The Two-Minute Rule states, “When
you start a new habit, it
should take less than two minutes to do.”
The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely
it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is
required to do great things.
Standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that
doesn’t exist.
14
How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and
Bad Habits Impossible
I
N THE SUMMER OF 1830,
Victor Hugo was facing an impossible deadline. Twelve
months earlier, the French author had promised his publisher a new book.
But
instead of writing, he spent that year pursuing other projects,
entertaining guests, and delaying his work. Frustrated, Hugo’s
publisher
responded by setting a deadline less than six months away. The book had to
be finished by February 1831.
Hugo concocted a strange plan to beat his procrastination. He collected
all of his clothes and asked an assistant to lock them away in a large chest.
He was left with nothing to wear except a large shawl. Lacking any suitable
clothing to go outdoors, he remained in his study and wrote furiously during
the fall and winter of 1830.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published
two weeks early on January 14, 1831.
*
Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about
making bad habits hard. This is an inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior
Change:
make it difficult. If you find yourself continually struggling to
follow through on your plans, then you can take a page from Victor Hugo
and make your bad habits more difficult by creating what psychologists call
a
commitment device.
A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls
your actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future behavior, bind you to
good habits, and restrict you from bad ones. When Victor Hugo shut his
clothes away so he could focus on writing, he was creating a commitment
device.
*
There are many ways to create a commitment device.
You can reduce
overeating by purchasing food in individual packages rather than in bulk
size. You can voluntarily ask to be added to the banned list at casinos and
online poker sites to prevent future gambling sprees. I’ve even heard of
athletes who have to “make weight” for a competition
choosing to leave
their wallets at home during the week before weigh-in so they won’t be
tempted to buy fast food.
As another example, my friend and fellow habits expert Nir Eyal
purchased an outlet timer, which is an adapter that he plugged in between
his internet router and the power outlet. At 10 p.m. each night, the outlet
timer cuts off the power to the router. When the internet goes off, everyone
knows it is time to go to bed.
Commitment devices are useful because
they enable you to take
advantage of good intentions before you can fall victim to temptation.
Whenever I’m looking to cut calories, for example, I will ask the waiter to
split my meal and box half of it to go
before the meal is served. If I waited
until the meal came out and told myself “I’ll just eat half,” it would never
work.
The key is to change the task such that it requires more work to get
out of
the good habit than to get started on it. If you’re feeling motivated to get in
shape, schedule a yoga session and pay ahead of time. If you’re excited
about the business you want to start, email an entrepreneur you respect and
set up a consulting call. When the time comes to act, the only way to bail is
to cancel the meeting, which requires effort and may cost money.
Commitment devices increase the odds that you’ll do the right thing in
the future by making bad habits difficult in the present. However, we can do
even better. We can make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.
