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The most effective way to implement a behavior change
A commitment device is a method to lock yourself into behavior modification by associating it with a reward or a punishment.
Example: Limiting or blocking your social media or TV in case you miss your goal.
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They are actions we make without thinking (habits, routines, compulsions). They control more than 40% of our daily actions.
So if we want to change our lives and be more productive, we...
This behavior keeps you from dedicating your time to meaningful work. Replying to email may feel productive, but the truth is emails are rarely the most important thing on your to-do list.
So instead of keeping your inbox open all day, change your default behavior to working on emails in batches.
Real-time communication sets the expectation that you’re always available. And for many of us, our default behaviors support just that.
In order to change this behavior, you need to set expectations on response time. Mute specific channels, get rid of pop-ups, turn off mobile notifications, etc.
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Negative emotions may trigger us to think about everything we’re not doing, or feel like we’re doing wrong, but they're ineffective for making changes that stick. Real change needs a positive pl...
Feeling overwhelmed by trying to change a behavior often makes us charge into change, and see failure as a sign of incapacity. But this straps us into a no-win situation because you are unlikely to sustain the initial momentum to change for long.
If we really want to change, one of the first things we have to do is take all-or-nothing off the table, and purge a few other thinking errors while we’re at it.
It’s almost never possible to tackle all of a change at once. We have to start with particular, very specific and measurable actions.
Each specific action is one forkful of behavior change and a set of those actions engaged over time results in a cumulative change. And accompanying those cumulative actions, we need realistic and specific goals as they provide targets to measure ourselves against.