Willpower doesn't work

Howdy, and good Sunday to you sir/ma’am. 🤠 

Today, we continue working on our habits. So far, we covered what habits are (patterns that save time and energy for convenience), how they work (cue, action, reward), why you stick to the dumb ones (they’re easy), and goals vs habits (a goal is the outcome, a habit is the process that gets you to that outcome). Today, we finally get to the good stuff: how to break bad habits.

DISCLAIMER: I ain’t no professional good habits architect and/or bad habit destroyer, but this is what has worked for me. I should’ve said this from the start of this series, but better late than never.

How to Break Bad Habits (Without Relying on Willpower)

Right off the bat: breaking a bad habit isn’t about “trying harder”.
Many of us have tried pretty damn hard to break some of our most dreaded looping patterns yet we always come back to them sooner rather than later. So, if willpower isn’t it, then what the heck is it?

The secret sauce is to create the conditions that make it easy to do the things you truly want to do (building the good habit), while simultaneously making it difficult and unappealing to do the things you don’t want to do (the bad habit). Think of yourself as a gardener. A gardener creates the right environment and conditions paired with adequate maintenance in order to bear the yummy veggies and fruits. In my experience, the secret sauce to breaking bad habits has 3 ingredients: Environment Design, Identity Management, and Habit Replacement.

1. Environment Design:

To an extent, I strongly believe we have no free will. What we think and do is driven
-though not necessarily determined- by our environment, physiology, and psychology.

E.g. Albert was determined to get 3 things done on this fine day: Spring-clean his room, do laundry, and get ready for the week. He starts with spring cleaning which should take no more than two hours. Or so he thinks… The vast variety of chaos in his room offers a wide selection of areas to start from, leaving him overwhelmed, and he hasn’t even started! This negative emotion kicks off his procrastination loop: doomscroll.
30 minutes later, he finally snaps out of it and goes for a plastic bag to get rid of all the old junk. As he examines his long-stored papers, gifts, letters, and souvenirs, he becomes enchanted by them, reminiscing about the times these things came into his life, wondering if he should keep a few for sentimental reasons. He checks the time and thinks, “Oh crap! Another 30 minutes gone?!” So he puts aside the dilemma and rushes to the next monster: What clothes stay and what goes. He summons his mountain of abandoned clothes, and the chaos promotes him to his knees. It’s too much but he starts picking at the mess anyway. The pants he was sure to get rid of suddenly make a comeback after trying them on, and off he goes, trying on his clothes all over again for a final verdict. After yet another 30 minutes, he tosses all the unwanted clothes in a bag and now he must rearrange and fold all those that made a comeback. At this point, Albert has to pee now. After that, he’s kind of hungry, so he opts for a “quick break” to get a snack when suddenly a mosquito crosses his path. He wants to let it go, but he hates mosquitoes, so Albert challenges the poor flying critter to a duel! He grabs his mosquito-killing device and spends the next 5 to 10 minutes chasing it, losing sight of it, finding it again, until finally, he gives up after attacking, missing the target twice and permanently losing it from his radar. Humiliated, he goes to make a sandwich which takes another 10 minutes. Finally, he sits down to eat while he -you guessed it- doomscrolls. The clock strikes noon; the 2 hours are up, the room’s a mess, laundry is next, and he’s lost a huge chunk of the morning.

In this example, Albert is merely a puppet. His intentions are clear, but his environment (chaotic room, mosquito), his psychology (easily distracted, overthinker, etcetera), and psysiology (having to pee, hunger) are clearly running the show.

This too plays a role when building/breaking habits. For your psychology and psychology, that’s for another day. But for your environment? It can make or break your success with habits. I mean, if we’re animals who respond to the stimuli in our surroundings, to tailor an environment that encourages the type of person you want to be is the best way to go.

Not drinking enough water? Get a big water bottle you love, fill it up the night before, put it on your nightstand, drink water as soon as you’re up, and carry it with you wherever you go.

Eating too much junk food? Go to the pantry and freakin throw it away. And when you go get groceries, buy your willpower at the store by not buying the crap food in the first place!

2. Identity - Make the Habit Unattractive

This one’s powerful. We all have an idea of who we are by the things we identify with, whether consciously or not. If you think of yourself as dumb, you’ll avoid engaging in “smart people things”. If you think of yourself as a hardcore introvert that sucks at socializing, that’s what you’ll do. So, if our actions come from who we are, what if we deliberately built a different identity? This is how I quit my really bad smoking habit 6 years ago.

1. Think of the person you want to be in 1-3 years (your vision), and of who you don’t want to be (your anti-vision)
   E.g. Vision: NOT a smoker. Anti-vision: A beat-up nicotine addict with zero stamina, unable to run for 30 seconds nonstop without wanting to drop dead

2. Jot down the awesome pros that come from not being a smoker
   E.g. Save a lot of money, don’t smell like cigarettes, not reliant on them to “calm down”, etcetera

3. Jot down all the cons of how much it sucks to be a smoker
   E.g. I spend so much money, I smell bad, I’m anxious when I don’t smoke for a while, feel groggy all the time and smoking is certainly not helping, I’m following the steps of my grandpa who passed away because of smoking, etcetera.

4. Watch your language
   When you’re offered a smoke, to say you’re “trying to quit” implies you’re still on the fence. Stop that. But when you identify as a “non-smoker”, the action of not smoking aligns with who you are, making it easy to say no.

   E.g.
   - DON’T: “No thanks, I’m trying to quit.”

   - DO: “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

The trick is to carve a clear identity based on who you want to be, pair that with

The trick is to flip the script of your identity by choosing to identify as your future self now. By doing so, you cast a vote for the person you want to become, identifying with your vision while simultaneously reminding yourself of how much you don’t want your anti-vision to come into existence. If you pair this with prioritizing consistency over perfection, over time you will start to look more and more like your future self. Remember that what you focus on expands.

Note: Just be sure your vision is actually within grasp, instead of shooting at an unnattainable cloud.

3. Replace the Habit

You can’t “stop” a bad habit, cold turkey just like that—you have to replace it. That’s the thing that many of us forget about life. We don’t get rid of our problems. We merely transform them or exchange them for better ones. And this applies to your habits as well. If you struggle with junk food, you can’t just get rid of that problem and leave an empty void. You must replace it. Even if the void isn’t crazy about it, at least it’s getting something!

E.g.

Old Habit: Feeling stressed → Eat junk food → Temporary relief

New Habit: Feeling stressed → Eat an apple → Temporary relief (but healthier)

Make the new habit as easy and rewarding as possible.

Alright, that’s a wrap for today. I encourage you to take a look at those habits you’re trying to build and apply these ideas. How can you tailor your environment to work for you? What identity must you embody? What’s a good alternative that can replace your old habit?

See you next week.