Art Markman is Professor of Psychology at University of Texas at Austin and the Executive Editor of the Cognitive Science Journal. In his book Smart Change, Professor Markman addresses a major difficulty that all of us face – changing long established habits. In fact, some neuroscientists are stating that up to 95% of our daily behavior is of an automated variety that is generated by memories and learned behaviors stored in our subconscious. In other words, we are in many ways one big walking habit! Which points out how difficult it is to make transformational changes in our lives since much of what we do is deeply programmed within us. What Markman does so well in this book is to show that the solution to this dilemna is to learn to re-program the subconscious in order to break the habitual cycle and implant new, more desired behaviors. Here is a high level look at the book’s core points.
Ch. 1 – The problem of Behavior Change
- Habits make behavior change hard. The brain is designed to spend as little time as possible thinking in order to conserve energy.
Smart Change approach:
- Identify the goals you are systematically, failing to achieve, Then figure out what behaviors are causing the problems to determine what needs to be changed. Develop a structure to create new habits to replace the ones that were causing the problem.
- Have to overcome not only brain’s desire to automate behaviors but also brain’s desire for near term pleasure versus long term gain.
Ch. 2 – Sustaining Behavior
- You need to have goals in order to change behavior. The more energy, motivation, or arousal behind a goal, then more likely you are to change behaviors in order to achieve it. Otherwise, we would say the goal is dormant.
- Environment helps reinforce behaviors that create habits. Changing your environment and doing things differently helps in changing habits. In a similar vein, create environmental cues and structures to make it easy for the brain to learn new desirable habits.
- When you make a goal explicit, the brain actively searches for things in the environment in order to realize the goal. Be very intentional in your goal setting so that the brain can do its part.
- Habitual response will become automated and happen without much effort from you. In order to change it, you have to become very mindful of what you are thinking, doing, feeling, etc. and then when you notice undesirable behaviors, take mindful action to stop it.
- The brain sends cravings as a way to remind you that you have not satisfied a previously established habit or goal – hunger pangs as an example. Your stop system needs to step in to not give into the cravings. When you are stressed or tired, the stop system or will power works less effectively. So proper stress management is necessary to change behaviors.
Ch. 3 – Optimize your Goals
- Clarify abstract goals and then identify the specific actions to take to achieve the goal.
- Need to set both outcome goals and process goals. A process goal for weight loss would be go to gym on mondays and wednesdays and the outcome goal would be lose 10 pounds by June. Process goals help you keep the habit going into forming a long term change of behavior.
- The brain does not like negative goals – trying to forcibly stop a behavior. Instead, it prefers positive goals – actions to perform rather than actions to avoid.
- Set up milestones you need to achieve to hit your goal.
- Think long and hard if you have the right goal. Sometimes we focus on the wrong thing for us.
- For each goal, understand what are the actions, obstacles, and signs (that you have achieved it).
- Focus more on process goals.
Ch. 4 – Taming the Go System
Use Implementation Intentions – visualize or brainstorm what you need to achieve. Then, you can start to unveil the actions and steps needed to take to achieve it.
- What action am I going to take
- When am I going to do it
- Where will this take place
- How often am I going to need to perform this action
- What aspects of my life will I need to work around to reach my goal
- Whose help do I need
- What resources do I require
Focus on one change at a time until a habit is formed.
Goal Arousal – need to energize your goals in order to create the momentum to achieve them. Need to find ways to heighten the importance of the goal. Alternatively, you need to lower the arousal for habits you are trying to break. This requires focusing on process actions of that habit and also changing the environmental clues that support that habit. Conversely, to establish a habit, increase arousal, focus on good supporting process actions, and arrange your environment to support making the new desired behavior into a habit.
Ch. 5 – Harness the Stop System
- Help the Stop system by creating space (time, distance, or social relationship) between the temptation and yourself.
- Build scenarios to enact when faced with a temptation – what will you do in those situations, map it out. This way you will be better prepared to help the stop system do its work.
- Overall, the stop system is a good short term tool, but the Go System creates better long lasting change.
Ch. 6 – Manage your Environment
- The key is to create a consistent mapping between the environment and behavior and then to repeat the behavior in that environment.
- It takes about 20 times of repeating a behavior in a certain environment for it to become a habit.
- You want to set up your world so the things you want to do are easy and what you don’t want to do are hard.
- Learn to identify the obstacles and temptations in your environment and learn to plan for them.
Ch. 7 – Engage with Others
- People with similar goals help reinforce desired behaviors.
Ch. 8 – Making Change is essentially a summary and Chapter 9 is Helping Others Engage in Smart Change
- Lead by Example
- Suggest Goals
- Give the right feedback – try to provide more guidance to create process changes rather than outcome goals.
- Ask the person what things they are doing to achieve their goals, compliment on how they are doing things, ask what is their secret.
- Positive feedback is good to get people committed to a goal. Negative feedback is good to prod people to accomplish even more (we still have more good work to do…).
- Support Habit Development – look for ways to alter their environment to align with habit formation.
- Take advantage of laziness. Make the good behaviors as easy as possible to do, while the bad ones make hard to do.
- Make good behavior cheap and bad behavior expensive – through price of some type, or say making certain things harder to do.
- Develop support networks – communities of people who can support each other in change and doing things differently.
- Engage in conversations
-Jay Kshatri
www.ThinkSmarterWorld.com
