In this webinar, I share some key ideas in designing our habits so that we enjoy them more, get frustrated and discouraged by them less, and become much more likely to do them!
I’ve broken this webinar recording into two parts:
- Part I – My Talk: How to design our habits for delight (See notes)
- Part II – Questions & Answers: I answered some vulnerable questions from some amazing people, please watch!
Part I: Leo’s Talk (with notes)
- Habits are a lot like software — we download them to our devices, and they serve some function in our lives that gives us a benefit
- You download a budgeting app, it helps you take care of your finances.
- You start writing, it helps you express yourself or your ideas.
- And just like an app, a habit can be badly designed or wonderfully designed.
- Have you ever used software that’s frustrating, that you just try to get through so you can get the benefit but you really don’t want to do it?
- That’s how most of our habits are — we’re getting through them to get the benefit, but they’re often frustrating, discouraging, scary, hard, overwhelming.
- That’s just bad design!
- The good news is, we can design better habit interfaces.
- Let’s look at some ideas …
- The first is that the habit should be functional – you are trying to get some benefit from it. What is the benefit? Does it do a good job of getting you that? Is there something getting in the way of it that you can remove?
- For example – if you started exercising, but immediately got injured, you can see that the injury is not going to help you get the benefit. So can you do the exercise habit next time so that it’s less likely you’ll get injured?
- Make sure you ask yourself what job you want done with your habit
- Beyond functional, is it reliable and usable? Is there something that makes this habit hard to do, like you can only do your writing if you have complete quiet (but you have noisy kids)? Maybe you can only practice piano when no one in your building is using it, but it’s often being used? Look at ways to make it more reliable and usable
- Beyond reliable & usable, is it delightful? Do you actually like using it?
- For example, if you want to write but every time you do, you dread it, how long will you want to keep doing that?
- Can you bring fun into it? Make it into a game, do it socially, set challenges for yourself
- Can you make it more rewarding? Enjoy the process, give yourself rewards, give yourself points
- Can you bring positive emotions into the habit? Maybe there’s uplifting music, maybe you connect with your deeper meaning of why you’re doing this, maybe you have a narrative around it that you are on an adventure or a journey of growth
Watch above, or here on Vimeo.
Part II: Questions and Answers
In the second part of the webinar, I answered a number of great questions from members, please watch!
We talked about:
- How to choose what to work on if you’re stuck with too many choices
- How to stick with working on something when it takes months to master!
- And more!