Tag: Life Hacks

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What are some good habits to follow?

I want to suggest a good habit that will increase your success rate at developing good habits!

It can be learnt in less that 5 minutes, and you can apply it immediately. Start using it straight away, and you will surprised how quickly you feel more in control of your life. Use it with the simplest of habits initially. With practice, you will be using it with your your most ambitious projects. This is not a crazy idea: it is based on many years of research on motivation and behavior. ( See reference at the end of this answer.)

Basically, we have two forms of habits:

  • We have an enormous set of habits that we easily practice daily: eating, drinking, dressing, showering, going to the bathroom, going to work, eating lunch, getting coffee, taking work breaks, going home, putting our feet up, eating dinner, going to bed. In other words, we have lots of repetitive behaviors that we do almost without thinking. Let’s give them a name: Automatic Habits.
  • We have another list of behaviors, that we don’t practice daily, but wish we did: trivial things, such as paying bills on time, taking out the garbage, making that uncomfortable phone call; or not-so-trivial things, such as writing our next novel, practicing the piano, organizing out lives. Let’s call these Desired Habits.

All I ask you to do, is to insert a Desired Habit right before you do an Automatic Habit. Initially practice with easy Desired Habits.

For instance, today you might:

  • pay one bill before you take your shower,
  • make that uncomfortable phone call before you go to lunch,
  • finish the piece of work on your desk before going for another cup of coffee,
  • finish part of your homework before you eat dinner,
  • put away your clothes before going to bed,

Tomorrow, do something similar:

  • Practice doing at least 5 Desired Habits each day.
  • It doesn’t matter if they are the same Desired Habits , or a new ones.
  • You simply keep putting in any Desired Habit immediately before any Automatic Habit.
  • Do this for 2 weeks, and you will notice that your Desired Habits are slowly changing into Automatic Habits!

Repeat daily and introduce more complex Desired Behaviors as time goes on, such as writing 100 words of that article before breakfast, or practicing the piano for 15 minutes before dinner.

In other words, increase the strength of any Desired Habit by doing it immediately before any of your Automatic Habits.

Start Now !

By the way, look what happens if you do the opposite of my suggestion:

  • I will do all the bills this weekend,
  • I will make that uncomfortable call after lunch,
  • I will do my homework after watching TV,
  • I will clean up my room tomorrow.

This is a recipe for developing the Undesirable Habit of Procrastination!

(From a technical point of view, by consistently performing a low probability behavior, (new good habit), immediately before a high probability behavior, (having a cup of coffee), you can rapidly increase the strength and frequency of that low probability behavior. For further technical information, see Wikipedia : Premack’s Principle.)

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What other things can I do when I don’t feel like studying?

 I often don’t feel like doing tasks that I know I should be doing. And probably most of the time the feelings win, because it always seems easier to follow my feelings, rather than my knowledge.

If I try to follow my feelings, there is the immediate gratification of, “Ah, I don’t have to do it now, I’ll wait till I feel like it.” Feels good.

If I try to follow what I know I should do, the immediate response is pain. “I really don’t want to do it now, and I don’t see any immediate reward.” Feels bad.

Whether we like it or not, we are built to go for the quick fix.

So if you want to increase the chances of doing an uncomfortable task, attach some sort of quick fix soon after starting the task.

  • It can be something as simple as “I don’t start drinking my first cup of coffee until I have studied for 5 minutes. After savoring a few sips of coffee, repeat this behavior for the next 5 minutes. Repeat several times, and then take a 15 minute break.
  • Also, once you have practiced this type of behavior, (usually for about a couple of weeks), you begin to notice that you feel good even before you start the new habit.

This simple type of reinforcement can be used to increase the chances of doing any sort of behavior that you have a tendency to avoid.

I use this strategy for lots of daily chores that otherwise not be done until later.

  • I can use it for very simple things, such as taking out the garbage before reading the paper.
  • Each morning, I work for 30 minutes on tedious paper work that never comes to an end. Each short tedious task is interspersed with drinks of my morning coffee. (This strategy has been working for years.)
  • In the evening, I have to file items on my desk before leaving for home. (At this point, it’s so automatic, and I hardly notice doing it.)
  • In general, I use this strategy for many things in life. It makes life more comfortable, and I don’t feel a such a slave to my tendency to procrastinate.

Bottom line: If you have a tendency to procrastinate about important tasks, make life more comfortable by giving yourself a quick fix immediately after you have done at least part of the task.

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Does a “fake it ’til you make it” attitude toward life actually work?

As a Behavior Therapist who is trying to help people overcome their anxieties and fears, I have found this approach to be the the most effective way for increasing the chances of establishing desired behaviors, and putting the fear to sleep. It is based on the well-established strategy of Exposure and Response Prevention, (ERP).

To phrase it slightly differently, we have to practice the desired behavior before the primitive fear mechanism can learn that the new behavior is “safe”

Fear, anxiety, panic, embarrassment are all part of a primitive defensive mechanism that has been around for millions of years. The point of the mechanism is make us act very cautiously, because, in a primitive world, if we wandered too far from our safe area, we would likely end up as somebody else’s dinner.

This primitive system was, and still is, a very important part of our everyday lives. It is an extremely powerful force, and it follows very simple rules that are worth remembering:

  • Fear watches what you do.
  • If you get into any kind of trouble, it immediately prepares you to escape.
  • So the next time you get close to a similar situation, it remembers what you did the last time, and gets to escape BEFORE you get into trouble.

Fear hates change. New event are dangerous. Play it safe. Don’t go too far from the nest, because if you do, you are likely to end up dead.

However, in this new world we live in, NOT taking risks can be dangerous. It can result in missed opportunities, procrastination, a life in dead-end jobs, and so on. It is the people who take risks who get most of the spoils.

Fortunately, in this modern world, compared to the days of anarchy, when we take risks today, failure is rarely the end of the world. We are more likely to just lose our shirts compared to the old days, where taking a risk could easily lead to losing our heads!

So in order to weaken fear which is obsessed with safety, we have to challenge it and walk towards situations that the fear say we should avoid. And if we fail, we simply still alive to get up and try again.

We have to act as if the world is safe, and defy that the screams of that scared primitive animal who is watching us leave our safe zone. The more often we can challenge the fear in any situation, and show it that the changes are beneficial for survival in today’s world, the sooner the fear will learn that change is OK.

If we continually face fear this way, it loses its power. Rather than being a crippling force, we begin to see fear as even exciting and challenging.

We are really not faking anything. We are simply teaching the fear that excessive caution is not needed in this modern world.

We are simply doing what we have always wanted to do, but were prevented by a primitive, out-of-date, force.

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How can I stop overthinking and take action more quickly?

Here is a simple strategy that many people have found useful for speeding up decision making. It is a way of overcoming procrastination in general, and does not take a lot of effort. However, it needs consistent practice if you want it to be effective for the rest of your life. I have used it daily for years. I call the strategy Thinking and Doing.

First of all, a couple of points about why procrastination is such a popular, but frustrating, pastime:

  1. Delaying making a decision is a “safe”thing to do, because it prevents you from making a mistake right now.
  2. The trouble is, every time you delay, you get a small feeling of relief, but automatically your brain makes you more anxious about making future decisions.
  3. So you end up in a vicious cycle where your delaying behavior is rewarded, and your decision-making becomes more difficult.

So how do you reverse this destructive process?

We all know that the standard answer for getting over our fears is to face them. The question is how to learn to face them and win. And the answer is to practice first with making easy trivial decisions. Each day you need to practice making rapid decisions about things that are slightly outside your comfort zone.

To give an example:

Whenever a thought comes into your head that requires an action, you decide to complete that action immediately, wherever practical. To be more specific:

  1. Each task needs to be done immediately, as it crops up in your head.
  2. The tasks should be as simple as possible, such as:
    • making a phone call you need to make,
    • paying a bill,
    • taking out the garbage,
    • picking up a piece of clothing off the floor and putting it away,
    • getting out of bed,
    • doing the dishes

Whatever the task, make sure you do it

  • as quickly as possible,
  • as soon as possible,
  • and don’t stop until you have finished the task.

Decide to do at least 10 trivial tasks a day; the more the merrier.

Obviously what may be trivial for one person may be extremely difficult for the next. But the major point of this simple exercise is that the more of these trivial tasks you do, the sooner you will notice that it is getting easier to make decisions about more difficult tasks.

If you practice this simple exercise for a couple of weeks, you will notice a remarkable change:

  • Your feelings of discomfort about decision-making will begin to subside.
  • Rather than seeing the task as uncomfortable, you will begin to perceive it as challenging, exciting, and, on occasion, exhilarating.
  • You will also begin to get a stronger feeling of being in control.

By facing these mild feelings of discomfort this way, you will find that it is a lot easier to make more rapid decisions about your more significant decisions. Of course this does not mean that you won’t make wrong decisions at times. But your fear of making mistakes will decrease as you find out that we can gain a lot of useful information from your errors.

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What are some anxiety and/or depression hacks to cope, prevent, avoid, work with, outsmart, lessen, etc. the effects?

Actually, if you can’t calm down, its because you are acting is if you are in danger! If you want to get rid of anxiety, you must first act as if you are safe! Only then can the anxiety go to sleep.

Ask someone “How do you know you are anxious?” They will usually mention sensations such as feeling butterflies in the stomach, tightness in the chest, racing thoughts, shortness of breath, trembling, inability to think clearly, pacing, feeling frozen, or having an urge to run away. Obviously, your anxiety is actively preparing to do something!

  • It is simply preparing you to run away.
    • Anxiety is part of a very primitive survival mechanism found in the majority of animals.
    • Anxiety is your bodyguard:It is an early warning system, to help you escape physical danger.
      • And whenever you run into a situation that looks similar to a past uncomfortable situation, your bodyguard immediately revs you up to help you escape again to a safe place.
      • When you reach a safe place, you automatically relax and act as if you are safe.
      • Your bodyguard observes you relaxing and acting as if you are safe.
      • It declares “Mission Accomplished”, and goes back to sleep until you meet your next threat.

How is this related to depression?
In the anxious person, this defensive mechanism is working overtime! And chronic anxiety leads to depression. Get the anxiety under control, and the chances are you will get the depression under control! This anxiety mechanism is fully developed at the time you are born.

  • At birth, your first response is fear, as you are suddenly dragged into a hostile world of lights, noise, cold, and uncertainty, as you struggle to breathe for the first time.
    • Gone is the serenity of that safe, relaxing, womb.
    • As a newborn, you suddenly have to face a lot of discomforts that you never experienced before: hungry, discomfort of a messy diaper, loud noises, horrible glaring lights. Your reaction is to go back to your safe place. But that has gone for good.
    • Somehow you have to make the new world safe, but you have no control over your environment. However you soon learn that crying usually results in some response from the world, where your discomforts are somewhat relieved.
    • So the next time you are in a similar uncomfortable mess, your bodyguard remembers what you did the last time, and gets you crying again, hoping to get similar magical relief.
    • Before long, you are using these types of agitated responses to escape from all sorts of discomforts.
  • This is the one point you need to remember about anxiety
    • When you feel anxiety, your are feeling a primitive part of your body preparing to escape from where you are, and to help you find a safer place.
    • And the strength of that anxiety is directly related to how often you have escaped from similar situations in the past.
  • So what is a safe place?
    • It is any place where you where you can relax, and act as if you are no longer in danger.
    • Once you are relaxed, your bodyguard believes it has done it’s job, and the whole defensive mechanism goes to sleep.

Unfortunately this primitive anxiety mechanism has little else to offer in terms of survival. It simply prepares you to run away, and find a safe hiding place. That’s it!!
But in this modern world, running away is the wrong response if you are:

  • Feeling trapped in the boardroom.
  • Worrying about your financial future.
  • Feeling uncomfortable in social situations.
  • Being afraid of flying,
  • Working for an angry boss.
  • Giving a speech,
  • Taking an exam.

Anxiety is actually counterproductive in these situations. So how do we stop these rather mentally bodyguards from pressing the panic button in these situations?

The only way you can do this is by acting as if you are safe! Easier said than done!
After treating anxiety patients for many years with a variety of techniques, I find the most effective way of teaching people how to feel safe in stressful situations is by using Exposure Therapy, or, to use its full name:

Graded Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

  • This technique has been around for 65 years, and it teaches you how to gradually walk towards slightly anxiety-provoking situations, where you increase the anxiety a little bit, but practice tolerating the discomfort.
  • Your bodyguard will fight you initially, because it is still trying to get you to run away.
  • However, if you keep acting as if the situation is safe, your bodyguard will eventually get the message, and then it actually has no choice but to go to sleep.

So how would you use this ERP technique with an angry boss?

  • It is helpful to learn some good relaxation and breathing technique before you start the procedure, as these skills can help you to act as if you are safe.
  • This is why there are so many disciplines that emphasize the importance of relaxation, whether it is meditation, mindfulness, yoga, Zen, Buddhism, just to name a few. Obviously, these disciplines know that there is some connection between having a relaxed body and gentle breathing that can counteract fear and anxiety.
  • So, if possible, try to learn some basic relaxation and breathing skills as mentioned above. These are useful lifetime skills to help you find your safe place.

Next, ERP in imagination:

  • Then, do this simple ERP exercise in the safety of your own home.
    • Imagine yourself at work, with your boss is in his usual bad mood. Create the image as strongly as you can, trying to scare yourself as much as you can, while staying as relaxed as possible despite the fear.
      • Do this imaginal exercise for several days in a row, for about 20 minutes each time!
      • This can feel quite scary the first couple of times you do it. But after about 7 days, you will notice that it gets more and more difficult to experience the anxiety.
      • You bodyguard is beginning to get bored.

Then, use ERP in the real world:

  • Now start trying to relax in the work situation.
    • Start with easy situations, where you practice relaxing when your boss is not around.
      • As the workplace begins to feel a little more safe, try deliberately holding that relaxed state when your boss is around.
      • Later you practice the same behavior when he is ranting and raving.
      • With time, you will notice that the anxiety is getting weaker as you act as if you are not in physical danger.
    • At the same time as you are practicing the above exercises, you will probably notice that you have other defensive behaviors going on. Use the same ERP strategy with these as well. For instance, use the strategy to:
      • practice making eye contact with your boss;
      • looking for ways to approach him, rather than hiding and avoiding;
      • talking to him earlier, rather than delaying:
      • standing up straight when you are around him, and so on.
    • Each day, try to approach some slightly scary situations, feel the bodyguard suggesting that you avoid the situation, but just relax and walk towards the discomfort. Notice that with consistent practice the anxiety gets weaker and weaker, and that you feel more and more secure. In general:
      • Behave in a way which is the opposite to your old defensive way.
      • Make the tasks relatively easy.
      • This technique take patience and perseverance.
      • You need to win most of these battles.
      • If you fail too often, you are pushing yourself too hard, and the bodyguard will not be convinced that you are in a safe place, and begin to take over.
      • Finally, watch how your other colleagues act around your boss. If some are acting in a more relaxed way, perhaps you can learn from their techniques.

In summary, if you keep acting as if you are safe, and not pushing yourself too hard, your bodyguard all eventually get the message that you are in a relatively safe place, and will stop preparing you to run away.