Mastering the Habit. Reading notes

preface

What is habit, eat and sleep every day, eat and sleep belong to survival instinct, habit is we get up every day brush teeth wash a face, it is we must take a mobile phone to go to the toilet, to lunch point will be punctual point takeout, and stay up late more don’t want to go to bed….. These seem to be habits.

Habits, why is it so hard to change it, I tried to change this year I don’t love the bad habit of finishing the home, from the heartache of act I learned a lot about the trade-offs of gist, and whether items let me “bait”, but still used in told me that it can keep, can keep it, It also means that whenever we want to change, our habits will at some point knock us back into shape.

For all these reasons, I stumbled across a book called “Mastering Habits” on the Internet, and it turned out to be a great book.

Recommended language

We think we are in control of our habits, but in fact our habits are in control of us. The past way to change a habit is to start with the results, but this book tells you that you need to change your system. We do it right, but we lose the system, and our bad habits stay with us.

I hope you can settle down and read this book so that you can have a new “identity” instead of being bound by your old habits.

Personal assessment

4 stars out of 5 stars), while the case is shown slightly repetitive, but the content of the core content is very useful, this book also puts forward the four core: prompt, desires, reaction, rewards, and tells how to use all micro habits to change itself, bad habits was not made in a day or two, so change the bad habits also needs a gradual process.

Reading technique: Grasp the author’s core ideas, skim the case, and form your own summary.

Reading time: 4 hours.

Summary of notes:

1. Reshaping identity instead of changing outcomes?
2. Why is it that having an identity requires a new identity?
3. How are micro-habits practiced by individuals
4. Four Steps to Changing Habits (the book is a long one and I’ll skip it)
5. Changing habits is a very boring thing
6. Do we compare ourselves to the strong or the weak
7. Temporary notes (running book)

Contents summary

The content individual also found a more important part to explain.

Reshape your identity

There are two key elements to the inability to change habits: 1) there is nothing to change, and 2) there is nothing to change. Trying to change habits in the wrong way

At the beginning of the book, the author addresses his core concept: changing the system. We may have a complete goal but it is difficult to have a complete system. For the system, the book makes the following diagram:

In the traditional view: We often change based on the results, our goal is very correct, but in the middle of the process is quite long, there is no effect, finally give up, we have goals, but not completed the transformation of identity, a day not fitness will not affect his thin, eat a dessert will not affect me to lose weight, we have established a target and check in, Set goals without a training system, and end up in the past.

Habit reinvention emphasizes that we need to change our identity first. What is identity? The simple way to think about it is that we define ourselves or label ourselves, and yet we constantly try to change our identity in accordance with our new identity, and then we use the results to measure whether we fit into our new identity, so from identity to results is the right system to change habits, like I’m an athlete, That’s why I have to go to the gym every day (not because I need to lose 20 pounds to go to the gym), and THAT’s why I’m an author, so I need to read a lot of books (not because I need to read a lot of books to be an author), so new identities give us new behaviors.

To sum up, reinventing your identity is reinventing your system. You have to make your habits fit your identity, and you have to use your identity to remodel your habits.

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Evidence of belief

From the above, we know that to remodel habits, we have to start with identity, so what is remodel identity? The answer is to look for evidence of belief. Here are some simple examples:

• Every time I type a word, I’m a writer
• Every time I start running, I’m a marathon champion
• Every time I win a game, I become a world champion

Some people may think that this is just brainwashing themselves. In fact, bad habits come from the evil spirit of laziness, which is constantly brainwashing us. Therefore, we need to brainwash ourselves to reshape new ideas. There may be a counter-effect here, which is that you don’t think you can do it at all. If you think you can’t be a writer even if you write 100,000 words, then you really can’t do it, because you don’t have the process and you don’t directly imagine the outcome and you never write a word, it’s like trying to win the world championship without training for a day, So success in changing habits determines how much faith you hold and how much you’re willing to sweat to change your behavior. But more often than not we crave the best outcome with the least amount of time, but is it really possible to subconsciously go back to our past identities and beliefs?

Don’t be bound by who you are

Why was the last section about reinventing identity, and this one about not being bound by identity? Because it’s so easy to get caught up in our identities! It’s getting into the comfort zone that we’ve set for ourselves, and once we decide what we know about ourselves, then identity is a barrier, and we’re bound by the system.

Here’s another example. Some people in our lives define themselves as “road nuts.” When it comes to finding a place on their own, they get caught in a strange cycle: I am a road fool -> I can’t find the way -> I can’t find the way, had to ask the way -> ask the way or can’t find the way -> I am a road fool, this seems to be a magic spell, once trapped in the identity of the bondage we will always be in a dead circle inside.

In short, the most important thing is not to reinvent yourself, but to reinvent yourself and try to push the envelope. ** We need to strengthen our sense of who we are, to refuse to fall into the trap of identity, to boldly strive and experiment, and not to be trapped by identity.

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Personal attempts at micro-habits

Here’s a practical way of investing your time that’s right for you (but not for everyone) to talk about using micro-habits to reinvent yourself:

1. Make a table with each week as a node. Make a table as follows, marking what is done for each hour, marking the attributes of what is done: [investment], [consumption], [waste], [idle]. The first week is just marking, not doing anything (the color was added later, please ignore here).

   It was easy to do, so I did it with ease

2. In the second week, build on the previous step and record how much time you spent recharging your batteries during the week, and mark your most productive hours, like the ones in blue, and the rest similar to the first week.

   It takes a little bit of thinking, like I have to remember what I was doing in a certain time period and determine if I was distracted or distracted during that time period, but it’s not too difficult.

3. In the third week, I began to classify four types of investment time, and noticed that the color blocks were randomly filled in, because the content and text would leak personal information, so they were deleted. In the summary part, I recorded the total learning time, and what I did not finish and what I did not finish. The benefit was to give myself encouragement. But there is clearly something wrong with this table……

   I need to think about what color block to give in a certain period of time, and remember what to record and what to record. For example, eating, drinking and excrement are not included in the list, but the meals to enhance the relationship with colleagues should be recorded in the list. Whether this is helpful or not to my goal requires more thinking and judgment

4. Finally, I made a present chart, which recorded what I did every hour of the past week, marked with four colors, with a summary at the end of each day.

   I can’t remember what color represents what, so I’ve given color and text markings below. The daily recognition and reflection may shame me. I may not get much done in a day. But I stayed true to my results and changed in the next cycle, and the less guilt I felt, the more success I had

Above is my habit to control a book that experiment, the habits of the use of tiny changes to adjust oneself, use a month to prove the changing habits of this book is very useful, I know in what time will distract attention from the part time to waste, I constantly struggle on something, it helps to correct my bad habit, procrastination, At the same time, the daily procrastination made me feel more guilty about what I did every day. In order to get rid of the guilt, I made another list to prove that I was closer to my goal by drawing a cross.

Of course, this kind of chart is easy to perelaborate themselves, so every month to do a summary, and regular to do a review, and to constantly change the table to adapt to their own, don’t let yourself into a fixed mode of thinking, to jump out of the trap of identity.

But a lot of people will think that this is not very tired? Personally, I think if something can be done easily, it must be of little value.

Four steps to changing habits

It change habits under the following a few steps, and the book has been emphasized, this conclusion is: (1) in the book make it attractive, (2) make it obvious, (3) to make it simple, (4) to make it enjoyable, at the same time, the key is we need constantly encourage yourself with a small win.

Here are the specific concepts from these four aspects:

prompt

A prompt is a signal, such as a phone call, indicating that we have received a text message. At this time, the brain will quickly release the signal and wait for us to think and respond.

Tip is to do right things at right time, in fact, it all started reading when we constantly hint of training, such as the morning of the first sound of the bell ring represents the we’re going to be late, we will speed up the pace, but there are for the teachers, class attendance may just means the beginning of a day’s work, they will wait for the students to sit down and later arrived at the classroom, Before you know it, a habit is born. Don’t get into the habit of being late. Wasting time may be fun for the moment, but it will create a bad habit.

Tip is the individual consciousness, we must learn to “shielding tip”, after received text messages, our habits make us the first time to read the information content, and then make a judgment and choice, then we can choose to accept reply immediately, accept later reply, but if it is led by information, we immediately read and reply, under the same prompt, We respond to cues at different speeds, and individuals consciously respond differently to the same habits.

A good habit is also a good cue chain, and what is a good cue chain? Do the dishes right after you eat, put on your workout clothes right after you get home, turn off your phone right after you go to sleep. We overlay the old cues with new ones, causing the behavior to change without realizing it.

The simplest practice to change the tip is to go to the bathroom without your phone.

thirst

Tips are not enough, we have to have a desire for the new tip, although we can use a new identity to hypnosis, such as I wrote every word there will be thousands of people thumb up above, but we need more desire to encourage yourself, mentions the concept of dopamine in the book, passive use dopamine to encourage yourself more easily, it is difficult but active use of dopamine, This is one of the reasons why it is important to make the cue obvious. Only by making the cue obvious will we be able to acknowledge the constant improvement, and then we will have the next cue and continue to change.

Taking my own running experience as a reference, the hardest part of running is giving yourself hints rather than actually running

Here’s what I think is possible:

1. Measure your results with money: Being utilitarian isn’t a bad thing, and being utilitarian is a good way to encourage yourself, but is it better to make the monetary rewards harder to come by
2. Detailed tracking: Chart your efforts for a month to keep you on your to-do list

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reaction

When we encounter danger, we will immediately avoid it. When we encounter bright light, we will close our eyes. Imagine if you have any feelings like being controlled by habits. And when we respond to a message immediately, that’s how we react to it, and you can see that reaction is so tempting, it can even be a compulsion.

A challenge here suggest that readers do, hide your mobile phone in places they don’t focus on, and see yourself how long will go to mobile phone, record the persist for long time not looking for a mobile phone, this is your challenge the limits of a willpower, when we can do it for watch mobile phone, I believe that you can more clearly about their cognitive.

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reward

Reward since needless to say, each person has a different custom reward mechanism, people will use the means of scoring, there will be someone to encourage self with relaxation, reward is a closed-loop habit change eventually, do not have the habit of reward basic unable to insist, because the temptation of society now far more than our reserves of willpower, the only way is to don’t we go to observe the temptation, And set up good rewards to stimulate yourself.

Good reward is to let you complete a change of behavior at the same time actively into the next behavior change, the switch fitness, for example, if every fitness will play a switch, habits after we as long as the spin of the gym time, reduce the time to reward, the prize is to encourage us more to complete the habits of good rewards.

Changing habits is never fun

If you ask a go master, “Is it fun to play chess?” he will undoubtedly answer, “Yes, it is.” But if you ask him if he doesn’t feel tired playing chess every day, he will probably say that he is used to playing chess. Then you ask him again if he ever wanted to give up playing chess because it was boring. I think I will answer in the affirmative 100%. I think there is no one who can keep 100% enthusiasm on one thing.

Taking individual running as an example again, the hardest part is not the first month, but the two or three months of no progress in the middle. The basic requirement of running exercise is at least half a year, and the reward is often behind the effort, even you can’t see the reward, so it is so important to find measurable goals, but also to find an identity you are willing to accept is very difficult.

Compare yourself to the best

Determines the evolution of homo sapiens will follow the strong, the weak we will be compared with the strong for a long time, we will check yourself whether to have the strong quality, and found that we lack qualities, such as communication, property management concepts, such as logical thinking, and sometimes we give birth to the frustration, and customize the result, experience process, but there is no way to complete as a result, Because we can’t change who we are. In the end, we seek comfort by comparing ourselves with those who are inferior to us.

Comfort is better than the strong is very easy, but you have compare with yourself, how many words you wrote today, what you learned, what you are doing things spent much time, how long did it take you to dinner, how long did it take you go to sleep, the time in there, and so on, these things can answer only a few people, most will only have a vague concept, majority is 1 hour, In fact, we can only compare our past self with our future self, our lazy self and our positive self. Which self we choose to be determines what kind of identity we acquire and what kind of results we produce.

If you compare yourself to the strong, put yourself in the position of the strong and think about what the strong will do, how the strong will be disciplined. If you compare yourself to yourself, you should constantly surpass your past self. So comparing or not comparing makes us tired, so in the end I decided not to compare, just to see how far we are from our goal.

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Write in the last

We need to control our habits, not be controlled by our habits. We need to constantly establish our identity, but we need to not let our identity bind us. Controlling our habits is simple.

Keep an eye on yourself. Every time we give in to temptation, we do it again, and every time we resist it, we get closer.

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Temporary notes

Here are some scattered personal notes to review later.

• Change is a reminder to self
• The clearer the goal, the clearer the description, the higher the action
• Habits have three qualities: [time] [place] [behavior]
• As soon as I get home, I change into my workout clothes: Act fast, and your thoughts will follow
• The tip is to be clear about your motives
  • case
    • As soon as I pick up the phone, I will point out = as soon as I pick up the phone, I will go to see the unfinished tasks today
    • As soon as I get home I change into my gym clothes -> Action is above everything else.
• Lewin’s equation :(unimportant)
  • Behavior = f(function)[(person, environment)]
  • explain
    • Behavior is a function of the people in the environment
    • The profit comes from what you can see at eye level
  • Think about:
    • The items at the top and bottom of the shelves attract the least attention
    • The lower shelf is usually the second choice