Engineering Habits

Last month I read The Power of Habit, put some of the ideas to use, and have generally been thinking about habits as a concept and force in life. Here are some takeaways:

Using Bad Habits for Good 

This idea wasn't brought up in the book, and is my own concoction. One might label certain habits "bad" and "good." Further, one could think that bad habits reinforce a loss of value in entertaining them. However, can a bad habit add value and become good? I think so.

As an example, I have been trying to get up earlier for a long time. I normally end up hitting the snooze at 6am at least a few times. However, nothing is really incentivizing me to get up. I don't have to get up at 6am and I can always rationalize that the stuff that I want to do at that time of day (like yoga, watering the plants, making tea) isn't all that important or can be done later.

I have a bad habit, before going to bed of grabbing my phone to check email or read FB. At a fellowship retreat a couple weeks ago a mentor spoke about hacking one's sleep and talked all about hacking one's melatonin to do so. I know that reading email in the dark is disturbing melatonin production. So, what if I read my emails in the morning, instead of hitting snooze, and got a hit of light to disturb my melatonin levels? I generally read off my phone when I wake up later anyway, so why not push the process up by a couple hours to wake me up faster?

I've been doing this for a little over a week now and the results have been pretty good. I've gotten up a majority of the days this week at about 6am and it's been enjoyable to check in online to help boost me out of bed.

Engineering "Natural" Consequences

In "The Power of Habit" the author talks about habit loops and how rewards fuel these loops. In the book, these rewards were sometimes arbitrary (such as dessert for eating your dinner) but most often were more deeply and secretly ingrained, such as "social time" as a natural consequence. For example, you might have a habit of going to grab coffee in the office a lot and the reward is that you bump into people there and get a hit of socialization.

I'm a firm believer in natural consequences. As an example, if I don't go to a conference I miss out on meeting new people, making good connections, etc. Yesterday I went to an event and met a man who has a very ambitious 14 year old who might make for a great fellow someday. It was a neat consequence of going to said event.

When working with a larger group, I often grapple with how to ensure that people are clear as to what the natural consequences of an action might be though. You don't know what you're missing out on if you don't go to something and aren't taking the time to reflect on it...it's just something missed, life goes on.

In my work, I elicit information and feedback from people on a regular basis. In the past, collecting this info has been painful (lots of reminders, prodding) and I think that by implementing a punishment for not offering feedback is perpetuating a bad meme (doing something only because you will be punished otherwise). Ideally people participate because they want to and receive value as well.

Originally the data I was collecting was just for a small group of people, not for those being surveyed. I've since generated reports that go out to the larger survey group and so far the results have been positive with a 28% increase in participation from the first month of experimenting with this to the next.

I've enjoyed being able to find a way to reward people for their information with data and meet my need for supporting a philosophy based on mutual wins rather than arbitrary consequences.

How about you? 

I'll really curious about how others might leverage their bad habits for good and what other areas you've socially engineered to attain the results you want. Would love to hear from you here or on FB.