Happiness Advantage Principle 6

PRINCIPLE #6

The 20-Second Rule -- How To Turn Bad Habits into Good Ones by Minimizing Barriers to Change

We Are “Mere Bundles of Habits”

During the years I spent working in Harvard’s research lab, my workday started with a long ride up the elevator in William James Hall. The 15-story building has been home to Harvard’s psychology department for decades, and it has housed more than its fair share of fascinating research - from B.F. Skinner and his famous box, to rambunctious bonobo monkeys and genetically engineered rodents. (All humanely treated, which is more than we can say for the graduate students.) The discoveries made by the building’s name-sake, though, might be its proudest heritage.

While his brother Henry was gaining worldwide fame as a novelist, William James was carving out his own niche in history with his breakthroughs in the field of psychology. Born a few years into the second half of the nineteenth century, Jmaes applied his training in medicine, philosophy, and psychology to his lifelong study of the human mind. He taught Harvard’s first experimental psychology class in 1875 and by 1890 had published Principles of Psychology, a 1,200-page tour de force that became the precursor to the modern psychology textbook. As I tell my students every year, think of the poor undergraduates who took William James’s class before you complain too loudly about this week’s reading assignment. 

In my mind, though, the greatest contribution William James made to the field of psychology is one that was a full century ahead of his time. Humans, James said, are biologically prone to habit, and it is because we are “mere bundles of habits” that we are able to automatically perform many of our daily tasks - from brushing our teeth first thing in the morning to setting the alarm before climbing into bed at night. 

It is precisely because habits are so automatic that we rarely stop and think about the enormous role they play in shaping our behavior, and in fact our lives. After all, if we had to make a conscious choice about every little thing we did all day, we would likely be overwhelmed by breakfast.

None of this seems particularly groundbreaking to us today. But what William Jmaes concluded was indeed crucial to our understanding of behavioral change. Given our natural tendency to act out of habit, James surmised, couldn’t the key to sustaining positive change be to turn each desired action into a habit, so that it would come automatically, without much effort, thought, or choice? As the Father of Modern Psychology so shrewdly advised, if we want to create lasting change, we should “make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.” Habits are like financial capital - forming one today is an investment that will automatically give out returns for years to come.

Of course, this is where the phrase “easier said than done” has particular relevance. Good habits may be the answer, but how do we create them in the first place? William Jones had a prescription for that, too. He called it “daily strokes of effort.” This is hardly revelatory, basically working out of an old dictum “practice makes perfect.” Still, he was onto something far more sophisticated than he could possibly have known at the time. “A tendency to act,” he wrote, “only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain ‘grows’ to their use” In other words, habits form because our brain actually changes in response to frequent practice. 

Remember how we learned that the brain’s structures and pathways are flexible and elastic? Well, it turns out that as we progress through our days learning new facts, completing new tasks, and having new conversations, our brains are constantly changing and rewiring to reflect these experiences. Within our brains are billions upon billions of neurons, interconnected in every which way to form a complex set of neural pathways. Electrical currents travel down these pathways, from neuron to neuron, delivering the messages that make up our every thought and action. The more we perform a particular action, the more connections form between the corresponding neurons. The stronger this link, the faster the message can travel down the pathway. 

This is also how we become skilled at an activity with practice. 

Why Willpower Is Not The Way

Anyone who has ever tried to maintain a strict diet has experienced this failure of willpower. We deny and deny ourselves until all of a sudden we can’t take it anymore, and the floodgates break. The more we attempt to “stay strong,” the harder we eventually fall - usually right into a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. 

The reason so many of us have trouble sustaining change is because we try to rely on willpower. We think we can go from 0 to 60 in an instant, changing or overturning ingrained life habits through the sheer force of will. The reason willpower is so ineffective at sustaining change is that the more we use it, the more worn-out it gets. 

Studies have replicated this finding with a huge range of tasks designed to tap willpower. In one, people were asked to watch a humorous film and suppress their laughter, then solve difficult anagrams. In another, they were instructed to write about a day in the life of an obese person without using any stereotypes, then were told to supress a specific thought (“don’t think about a white bear”). And indeed, no matter what the tasks were, they always performed significantly worse on the second than the first. If they had suppressed stereotypes, they couldn’t avoid thinking about a white bear. And so on. 

The point of these experiments was to show that no matter how unrelated the tasks were, they all seemed to be tapping the same fuel source.

Unfortunately, we face a steady stream of tasks that deplete our willpower every single day. Whether it’s avoiding the dessert table at the company lunch, staying focused on a computer spreadsheet for hours on end, or sitting still through a three-hour meeting, our willpower is consistently being put to the test. So it’s no wonder really, that we so easily give in to our old habits, to the easiest and most comfortable path, as we progress through the day. 

The Path to Distraction

It was the second day of the training session I was giving at a large technology company in Hong Kong, a city so electric it makes Times Square look like Topeka. I found some time to work privately with Ted, one of the lead managers on the marketing team, who was struggling to keep up with his workload. No matter how much he worked, he always felt behind, and he had to keep extending his hours to keep up with it all. 

When Ted arrives at 7 A.M., the first thing he does is open his internet browser. His home page is CNN, so he starts reading up on the day’s breaking news. His intent is to scan the major headlines and move on, but invariably, he ends up clicking through the other links that catch his eye.  Then without even thinking about it, he opens two different websites where he checks his stocks and investments to see how they fared overnight.

Next he checks his e-mail, which will continue to stay open throughout the day, alerting him every time he receives new messages. Once he wades through his in-box, clicks on a couple more links and attachments, and fires back a few responses, he’s ready to get to work. Sort of. Turns out, Ted generally gets about 30 minutes of real work done before he takes a quick coffee break. Then he sits back down at his computer, where he can’t help but notice that his home page has a whole new batch of headlines to scan. And what’s this? Ten new e-mails? He’d better read them. Then he checks his stocks, again, just to be sure financial Armageddon hasn’t kicked in. Finally Ted refocuses and gets into a groove writing a new marketing plan… which lasts for about 10 minutes until his concentration is broken again by the arrival of a new e-mail. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “and so it goes.”

Does this sound at all familiar? The American Management Association reports that employees spend an average of 107 minutes on e-mail a day. A group of London workers I spoke with admitted that they checked stocks about 4 or 5 times an hour; that’s 35 times a day.  And I suspect that if most office workers tallied up all the minutes they spend each day on blogs, social networking sites, Amazon.com, and so forth, it would paint a very alarming picture indeed. No wonder it’s so hard to get anything done!

As Ted and I worked to find ways to minimize the distractions, I had an epiphany: It’s not the sheer number and volume of distractions that gets us into trouble; it’s the ease of access to them.

Technology may make it easier for us to save time, but it also makes it a whole lot easier for us to waste it. In short, distraction, always just one click away, has become the path of least resistance.

Redirecting the Path:  The 20-Second Rule

In allowing himself to be swept along this path, Ted had become ensnared in a series of very bad habits. 

Clearly, it was time for another experiment. I took the guitar out of the closet, bought a $2 guitar stand, and set it up in the middle of my living room. Nothing had changed except that now instead of being 20 seconds away, the guitar was in immediate reach. Three weeks later, I looked up at a habit grid with 21 proud check marks.

What I had done here, essentially, was put the desired behavior on the path of least resistance, so it actually took less energy and effort to pick up and practice the guitar than to avoid it. I like to refer to this as the 20-Second Rule, because lowering the barrier to change by just 20 seconds was all it took to help me form a new life habit. In truth, it often takes more than 20 seconds to make a difference - and sometimes it can take much less - but the strategy itself is universally applicable.  Lower the activation energy for habits you want to adopt, and raise it for habits you want to avoid. The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change.

At one point, I was watching TV about three hours a day, which was of course decreasing my productivity and time with my real-life friends. I wanted to watch less television, but every time I’d come home from work, I would be tired from teaching, and it was so easy to sit down on the couch and press the “on” button on the remote control. So I decided to do another experiment on myself. This time, I was determined to play the same trick my brain had played upon me when I didn’t play the guitar. I took the batteries out of the remote control, took my stopwatch, and walked the batteries exactly 20 seconds away and left them in a drawer in my bedroom. Would that be enough to cure me of my TV habit?

The next few nights when I got home from work, I plopped down on the couch and pressed the “on” button on the remote - usually repeatedly - forgetting that I had moved the batteries. Then, frustrated, I thought to myself, “I hate that I do these experiments.” But sure enough, the energy and effort required to retrieve the batteries - or even to walk across the room and turn the TV on manually - was enough to do the trick. Soon I found myself reaching for a book I had purposefully placed on the couch, or the guitar that now sat on a stand right by the couch, or even the laptop, now positioned in easy reach, on which I was writing this manuscript. As the days passed, the urge to watch TV waned, and the new activities became more habitual. Eventually, I even found myself doing things that required far more activation energy than retrieving batteries, like going out to play pickup basketball or meeting friends for dinner. And I felt much more energized, productive, and happy for it.

By adding 20 seconds to my day, I gained back three hours.

The 20-Second rule is an especially crucial ally in our quest for healthier eating habits.

Clever minds have come up with some creative ways to put barriers between ourselves and our vices. For instance, in an increasing number of U.S. states, compulsive gamblers can request that the government put them on a list that actually makes it illegal for them to enter casinos or collect any gambling earnings. Some cell phone carriers offer a service to prevent imbibers from “drunk dialing” by blocking all outgoing calls (except 911) after a certain hour on weekends.

Governments, too, have found a way to use the 20-Second Rule in service of the greater public good. For example, polls show that the number of people willing to be organ donors is quite high, but that most are deterred by the long process of filling out the right forms to do so. In response, some countries have switched to an opt-out program, which automatically enrolls all citizens as donors. Anyone is free to withdraw their name, of course, but when staying on the list becomes the default option, most people will do so. This really works; when Spain switched to opt-out, the number of donated organs immediately doubled.

Save Time By Adding Time

The first step is a seemingly counterintuitive one - disable many of the shortcuts that were originally designed to “save time” at the office. For example, I encouraged Ted to keep his e-mail program closed while he worked, so it would no longer send jarring slers whenever he received new mail. Any time he wanted to check e-mail, he’d have to actively open the program and wait for it to load. While this reduced involuntary interruptions, it was still too easy for him to click on the little Outlook icon whenever his mind wandered, so to protect against habitual checking, we made it even more difficult.

Sleep In Your Gym Clothes

The 20-Second Rule isn’t just about altering the time it takes to do things. Limiting the choices we have to make can also help lower the barrier to positive change. You may recall how Roy Baumeister’s willpower studies showed that self-control is a limited resource that gets weakened with overuse. Well, these same researchers have discovered that too much choice similarly saps our reserves.

Their studies showed that with every additional choice people are asked to make, their physical stamina, ability to perform numerical calculations, persistence in the face of failure, and overall focus drop dramatically. And these don’t have to be difficult decisions either - the questions are more “chocolate or vanilla” than they are Sophie’s Choice. Yet every one of these innocuous choices depletes our energy a little further, until we just don’t have enough to continue with the positive habit we’re trying to adopt.

If you’ve ever tried to start up the habit of early-morning exercise, you have probably encountered how easy it is to get derailed by too much choice. Each morning after the alarm clock sounds, the inner monologue goes something like this: Should I hit the snooze button or get up immediately? What should I wear to work out this morning? Should I go for a run or go to the gym? Should I go to the nearby gym that’s more crowded or a quieter gym that’s slightly farther away? What kind of cardio should I do when I get there? Should I lift weights? Should I go to kickboxing class or maybe yoga? And by that point you’re so exhausted by all the options, you’ve fallen back asleep. At least that’s what would happen to me. So I decided to decrease the number of choices  I would have to make in order to get myself to the gym

Each night before I went to sleep, I wrote out a plan for where I would exercise in the morning and what parts of my body I would focus on. Then, I put on sneakers right by my bed. Finally - and most important - I just went to sleep in my gym clothes. (And my mom wonders why I’m not married yet.)

Subsequently, in talking to athletes and nonathletes worldwide, I hear the same from both: Something weird happens in the human brain when you put your athletic shoes on - you start to think it is easier to just go work out now than to “take all this stuff back off again.” In reality, it’s easier to take off the shoes, but your brain, once it has tipped toward a habit, will naturally keep rolling in that direction, following the path of perceived least resistance. 

This isn’t just about getting yourself to exercise. Think of the positive changes you want to make at your job, and figure out what it would mean to “just get your shoes on” at work. The less energy it takes to kick start a positive habit, the more likely that habit will stick.

It’s All In The Shoes

This book is full of ways we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage. But without actually putting those strategies into action, they remain useless, like a set of expensive tools that sit locked behind a glass case. The key to their use - to permanent, positive change - is to create habits that automatically pay dividends, without continued concerted effort or extensive reserves of willpower. The key to creating these habits is ritual, repeated practice, until the actions become ingrained in your brain’s neural chemistry. And the key to daily practice is to put your desired actions as close to the path of least resistance as humanly possible. Identify the activation energy - the time, the choices, the mental and physical effort they require - and then reduce it. If you can cut the activation energy for those habits that lead to success, even by a little as 20 seconds at a time, it won’t be long before you start reaping their benefits. The first step metaphorically - and sometimes literally - is just to get your shoes on.