No BS Habit Advice
What a tune. Oh, people discover singing. Unbelievable, man. Get this tune on, guys, in the morning. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1:Listen to it. Are you bopping? Are you smiling? Yeah. Please don't take it down, Apple.
Speaker 1:Please don't take it down. I'm just playing music. Leave me alone. Welcome everyone to the podcast. Okay.
Speaker 1:So as I said yesterday we're going to go back through some basics and today's basics about habits and you might be thinking well habits take sixty six days to form so what's the point? It's not true. Don't take sixty days to form maybe on average when you study but the number one guy on harvest, the leading expert has come out and said you can start a habit within a few days maybe even within a day. And the example he uses is how long did it take to get addicted to using Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok happens that day. And he was working with these companies before to make them addictive.
Speaker 1:Now he's come on our side. And I've said about this guy before, I say the same thing, but I need you to get into your head that the only way to change is tiny habits, tiny ways, tiny changes over time and taking it one day at a time and I was like, scotched up about it but it is how it works. So I'm going to read out some of my favorite quotes from Tiny Harbors like I did from The Obstacle is Away yesterday, see how you react to them and then I'm going share a story from one of the groups later on and explain how we have to start looking at our data objectively because we will make up some stories and really mess our heads up. Alright, first thing BJ Fogg says, But the alarming levels of obesity, sleeplessness and stress reported by the media and seen in my Stanford lab research tell me there is a painful gap between what people want and what people actually do. Our approach to change is this, it's a design flaw not a personal flaw.
Speaker 1:In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors you should do three things. One, stop judging yourself, we say this all the time. Two, take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors And three, embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward. Okay? Once you remove any hint of judgment, your behavior becomes a science experiment.
Speaker 1:A sense of exploration and discovery is a prerequisite to success, not another bonus. That is just a beautiful way to say it. We are exploring, we are testing things out, we are trying things out. No pressure. Let's just give it a go with fun with a smile on our face, Track and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:Let's let's train in, train this out, train that out. You know, let's give it a go, man. What's the what's the problem? What's the what what's the doom and gloom about it? Give it a go.
Speaker 1:And he says this, before I go on, let me set the record straight. Information alone does not reliably change behavior. This is a common mistake people make even well meaning professionals. The assumption is this, if we give people the right information it will change their attitudes which will turn will change your behaviors. I call this information action fallacy.
Speaker 1:Many products and programs and well meaning professionals set out to educate people as a way to change them. At professional conferences they say stuff like if people just knew the fact it would change. I agree with this. I also agree that you still need the right facts obviously but that's still not enough. So you need the facts and the way to apply the facts.
Speaker 1:And he says in his research on habit formation dating back to 2009 I found that there are only three things that we can do that will create lasting change. One is our epiphany and we do this with you guys on the podcasts on the fourteen day masterclass epiphanies are powerful and a lot of you have these and they changes the way you look at something forever. Once it's clicked, can't be unseen. Changeable environment, big one. Okay.
Speaker 1:You will stoop to who you hang around with the most. Okay. Most of the time, unless you're a super special person who can outpower all our stuff or change your habit in tiny ways. So we have epiphanies, which will come, but we can foster an environment that they can happen, we can change your environment, you know, you hate your job, friends are bringing you down, all the stuff we love to look at changing environment that's what the ancients did actually. When the ancients ancient Greece and Rome had their kids or know, the young adults who were depressed and weren't feeling anything, they would send them off to another land as a way to, change them or improve their mental health.
Speaker 1:And they've had a change of environment was a big thing then. Go on your personal journey. You read the book The Alchemist, it's all about this personal journey from the hometown to finding his legend and going through this and that, it was amazing and changing habits anyways. Okay? Right.
Speaker 1:Next thing he says, over the last twenty years I found that the only consistent sustainable way to grow big is to start small. You've got to listen to this seriously. Stop thinking you can jump in the deep end. Think of it, just think of it if you would never learn how to swim and someone pushed you in a deep end. It's game over, it's game over for me today, it'll be game over for you.
Speaker 1:That's what it's like, that's what you do, you jump into five workouts a week, you jump into trying to eat perfect meals every day, chicken broccoli, trying to do this clean eating nonsense straight away. You're trying to do 15,000 steps straight away. You're trying to everything straight away and then you go, it's not for me, I'm not the person that can be successful. Maybe I wasn't born to be this person. And that's bullshit.
Speaker 1:Bullshit. You look at these most successful people, quote unquote success anyway, they all got a small tiny harvest day today. There's an email by Ryan Holiday yesterday actually, was brilliant. I'd been doing this reading list email for thirteen years and everything's all I've done thirteen years is I've read every day, I've wrote every day, I've done the same things day in day out, small things and they've just built up over time. I never would have believed it would turn into this amount of work, this amount of book recommendations, 13 books written, all this stuff, right?
Speaker 1:Not saying he just was born this author process, read and write and research in small bits. Yeah? And the same for everyone. We are foolish to think we are different to the way nature works. We are nature.
Speaker 1:Okay. He then says once Joonie understood a key maxim of behavior change that simplicity changes behavior, she refocused the personal efforts to create a constellation of habits tiny in size but big on impact that helped her kick her sugar habit for good. She redesigned her kind of, you know, day to day in small ways. Now, important here is that it's kind of the eightytwenty rule. There is 20% of things you do that bring you back 80% of the impact.
Speaker 1:Okay. This is Pareto's principle. 20% of the workforce deliver 80% of the productivity. And look at these things. So how can you focus on that 20% and even narrow it down to more, how can you focus on that 4% that delivers the 64%?
Speaker 1:So if you do the 20%, the 20%, and this is true if you look into your life, if you look into your job, into your work, into bang for your buck, what is can you spend the least time on that brings you back the most results. So for example for me as a business owner with Rugby Warfare, Turtle, looking at overall strategy all our stuff, I can get bogged down in customer service emails maybe, can look into that, I want to go and look into it, I could get bogged down in like tasks like looking into social media management and all this stuff right, which doesn't bring much value back for the company, doesn't move forward. I can focus on what really does move the needle for the business where my time can go which is focusing on what the future looks like and ideas for next challenges, ideas for events, ideas for how we can make the app better. That time spent on those features, those ideas, the way everything connects, spends on that, that 20% focus there, community, the right product, the right free lead magnet for people who will come to Turtle and be the right person, right people for us, focusing on how we represent the brand online, on the website, making tweaks to the sales funnel, all this stuff, that stuff was what brings back the main thing.
Speaker 1:Right? But you've to figure out what that is for you. So I can spend my time on that 20% and I know that's the 80% that comes back. Everything else is nonsense. Everything else is kind of bonus stuff.
Speaker 1:And I don't want get bogged in on that. So what is your what is the work you do, you're gifted in that you're not doing? Right, I've been terrible at this, know, you have delegate, you've got to have abdomen support, customer service support, you have to have systems in place so you can be free to do this obviously, but that's just a work example. What about a personal life example? You know, strength for me strength training brings me back the most bang for my buck time wise.
Speaker 1:I can go to the gym, follow a plan, I don't need to go to a CrossFit gym and only train at a certain time, I don't need to do anything else I can just go to the gym thirty to forty minutes in and out. When it comes to my nutrition, I can use the app and track for ten minutes a day maximum and that's going to bring me back, that's going to give me all the results I need for fat loss on other data points. Right, reading for me spending thirty minutes an hour a day reading brings me back huge returns in terms of widening my perspective, new ideas for the business, new ideas for my own life, wisdom to pass on to you guys, just insights, epiphanies from reading. So you have to do this analysis yourself but then you have to look tiny and how you can make these things day to day stuff. Think about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, a few more things. He says the more motivated you are to do a behavior, more likely you are to do the behavior. Very, very basic, right, but it's simple but the harder the behavior to do, the less likely you are to do it. Very basic. You've got very high motivation to do something if it's very easy to do.
Speaker 1:If you ask me now, am I motivated to pick up my phone? Well, yeah, because it's right next to me, pick it up all the time. So do you because it's so easy to do, it's literally my hands are boom up, it's picked up. So you have to think about how we can make the actions we want to do that easy to start with. That's why we talk about you get up in the morning, you put your trainers on and you go for a walk around the block and back.
Speaker 1:It's so easy to do. Right? He talks about flossing his teeth, he talks about I'll brush my teeth and then I floss tooth. He says that and then the next day I'll do two, it's so easy to do though you can't not do it, that's the point of this stuff. You know, you wake up, you have your cup of coffee and you just put in the breakfast you're gonna eat in the app, it's so easy to do, you already are sitting on picking the cup of coffee up and then you're gonna pick your phone up, you're already on your phone, all you now have to do tap the app, put your breakfast in.
Speaker 1:Okay, these things are so small that you like, they're irresistible to do. But how can we hack our own brain to do it in the way that works for us not against us like on social media, TikTok, all the stuff. Motivation and ability work together like teammates, you need to have both motivation and ability for a behavior to land above the action line. But motivation and ability can work together like teammates. If one is weak, the other needs to be strong to get you above the curve.
Speaker 1:In other words, the amount you have of one affects the amount you need for another. Understanding the relationship of motivation and ability opens the door to new ways of analyzing and designing behaviors. If you have only a little bit of one, then you need more of the other to compensate. So for example, I'm highly motivated, right, like extremely motivated, but something's quite hard to do, my ability to do is quite hard. Like I got to go to the gym and do a session.
Speaker 1:I still might do it because I'm so motivated. I've watched a video of Bruce Lee kicking ass and like let's go, Cobra Kai, let's go to gym, no mercy, I'm off to the gym. But if my motivation was lower then maybe it wouldn't have been enough to push me over to God, God I might do it tomorrow. But at the same time if my motivation is low for example my motivation to eat a meal high protein or to have my clear way is low right, my motivation is low for it but my ability is so easy because I've already pre done it and it's in my fridge then all I got to do is open the fridge and drink it. So that's why meal prepping and meal planning and having these meals ready is essential really for long term success because you've done the work even if you're not motivated all you got to do is eat it as opposed to thinking about preparing and caring it.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? It makes sense to me. Okay, no behaviour happens without a prompt, you don't have a prompt, your levels of motivation and ability don't matter. Either you are prompted to act or you're not. No prompt, no behaviour, simple yet powerful.
Speaker 1:This why you should use the phone alarms. Your phone needs to go off at nine p. M. To say look put me on charge and don't touch me till the morning. This is your prompt to do so.
Speaker 1:When your alarm goes off instead of the alarm going off meaning pick my phone up because it's not in your room, you've left it in the kitchen, your manual alarm goes off and that means get up, pop your trainers on or the clothes you got ready by the bed and go for a walk. Yeah. Prompt in the app where you got notifications on, remind us to weigh yourself, remind us to track your food, reminders to your check-in. These are prompts sometimes you forget and you have a prompt and you do the action right. You wouldn't look at your phone half as much if you turn off all notifications which is what I do.
Speaker 1:I turn off all notifications. I don't know if anyone is texting me or phone me right now. Only some numbers will come through. But I don't know if someone's Whatsapp me right now. I don't if someone is texting me, don't know if Instagram is going off, nothing.
Speaker 1:But I know if I go on the app itself and that's helped me take more control of my life versus being a slave to my phone's vibrations. And he said you can disrupt the behaviour you don't want by removing the prompt. This isn't always easy but removing the prompt is your best first move to stop in a behaviour from happening. So if you don't want to go on your phone all the time, guess what turn off the notifications all apps don't have any vibrations, buzzes, nothing. And you won't go on your phone app as much.
Speaker 1:You might for the first few days be like automatically picking your phone up. But you won't be reacting all the time to the buzz. What else can we do? What else can we remove? You know simple one, phone in your bedroom when you wake up you can't fucking grab it to pick it up, it's not there to do so so you don't go on social media doomscroll for thirty minutes as you wake up because you have to get out of bed, you've got a manual alarm clock, you might as well get on with your day so you don't go on your phone.
Speaker 1:That's a simple one, remove the phone from the bedroom. You know those two are huge life changers so give it a go basically. And then a few more things here. Okay, What about her design exercise habit? As it turned out she didn't need any adjustment.
Speaker 1:Once Katie removed the distraction of scrolling social media she started working out with the plans and tools she already had in place. So you might be thinking I don't have the motivation to work out in the morning, don't have time. But what happens is you wake up, the alarm goes off which is on your phone, you pick your phone up, you go on social media fifteen-twenty minutes, you go back to sleep and you go I can't be bothered. Imagine you do move that from the morning and you just woke up with a manual alarm clock. You are then free to go out for the shower, to go and work out, not touch your phone until you finished it.
Speaker 1:You don't necessarily need more motivation you just need to remove the barriers. Does that make sense? So that's it for today I'll talk with the other post tomorrow. I just want you to have some ideas about habits and how you don't have to wait sixty six bloody days to do it you just need to make sure that it's easy to do is tiny motivation or the ability needs to be high to get you over the action line to do it, remove things so removing barriers allows the ball to come through and take action you know I'm saying and that's all you gotta do. You gotta think tiny so this is your prompt today obviously you know put your one big thing in the phone So you've got it, so one big thing tracking your macros for the day whatever.
Speaker 1:But start small with it, just put your breakfast in now or go for a small walk. If you're thinking I don't get enough steps in just right now if you're sitting down just stand up and go for a five minute walk and come back, you know. Or put an alarm on your phone at twelve or 12:15 to remind yourself to go for a fifteen minute walk at lunchtime. Like small things like this, or like if you're waiting for the kettle to boil just start tracking or do some sit ups or press ups or squats or some stretches, some yoga stretches you can do some sun salutations or practice memorial one whatever you want to do and you can start building these habits in because it's so easy to do because they're just there and you know don't need super high motivation because the ability to do it so easy. Again if you want to increase your protein, have protein yogurts, have overnight oats done the night before so the next day that it's there, have clear whey mixed and ready in the fridge cold so it's there so you've got these things there super easy.
Speaker 1:But there's loads of things you can do work wise so think about it, this is your prompt to think about it as well and let me know what you thought of this podcast if you want more on this book there's a lot more to this book by the way like a lot more so I can try and break it down even more but hopefully that was helpful. Go and listen to Purple Disc Machine, 80s type music, modern twist, bobbing about. Speak to you tomorrow.
