I have the rare opportunity to use the energy I have to create the new habit of getting up early.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>I could engage in the sustainable habit model and build the habit using small steps. With 2am as my usual bedtime, I could probably make “going to bed before 1am” a good first step, and wake up at 9am, feeling moderately accomplished, building some instinctual evidence that “waking up early is a good idea”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Alternatively, I could harness the high motivation wave that I’m on in the beginning of a habit, and use an <strong>attack dose</strong> to take advantage of that high motivation. The key question is: “what’s the most intense thing I’m willing to do right now to act on this habit?“—to which my answer is, go to sleep 4 hours before my average bedtime. If you’re a midnight sleeper, that means going to sleep at 8pm. (I’m a 2am sleeper, so an attack dose would be 10pm for me). I’ll also have a specific metric for success as usual, like how good I feel after waking up earlier.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I believe the attack dose will allow you to fast-track building instinctual evidence. My attack dose for waking up earlier, which is going to sleep at 10pm and waking up at 6am, would get me up 4 more hours earlier and—presumably—I would feel much better about that and it would allow me to taste a bit of how good it feels to wake up so early, which can be highly motivating. A normal ‘small steps’ approach, waking up at 9am, would make me feel good, but not as euophriously good as waking up at 6am. <strong>Since we have the initial motivation to do it, we should use that to build more motivation for us to continue building the habit.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Planned deceleration</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>But there’s a caveat: keeping this up will be extremely difficult. Both internal factors (such as fatigue and willpower depletion, <em>especially</em> at night) plus external factors (such as events in the evening and urgent things that prevent you from keeping this up) will throw this into chaos given enough time and the randomness of life. Make no mistake: during the attack dose period, the prospective habit is highly volatile and not at all stable nor sustainable. As a result, we need to predict that these things will happen, and plan to relax the habit intensity over time to more sustainable levels. Consider the following:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/attack-doses@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>For example, I might start with an attack dose of going to sleep at 10pm for 3 nights, and then gradually decelerate to going to sleep at 11pm, and then 12am, and then 1am. I’ll then engage in sustainable habit development, making small steps to get back to the 10pm goal—perhaps taking a few weeks to get back to 10pm, but doing so sustainably, facing some challenges but being able to get through them, and building a strong foundation of instinctual evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The reason we deliberately decelerate the habit is because random events will happen that will disrupt the high bar you’ve set for yourself with the attack dose. Habits, especially the early days, are highly vulnerable to disruption, and we need to build <em>resilience</em> to disruption, which is one of the goals of using small steps for sustainable habit development. Habit resilience is what can allow us to continue developing a habit even when we’re facing challenges, like missing a day, but if we don’t have the resilience, failing to make good on a habit one day may unravel the entire habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In mindfulness meditation and in Zen, perhaps the most important lesson is to reserve judgment and be kind to oneself when things go wrong. If, in the middle of meditation, you start thinking about bills or something that happened yesterday or things you’re about to do, and then catch yourself in this state of ‘monkey mind,’ the key is to not berate yourself for failing to keep focused. Rather,&nbsp;the better course of action is to recognize it, accept that it happened, and refocus without judgment.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Resilience is the acceptance of challenges and pressing on regardless. You could be strong-willed and stick to the attack dose and see challenges as just “one-time things” that you can bounce back from—but this depends strongly on willpower, which is unreliable. Instead, a more accessible goal is to lower the bar, so when challenges inevitably crop up, it’s more likely that we are resilient enough to continue the habit, instead of losing it altogether. In other words, <strong>if we expect that there will be challenges, and plan that into habit development, we may be more capable of continuing the habit despite challenges.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is especially relevant for new year’s resolutions. Many people go hard on a new resolution, such as by going to the gym every morning, and expect to keep this up for the entirety of the habit. But then they miss a day, then another, and the habit is often lost after a few discouraging failures. Instead of thinking that we’ll keep up an ambitious habit, we have to expect that our motivation will wane, and things will come up that will disrupt the habit—we have to <em>plan</em> for them, lower the bar for the habit, expect disruptions instead of being able to continue going to the gym every day at 6am. Building resilience.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we do so, the habit is easier to do, and we may be more easily motivated to do it, especially compared to the attack dose. When we have a task that you are easily motivated to do, it can create a safety net for when your motivation is lower—the task is still easy enough to do regardless.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Consider the following hypothetical diagram:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/motivation-resilience@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Here, we see that we match our high motivation with high habit intensity in the beginning (the attack dose). Then, we taper down, but our motivation is most likely still high. The reason is that by creating a gap between the (lower) intensity of the habit and our (higher) motivation level, we <em>may</em> be more resilient to drops in motivation that may happen over the course of time. Assuming that missing one day of a habit puts us at high risk of dropping the habit altogether, it seems to be essential to have this safety net.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose: pros and cons</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory is that the attack dose:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong> Builds more instinctual evidence</strong> for the habit. After waking up at 6am and getting a lot done, I’ll be able to really see the benefit of waking up early, which will increase the instinctual evidence way more than just doing the small-steps plan, taking advantage of the higher motivation wave, which will theoretically maintain my motivation to continue the habit due to the stronger evidence for doing it.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>May create self-reinforcing motivation</strong>. By getting big successes early on, your initial high motivation may be even more elevated, potentially boosting future habit performance. Seeing lots of results from attack-dose habit development may contribute a lot more to your motivation than seeing smaller gains from normal small-steps habit development. (This may become a motivation ‘multiplier’ of sorts, causing cascading effects.)</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Keeps the instinctual evidence more accessible</strong>. I can probably think of a day a long time ago when I got up early, but that far-away memory doesn’t affect my decision-making much. Rather, immediate, near-term evidence (such as how great it was to wake up early) may be more effective, since you experienced the evidence recently. [We know that activating certain memories using words makes them more accessible, which in turn influences judgment (Forster &amp; Liberman, 2007). It doesn’t seem too much a jump to hypothesize that <em>experiential</em> activation, that is, doing some action, increases accessibility and influences behavior.]</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Shows the contrast between the goal and your initial state</strong>. Imagine going from a few super-productive days waking up at 6am and then scaling down to a schedule close to your previous one. Seeing the contrast between the two may be highly motivating for you to get back to waking up at 6am.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Can be combined with other techniques to increase success</strong>. We can use techniques that may seem too heavy-handed for small-steps habit development, but that allow us to hit the attack dose goals. For waking up early, we can have negative consequences, such as losing money, if we don’t wake up in time. For exercise, we can enlist a personal trainer to make sure that we get through our attack dose, which could be, say, a full 60 minutes of training. For meditation, a difficult habit to start, we can enroll in a meditation class that will guide us through. While these are not necessary for small-steps development, they can increase the potential that we succeed at achieving the attack dose to build motivation.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>There are risks present, of course:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Deceleration may be demotivating.</strong> Someone going through the planned deceleration process, despite knowing that this is what they planned all along, may be demotivated from seeing their goals dwindle during that period.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>The habit may be lost during deceleration.</strong> If someone went through hardship to achieve the attack dose, perhaps if the costs outweighed the benefits, they may lose the habit during deceleration and fail to engage in sustainable development.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>These risks can be potentially sidestepped if we build enough evidence in the beginning, during the attack dose, for the importance of the habit, ideally creating enough momentum to allow the person to either go back to the attack dose or find a balance between sustainable levels for the habit and the attack dose levels. There should be more work on figuring out how to reduce these risks.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Example implementations</h3>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Exercise</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Go to the gym for 60 minutes, 3 times a week</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to going 15 minutes per day, 3 days a week, then escalating back to 1 hour</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How exercise makes you feel great about yourself and your health, makes you more confident, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and taste a bit of how great it feels to exercise, but also plans for future disruptions by scaling back and developing sustainably</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Someone may not be physically able to exercise for 60 minutes; scaling back to 15 minutes may make someone lazier over time; someone may not see the results they want to during the attack dose and may be less motivated.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong> (simultaneous techniques that can increase adoption): External incentives, such as signing up for a class or personal trainer that will make sure that we get through our attack dose.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Meditation</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Meditate for 20 minutes for 5 days</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to meditating for 3 minutes per day, then gradually increasing to 30 minutes</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How beneficial meditation is, awareness of how busy our minds are, and the need to meditate to become more mindful</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and understand how useful meditation is; 3 minutes is often too little time to see the benefits of meditation apart from “wow, my mind is really chatty”</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Starting out on a meditation habit is difficult because the first few sessions are frustrating, and the attack dose can potentially exacerbate this frustration, but this is highly dependent on the individual.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: Enrolling in a meditation class, or meditating with someone who meditates often, who can convince you that the difficulties and frustrations are normal.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Waking up early</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Wake up 4 hours before average wake-up time (e.g. waking up at 6am if you usually wake up at 10am)</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to waking up one hour earlier, then work up to desired time</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How great it is to wake up early, feeling less guilty about wasting the day, better work, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and really see the benefits of waking up early, and it can also get you out of the cycle of waking up late, going to bed late, waking up late, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Going to sleep earlier than normal may be difficult, even with high motivation (physical limitations).</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: External incentives, such as paying a certain amount of money if you don’t get up at a certain time, can help increase initial adoption. For waking up early, one can combat the physical limitations by using e.g. melatonin to meet the attack dose goals. (These are only for achieving the attack dose, and I believe they are counterproductive in the sustainable development process for building a true internal incentive for the habit.)</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<h3>Gist</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we are most likely highly motivated to carry it out. It may be smart to take advantage of this high motivation wave and engage in high-intensity habits to build a lot of instinctual evidence for the habit, and then enter into planned deceleration, shifting gears to sustainable habit development. The net result may be higher motivation and much more instinctual evidence that the habit is worthwhile—evidence that can give us strong motivation to continue building the habit, and evidence that is <em>so much more real</em> because, well, you just proved it was.</p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 40px; margin-bottom: 20px; width: 200px; border-bottom: 1px solid #DDD;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<section style=\"color: #777; font-size: 15px;\">\r\n\t<p><em>Acknowledgements</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Thank you to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/dngoo\">David Ngo</a>, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/arjunblj\">Arjun Balaji</a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/conradd\">Conrad Barrett</a> for reviewing and discussing drafts of this article.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><em>References</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Forster, J., &amp; Liberman, N. (2007). Knowledge Activation. In A. W. Kruglanski &amp; E. T. Higgins (Eds.), <em>Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles</em> (2nd., pp. 201–231).</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"height: 20px;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<div id=\"disqus_thread\"><iframe id=\"dsq-2\" data-disqus-uid=\"2\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Disqus\" width=\"100%\" src=\"http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&amp;version=4703cddeb19100418d2fe56c8e42d01f&amp;f=markbao&amp;t_u=file%3A%2F%2F%2FUsers%2Fmarkbao%2FDesktop%2FJournal%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Mark%2520Bao.html&amp;t_d=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;t_t=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;s_o=default#2\" horizontalscrolling=\"no\" verticalscrolling=\"no\" style=\"width: 100% !important; border: none !important; overflow: hidden !important; height: 75px !important;\"></iframe></div>\r\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">\r\n    /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */\r\n    var disqus_shortname = 'markbao'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname\r\n\r\n    /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */\r\n    (function() {\r\n        var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;\r\n        dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';\r\n        (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);\r\n    })();\r\n</script>\r\n<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the &amp;lt;a href=“http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript”&amp;gt;comments powered by Disqus.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</noscript>","created_at":1427608440,"updated_at":1427608440}}],"relationships":[{"id":"26","type":"TAG","startNode":"11","endNode":"2","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"11","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"22bc7e90-3fe7-430e-bb4d-983d81786533","title":"A technique for starting new habits and maintaining motivation: Attack Doses","slug":"a-technique-for-starting-new-habits-attack-doses","subtitle":"Riding motivation waves to build instinctual evidence","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,habits,motivation,goals","content":"            <meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<link rel=\"image_src\" href=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<style type=\"text/css\">\r\nh4 {\r\n\tfont-family: \"WeblySleek UI\", Helvetica, sans-serif;\r\n\tfont-size: 1.2em;\r\n\tfont-weight: bold;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-top: 0;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\tbackground-color: #F5F5ED;\r\n\tborder-radius: 4px;\r\n\tpadding: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n}\r\n\r\n@media only screen and (min-width : 768px) {\r\n\tsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\t\tmargin: 20px -20px 20px -20px;\r\n\t}\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 10px !important;\r\n\tfont-size: 15px;\r\n\tline-height: 26px;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p:last-child {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 0 !important;\r\n}\r\n</style>\r\n<p>I’ve always had a nagging feeling (since writing <a href=\"http://markbao.com/journal/building-sustainable-habits-why-we-make-excuses-and-resist-habit-change\"><em>Building Sustainable Habits: Why We Make Excuses and Resist Habit Change</em></a>) that sometimes building habits using small steps isn’t always the right way to go. There are people who are able to start a new habit, ramp up fast, build a self-reinforcing loop of motivation, and continue to execute over and over—without the need for small steps. So, which one is the right way to build a new habit? Using small steps, or using the fast-track approach of getting motivated and going hard on the new habit?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>One argument is that most people won’t be able do the fast-track approach. We might hear about the cases where this was successful, but there are many where the fast-track approach didn’t work, and we don’t hear about those cases.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Another argument might be that we can combine both of them to match the different levels of motivation that we have, such as the high motivation we have in the beginning of a habit and the sometimes declining motivation we have in the middle of one. In this article, I’ll introduce a hybrid approach, which takes advantage of both high motivation and sustainable habit development, and I’ll outline some example habit development plans  that incorporate the attack dose technique. While this is wholly empirical and strictly a theory, it may be a useful concept to incorporate into your habit development, especially as you implement new goals for 2015.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Motivation waves</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>BJ Fogg, the director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, and Tiny Habits, a habit development program, introduced the idea of <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqUSjHjIEFg\"><em>motivation waves</em></a>, stating that we have different levels of motivation at different points during the development of a habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/fogg-motivation-wave.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Fogg argues that during these high motivation points, we have a temporarily higher ability to engage in habit-building tasks. We might have higher willpower during these points, which would allow us to follow through on doing the habit, which we can apply to dual-process habit development.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>A recap of dual-process habit development theory: the goal of habit development is to close the gap between “what you want to do” and “what you actually do”. Let’s take exercise: you <em>know</em> that you should exercise to be healthy, maintain a good appearance, increase confidence, and other reasons of that sort. This is the <em>conscious</em> side, which has reasoned out the benefits. But—a lot of people don’t actually do it, because they feel like it’s annoying, painful, don’t have enough energy, and other reasons, which is their <em>instinctual</em> side thinking about why they don’t want to exercise. These two&nbsp;sides are often in opposition. The goal of sustainable habit development is to build <em>instinctual evidence</em>—such as seeing results, weight loss, better health, etc.—so that “how much you know you <em>should</em> exercise” matches “how much you <em>want to</em> exercise”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we’re almost always in a high motivation state: either it’s a new year, or something just gets us Mad As Hell and we have enough energy to change it.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>For me, that’s certainly getting up earlier, which has been a challenge for, I dunno, 22 years or so. In my daily writing exercise for today, I noted my frustration for not being able to develop the waking-up-early habit for so long. For me, the key problem with waking up late is going to sleep late. Right now, I’m in a high motivation state, and I have the rare opportunity to use the energy I have to create the new habit of getting up early.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>I could engage in the sustainable habit model and build the habit using small steps. With 2am as my usual bedtime, I could probably make “going to bed before 1am” a good first step, and wake up at 9am, feeling moderately accomplished, building some instinctual evidence that “waking up early is a good idea”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Alternatively, I could harness the high motivation wave that I’m on in the beginning of a habit, and use an <strong>attack dose</strong> to take advantage of that high motivation. The key question is: “what’s the most intense thing I’m willing to do right now to act on this habit?“—to which my answer is, go to sleep 4 hours before my average bedtime. If you’re a midnight sleeper, that means going to sleep at 8pm. (I’m a 2am sleeper, so an attack dose would be 10pm for me). I’ll also have a specific metric for success as usual, like how good I feel after waking up earlier.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I believe the attack dose will allow you to fast-track building instinctual evidence. My attack dose for waking up earlier, which is going to sleep at 10pm and waking up at 6am, would get me up 4 more hours earlier and—presumably—I would feel much better about that and it would allow me to taste a bit of how good it feels to wake up so early, which can be highly motivating. A normal ‘small steps’ approach, waking up at 9am, would make me feel good, but not as euophriously good as waking up at 6am. <strong>Since we have the initial motivation to do it, we should use that to build more motivation for us to continue building the habit.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Planned deceleration</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>But there’s a caveat: keeping this up will be extremely difficult. Both internal factors (such as fatigue and willpower depletion, <em>especially</em> at night) plus external factors (such as events in the evening and urgent things that prevent you from keeping this up) will throw this into chaos given enough time and the randomness of life. Make no mistake: during the attack dose period, the prospective habit is highly volatile and not at all stable nor sustainable. As a result, we need to predict that these things will happen, and plan to relax the habit intensity over time to more sustainable levels. Consider the following:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/attack-doses@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>For example, I might start with an attack dose of going to sleep at 10pm for 3 nights, and then gradually decelerate to going to sleep at 11pm, and then 12am, and then 1am. I’ll then engage in sustainable habit development, making small steps to get back to the 10pm goal—perhaps taking a few weeks to get back to 10pm, but doing so sustainably, facing some challenges but being able to get through them, and building a strong foundation of instinctual evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The reason we deliberately decelerate the habit is because random events will happen that will disrupt the high bar you’ve set for yourself with the attack dose. Habits, especially the early days, are highly vulnerable to disruption, and we need to build <em>resilience</em> to disruption, which is one of the goals of using small steps for sustainable habit development. Habit resilience is what can allow us to continue developing a habit even when we’re facing challenges, like missing a day, but if we don’t have the resilience, failing to make good on a habit one day may unravel the entire habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In mindfulness meditation and in Zen, perhaps the most important lesson is to reserve judgment and be kind to oneself when things go wrong. If, in the middle of meditation, you start thinking about bills or something that happened yesterday or things you’re about to do, and then catch yourself in this state of ‘monkey mind,’ the key is to not berate yourself for failing to keep focused. Rather,&nbsp;the better course of action is to recognize it, accept that it happened, and refocus without judgment.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Resilience is the acceptance of challenges and pressing on regardless. You could be strong-willed and stick to the attack dose and see challenges as just “one-time things” that you can bounce back from—but this depends strongly on willpower, which is unreliable. Instead, a more accessible goal is to lower the bar, so when challenges inevitably crop up, it’s more likely that we are resilient enough to continue the habit, instead of losing it altogether. In other words, <strong>if we expect that there will be challenges, and plan that into habit development, we may be more capable of continuing the habit despite challenges.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is especially relevant for new year’s resolutions. Many people go hard on a new resolution, such as by going to the gym every morning, and expect to keep this up for the entirety of the habit. But then they miss a day, then another, and the habit is often lost after a few discouraging failures. Instead of thinking that we’ll keep up an ambitious habit, we have to expect that our motivation will wane, and things will come up that will disrupt the habit—we have to <em>plan</em> for them, lower the bar for the habit, expect disruptions instead of being able to continue going to the gym every day at 6am. Building resilience.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we do so, the habit is easier to do, and we may be more easily motivated to do it, especially compared to the attack dose. When we have a task that you are easily motivated to do, it can create a safety net for when your motivation is lower—the task is still easy enough to do regardless.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Consider the following hypothetical diagram:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/motivation-resilience@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Here, we see that we match our high motivation with high habit intensity in the beginning (the attack dose). Then, we taper down, but our motivation is most likely still high. The reason is that by creating a gap between the (lower) intensity of the habit and our (higher) motivation level, we <em>may</em> be more resilient to drops in motivation that may happen over the course of time. Assuming that missing one day of a habit puts us at high risk of dropping the habit altogether, it seems to be essential to have this safety net.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose: pros and cons</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory is that the attack dose:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong> Builds more instinctual evidence</strong> for the habit. After waking up at 6am and getting a lot done, I’ll be able to really see the benefit of waking up early, which will increase the instinctual evidence way more than just doing the small-steps plan, taking advantage of the higher motivation wave, which will theoretically maintain my motivation to continue the habit due to the stronger evidence for doing it.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>May create self-reinforcing motivation</strong>. By getting big successes early on, your initial high motivation may be even more elevated, potentially boosting future habit performance. Seeing lots of results from attack-dose habit development may contribute a lot more to your motivation than seeing smaller gains from normal small-steps habit development. (This may become a motivation ‘multiplier’ of sorts, causing cascading effects.)</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Keeps the instinctual evidence more accessible</strong>. I can probably think of a day a long time ago when I got up early, but that far-away memory doesn’t affect my decision-making much. Rather, immediate, near-term evidence (such as how great it was to wake up early) may be more effective, since you experienced the evidence recently. [We know that activating certain memories using words makes them more accessible, which in turn influences judgment (Forster &amp; Liberman, 2007). It doesn’t seem too much a jump to hypothesize that <em>experiential</em> activation, that is, doing some action, increases accessibility and influences behavior.]</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Shows the contrast between the goal and your initial state</strong>. Imagine going from a few super-productive days waking up at 6am and then scaling down to a schedule close to your previous one. Seeing the contrast between the two may be highly motivating for you to get back to waking up at 6am.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Can be combined with other techniques to increase success</strong>. We can use techniques that may seem too heavy-handed for small-steps habit development, but that allow us to hit the attack dose goals. For waking up early, we can have negative consequences, such as losing money, if we don’t wake up in time. For exercise, we can enlist a personal trainer to make sure that we get through our attack dose, which could be, say, a full 60 minutes of training. For meditation, a difficult habit to start, we can enroll in a meditation class that will guide us through. While these are not necessary for small-steps development, they can increase the potential that we succeed at achieving the attack dose to build motivation.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>There are risks present, of course:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Deceleration may be demotivating.</strong> Someone going through the planned deceleration process, despite knowing that this is what they planned all along, may be demotivated from seeing their goals dwindle during that period.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>The habit may be lost during deceleration.</strong> If someone went through hardship to achieve the attack dose, perhaps if the costs outweighed the benefits, they may lose the habit during deceleration and fail to engage in sustainable development.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>These risks can be potentially sidestepped if we build enough evidence in the beginning, during the attack dose, for the importance of the habit, ideally creating enough momentum to allow the person to either go back to the attack dose or find a balance between sustainable levels for the habit and the attack dose levels. There should be more work on figuring out how to reduce these risks.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Example implementations</h3>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Exercise</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Go to the gym for 60 minutes, 3 times a week</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to going 15 minutes per day, 3 days a week, then escalating back to 1 hour</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How exercise makes you feel great about yourself and your health, makes you more confident, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and taste a bit of how great it feels to exercise, but also plans for future disruptions by scaling back and developing sustainably</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Someone may not be physically able to exercise for 60 minutes; scaling back to 15 minutes may make someone lazier over time; someone may not see the results they want to during the attack dose and may be less motivated.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong> (simultaneous techniques that can increase adoption): External incentives, such as signing up for a class or personal trainer that will make sure that we get through our attack dose.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Meditation</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Meditate for 20 minutes for 5 days</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to meditating for 3 minutes per day, then gradually increasing to 30 minutes</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How beneficial meditation is, awareness of how busy our minds are, and the need to meditate to become more mindful</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and understand how useful meditation is; 3 minutes is often too little time to see the benefits of meditation apart from “wow, my mind is really chatty”</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Starting out on a meditation habit is difficult because the first few sessions are frustrating, and the attack dose can potentially exacerbate this frustration, but this is highly dependent on the individual.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: Enrolling in a meditation class, or meditating with someone who meditates often, who can convince you that the difficulties and frustrations are normal.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Waking up early</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Wake up 4 hours before average wake-up time (e.g. waking up at 6am if you usually wake up at 10am)</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to waking up one hour earlier, then work up to desired time</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How great it is to wake up early, feeling less guilty about wasting the day, better work, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and really see the benefits of waking up early, and it can also get you out of the cycle of waking up late, going to bed late, waking up late, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Going to sleep earlier than normal may be difficult, even with high motivation (physical limitations).</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: External incentives, such as paying a certain amount of money if you don’t get up at a certain time, can help increase initial adoption. For waking up early, one can combat the physical limitations by using e.g. melatonin to meet the attack dose goals. (These are only for achieving the attack dose, and I believe they are counterproductive in the sustainable development process for building a true internal incentive for the habit.)</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<h3>Gist</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we are most likely highly motivated to carry it out. It may be smart to take advantage of this high motivation wave and engage in high-intensity habits to build a lot of instinctual evidence for the habit, and then enter into planned deceleration, shifting gears to sustainable habit development. The net result may be higher motivation and much more instinctual evidence that the habit is worthwhile—evidence that can give us strong motivation to continue building the habit, and evidence that is <em>so much more real</em> because, well, you just proved it was.</p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 40px; margin-bottom: 20px; width: 200px; border-bottom: 1px solid #DDD;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<section style=\"color: #777; font-size: 15px;\">\r\n\t<p><em>Acknowledgements</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Thank you to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/dngoo\">David Ngo</a>, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/arjunblj\">Arjun Balaji</a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/conradd\">Conrad Barrett</a> for reviewing and discussing drafts of this article.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><em>References</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Forster, J., &amp; Liberman, N. (2007). Knowledge Activation. In A. W. Kruglanski &amp; E. T. Higgins (Eds.), <em>Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles</em> (2nd., pp. 201–231).</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"height: 20px;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<div id=\"disqus_thread\"><iframe id=\"dsq-2\" data-disqus-uid=\"2\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Disqus\" width=\"100%\" src=\"http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&amp;version=4703cddeb19100418d2fe56c8e42d01f&amp;f=markbao&amp;t_u=file%3A%2F%2F%2FUsers%2Fmarkbao%2FDesktop%2FJournal%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Mark%2520Bao.html&amp;t_d=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;t_t=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;s_o=default#2\" horizontalscrolling=\"no\" verticalscrolling=\"no\" style=\"width: 100% !important; border: none !important; overflow: hidden !important; height: 75px !important;\"></iframe></div>\r\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">\r\n    /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */\r\n    var disqus_shortname = 'markbao'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname\r\n\r\n    /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */\r\n    (function() {\r\n        var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;\r\n        dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';\r\n        (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);\r\n    })();\r\n</script>\r\n<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the &amp;lt;a href=“http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript”&amp;gt;comments powered by Disqus.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</noscript>","created_at":1427608440,"updated_at":1427608440}},{"id":"12","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"c0abf2f6-b0f8-4e78-9f21-978ea546f929","name":"motivation","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"24","type":"TAG","startNode":"11","endNode":"12","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"7","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"3fea8d46-5ae3-4c71-a1ce-64c65871b51d","name":"habits","central":false,"public":true}},{"id":"11","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"22bc7e90-3fe7-430e-bb4d-983d81786533","title":"A technique for starting new habits and maintaining motivation: Attack Doses","slug":"a-technique-for-starting-new-habits-attack-doses","subtitle":"Riding motivation waves to build instinctual evidence","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,habits,motivation,goals","content":"            <meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<link rel=\"image_src\" href=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<style type=\"text/css\">\r\nh4 {\r\n\tfont-family: \"WeblySleek UI\", Helvetica, sans-serif;\r\n\tfont-size: 1.2em;\r\n\tfont-weight: bold;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-top: 0;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\tbackground-color: #F5F5ED;\r\n\tborder-radius: 4px;\r\n\tpadding: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n}\r\n\r\n@media only screen and (min-width : 768px) {\r\n\tsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\t\tmargin: 20px -20px 20px -20px;\r\n\t}\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 10px !important;\r\n\tfont-size: 15px;\r\n\tline-height: 26px;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p:last-child {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 0 !important;\r\n}\r\n</style>\r\n<p>I’ve always had a nagging feeling (since writing <a href=\"http://markbao.com/journal/building-sustainable-habits-why-we-make-excuses-and-resist-habit-change\"><em>Building Sustainable Habits: Why We Make Excuses and Resist Habit Change</em></a>) that sometimes building habits using small steps isn’t always the right way to go. There are people who are able to start a new habit, ramp up fast, build a self-reinforcing loop of motivation, and continue to execute over and over—without the need for small steps. So, which one is the right way to build a new habit? Using small steps, or using the fast-track approach of getting motivated and going hard on the new habit?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>One argument is that most people won’t be able do the fast-track approach. We might hear about the cases where this was successful, but there are many where the fast-track approach didn’t work, and we don’t hear about those cases.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Another argument might be that we can combine both of them to match the different levels of motivation that we have, such as the high motivation we have in the beginning of a habit and the sometimes declining motivation we have in the middle of one. In this article, I’ll introduce a hybrid approach, which takes advantage of both high motivation and sustainable habit development, and I’ll outline some example habit development plans  that incorporate the attack dose technique. While this is wholly empirical and strictly a theory, it may be a useful concept to incorporate into your habit development, especially as you implement new goals for 2015.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Motivation waves</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>BJ Fogg, the director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, and Tiny Habits, a habit development program, introduced the idea of <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqUSjHjIEFg\"><em>motivation waves</em></a>, stating that we have different levels of motivation at different points during the development of a habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/fogg-motivation-wave.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Fogg argues that during these high motivation points, we have a temporarily higher ability to engage in habit-building tasks. We might have higher willpower during these points, which would allow us to follow through on doing the habit, which we can apply to dual-process habit development.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>A recap of dual-process habit development theory: the goal of habit development is to close the gap between “what you want to do” and “what you actually do”. Let’s take exercise: you <em>know</em> that you should exercise to be healthy, maintain a good appearance, increase confidence, and other reasons of that sort. This is the <em>conscious</em> side, which has reasoned out the benefits. But—a lot of people don’t actually do it, because they feel like it’s annoying, painful, don’t have enough energy, and other reasons, which is their <em>instinctual</em> side thinking about why they don’t want to exercise. These two&nbsp;sides are often in opposition. The goal of sustainable habit development is to build <em>instinctual evidence</em>—such as seeing results, weight loss, better health, etc.—so that “how much you know you <em>should</em> exercise” matches “how much you <em>want to</em> exercise”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we’re almost always in a high motivation state: either it’s a new year, or something just gets us Mad As Hell and we have enough energy to change it.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>For me, that’s certainly getting up earlier, which has been a challenge for, I dunno, 22 years or so. In my daily writing exercise for today, I noted my frustration for not being able to develop the waking-up-early habit for so long. For me, the key problem with waking up late is going to sleep late. Right now, I’m in a high motivation state, and I have the rare opportunity to use the energy I have to create the new habit of getting up early.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>I could engage in the sustainable habit model and build the habit using small steps. With 2am as my usual bedtime, I could probably make “going to bed before 1am” a good first step, and wake up at 9am, feeling moderately accomplished, building some instinctual evidence that “waking up early is a good idea”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Alternatively, I could harness the high motivation wave that I’m on in the beginning of a habit, and use an <strong>attack dose</strong> to take advantage of that high motivation. The key question is: “what’s the most intense thing I’m willing to do right now to act on this habit?“—to which my answer is, go to sleep 4 hours before my average bedtime. If you’re a midnight sleeper, that means going to sleep at 8pm. (I’m a 2am sleeper, so an attack dose would be 10pm for me). I’ll also have a specific metric for success as usual, like how good I feel after waking up earlier.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I believe the attack dose will allow you to fast-track building instinctual evidence. My attack dose for waking up earlier, which is going to sleep at 10pm and waking up at 6am, would get me up 4 more hours earlier and—presumably—I would feel much better about that and it would allow me to taste a bit of how good it feels to wake up so early, which can be highly motivating. A normal ‘small steps’ approach, waking up at 9am, would make me feel good, but not as euophriously good as waking up at 6am. <strong>Since we have the initial motivation to do it, we should use that to build more motivation for us to continue building the habit.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Planned deceleration</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>But there’s a caveat: keeping this up will be extremely difficult. Both internal factors (such as fatigue and willpower depletion, <em>especially</em> at night) plus external factors (such as events in the evening and urgent things that prevent you from keeping this up) will throw this into chaos given enough time and the randomness of life. Make no mistake: during the attack dose period, the prospective habit is highly volatile and not at all stable nor sustainable. As a result, we need to predict that these things will happen, and plan to relax the habit intensity over time to more sustainable levels. Consider the following:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/attack-doses@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>For example, I might start with an attack dose of going to sleep at 10pm for 3 nights, and then gradually decelerate to going to sleep at 11pm, and then 12am, and then 1am. I’ll then engage in sustainable habit development, making small steps to get back to the 10pm goal—perhaps taking a few weeks to get back to 10pm, but doing so sustainably, facing some challenges but being able to get through them, and building a strong foundation of instinctual evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The reason we deliberately decelerate the habit is because random events will happen that will disrupt the high bar you’ve set for yourself with the attack dose. Habits, especially the early days, are highly vulnerable to disruption, and we need to build <em>resilience</em> to disruption, which is one of the goals of using small steps for sustainable habit development. Habit resilience is what can allow us to continue developing a habit even when we’re facing challenges, like missing a day, but if we don’t have the resilience, failing to make good on a habit one day may unravel the entire habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In mindfulness meditation and in Zen, perhaps the most important lesson is to reserve judgment and be kind to oneself when things go wrong. If, in the middle of meditation, you start thinking about bills or something that happened yesterday or things you’re about to do, and then catch yourself in this state of ‘monkey mind,’ the key is to not berate yourself for failing to keep focused. Rather,&nbsp;the better course of action is to recognize it, accept that it happened, and refocus without judgment.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Resilience is the acceptance of challenges and pressing on regardless. You could be strong-willed and stick to the attack dose and see challenges as just “one-time things” that you can bounce back from—but this depends strongly on willpower, which is unreliable. Instead, a more accessible goal is to lower the bar, so when challenges inevitably crop up, it’s more likely that we are resilient enough to continue the habit, instead of losing it altogether. In other words, <strong>if we expect that there will be challenges, and plan that into habit development, we may be more capable of continuing the habit despite challenges.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is especially relevant for new year’s resolutions. Many people go hard on a new resolution, such as by going to the gym every morning, and expect to keep this up for the entirety of the habit. But then they miss a day, then another, and the habit is often lost after a few discouraging failures. Instead of thinking that we’ll keep up an ambitious habit, we have to expect that our motivation will wane, and things will come up that will disrupt the habit—we have to <em>plan</em> for them, lower the bar for the habit, expect disruptions instead of being able to continue going to the gym every day at 6am. Building resilience.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we do so, the habit is easier to do, and we may be more easily motivated to do it, especially compared to the attack dose. When we have a task that you are easily motivated to do, it can create a safety net for when your motivation is lower—the task is still easy enough to do regardless.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Consider the following hypothetical diagram:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/motivation-resilience@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Here, we see that we match our high motivation with high habit intensity in the beginning (the attack dose). Then, we taper down, but our motivation is most likely still high. The reason is that by creating a gap between the (lower) intensity of the habit and our (higher) motivation level, we <em>may</em> be more resilient to drops in motivation that may happen over the course of time. Assuming that missing one day of a habit puts us at high risk of dropping the habit altogether, it seems to be essential to have this safety net.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose: pros and cons</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory is that the attack dose:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong> Builds more instinctual evidence</strong> for the habit. After waking up at 6am and getting a lot done, I’ll be able to really see the benefit of waking up early, which will increase the instinctual evidence way more than just doing the small-steps plan, taking advantage of the higher motivation wave, which will theoretically maintain my motivation to continue the habit due to the stronger evidence for doing it.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>May create self-reinforcing motivation</strong>. By getting big successes early on, your initial high motivation may be even more elevated, potentially boosting future habit performance. Seeing lots of results from attack-dose habit development may contribute a lot more to your motivation than seeing smaller gains from normal small-steps habit development. (This may become a motivation ‘multiplier’ of sorts, causing cascading effects.)</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Keeps the instinctual evidence more accessible</strong>. I can probably think of a day a long time ago when I got up early, but that far-away memory doesn’t affect my decision-making much. Rather, immediate, near-term evidence (such as how great it was to wake up early) may be more effective, since you experienced the evidence recently. [We know that activating certain memories using words makes them more accessible, which in turn influences judgment (Forster &amp; Liberman, 2007). It doesn’t seem too much a jump to hypothesize that <em>experiential</em> activation, that is, doing some action, increases accessibility and influences behavior.]</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Shows the contrast between the goal and your initial state</strong>. Imagine going from a few super-productive days waking up at 6am and then scaling down to a schedule close to your previous one. Seeing the contrast between the two may be highly motivating for you to get back to waking up at 6am.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Can be combined with other techniques to increase success</strong>. We can use techniques that may seem too heavy-handed for small-steps habit development, but that allow us to hit the attack dose goals. For waking up early, we can have negative consequences, such as losing money, if we don’t wake up in time. For exercise, we can enlist a personal trainer to make sure that we get through our attack dose, which could be, say, a full 60 minutes of training. For meditation, a difficult habit to start, we can enroll in a meditation class that will guide us through. While these are not necessary for small-steps development, they can increase the potential that we succeed at achieving the attack dose to build motivation.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>There are risks present, of course:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Deceleration may be demotivating.</strong> Someone going through the planned deceleration process, despite knowing that this is what they planned all along, may be demotivated from seeing their goals dwindle during that period.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>The habit may be lost during deceleration.</strong> If someone went through hardship to achieve the attack dose, perhaps if the costs outweighed the benefits, they may lose the habit during deceleration and fail to engage in sustainable development.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>These risks can be potentially sidestepped if we build enough evidence in the beginning, during the attack dose, for the importance of the habit, ideally creating enough momentum to allow the person to either go back to the attack dose or find a balance between sustainable levels for the habit and the attack dose levels. There should be more work on figuring out how to reduce these risks.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Example implementations</h3>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Exercise</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Go to the gym for 60 minutes, 3 times a week</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to going 15 minutes per day, 3 days a week, then escalating back to 1 hour</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How exercise makes you feel great about yourself and your health, makes you more confident, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and taste a bit of how great it feels to exercise, but also plans for future disruptions by scaling back and developing sustainably</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Someone may not be physically able to exercise for 60 minutes; scaling back to 15 minutes may make someone lazier over time; someone may not see the results they want to during the attack dose and may be less motivated.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong> (simultaneous techniques that can increase adoption): External incentives, such as signing up for a class or personal trainer that will make sure that we get through our attack dose.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Meditation</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Meditate for 20 minutes for 5 days</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to meditating for 3 minutes per day, then gradually increasing to 30 minutes</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How beneficial meditation is, awareness of how busy our minds are, and the need to meditate to become more mindful</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and understand how useful meditation is; 3 minutes is often too little time to see the benefits of meditation apart from “wow, my mind is really chatty”</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Starting out on a meditation habit is difficult because the first few sessions are frustrating, and the attack dose can potentially exacerbate this frustration, but this is highly dependent on the individual.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: Enrolling in a meditation class, or meditating with someone who meditates often, who can convince you that the difficulties and frustrations are normal.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Waking up early</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Wake up 4 hours before average wake-up time (e.g. waking up at 6am if you usually wake up at 10am)</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to waking up one hour earlier, then work up to desired time</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How great it is to wake up early, feeling less guilty about wasting the day, better work, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and really see the benefits of waking up early, and it can also get you out of the cycle of waking up late, going to bed late, waking up late, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Going to sleep earlier than normal may be difficult, even with high motivation (physical limitations).</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: External incentives, such as paying a certain amount of money if you don’t get up at a certain time, can help increase initial adoption. For waking up early, one can combat the physical limitations by using e.g. melatonin to meet the attack dose goals. (These are only for achieving the attack dose, and I believe they are counterproductive in the sustainable development process for building a true internal incentive for the habit.)</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<h3>Gist</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we are most likely highly motivated to carry it out. It may be smart to take advantage of this high motivation wave and engage in high-intensity habits to build a lot of instinctual evidence for the habit, and then enter into planned deceleration, shifting gears to sustainable habit development. The net result may be higher motivation and much more instinctual evidence that the habit is worthwhile—evidence that can give us strong motivation to continue building the habit, and evidence that is <em>so much more real</em> because, well, you just proved it was.</p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 40px; margin-bottom: 20px; width: 200px; border-bottom: 1px solid #DDD;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<section style=\"color: #777; font-size: 15px;\">\r\n\t<p><em>Acknowledgements</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Thank you to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/dngoo\">David Ngo</a>, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/arjunblj\">Arjun Balaji</a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/conradd\">Conrad Barrett</a> for reviewing and discussing drafts of this article.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><em>References</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Forster, J., &amp; Liberman, N. (2007). Knowledge Activation. In A. W. Kruglanski &amp; E. T. Higgins (Eds.), <em>Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles</em> (2nd., pp. 201–231).</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"height: 20px;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<div id=\"disqus_thread\"><iframe id=\"dsq-2\" data-disqus-uid=\"2\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Disqus\" width=\"100%\" src=\"http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&amp;version=4703cddeb19100418d2fe56c8e42d01f&amp;f=markbao&amp;t_u=file%3A%2F%2F%2FUsers%2Fmarkbao%2FDesktop%2FJournal%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Mark%2520Bao.html&amp;t_d=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;t_t=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;s_o=default#2\" horizontalscrolling=\"no\" verticalscrolling=\"no\" style=\"width: 100% !important; border: none !important; overflow: hidden !important; height: 75px !important;\"></iframe></div>\r\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">\r\n    /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */\r\n    var disqus_shortname = 'markbao'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname\r\n\r\n    /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */\r\n    (function() {\r\n        var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;\r\n        dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';\r\n        (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);\r\n    })();\r\n</script>\r\n<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the &amp;lt;a href=“http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript”&amp;gt;comments powered by Disqus.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</noscript>","created_at":1427608440,"updated_at":1427608440}}],"relationships":[{"id":"22","type":"TAG","startNode":"11","endNode":"7","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"1","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"1d065a3a-d351-476c-94f7-5340f82764b8","name":"psychology","central":true,"public":true}},{"id":"11","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"22bc7e90-3fe7-430e-bb4d-983d81786533","title":"A technique for starting new habits and maintaining motivation: Attack Doses","slug":"a-technique-for-starting-new-habits-attack-doses","subtitle":"Riding motivation waves to build instinctual evidence","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,habits,motivation,goals","content":"            <meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<link rel=\"image_src\" href=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/preview-facebook.png\">\r\n<style type=\"text/css\">\r\nh4 {\r\n\tfont-family: \"WeblySleek UI\", Helvetica, sans-serif;\r\n\tfont-size: 1.2em;\r\n\tfont-weight: bold;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-top: 0;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\tbackground-color: #F5F5ED;\r\n\tborder-radius: 4px;\r\n\tpadding: 20px;\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 20px;\r\n}\r\n\r\n@media only screen and (min-width : 768px) {\r\n\tsection.artispec-example-imp {\r\n\t\tmargin: 20px -20px 20px -20px;\r\n\t}\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 10px !important;\r\n\tfont-size: 15px;\r\n\tline-height: 26px;\r\n}\r\n\r\nsection.artispec-example-imp p:last-child {\r\n\tmargin-bottom: 0 !important;\r\n}\r\n</style>\r\n<p>I’ve always had a nagging feeling (since writing <a href=\"http://markbao.com/journal/building-sustainable-habits-why-we-make-excuses-and-resist-habit-change\"><em>Building Sustainable Habits: Why We Make Excuses and Resist Habit Change</em></a>) that sometimes building habits using small steps isn’t always the right way to go. There are people who are able to start a new habit, ramp up fast, build a self-reinforcing loop of motivation, and continue to execute over and over—without the need for small steps. So, which one is the right way to build a new habit? Using small steps, or using the fast-track approach of getting motivated and going hard on the new habit?</p>\r\n\r\n<p>One argument is that most people won’t be able do the fast-track approach. We might hear about the cases where this was successful, but there are many where the fast-track approach didn’t work, and we don’t hear about those cases.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Another argument might be that we can combine both of them to match the different levels of motivation that we have, such as the high motivation we have in the beginning of a habit and the sometimes declining motivation we have in the middle of one. In this article, I’ll introduce a hybrid approach, which takes advantage of both high motivation and sustainable habit development, and I’ll outline some example habit development plans  that incorporate the attack dose technique. While this is wholly empirical and strictly a theory, it may be a useful concept to incorporate into your habit development, especially as you implement new goals for 2015.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Motivation waves</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>BJ Fogg, the director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, and Tiny Habits, a habit development program, introduced the idea of <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqUSjHjIEFg\"><em>motivation waves</em></a>, stating that we have different levels of motivation at different points during the development of a habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/fogg-motivation-wave.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Fogg argues that during these high motivation points, we have a temporarily higher ability to engage in habit-building tasks. We might have higher willpower during these points, which would allow us to follow through on doing the habit, which we can apply to dual-process habit development.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>A recap of dual-process habit development theory: the goal of habit development is to close the gap between “what you want to do” and “what you actually do”. Let’s take exercise: you <em>know</em> that you should exercise to be healthy, maintain a good appearance, increase confidence, and other reasons of that sort. This is the <em>conscious</em> side, which has reasoned out the benefits. But—a lot of people don’t actually do it, because they feel like it’s annoying, painful, don’t have enough energy, and other reasons, which is their <em>instinctual</em> side thinking about why they don’t want to exercise. These two&nbsp;sides are often in opposition. The goal of sustainable habit development is to build <em>instinctual evidence</em>—such as seeing results, weight loss, better health, etc.—so that “how much you know you <em>should</em> exercise” matches “how much you <em>want to</em> exercise”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we’re almost always in a high motivation state: either it’s a new year, or something just gets us Mad As Hell and we have enough energy to change it.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>For me, that’s certainly getting up earlier, which has been a challenge for, I dunno, 22 years or so. In my daily writing exercise for today, I noted my frustration for not being able to develop the waking-up-early habit for so long. For me, the key problem with waking up late is going to sleep late. Right now, I’m in a high motivation state, and I have the rare opportunity to use the energy I have to create the new habit of getting up early.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>I could engage in the sustainable habit model and build the habit using small steps. With 2am as my usual bedtime, I could probably make “going to bed before 1am” a good first step, and wake up at 9am, feeling moderately accomplished, building some instinctual evidence that “waking up early is a good idea”.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Alternatively, I could harness the high motivation wave that I’m on in the beginning of a habit, and use an <strong>attack dose</strong> to take advantage of that high motivation. The key question is: “what’s the most intense thing I’m willing to do right now to act on this habit?“—to which my answer is, go to sleep 4 hours before my average bedtime. If you’re a midnight sleeper, that means going to sleep at 8pm. (I’m a 2am sleeper, so an attack dose would be 10pm for me). I’ll also have a specific metric for success as usual, like how good I feel after waking up earlier.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>I believe the attack dose will allow you to fast-track building instinctual evidence. My attack dose for waking up earlier, which is going to sleep at 10pm and waking up at 6am, would get me up 4 more hours earlier and—presumably—I would feel much better about that and it would allow me to taste a bit of how good it feels to wake up so early, which can be highly motivating. A normal ‘small steps’ approach, waking up at 9am, would make me feel good, but not as euophriously good as waking up at 6am. <strong>Since we have the initial motivation to do it, we should use that to build more motivation for us to continue building the habit.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Planned deceleration</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>But there’s a caveat: keeping this up will be extremely difficult. Both internal factors (such as fatigue and willpower depletion, <em>especially</em> at night) plus external factors (such as events in the evening and urgent things that prevent you from keeping this up) will throw this into chaos given enough time and the randomness of life. Make no mistake: during the attack dose period, the prospective habit is highly volatile and not at all stable nor sustainable. As a result, we need to predict that these things will happen, and plan to relax the habit intensity over time to more sustainable levels. Consider the following:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/attack-doses@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>For example, I might start with an attack dose of going to sleep at 10pm for 3 nights, and then gradually decelerate to going to sleep at 11pm, and then 12am, and then 1am. I’ll then engage in sustainable habit development, making small steps to get back to the 10pm goal—perhaps taking a few weeks to get back to 10pm, but doing so sustainably, facing some challenges but being able to get through them, and building a strong foundation of instinctual evidence.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The reason we deliberately decelerate the habit is because random events will happen that will disrupt the high bar you’ve set for yourself with the attack dose. Habits, especially the early days, are highly vulnerable to disruption, and we need to build <em>resilience</em> to disruption, which is one of the goals of using small steps for sustainable habit development. Habit resilience is what can allow us to continue developing a habit even when we’re facing challenges, like missing a day, but if we don’t have the resilience, failing to make good on a habit one day may unravel the entire habit.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>In mindfulness meditation and in Zen, perhaps the most important lesson is to reserve judgment and be kind to oneself when things go wrong. If, in the middle of meditation, you start thinking about bills or something that happened yesterday or things you’re about to do, and then catch yourself in this state of ‘monkey mind,’ the key is to not berate yourself for failing to keep focused. Rather,&nbsp;the better course of action is to recognize it, accept that it happened, and refocus without judgment.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Resilience is the acceptance of challenges and pressing on regardless. You could be strong-willed and stick to the attack dose and see challenges as just “one-time things” that you can bounce back from—but this depends strongly on willpower, which is unreliable. Instead, a more accessible goal is to lower the bar, so when challenges inevitably crop up, it’s more likely that we are resilient enough to continue the habit, instead of losing it altogether. In other words, <strong>if we expect that there will be challenges, and plan that into habit development, we may be more capable of continuing the habit despite challenges.</strong></p>\r\n\r\n<p>This is especially relevant for new year’s resolutions. Many people go hard on a new resolution, such as by going to the gym every morning, and expect to keep this up for the entirety of the habit. But then they miss a day, then another, and the habit is often lost after a few discouraging failures. Instead of thinking that we’ll keep up an ambitious habit, we have to expect that our motivation will wane, and things will come up that will disrupt the habit—we have to <em>plan</em> for them, lower the bar for the habit, expect disruptions instead of being able to continue going to the gym every day at 6am. Building resilience.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>When we do so, the habit is easier to do, and we may be more easily motivated to do it, especially compared to the attack dose. When we have a task that you are easily motivated to do, it can create a safety net for when your motivation is lower—the task is still easy enough to do regardless.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Consider the following hypothetical diagram:</p>\r\n\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2014/habits-attack-doses/motivation-resilience@2x.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p>\r\n\r\n<p>Here, we see that we match our high motivation with high habit intensity in the beginning (the attack dose). Then, we taper down, but our motivation is most likely still high. The reason is that by creating a gap between the (lower) intensity of the habit and our (higher) motivation level, we <em>may</em> be more resilient to drops in motivation that may happen over the course of time. Assuming that missing one day of a habit puts us at high risk of dropping the habit altogether, it seems to be essential to have this safety net.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>The attack dose: pros and cons</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>My theory is that the attack dose:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong> Builds more instinctual evidence</strong> for the habit. After waking up at 6am and getting a lot done, I’ll be able to really see the benefit of waking up early, which will increase the instinctual evidence way more than just doing the small-steps plan, taking advantage of the higher motivation wave, which will theoretically maintain my motivation to continue the habit due to the stronger evidence for doing it.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>May create self-reinforcing motivation</strong>. By getting big successes early on, your initial high motivation may be even more elevated, potentially boosting future habit performance. Seeing lots of results from attack-dose habit development may contribute a lot more to your motivation than seeing smaller gains from normal small-steps habit development. (This may become a motivation ‘multiplier’ of sorts, causing cascading effects.)</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Keeps the instinctual evidence more accessible</strong>. I can probably think of a day a long time ago when I got up early, but that far-away memory doesn’t affect my decision-making much. Rather, immediate, near-term evidence (such as how great it was to wake up early) may be more effective, since you experienced the evidence recently. [We know that activating certain memories using words makes them more accessible, which in turn influences judgment (Forster &amp; Liberman, 2007). It doesn’t seem too much a jump to hypothesize that <em>experiential</em> activation, that is, doing some action, increases accessibility and influences behavior.]</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Shows the contrast between the goal and your initial state</strong>. Imagine going from a few super-productive days waking up at 6am and then scaling down to a schedule close to your previous one. Seeing the contrast between the two may be highly motivating for you to get back to waking up at 6am.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>Can be combined with other techniques to increase success</strong>. We can use techniques that may seem too heavy-handed for small-steps habit development, but that allow us to hit the attack dose goals. For waking up early, we can have negative consequences, such as losing money, if we don’t wake up in time. For exercise, we can enlist a personal trainer to make sure that we get through our attack dose, which could be, say, a full 60 minutes of training. For meditation, a difficult habit to start, we can enroll in a meditation class that will guide us through. While these are not necessary for small-steps development, they can increase the potential that we succeed at achieving the attack dose to build motivation.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>There are risks present, of course:</p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Deceleration may be demotivating.</strong> Someone going through the planned deceleration process, despite knowing that this is what they planned all along, may be demotivated from seeing their goals dwindle during that period.</li>\r\n\t<li><strong>The habit may be lost during deceleration.</strong> If someone went through hardship to achieve the attack dose, perhaps if the costs outweighed the benefits, they may lose the habit during deceleration and fail to engage in sustainable development.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n\r\n<p>These risks can be potentially sidestepped if we build enough evidence in the beginning, during the attack dose, for the importance of the habit, ideally creating enough momentum to allow the person to either go back to the attack dose or find a balance between sustainable levels for the habit and the attack dose levels. There should be more work on figuring out how to reduce these risks.</p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Example implementations</h3>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Exercise</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Go to the gym for 60 minutes, 3 times a week</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to going 15 minutes per day, 3 days a week, then escalating back to 1 hour</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How exercise makes you feel great about yourself and your health, makes you more confident, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and taste a bit of how great it feels to exercise, but also plans for future disruptions by scaling back and developing sustainably</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Someone may not be physically able to exercise for 60 minutes; scaling back to 15 minutes may make someone lazier over time; someone may not see the results they want to during the attack dose and may be less motivated.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong> (simultaneous techniques that can increase adoption): External incentives, such as signing up for a class or personal trainer that will make sure that we get through our attack dose.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Meditation</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Meditate for 20 minutes for 5 days</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to meditating for 3 minutes per day, then gradually increasing to 30 minutes</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How beneficial meditation is, awareness of how busy our minds are, and the need to meditate to become more mindful</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and understand how useful meditation is; 3 minutes is often too little time to see the benefits of meditation apart from “wow, my mind is really chatty”</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Starting out on a meditation habit is difficult because the first few sessions are frustrating, and the attack dose can potentially exacerbate this frustration, but this is highly dependent on the individual.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: Enrolling in a meditation class, or meditating with someone who meditates often, who can convince you that the difficulties and frustrations are normal.</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<section class=\"artispec-example-imp\">\r\n\t<h4>Waking up early</h4>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose during high motivation</strong>: Wake up 4 hours before average wake-up time (e.g. waking up at 6am if you usually wake up at 10am)</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Planned deceleration</strong>: Scale back to waking up one hour earlier, then work up to desired time</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Building evidence for</strong>: How great it is to wake up early, feeling less guilty about wasting the day, better work, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose benefits</strong>: Allows you to build early evidence and really see the benefits of waking up early, and it can also get you out of the cycle of waking up late, going to bed late, waking up late, etc.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Attack dose risks</strong>: Going to sleep earlier than normal may be difficult, even with high motivation (physical limitations).</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><strong>Co-techniques</strong>: External incentives, such as paying a certain amount of money if you don’t get up at a certain time, can help increase initial adoption. For waking up early, one can combat the physical limitations by using e.g. melatonin to meet the attack dose goals. (These are only for achieving the attack dose, and I believe they are counterproductive in the sustainable development process for building a true internal incentive for the habit.)</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<h3>Gist</h3>\r\n\r\n<p>When we start a new habit, we are most likely highly motivated to carry it out. It may be smart to take advantage of this high motivation wave and engage in high-intensity habits to build a lot of instinctual evidence for the habit, and then enter into planned deceleration, shifting gears to sustainable habit development. The net result may be higher motivation and much more instinctual evidence that the habit is worthwhile—evidence that can give us strong motivation to continue building the habit, and evidence that is <em>so much more real</em> because, well, you just proved it was.</p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 40px; margin-bottom: 20px; width: 200px; border-bottom: 1px solid #DDD;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<section style=\"color: #777; font-size: 15px;\">\r\n\t<p><em>Acknowledgements</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Thank you to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/dngoo\">David Ngo</a>, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/arjunblj\">Arjun Balaji</a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/conradd\">Conrad Barrett</a> for reviewing and discussing drafts of this article.</p>\r\n\r\n\t<p><em>References</em></p>\r\n\r\n\t<p>Forster, J., &amp; Liberman, N. (2007). Knowledge Activation. In A. W. Kruglanski &amp; E. T. Higgins (Eds.), <em>Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles</em> (2nd., pp. 201–231).</p>\r\n</section>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"height: 20px;\"></div>\r\n\r\n<div id=\"disqus_thread\"><iframe id=\"dsq-2\" data-disqus-uid=\"2\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Disqus\" width=\"100%\" src=\"http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&amp;version=4703cddeb19100418d2fe56c8e42d01f&amp;f=markbao&amp;t_u=file%3A%2F%2F%2FUsers%2Fmarkbao%2FDesktop%2FJournal%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520Mark%2520Bao.html&amp;t_d=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;t_t=Journal%20%E2%80%93%20Mark%20Bao&amp;s_o=default#2\" horizontalscrolling=\"no\" verticalscrolling=\"no\" style=\"width: 100% !important; border: none !important; overflow: hidden !important; height: 75px !important;\"></iframe></div>\r\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">\r\n    /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */\r\n    var disqus_shortname = 'markbao'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname\r\n\r\n    /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */\r\n    (function() {\r\n        var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;\r\n        dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';\r\n        (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);\r\n    })();\r\n</script>\r\n<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the &amp;lt;a href=“http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript”&amp;gt;comments powered by Disqus.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</noscript>","created_at":1427608440,"updated_at":1427608440}}],"relationships":[{"id":"20","type":"TAG","startNode":"11","endNode":"1","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"16","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"58aa88f8-d280-4b08-b274-77b143294f9c","title":"Request: help on over-optimization. Reward: a story from Thailand","slug":"my-email-for-the-listserve","subtitle":"My email for The Listserve","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"personal","content":"            <p>\r\n\t<em>The Listserve is an email&nbsp;listserve with about 25,000 subscribers, in which one person every day is selected to&nbsp;email the entire group. A few days ago, the random number generator smiled upon my user ID (or some such). I didn’t&nbsp;know what to write about, and I didn’t want to give some obvious life advice—so I asked for some, and told a story to add some value.</em>\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t<em>Published January 3, 2015, copied here,&nbsp;with a photo for context.</em>\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t<em>—</em>\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tHey Listserve,\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tI’m Mark Bao. I’d like to ask for some life advice. And tell you a story.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t1. For most of my life, I’ve been trying to optimize things as much as possible. Optimize the things I’m working on. Make sure that I’m learning exactly the right things, to build the mental structures so I can be different than others. And above all -- make sure I’m working on something that I think will have the most impact on the world -- which right now I think is behavioral science. But lately, such a focus on optimization, and perfectionism, has gotten difficult -- in part because I realize that there’s so much uncertainty and I can’t predict things, and trying to make sure things work out while not knowing everything has been overwhelming. Has anyone else dealt with this? I’d love to chat with you.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t2. I’m starting a group of people who are interested in psychology, thoughtful topics, life-long learning, and understanding things on a deeper level. If you read Farnam Street or Raptitude or Less Wrong or are interested in understanding behavior and improving personal growth, it would be rad to have you in the group! Just shoot me an email. The goal is to have a collaborative discussion among thoughtful people trying to make the world a better place.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tAnd now a story. Northwest Thailand. During my round-the-world trip. T and I decide to take a day hike into a valley, between two mountains, to a waterfall, crossing a river a few times, climbing boulders, walking through idyllic paths through damp forests and brushes teeming with weird bugs we’ve never seen before.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tWe get to the waterfall, and eat our sandwiches in victory.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t<img src=\"http://i.imgur.com/x0vzCqF.jpg\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\">\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t 3 hours to sundown - just enough time to get back home before things go dark. But when it does go dark... It gets below zero. If you stayed in the valley, things aren’t looking great for you. We had no more food. No water. Hiking in shorts and a t-shirt. No worries, plenty of time to go.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tWalking back, T spots an upper trail. I’m thrilled -- I hate backtracking and always like to take new trials. We walk up and see a whole new view of the valley, almost reaching the top of the mountain. But...\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t“Hey, T?”\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t“Yeah?”\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t“Did we lose the trail?”\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tWe look down. What was the trail now was a few leaves on the ground.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t“Uh, weird.”\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t1.5 hours to go before sundown. We tried backtracking, trying to find the leaves on the ground we followed before. It was all shrubs and trees and weird bugs.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tNothing.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\t1 hour to get out. No trail. Getting dark. No food. No water. And already feeling chilly.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tPanic. But after a moment: we remembered we crossed the river at the bottom of the valley. So we thought: well, maybe we should try to get down to the river.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tWe found a relatively flat incline with some leaves, got on our butts, and slid down the side, getting scratched, bit by bugs, dodging tree trunks, and trying to control ourselves going down.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tWe didn’t know if that would lead to the right place. We didn’t know how far we went up and if we had enough time to get down.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tBut then we caught a glimpse of the river. We got up, jumped over a bunch of boulders, and ran over to the river, ridiculously happy that we made it down. Followed the river for a while, found the path again -- and found our way back, walking back home just as the sun set.\r\n</p>\r\n<p>\r\n\tMark Bao\r\n\t<br>\r\n\tNew York, NY\r\n</p>","created_at":1427609026,"updated_at":1427609026}},{"id":"4","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6bf2236c-a8c9-4cb6-ae1d-ffc4a8b50bfd","name":"personal","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"36","type":"TAG","startNode":"16","endNode":"4","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"17","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"cc15e079-95f8-4a14-a892-bc29af4f5f00","title":"The Optimization–Cognitive Load Tradeoff","slug":"the-optimization-cognitive-load-tradeoff","subtitle":"How perfectionism can lead to procrastination and lower performance","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,optimization,personal","content":"            <p>Lately, I’ve been exploring what the tradeoffs of optimization are. That is, when we try to optimize what we do in work and life, what are the effects? What actually gets <em>worse</em> when we try to make things better?</p>\r\n<p>One that seems obvious is that <strong>more optimization leads to higher cognitive load</strong>. The more we want to do something well, the more mental effort we’ll have to put into doing that task. This doesn’t just amount to the additional work needed to do something well, but I hypothesize that optimizing also seems to involve a <em>second track</em> of thinking, running alongside the track of the action itself, that is dedicated to observing how we are doing that action and evaluating whether we are doing it well or not.</p>\r\n<p>If we assume that the need to optimize increases cognitive load, either beacuse the desire to do something well involves more mental effort, or because the simultaneous reflexive self-evaluation of our performance requires us to perform two tasks (the main task and the optimization task) at the same time, we can make a few hypotheses:</p>\r\n<p><strong>Optimization may lead to avoidance and procrastination.</strong> — A desire to optimize how well you do a task, which leads to cognitive higher load, may make us avoid that task more. Common sense tells us that we are inclined to avoid tasks that are cognitively demanding. Having a desire to optimize on a task may make us procrastinate on that task, since we have such a high bar of performance when we carry out the task that it feels daunting.</p>\r\n<p>Take one example: I have to send out a bunch of cold emails. I want to send out the perfect cold emails since these are very important emails, but that makes the task of “send cold emails” more difficult and daunting. As a result, I tend to avoid the task beacuse I added the need to optimize to it. If the task was simply “send cold emails” without an optimization element, I’d be able to send out some damn emails. But if I attempt to optimize the emails and as a result procrastinate to the last minute, rush the emails, and send out crappy ones because of the time pressure, that amounts to a very bad optimization on the whole.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Optimization may undermine performance.</strong> — If optimization takes up a certain level of cognitive resources, then the act of optimization can actually decrease performance. Research has found that increased cognitive load, represented by increased working memory usage, can decrease performance (Ward &amp; Mann, 2000). One group of researchers suggest that “cognitive load has a detrimental effect on goal pursuit by diverting processing resources away from the goal” (Vohs, Kaikati, Kerkof, &amp; Schmeichel, 2009). As a result, the need to optimize may lead to us ‘overthinking it’, or exhaust more cognitive resources, which may lead to us actually doing <em>worse</em> on a task even though we are ostensibly attempting to optimize how well we are doing it.</p>\r\n<p>Perhaps this is what is behind Buddhists’ conception of the “beginner’s mind,” the unexperienced, unprejudiced mind that does not try too hard to optimize, which we might consider as the source of “beginner’s luck”. Or this might be why (to pull a story from Timothy Gallwey’s <em>The Inner Game of Tennis</em>) a tennis player might be in the zone, but once his opponent comments on how well his backhand is doing today, he reflexively tries to understand what exactly he was doing with his backhand that was working, leading to him losing his streak.</p>\r\n<p>With both of these, we see that there may be a tradeoff between the desire to optimize and the effects of cognitive load. Optimization is a good thing, until we try to optimize too much. Then, it might lead to avoidance of the daunting task, or to decreased performance on the task. Perfectionists—those who optimize to an extreme degree—may actually find themselves doing <em>worse</em> and procrastinating more due to the need to be perfect. What do we do about that?</p>\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2015/the-optimization-cognitive-load-tradeoff/optimization-cognitive-load-summary@2x.png\" alt=\"Optimization - Cognitive Load Tradeoff Chart\" style=\"max-width: 100%\"></p>\r\n<h3>Counter-strategies</h3>\r\n<p>Here are three counter-strategies that I think may be interesting to consider:</p>\r\n<p><strong>Increase cognitive capacity or willpower.</strong> — If the problem is that optimization makes us procrastinate, we may be able to continue to optimize at the same level if we come at it from the direction of training ourselves to procrastinate less and focus more. As someone that has been able to do this for short stretches of time, I know it’s possible, but the difficulty is sustaining this long-term. The negative impact of optimization on task performance, however, is more difficult to solve.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Rebalancing.</strong> — The potentially better option is to be aware of when one’s desire to optimize is causing procrastination or decreased task performance. Then, keeping the end goal in mind, we may try to shift the balance of optimization so that we are optimizing less but also freeing up cognitive resources so we can either reduce procrastination (so we can do the task in the first place) or increase performance (so we can do that task well). Educational psychologists have used cognitive load in conjunction with the concept of the zone of proximal development to advocate “reach” goals, which is in the space between goals we can easily achieve and goals we are unable to achieve (Schnotz, 2008). We may take the same approach, finding, say, a <em>zone of proximal performance</em>, where we are still optimizing what we are doing but not so much that it becomes cognitively overbearing. Striking a better balance seems to me to be an effective way to hit the sweet spot of optimizing enough but not to the point of excess.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Separate doing the task and evaluating performance.</strong> — We might be able to reduce the detrimental effect of optimization on cognitive load and performance by segregating the processes of “actually performing the task” and “evaluating our performance”, doing them sequentially instead of simultaneously. Taking the example of writing cold emails, I might write a cold email out, promising myself to review it after I’m done, instead of worrying about how to make each part perfect. When I’m done, I can shift into an ‘evaluative’ stage. This way, I can separate the two tracks of performing the task and evaluating how I’m doing, potentially reducing the negative effect of cognitive load on performance by not needing to keep the two tasks in mind at the same time.</p>\r\n<h3>Gist</h3>\r\n<p>As we can see here, optimization is a double-edged sword. I hypothesize that it can be really beneficial when used correctly, but potentially detrimental and counterproductive when taken to excess. In my next post, I’ll talk about another tradeoff: the tradeoff of optimization with contentment and happiness.</p>\r\n<div style=\"color: #777; margin-top: 30px;\">\r\n<p>—</p>\r\n<p><em>Thank you to Quinten Farmer and Dan Shipper for reading a draft of this post.</em></p>\r\n<p>References</p>\r\n<p>Schnotz, W. (2008). Why multimedia learning is not always helpful. In J.-F. Rouet (Ed.), <em>Understanding multimedia documents</em> (pp.&nbsp;17–43). New York; London: Springer. Retrieved from <a href=\"http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=367576\">http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=367576</a><br>Vohs, K. D., Kaikati, A. M., Kerkhof, P., &amp; Schmeichel, B. J. (2009). Self-regulatory resource depletion: A model for understanding the limited nature of goal pursuit. In G. B. Moskowitz &amp; H. Grant (Eds.), <em>The psychology of goals</em>. New York: Guilford Press.<br>Ward, A., &amp; Mann, T. (2000). Don’t mind if I do: Disinhibited eating under cognitive load. <em>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</em>, 78(4), 753–763. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.753</p>\r\n</div>","created_at":1427609040,"updated_at":1427609040}},{"id":"4","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6bf2236c-a8c9-4cb6-ae1d-ffc4a8b50bfd","name":"personal","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"42","type":"TAG","startNode":"17","endNode":"4","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"17","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"cc15e079-95f8-4a14-a892-bc29af4f5f00","title":"The Optimization–Cognitive Load Tradeoff","slug":"the-optimization-cognitive-load-tradeoff","subtitle":"How perfectionism can lead to procrastination and lower performance","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,optimization,personal","content":"            <p>Lately, I’ve been exploring what the tradeoffs of optimization are. That is, when we try to optimize what we do in work and life, what are the effects? What actually gets <em>worse</em> when we try to make things better?</p>\r\n<p>One that seems obvious is that <strong>more optimization leads to higher cognitive load</strong>. The more we want to do something well, the more mental effort we’ll have to put into doing that task. This doesn’t just amount to the additional work needed to do something well, but I hypothesize that optimizing also seems to involve a <em>second track</em> of thinking, running alongside the track of the action itself, that is dedicated to observing how we are doing that action and evaluating whether we are doing it well or not.</p>\r\n<p>If we assume that the need to optimize increases cognitive load, either beacuse the desire to do something well involves more mental effort, or because the simultaneous reflexive self-evaluation of our performance requires us to perform two tasks (the main task and the optimization task) at the same time, we can make a few hypotheses:</p>\r\n<p><strong>Optimization may lead to avoidance and procrastination.</strong> — A desire to optimize how well you do a task, which leads to cognitive higher load, may make us avoid that task more. Common sense tells us that we are inclined to avoid tasks that are cognitively demanding. Having a desire to optimize on a task may make us procrastinate on that task, since we have such a high bar of performance when we carry out the task that it feels daunting.</p>\r\n<p>Take one example: I have to send out a bunch of cold emails. I want to send out the perfect cold emails since these are very important emails, but that makes the task of “send cold emails” more difficult and daunting. As a result, I tend to avoid the task beacuse I added the need to optimize to it. If the task was simply “send cold emails” without an optimization element, I’d be able to send out some damn emails. But if I attempt to optimize the emails and as a result procrastinate to the last minute, rush the emails, and send out crappy ones because of the time pressure, that amounts to a very bad optimization on the whole.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Optimization may undermine performance.</strong> — If optimization takes up a certain level of cognitive resources, then the act of optimization can actually decrease performance. Research has found that increased cognitive load, represented by increased working memory usage, can decrease performance (Ward &amp; Mann, 2000). One group of researchers suggest that “cognitive load has a detrimental effect on goal pursuit by diverting processing resources away from the goal” (Vohs, Kaikati, Kerkof, &amp; Schmeichel, 2009). As a result, the need to optimize may lead to us ‘overthinking it’, or exhaust more cognitive resources, which may lead to us actually doing <em>worse</em> on a task even though we are ostensibly attempting to optimize how well we are doing it.</p>\r\n<p>Perhaps this is what is behind Buddhists’ conception of the “beginner’s mind,” the unexperienced, unprejudiced mind that does not try too hard to optimize, which we might consider as the source of “beginner’s luck”. Or this might be why (to pull a story from Timothy Gallwey’s <em>The Inner Game of Tennis</em>) a tennis player might be in the zone, but once his opponent comments on how well his backhand is doing today, he reflexively tries to understand what exactly he was doing with his backhand that was working, leading to him losing his streak.</p>\r\n<p>With both of these, we see that there may be a tradeoff between the desire to optimize and the effects of cognitive load. Optimization is a good thing, until we try to optimize too much. Then, it might lead to avoidance of the daunting task, or to decreased performance on the task. Perfectionists—those who optimize to an extreme degree—may actually find themselves doing <em>worse</em> and procrastinating more due to the need to be perfect. What do we do about that?</p>\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2015/the-optimization-cognitive-load-tradeoff/optimization-cognitive-load-summary@2x.png\" alt=\"Optimization - Cognitive Load Tradeoff Chart\" style=\"max-width: 100%\"></p>\r\n<h3>Counter-strategies</h3>\r\n<p>Here are three counter-strategies that I think may be interesting to consider:</p>\r\n<p><strong>Increase cognitive capacity or willpower.</strong> — If the problem is that optimization makes us procrastinate, we may be able to continue to optimize at the same level if we come at it from the direction of training ourselves to procrastinate less and focus more. As someone that has been able to do this for short stretches of time, I know it’s possible, but the difficulty is sustaining this long-term. The negative impact of optimization on task performance, however, is more difficult to solve.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Rebalancing.</strong> — The potentially better option is to be aware of when one’s desire to optimize is causing procrastination or decreased task performance. Then, keeping the end goal in mind, we may try to shift the balance of optimization so that we are optimizing less but also freeing up cognitive resources so we can either reduce procrastination (so we can do the task in the first place) or increase performance (so we can do that task well). Educational psychologists have used cognitive load in conjunction with the concept of the zone of proximal development to advocate “reach” goals, which is in the space between goals we can easily achieve and goals we are unable to achieve (Schnotz, 2008). We may take the same approach, finding, say, a <em>zone of proximal performance</em>, where we are still optimizing what we are doing but not so much that it becomes cognitively overbearing. Striking a better balance seems to me to be an effective way to hit the sweet spot of optimizing enough but not to the point of excess.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Separate doing the task and evaluating performance.</strong> — We might be able to reduce the detrimental effect of optimization on cognitive load and performance by segregating the processes of “actually performing the task” and “evaluating our performance”, doing them sequentially instead of simultaneously. Taking the example of writing cold emails, I might write a cold email out, promising myself to review it after I’m done, instead of worrying about how to make each part perfect. When I’m done, I can shift into an ‘evaluative’ stage. This way, I can separate the two tracks of performing the task and evaluating how I’m doing, potentially reducing the negative effect of cognitive load on performance by not needing to keep the two tasks in mind at the same time.</p>\r\n<h3>Gist</h3>\r\n<p>As we can see here, optimization is a double-edged sword. I hypothesize that it can be really beneficial when used correctly, but potentially detrimental and counterproductive when taken to excess. In my next post, I’ll talk about another tradeoff: the tradeoff of optimization with contentment and happiness.</p>\r\n<div style=\"color: #777; margin-top: 30px;\">\r\n<p>—</p>\r\n<p><em>Thank you to Quinten Farmer and Dan Shipper for reading a draft of this post.</em></p>\r\n<p>References</p>\r\n<p>Schnotz, W. (2008). Why multimedia learning is not always helpful. In J.-F. Rouet (Ed.), <em>Understanding multimedia documents</em> (pp.&nbsp;17–43). New York; London: Springer. Retrieved from <a href=\"http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=367576\">http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=367576</a><br>Vohs, K. D., Kaikati, A. M., Kerkhof, P., &amp; Schmeichel, B. J. (2009). Self-regulatory resource depletion: A model for understanding the limited nature of goal pursuit. In G. B. Moskowitz &amp; H. Grant (Eds.), <em>The psychology of goals</em>. New York: Guilford Press.<br>Ward, A., &amp; Mann, T. (2000). Don’t mind if I do: Disinhibited eating under cognitive load. <em>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</em>, 78(4), 753–763. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.753</p>\r\n</div>","created_at":1427609040,"updated_at":1427609040}},{"id":"15","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"00e0b36b-07d8-4f37-ae5d-8051262300d7","name":"optimization","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"40","type":"TAG","startNode":"17","endNode":"15","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"17","labels":["JournalArticle"],"properties":{"uuid":"cc15e079-95f8-4a14-a892-bc29af4f5f00","title":"The Optimization–Cognitive Load Tradeoff","slug":"the-optimization-cognitive-load-tradeoff","subtitle":"How perfectionism can lead to procrastination and lower performance","view_type":"normal","tag_string":"psychology,optimization,personal","content":"            <p>Lately, I’ve been exploring what the tradeoffs of optimization are. That is, when we try to optimize what we do in work and life, what are the effects? What actually gets <em>worse</em> when we try to make things better?</p>\r\n<p>One that seems obvious is that <strong>more optimization leads to higher cognitive load</strong>. The more we want to do something well, the more mental effort we’ll have to put into doing that task. This doesn’t just amount to the additional work needed to do something well, but I hypothesize that optimizing also seems to involve a <em>second track</em> of thinking, running alongside the track of the action itself, that is dedicated to observing how we are doing that action and evaluating whether we are doing it well or not.</p>\r\n<p>If we assume that the need to optimize increases cognitive load, either beacuse the desire to do something well involves more mental effort, or because the simultaneous reflexive self-evaluation of our performance requires us to perform two tasks (the main task and the optimization task) at the same time, we can make a few hypotheses:</p>\r\n<p><strong>Optimization may lead to avoidance and procrastination.</strong> — A desire to optimize how well you do a task, which leads to cognitive higher load, may make us avoid that task more. Common sense tells us that we are inclined to avoid tasks that are cognitively demanding. Having a desire to optimize on a task may make us procrastinate on that task, since we have such a high bar of performance when we carry out the task that it feels daunting.</p>\r\n<p>Take one example: I have to send out a bunch of cold emails. I want to send out the perfect cold emails since these are very important emails, but that makes the task of “send cold emails” more difficult and daunting. As a result, I tend to avoid the task beacuse I added the need to optimize to it. If the task was simply “send cold emails” without an optimization element, I’d be able to send out some damn emails. But if I attempt to optimize the emails and as a result procrastinate to the last minute, rush the emails, and send out crappy ones because of the time pressure, that amounts to a very bad optimization on the whole.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Optimization may undermine performance.</strong> — If optimization takes up a certain level of cognitive resources, then the act of optimization can actually decrease performance. Research has found that increased cognitive load, represented by increased working memory usage, can decrease performance (Ward &amp; Mann, 2000). One group of researchers suggest that “cognitive load has a detrimental effect on goal pursuit by diverting processing resources away from the goal” (Vohs, Kaikati, Kerkof, &amp; Schmeichel, 2009). As a result, the need to optimize may lead to us ‘overthinking it’, or exhaust more cognitive resources, which may lead to us actually doing <em>worse</em> on a task even though we are ostensibly attempting to optimize how well we are doing it.</p>\r\n<p>Perhaps this is what is behind Buddhists’ conception of the “beginner’s mind,” the unexperienced, unprejudiced mind that does not try too hard to optimize, which we might consider as the source of “beginner’s luck”. Or this might be why (to pull a story from Timothy Gallwey’s <em>The Inner Game of Tennis</em>) a tennis player might be in the zone, but once his opponent comments on how well his backhand is doing today, he reflexively tries to understand what exactly he was doing with his backhand that was working, leading to him losing his streak.</p>\r\n<p>With both of these, we see that there may be a tradeoff between the desire to optimize and the effects of cognitive load. Optimization is a good thing, until we try to optimize too much. Then, it might lead to avoidance of the daunting task, or to decreased performance on the task. Perfectionists—those who optimize to an extreme degree—may actually find themselves doing <em>worse</em> and procrastinating more due to the need to be perfect. What do we do about that?</p>\r\n<p><img src=\"http://photos.markbao.com/journal/2015/the-optimization-cognitive-load-tradeoff/optimization-cognitive-load-summary@2x.png\" alt=\"Optimization - Cognitive Load Tradeoff Chart\" style=\"max-width: 100%\"></p>\r\n<h3>Counter-strategies</h3>\r\n<p>Here are three counter-strategies that I think may be interesting to consider:</p>\r\n<p><strong>Increase cognitive capacity or willpower.</strong> — If the problem is that optimization makes us procrastinate, we may be able to continue to optimize at the same level if we come at it from the direction of training ourselves to procrastinate less and focus more. As someone that has been able to do this for short stretches of time, I know it’s possible, but the difficulty is sustaining this long-term. The negative impact of optimization on task performance, however, is more difficult to solve.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Rebalancing.</strong> — The potentially better option is to be aware of when one’s desire to optimize is causing procrastination or decreased task performance. Then, keeping the end goal in mind, we may try to shift the balance of optimization so that we are optimizing less but also freeing up cognitive resources so we can either reduce procrastination (so we can do the task in the first place) or increase performance (so we can do that task well). Educational psychologists have used cognitive load in conjunction with the concept of the zone of proximal development to advocate “reach” goals, which is in the space between goals we can easily achieve and goals we are unable to achieve (Schnotz, 2008). We may take the same approach, finding, say, a <em>zone of proximal performance</em>, where we are still optimizing what we are doing but not so much that it becomes cognitively overbearing. Striking a better balance seems to me to be an effective way to hit the sweet spot of optimizing enough but not to the point of excess.</p>\r\n<p><strong>Separate doing the task and evaluating performance.</strong> — We might be able to reduce the detrimental effect of optimization on cognitive load and performance by segregating the processes of “actually performing the task” and “evaluating our performance”, doing them sequentially instead of simultaneously. Taking the example of writing cold emails, I might write a cold email out, promising myself to review it after I’m done, instead of worrying about how to make each part perfect. When I’m done, I can shift into an ‘evaluative’ stage. This way, I can separate the two tracks of performing the task and evaluating how I’m doing, potentially reducing the negative effect of cognitive load on performance by not needing to keep the two tasks in mind at the same time.</p>\r\n<h3>Gist</h3>\r\n<p>As we can see here, optimization is a double-edged sword. I hypothesize that it can be really beneficial when used correctly, but potentially detrimental and counterproductive when taken to excess. In my next post, I’ll talk about another tradeoff: the tradeoff of optimization with contentment and happiness.</p>\r\n<div style=\"color: #777; margin-top: 30px;\">\r\n<p>—</p>\r\n<p><em>Thank you to Quinten Farmer and Dan Shipper for reading a draft of this post.</em></p>\r\n<p>References</p>\r\n<p>Schnotz, W. (2008). Why multimedia learning is not always helpful. In J.-F. Rouet (Ed.), <em>Understanding multimedia documents</em> (pp.&nbsp;17–43). New York; London: Springer. Retrieved from <a href=\"http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=367576\">http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=367576</a><br>Vohs, K. D., Kaikati, A. M., Kerkhof, P., &amp; Schmeichel, B. J. (2009). Self-regulatory resource depletion: A model for understanding the limited nature of goal pursuit. In G. B. Moskowitz &amp; H. Grant (Eds.), <em>The psychology of goals</em>. New York: Guilford Press.<br>Ward, A., &amp; Mann, T. (2000). Don’t mind if I do: Disinhibited eating under cognitive load. <em>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</em>, 78(4), 753–763. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.753</p>\r\n</div>","created_at":1427609040,"updated_at":1427609040}},{"id":"1","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"1d065a3a-d351-476c-94f7-5340f82764b8","name":"psychology","central":true,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"38","type":"TAG","startNode":"17","endNode":"1","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"18","labels":["Note"],"properties":{"uuid":"57f8e23b-f546-4d0c-93a9-e51a26f84230","title":"College Strategies","slug":"college-strategies","subtitle":"Notes on effective techniques for college.","tag_string":"college,productivity","content":"        <p class=\"alert alert-info\">This is a&nbsp;work in progress.</p><h2 style=\"\" id=\"principles\">Principles</h2><ol>\r\n\t<li><strong>Understanding over memorization</strong> — In the long run, understanding first trumps repeated memorization in both efficacy and time spent, <em>especially</em> when factoring in assignments that use course material and&nbsp;cumulative assessments. And, more importantly, it makes the knowledge useful.</li>\t<li><strong>Focus on the building blocks: the best tools, optimized processes </strong>— The fundamental building blocks have a huge effect on the end result. Modern tools, such as note-taking apps, spaced repetition software, SelfControl, etc., and optimized processes, like the Cornell method, have huge benefits. Don’t skimp on tools.</li>\t<li><strong>Apply concepts from psychology</strong> — Use concepts such as distributed practice, active learning, memory consolidation,&nbsp;spaced repetition, and other concepts and methods from psychology. <cite>[See&nbsp;Dunlosky et al. 2013]</cite></li>\t<li><strong>Time leverage is essential</strong> — The goal is to find the highest value activities that have the lowest time input, but high time input activities with a very high value are also acceptable.</li>\t<li><strong>Long-term benefits at the cost of short-term suck. </strong>Understanding over memorization, strict time management systems, and other things suck in the moment and take a lot of work, but they pose a long-term benefit (and help us practice delayed gratification).</li></ol><h2 id=\"note-taking\">Note-taking</h2><h3 id=\"in-class\">In-class</h3><p>\r\n\t<strong>OmniOutliner is the gold standard in note-taking software. </strong>It’s&nbsp;the best tool I’ve found&nbsp;for taking notes during class. I start with the regular template, and added columns, headers, and tweaked fonts and formatting, and created my own modified template.</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Transcribe if necessary.</strong> —&nbsp;I try not to basically transcribe what the prof is saying, though some things do merit transcription. I’ve found that trying to keep up when taking notes while also trying to put things in my own words is very difficult, especially in fact-based STEM classes.</li>\t<li><strong>Use logical headers.</strong> — This will make it easier to mentally organize the topics. This is usually pretty easy if the class has slides, and takes a bit more guesswork if it doesn’t.</li>\t<li><strong>Record the lecture, but try not to rely on it.</strong>&nbsp;—&nbsp;I’ve written “[fill in 34:25]” many times when not paying attention or falling asleep, and that <em>doubles or triples </em>note review time afterwards. Don’t do this. Try to be as diligent as possible for the hour or two and stay focused, or else, for me, it takes&nbsp;2–3× more time later on to review the material I missed while browsing Facebook.</li>\t<li><strong>The obvious stuff...</strong>&nbsp;Keep notes organized, preferably in Dropbox, numbered by class, date, and topic (e.g.&nbsp;<em>Class 19 – 4/14 – Control of Cognition</em>). Resist the temptation to go on Facebook or turn off the internet altogether. Sit in the first 5 rows of class. Ask questions. etc.</li></ul><p>\r\n\t<img src=\"http://i.imgur.com/42RNOkB.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%\"></p><h3 id=\"out-of-class\">Out-of-class</h3><p>\r\n\tThis is the essential bit. Taking notes in class is good, but the knowledge isn’t quite consolidated during the first pass. Doing a note review, a second pass, will help in solidifying the knowledge and assist in the process of moving it to long-term memory (LTM).</p><p>\r\n\tWhile studies show that rereading has low utility compared to other techniques \r\n\t<cite>[Dunlosky et al. 2013]</cite>, I find that STEM and social science classes throw so much at you that rereading does help you figure out what the hell got taught during that class.</p><p>\r\n\tBut that’s not enough: during rereading, we should actively think about what the relation of the knowledge is to the bigger picture.</p><p>\r\n\tAs well-known as it is, the Cornell Notetaking System is the best method I’ve found for note review, mostly because it’s logical and makes sense from a psychological perspective. My use of Cornell might differ from the original, though, so here’s how it goes:</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Timing. </strong>The CNS recommends writing questions as soon after class as possible; I prefer to forget about the class and get coffee instead. There’s a few ways you can do this:<br>\r\n\t<ul>\r\n\t\t<li><em>Later in the day or the next day.</em> I use this since it injects a bit of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect\">spacing effect</a>; if I read my notes over right after class, it might be useful, but I’ll probably be fairly familiar with it. If I do it later in the day or the next day, it allows me to see it with new eyes and solidify my knowledge a bit more.</li>\t\t<li><em>Weekend</em>. Could be effective and free up week-time, but high probability of procrastination.</li>\t\t<li><em>Right after class</em>. Useful if you, like me sometimes, procrastinate on doing notes in favor of doing more high-priority stuff. I think it’s less effective, though.</li>\t</ul></li>\t<li><strong>Method. </strong>In my OmniOutliner template, I have a Cues column that is hidden by default, on the right side. During review, I unhide it, and start as I review the notes, I write questions that pertain to the notes:\r\n\t<ul>\r\n\t\t<li>e.g.&nbsp;“The prefrontal cortex acts as a switch operator by knowing what the context is and inhibiting a prepotent response if necessary, such as inhibiting the response of picking up the phone at a friend’s house.”&nbsp;→ <em>How is the PFC like a switch operator? What is an example?</em></li>\t\t<li>Questions should be on all levels: they can be specific, but they should also cover large topics that make you take a big-picture view to explain; so there should be big-picture questions like <em>How does the brain control thinking?</em></li>\t\t<li>Questions should come naturally, but to challenge my ability to come up with questions, I’ve come up with different cue types:</li>\t\t<ul>\r\n\t\t\t<li>ID cue: <em>What is expected utility?</em></li>\t\t\t<li>Compare cue: <em>How does expected utility differ from expected value?</em></li>\t\t\t<li>Application cue: <em>What would expected utility say people will pick given a choice between $5000 and a coin flip with $20,000/heads and $0/tails? How does that differ from expected value?</em> (+ compare question)</li>\t\t\t<li>Example cue: <em>Give an example of where expected utility differs from expected value.</em> [or <em>Give an example of when expected utility can differ with the magnitude of the choices given.]</em></li>\t\t</ul></ul></li></ul><h2 id=\"time--task-management\">Time &amp; task management</h2><h3 id=\"day-to-day-time-management\">Day-to-day time management</h3><p>\r\n\tI followed a stringent time management system that was like a digital offshoot of the one in Cal Newport’s “How to Become a Straight-A Student”.</p><p>\r\n\t<strong>The&nbsp;idea is to plan out pretty much every chunk of your day, from wake to sleep, during the beginning of the day or the previous day.</strong> Here’s my calendar from finals week:</p><p>\r\n\t<img src=\"http://i.imgur.com/HSFVCuN.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p><p>\r\n\tIt seems like an intense practice, but it’s very effective, because:</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>It gives you a plan for the day. </strong>It’s clear what you have to do, and when you have to do it. There’s no more ambiguity over what you should do next.</li>\t<li><strong>It reduces procrastination during tasks. </strong>Because everything is timeboxed, if I’m supposed to be spending 30 minutes doing “Skim chapter 15” and then move immediately on to 30 minutes of “Review class 22″, I’m less inclined to think that there’s some leeway for me to go on Facebook and slack off. If I slack off, I fall off schedule and everything gets screwed up. It places just enough pressure on you to get you to focus.</li>\t<li><strong>It reduces procrastination between tasks. </strong>Between-task procrastination is the devil. It’s easy to fall into: finish some task, sigh, and go on Facebook for a minute or fifteen. But when you know exactly what you’re supposed to do next, and you know you’re avoiding it, there’s less mindless procrastination going on—instead, you’re mindful of your procrastination, and that slight guilt gets me back to work.</li>\t<li><strong>It gives you an honest look at a) how much you can get done in a day, and b) how much you got done during a day. </strong>I’m always ambitious with how much I can get done and generally don’t achieve all that I want to do. Doing this gives me an honest look at what I <em>can</em> get done. Not only that, but at the end of the day, I can get <strong>honest, quantitative feedback on whether or not I actually got a lot done that day or not. </strong>We don’t generally get this kind of feedback.</li>\t<li><strong>It reduces the moseying that comes with non-work tasks. </strong>I like to take my time with dinner, but there’s no reason that getting a burrito and walking home takes more than 45 minutes. During days I don’t do the scheduling, I get a burrito, waste time reading Hacker News on my phone while eating,&nbsp;maybe grab some ice cream, mosey around and get something from the store, and <em>what the fuck it’s 10pm?!</em></li></ul><p>\r\n\tThe technique:</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Timing. </strong>Best to do this the day before, I find, especially if you have early classes or suck at being a morning person (like me). Before doing my daily end-of-day review, I take 3 minutes to look at my task list, see what needs to get prioritized, and plan out the next day including prospective wake-up time (see below).</li>\t<li><strong>Follow it.</strong>&nbsp;Or do as best as you can.</li>\t<li><strong>Mistakes happen. </strong>All the time. There’s not a day where I don’t adjust my plan, usually since something took longer than expected.</li></ul><h2 id=\"progress--growth\">Progress &amp; growth</h2><p>\r\n\tCycles of progress, continuous improvement</p><h2 id=\"health\">Health</h2><hr>\r\nTake folks through a tour of the brain or something during the course of this?","created_at":1427609100,"updated_at":1427609100}},{"id":"9","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6c4e11c9-bda4-4f2e-8b1d-5014239e4dc8","name":"productivity","central":false,"public":true}}],"relationships":[{"id":"46","type":"TAG","startNode":"18","endNode":"9","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"19","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"0e3ce8bd-5126-416d-8cb3-9e603616f0f5","name":"college","central":false,"public":true}},{"id":"18","labels":["Note"],"properties":{"uuid":"57f8e23b-f546-4d0c-93a9-e51a26f84230","title":"College Strategies","slug":"college-strategies","subtitle":"Notes on effective techniques for college.","tag_string":"college,productivity","content":"        <p class=\"alert alert-info\">This is a&nbsp;work in progress.</p><h2 style=\"\" id=\"principles\">Principles</h2><ol>\r\n\t<li><strong>Understanding over memorization</strong> — In the long run, understanding first trumps repeated memorization in both efficacy and time spent, <em>especially</em> when factoring in assignments that use course material and&nbsp;cumulative assessments. And, more importantly, it makes the knowledge useful.</li>\t<li><strong>Focus on the building blocks: the best tools, optimized processes </strong>— The fundamental building blocks have a huge effect on the end result. Modern tools, such as note-taking apps, spaced repetition software, SelfControl, etc., and optimized processes, like the Cornell method, have huge benefits. Don’t skimp on tools.</li>\t<li><strong>Apply concepts from psychology</strong> — Use concepts such as distributed practice, active learning, memory consolidation,&nbsp;spaced repetition, and other concepts and methods from psychology. <cite>[See&nbsp;Dunlosky et al. 2013]</cite></li>\t<li><strong>Time leverage is essential</strong> — The goal is to find the highest value activities that have the lowest time input, but high time input activities with a very high value are also acceptable.</li>\t<li><strong>Long-term benefits at the cost of short-term suck. </strong>Understanding over memorization, strict time management systems, and other things suck in the moment and take a lot of work, but they pose a long-term benefit (and help us practice delayed gratification).</li></ol><h2 id=\"note-taking\">Note-taking</h2><h3 id=\"in-class\">In-class</h3><p>\r\n\t<strong>OmniOutliner is the gold standard in note-taking software. </strong>It’s&nbsp;the best tool I’ve found&nbsp;for taking notes during class. I start with the regular template, and added columns, headers, and tweaked fonts and formatting, and created my own modified template.</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Transcribe if necessary.</strong> —&nbsp;I try not to basically transcribe what the prof is saying, though some things do merit transcription. I’ve found that trying to keep up when taking notes while also trying to put things in my own words is very difficult, especially in fact-based STEM classes.</li>\t<li><strong>Use logical headers.</strong> — This will make it easier to mentally organize the topics. This is usually pretty easy if the class has slides, and takes a bit more guesswork if it doesn’t.</li>\t<li><strong>Record the lecture, but try not to rely on it.</strong>&nbsp;—&nbsp;I’ve written “[fill in 34:25]” many times when not paying attention or falling asleep, and that <em>doubles or triples </em>note review time afterwards. Don’t do this. Try to be as diligent as possible for the hour or two and stay focused, or else, for me, it takes&nbsp;2–3× more time later on to review the material I missed while browsing Facebook.</li>\t<li><strong>The obvious stuff...</strong>&nbsp;Keep notes organized, preferably in Dropbox, numbered by class, date, and topic (e.g.&nbsp;<em>Class 19 – 4/14 – Control of Cognition</em>). Resist the temptation to go on Facebook or turn off the internet altogether. Sit in the first 5 rows of class. Ask questions. etc.</li></ul><p>\r\n\t<img src=\"http://i.imgur.com/42RNOkB.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%\"></p><h3 id=\"out-of-class\">Out-of-class</h3><p>\r\n\tThis is the essential bit. Taking notes in class is good, but the knowledge isn’t quite consolidated during the first pass. Doing a note review, a second pass, will help in solidifying the knowledge and assist in the process of moving it to long-term memory (LTM).</p><p>\r\n\tWhile studies show that rereading has low utility compared to other techniques \r\n\t<cite>[Dunlosky et al. 2013]</cite>, I find that STEM and social science classes throw so much at you that rereading does help you figure out what the hell got taught during that class.</p><p>\r\n\tBut that’s not enough: during rereading, we should actively think about what the relation of the knowledge is to the bigger picture.</p><p>\r\n\tAs well-known as it is, the Cornell Notetaking System is the best method I’ve found for note review, mostly because it’s logical and makes sense from a psychological perspective. My use of Cornell might differ from the original, though, so here’s how it goes:</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Timing. </strong>The CNS recommends writing questions as soon after class as possible; I prefer to forget about the class and get coffee instead. There’s a few ways you can do this:<br>\r\n\t<ul>\r\n\t\t<li><em>Later in the day or the next day.</em> I use this since it injects a bit of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect\">spacing effect</a>; if I read my notes over right after class, it might be useful, but I’ll probably be fairly familiar with it. If I do it later in the day or the next day, it allows me to see it with new eyes and solidify my knowledge a bit more.</li>\t\t<li><em>Weekend</em>. Could be effective and free up week-time, but high probability of procrastination.</li>\t\t<li><em>Right after class</em>. Useful if you, like me sometimes, procrastinate on doing notes in favor of doing more high-priority stuff. I think it’s less effective, though.</li>\t</ul></li>\t<li><strong>Method. </strong>In my OmniOutliner template, I have a Cues column that is hidden by default, on the right side. During review, I unhide it, and start as I review the notes, I write questions that pertain to the notes:\r\n\t<ul>\r\n\t\t<li>e.g.&nbsp;“The prefrontal cortex acts as a switch operator by knowing what the context is and inhibiting a prepotent response if necessary, such as inhibiting the response of picking up the phone at a friend’s house.”&nbsp;→ <em>How is the PFC like a switch operator? What is an example?</em></li>\t\t<li>Questions should be on all levels: they can be specific, but they should also cover large topics that make you take a big-picture view to explain; so there should be big-picture questions like <em>How does the brain control thinking?</em></li>\t\t<li>Questions should come naturally, but to challenge my ability to come up with questions, I’ve come up with different cue types:</li>\t\t<ul>\r\n\t\t\t<li>ID cue: <em>What is expected utility?</em></li>\t\t\t<li>Compare cue: <em>How does expected utility differ from expected value?</em></li>\t\t\t<li>Application cue: <em>What would expected utility say people will pick given a choice between $5000 and a coin flip with $20,000/heads and $0/tails? How does that differ from expected value?</em> (+ compare question)</li>\t\t\t<li>Example cue: <em>Give an example of where expected utility differs from expected value.</em> [or <em>Give an example of when expected utility can differ with the magnitude of the choices given.]</em></li>\t\t</ul></ul></li></ul><h2 id=\"time--task-management\">Time &amp; task management</h2><h3 id=\"day-to-day-time-management\">Day-to-day time management</h3><p>\r\n\tI followed a stringent time management system that was like a digital offshoot of the one in Cal Newport’s “How to Become a Straight-A Student”.</p><p>\r\n\t<strong>The&nbsp;idea is to plan out pretty much every chunk of your day, from wake to sleep, during the beginning of the day or the previous day.</strong> Here’s my calendar from finals week:</p><p>\r\n\t<img src=\"http://i.imgur.com/HSFVCuN.png\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\"></p><p>\r\n\tIt seems like an intense practice, but it’s very effective, because:</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>It gives you a plan for the day. </strong>It’s clear what you have to do, and when you have to do it. There’s no more ambiguity over what you should do next.</li>\t<li><strong>It reduces procrastination during tasks. </strong>Because everything is timeboxed, if I’m supposed to be spending 30 minutes doing “Skim chapter 15” and then move immediately on to 30 minutes of “Review class 22″, I’m less inclined to think that there’s some leeway for me to go on Facebook and slack off. If I slack off, I fall off schedule and everything gets screwed up. It places just enough pressure on you to get you to focus.</li>\t<li><strong>It reduces procrastination between tasks. </strong>Between-task procrastination is the devil. It’s easy to fall into: finish some task, sigh, and go on Facebook for a minute or fifteen. But when you know exactly what you’re supposed to do next, and you know you’re avoiding it, there’s less mindless procrastination going on—instead, you’re mindful of your procrastination, and that slight guilt gets me back to work.</li>\t<li><strong>It gives you an honest look at a) how much you can get done in a day, and b) how much you got done during a day. </strong>I’m always ambitious with how much I can get done and generally don’t achieve all that I want to do. Doing this gives me an honest look at what I <em>can</em> get done. Not only that, but at the end of the day, I can get <strong>honest, quantitative feedback on whether or not I actually got a lot done that day or not. </strong>We don’t generally get this kind of feedback.</li>\t<li><strong>It reduces the moseying that comes with non-work tasks. </strong>I like to take my time with dinner, but there’s no reason that getting a burrito and walking home takes more than 45 minutes. During days I don’t do the scheduling, I get a burrito, waste time reading Hacker News on my phone while eating,&nbsp;maybe grab some ice cream, mosey around and get something from the store, and <em>what the fuck it’s 10pm?!</em></li></ul><p>\r\n\tThe technique:</p><ul>\r\n\t<li><strong>Timing. </strong>Best to do this the day before, I find, especially if you have early classes or suck at being a morning person (like me). Before doing my daily end-of-day review, I take 3 minutes to look at my task list, see what needs to get prioritized, and plan out the next day including prospective wake-up time (see below).</li>\t<li><strong>Follow it.</strong>&nbsp;Or do as best as you can.</li>\t<li><strong>Mistakes happen. </strong>All the time. There’s not a day where I don’t adjust my plan, usually since something took longer than expected.</li></ul><h2 id=\"progress--growth\">Progress &amp; growth</h2><p>\r\n\tCycles of progress, continuous improvement</p><h2 id=\"health\">Health</h2><hr>\r\nTake folks through a tour of the brain or something during the course of this?","created_at":1427609100,"updated_at":1427609100}}],"relationships":[{"id":"44","type":"TAG","startNode":"18","endNode":"19","properties":{}}]}},{"row":[{}],"graph":{"nodes":[{"id":"4","labels":["Tag"],"properties":{"uuid":"6bf2236c-a8c9-4cb6-ae1d-ffc4a8b50bfd","name":"personal","central":false,"public":true}},{"id":"20","labels":["Note"],"properties":{"uuid":"953d65d8-a885-4d89-9746-b5c09052aac9","title":"Things to Write About","slug":"things-to-write-about","subtitle":"An article backlog","tag_string":"personal","content":"<p>\n\t<strong>The Optimization–Satisfaction Tradeoff. </strong>Or, perhaps, the <em>Optimization–Contentment </em>tradeoff, but that one isn't as nice, though <em>contentment </em>really illustrates the point better. Regardless, looking into research by Schwartz, Iyengar et al., and Diab et al. in the context of optimizing behavior and happiness, satisfaction, and contentment. Asking how we can balance these two. Perhaps including what David and I talked about in terms of “giving yourself something to be content with\" – planning ahead.\n</p>\n<p>\n\t<strong>Habits, goals, and whether it is better to achieve them through discipline or through 'tricks' or 'systems'. </strong>Should we try to be really disciplined at, say, going to the gym every day? Or is it more practical to use 'tricks' like “go to the gym and do 1 push-up\"? Are those tactics ultimately sustainable?\n</p>\n<p>\n\t<strong>Is it bad to replace passion with reason? The perils of relying on passion</strong>\n</p>","created_at":1427609160,"updated_at":1427611738}}],"relationships":[{"id":"48","type":"TAG","startNode":"20","endNode":"4","properties":{}}]}}],"stats":{"contains_updates":false,"nodes_created":0,"nodes_deleted":0,"properties_set":0,"relationships_created":0,"relationship_deleted":0,"labels_added":0,"labels_removed":0,"indexes_added":0,"indexes_removed":0,"constraints_added":0,"constraints_removed":0}}