Stone Age Brains and Modern Life Habits: What to do About It

These are notes and some reflections after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.

"Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy."

We get what we repeat. From brushing our teeth to going to the gym, to our dietary choices, to the time we spend on social media. Forming new habits and breaking old ones is tricky. What makes it even worse is that forming new good habits is hard, and falling victim to bad habits it's often very easy. 

Why?

The answer lies in how our brain works and how it, if at all, has evolved. While the world has changed much in recent years, human nature has changed little. From the Paleolithic times, the human brain evolved in an immediate-return environment where most decisions had an immediate impact (responding to grave threats, securing the next meal, taking shelter from the storm) placing a high value on instant gratification. The distant future was less of a concern. Hence, our brains evolved to prefer quick payoffs to long-term ones. 

But only recently - during the last 500 years or so - we live in a delayed-return environment where we take actions that deliver an impact in weeks, months, or years. This concept, called Evolutionary Mismatch, is one way for psychologists to study human behavior. “Our brains are wired for certain conditions, but our surroundings no longer match those conditions,” says Glenn Geher,

Smoking increases the risk of lung cancer in the long run. Unsafe sex can result in sexually transmitted diseases. Why would someone do any of that? 

"The consequences of bad habits are delayed, while rewards are immediate and our brain evolved to prioritize instant rewards."

"But success in nearly every field requires you to ignore an immediate gratification in favor of a delayed reward." 

The good news is that we can hack that Paleolithic brain to put it to work for us and not falling victim to it.

How?

The key is to understand some fundamental laws of behavior change and how to alter them to your specifications. To start, habits are created in 4 steps called The Neurological Feedback Loop:

We start by noticing a CUE that triggers a CRAVING to change the current state. As a result, we RESPOND by performing an action or thought (habit) and get a REWARD in exchange. Example: When we are answering emails, we begin to feel stressed and overwhelmed by work. We want to feel in control. As a result, we bite our nails and satisfy our craving to reduce stress. Biting our nails becomes associated with answering emails. Habit formed, that easy.

To get our habits under control and create new habits, we want to start by:

"Making the Cues Obvious, the Cravings Attractive, the Rewards Satisfying, and the Response as Easy as possible."

so it can reinforce the feedback loop to get it done and repeated. Here below made it simple:

Let's dive deep into each stage so we can decode the loop:

1.Make It Obvious

Awareness

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Carl Jung

The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. Conductors of Japanese railway systems call out different signals every time they perform an action reducing errors up to 85% making it one of the safest systems in the world. This technique is called Pointing-and-Calling and raises the level of awareness from a non-conscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing our actions. 

Implementation Intention

The two most powerful cues that trigger a habit are Time and Location. Setting an Implementation intention so we don't have to wait for an inspiration to strike. 

“I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]."

Do I mediate this morning or at lunch? No room for doubt, we just simply follow the predetermined plan.

Habits Stacking

When we get a new shirt, we tend to feel that we need to upgrade our shoes or trousers. Why? The tendency for one purchase to lead to another is called the "Diderot Effect" and it's rooted in the fact that each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior. We can put this to our advantage by leveraging the natural momentum that comes from one behavior leading into the next one we want to build.

“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”

The specificity is important.

Architect the Environment 

Customers often buy products not because they want them but because they're presented to them.

"Out of 11 million sensory receptors we humans have, 10 millon are dedicated to sight. It's not strange that the most powerful of all human sensory abilities is vision and visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior."

9 out of 10 soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight when they got back to their homes, changing radically the environment. The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least. Designing the right environment matters most than being extra motivated/disciplined. Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.

Our habits change depending on the room we are in and the cues in front of us, they're context-dependent. We want to be the architect of our environment and not the victim of it. We want to design our environment making the cues of good habits obvious and visible. Want to eat healthier? Get our fridge full of only healthy choices, and we'll make the best choice the most obvious, and the easiest.

2.Make it Attractive

Temptation Bundling

Pair an action you WANT to do with an action, you NEED to do.

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) launched a new Thursday television show by branding it as "TGIT on ABC", encouraging viewers to make popcorn, drink red wine, and enjoy the evening while watching ABC. Masters at "Temptation Bundling" they associated what they NEEDed viewers to do (what their shows) with activities their viewers WANTed to do (relax, drink wine, and eat popcorn). That television show was a success.

"When a REWARD is associated with a CUE, the NEW HABIT becomes more ATTRACTIVE."

Belonging is Attractive, and it Shapes our Habits

"In the long history of humankind, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." Charles Darwin

One of our deepest desires is to belong and this exerts a powerful influence on our modern behavior. Two key insights here:

1) The reward of being accepted and belonging was key to our survival. As a result, in today's world, we'd rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.

2) We don't choose our habits, we imitate them from family, friends, the church or school, or society as a large who create invisible social norms and we tend to soak up the qualities and practices of those around us.

"Hence, one of the most effective things we can do to build better habits is to join a culture where our desired behavior is the normal behavior."

Want to read more? By joining a book club your identity becomes linked to those around you and you switch from "I am a reader" to "We are readers" reinforcing your personal identity and sustaining more higher levels of motivation.

3.Make It Easy

This is about Reducing Friction. Decreasing the number of steps between us and our good habits we want to form.

?The Law of Least Effort

Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have their primary axis that runs East<>West, while Americas and Africa have it running North<>South. The difference in shape played a significant role in the spread of agriculture over centuries. As the climate does not vary much, farmers from France to China domesticated a few crops and from them along the entire stretch of the land. On the contrary, climate variation North<>South is much higher and represented many challenges. You can be the most talented farmer in the world but it won't help you grow Florida oranges in the Canadian winter. As a result, agriculture spread 2-3 times faster across Europe-Asia than it did up and down the Americas. More food, more people, stronger armies, better technologies, etc. The lesson? Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier.

Standardize before you can Optimize, and Scale

Want to form the habit of working out? Showing up at the gym five days in a row for just 2 minutes will help us cast votes for our new Identity. We aren't worried about getting in shape. We're focused on becoming the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. We want to standardize before we can optimize and scale. We rarely think about change in this way because everyone is consumed by the end goal (Outcomes)

Identity, Processes, and Outcomes

"Outcomes are about what we get. Processes are about what we do. Identity is about what we believe"

When our behavior (Processes) and our Identity are fully aligned, we are no longer pursuing behavior change. We are simply acting like the type of person we already believe ourselves to be. 

Commitment Devices

Ulysses, the hero of The Odyssey, told his sailors to tie him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear the enchanting song of the Sirens but wouldn’t be able to steer the ship toward them and crash on the rocks. Ulysses realized the benefits of locking in your future actions while our mind is in the right place rather than waiting to see where our desires take us at the moment. This is known as the “Ulysses contract" or "Commitment devices". 

Automatic time limits in our smartphones can help us get our phone usage under control. Removing the television from our bedroom can help us watch less and sleep better. Using email filters helps us clear up our inbox and be more productive. What "Commitment devices" could we implement in our life to get our habits under control and not to fall victim to temptation?

4.Make it Satisfying

"We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying." 

Chewing gum had been sold since the 1800s, but it wasn't until Wrigley added flavors like Spearmint, making it tasty and advertising as "Refresh Your Mouth" as a pathway to a clean mouth that it revolutionized the industry and it became a worldwide habit. This is a powerful example of the fourth law of Behaviour Change. We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying. Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating. Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit.

Never Miss Twice

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident, missing twice is the start of a new habit. Never miss twice.

"It's about being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts."

Your Personality Influences Your Habits

"Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. You can't control whether you're a potato or an egg, but you can decide to play a game where it's better to be hard or soft."

Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition, whether that's in sports or business. Habits are easy to perform and more satisfying to stick with when they align with your natural inclinations and abilities. We want to play the game where the odds are in our favor.

The obvious question is, "How do I figure out where the odds are in my favor? How do I identify the opportunities and habits that are right for me?" The first step is to understand your personality. James Clear recommends the "Big Five", a scientific analysis of personality measuring the different spectrum of behavior like: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. I took it and it's highly accurate. 

Another approach is simply Trial and Error. Google famously asks employees to spend 80% of the workweek on their official jobs and 20% on projects of their choice, which has led to the creation of blockbuster projects like Adwords and Gmail. Keep experimenting occasionally.

Reviewing your Habits

"Improvement is not only about learning habits, it's also about fine-tuning them." 

Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that they can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting—even when the world is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly changing, so we need to periodically check in to see if our old habits and beliefs are still serving us. A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and Review are the antidotes.

Resources

• Atomic Habits - The Book
• James Clear - Website
• Sophia Colombo - Illustrations
• Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology - Article Cover

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