How to Change Bad Habits by Altering Your Environment

TL;DR

Changing your environment can effectively break bad habits and foster good ones. By removing cues for negative behaviors, like uninstalling Facebook's newsfeed, and enhancing cues for positive habits, such as placing a pull-up bar in plain sight, you make it easier to adopt healthier routines and harder to slip back into old ones.

Transcript

One of the bad habits I had back in a day was spending hours and hours on Facebook I was an avid user during my teenage years when the platform first came out it was the best way to socialize with your friends and plan events but the reason why I spent so much time on the platform wasn't because I was talking to my friends or organizing a party it ... Read More

Key Insights

• 🤑 Changing the environment can have a significant impact on breaking bad habits and cultivating good ones.
• ⛑️ Increasing cues for good habits and decreasing cues for bad habits can make the desired behavior more automatic.
• 🦡 Removing cues for bad habits and making it harder to engage in them can decrease the likelihood of giving in.
• 💋 Preparing the environment to make it easier to follow through with good habits can increase the chances of sticking to them.
• 😪 Wearing gym clothes to sleep can serve as a cue and reminder to exercise in the morning.
• 🫠 Making the environment conducive to learning can be achieved through audiobooks, such as using Audible, which allows for reading in various situations.
• 🉐 "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene is recommended for gaining clarity about human behavior.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can changing your environment help break bad habits?

Changing the environment, such as removing cues for bad habits, makes it harder for the habit to even begin. For example, removing the newsfeed from Facebook significantly reduced the author's scrolling habit.

Q: How can increasing cues for good habits be beneficial?

Increasing cues for good habits can make them more automatic. For example, having a pull-up bar in the office increased the author's pull-up habit without conscious effort.

Q: What can be done to make it harder to follow through with bad habits?

One can remove cues for bad habits, such as getting rid of junk food in the house. By making it more difficult and time-consuming to engage in the bad habit, the likelihood of giving in decreases.

Q: How can one make it easier to follow through with good habits?

Preparing everything needed for the good habit in advance, such as packing the gym bag the night before, makes it easier to follow through. It serves as a visual cue and reduces barriers to starting the habit.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The author used to spend hours mindlessly scrolling through Facebook's newsfeed, but through changing the environment by installing a plugin that removed the newsfeed, they were able to drastically reduce their usage to less than 10 minutes a day.

• Changing the environment involves increasing cues for good habits and decreasing cues for bad habits. The author gave an example of having a pull-up bar in their office, which led them to do more pull-ups without thinking about it.

• To make it easier to follow through with good habits and harder to follow through with bad habits, one can get rid of cues for bad habits, such as junk food in the house, and stock the environment with healthy alternatives.