Decisions, decisions – it seems like there are a million decisions to be made every day! What to wear, what to eat, what to do. Decisions may seem endless. In reality our brain has automated many of the “decisions” we make. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, estimates that between 40%-45% of what we do every day is actually just habit.
Habits are automated behaviors. Our brains automate certain tasks for the sake of efficiency. If we had to think hard about all the mundane things we do, like brushing our teeth or driving to work, imagine how overwhelming that would be for our minds.
Habit Structure
A habit occurs when a certain routine follows a stimulus. The routine will in turn be followed by some sort of reward. Duhigg lays out this basic structure of habits in his book. A CUE tells the brain that it’s time to perform a habit. The habit or ROUTINE takes place. Finally, a REWARD for that behavior serves as reinforcement for the future. Cue, routine, reward over and over again. Duhigg calls this cycle the habit loop.
Now that we have a basic understanding about what a habit is, how can we make habits work for us instead of against us? After all, habits are neither good nor bad they are just habits. One thing that can have a major affect on habits is what author James Clear refers to as friction.
Friction
Friction is basically how easy or hard it is to do something. If you just spent the last 3 hours hiking up hill in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity you’re most likely going to be parched. When someone hands you an ice cold bottle of water there will be hardly any friction between getting the water and guzzling it down.
On the other end of the spectrum you’re at work and you’ve been working on a stressful project all morning. You got very little sleep the night before. After finally being able to fall asleep you ended up hitting the snooze a few too many times, making you late for work. You skipped your morning coffee and breakfast as you rushed to the office. At around 11:00am Shelly brings in 3 boxes of donuts just as your stomach is beginning to growl. You’re on a diet so you aren’t supposed to eat donuts. There is going to be a lot of friction involved with turning down those donuts.
Environmental Engineering
Jack Nicholson famously opens the 2006 film The Departed with the line “I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.” Friction, or lack there of, is often caused by our environment or circumstances. How can we engineer our environment and circumstances to reduce friction for good decisions and increase friction for bad ones? This is a fitness website with a focus on weight loss so an eating example might be a good place to start.
Examples
When we get hungry, we’re eventually going to eat. Our biology dictates that. Having healthy food available is going to ensure that healthy food is eaten. Packing a lunch or a snack is an obvious good behavior to resolve this but let’s back up even further. Maybe chopping vegetables or packing food into Tupperware is actually the important behavior. Where does that food come from? Backing up even further puts us shopping at the grocery store, picking up the food in the first place. But in reality planning the shopping list might actually be the most critical behavior of them all. Consider how large of an impact your shopping list has on your physical environment. What’s on and not on your list dictates what nourishment is inside your home.
A personal example of engineering my own environment involves one of my major vices: caffeine-free Coke! I love Coke so much. If I could drink nothing but Coke and not die (I just assume this would happen) I would. There used to be periods where I would drink way more Coke than I wanted to. I would find myself thirsty and before I even knew what was going on I was drinking a Coke. It was borderline scary how I would be drinking that sweet sweet nectar before I even had a chance to decide!
One day I had run out of Cokes in the refrigerator. There was still Coke in the pantry but it was warm. I decided to have water with lemon instead because I was thirsty for a cold drink now and didn’t want to wait for a Coke to get cold in the refrigerator. I realized how simple of a solution I had stumbled upon. If I wanted to drink less Coke, just don’t have it sitting cold in the refrigerator. I’ve read about my Coke trick being used for candy as well. Someone who was trying to eat less candy simply put it down in their basement so they would have to go downstairs if they really wanted it.
Take Action
I’m sure you can think about how to add or remove friction in your own life. Engineering your environment to control friction is a powerful technique to create change. Don’t wait on change, create it for yourself. Engineer the life you want by changing your physical environment.
Remember the structure of a habit: cue, routine, reward. How can you create more cues for your good behaviors and remove cues for your bad ones? Think of better routines that can follow cues. Replace stress eating with a 20 minute walk. Opt for sipping tea instead of munching on potato chips during a long car ride (cue = boredom, routine = munching, reward = not as bored).
You have the power to take control and make your life what you want. True control is not using willpower to make tough decisions in the moment. Control is designing your environment so you don’t have to make tough decisions at all. Only use your willpower as a last resort. A little bit of planning and creativity gives you the power to make good choices easy and bad ones hard.