MM#3--Atomic Habits + systems vs goals = winning

Unknown 0:11
Welcome to the theory to action podcast where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books and less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

David  0:30
Hello, I'm David and welcome back to another Mojo minute, quote, If you're having trouble changing your habits. The problem is that you, the problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, unquote. And that comes to us from James clear, a fellow Ohioan and former college baseball player from the great book. Atomic habits. Now how fascinating is that the James separates the fact of our willpower, away from our habits. He separates them. And in this great book atomic habits that I referenced. He also says that he's building on the science of people that have studied habits before him. Folks like BF Skinner, of the stimulus response reward fame and Charles Duhigg, who we've quoted before on this podcast from the super popular book, The Power of Habit. And both of them have taught the concept of concentrating on your systems versus your goals. And this is an important concept to unpack it let's go back to the book, every habit is initiated by Q, who were more likely to notice cues that stand out. Unfortunately the environments where we live and work, often make it easy not to do certain actions because there is no obvious cue to trigger the behavior. It's easy not to practice the guitar when it's tucked away in the closet. It's easy not to read a book, when the bookshelf is in the corner of the guest room. It's easy not to take your vitamins when they're out of sight in the pantry. When the cues that sparked a habit, or subtle or hidden. They are easy to ignore. By comparison, creating obvious visual cues can draw your attention toward a desired habit. And he gives an example here. In the early 1990s, the cleaning staff at the civil airport in Amsterdam. I apologize if I crucified the name of that airport installed a small sticker that look like a fly near the center of each journal. Now no laughing. Apparently when men stepped up to the urinals they aim for what they thought was about the stickers improve their aim, and significantly reduced quote unquote spillage around the urinals. Further analysis determined that the stickers cut bathroom cleaning costs by 8%, per year, quote about that for cleaning up the, I'm sorry, but for reducing the expenses by a percent. And who would have thought putting up a sticker would reduce bathroom cleaning costs by 8%. Seriously though, how important is the environment where you are at in terms of your habit building. For example, in my own life, I set my medication in the same place on my desk. So in the morning I will see it and take my morning medication for every morning workout I lay out my clothes the night before, so I know I'm not going to be looking for them in the morning and having to open up four or five drawers and not find them. And let's go back to the book on this because James stresses the setting up of your environment to help you in the habit formation in the quote unquote queue process. And we'll learn more about the queue process in the academy review. But going back to the book, quote, If you want to practice guitar more frequently, place your guitar stand in the middle of the living room. If you want to remember to send more thank you notes keep a stack of stationery on your desk. If you want to drink more water fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the house, quote, so in today's Mojo minute, how can you redesign your environment to help create the cues, and your preferred habit formation. Remember systems versus goals, create the system to hit your goals.

Unknown 5:22
Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast, be sure to check out our show page, AT T Mojo academy.com where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai