back to indexThe Science of Making & Breaking Habits | Huberman Lab Podcast #53
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
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and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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Today, we're talking all about habits.
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In particular, we're going to discuss the biology
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of habit formation and the biology of how we break habits.
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I think we can all appreciate the value of having habits.
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Habits organize our behavior into more or less
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reflexive actions, so we don't have to think too much
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about performing the various behaviors that, for instance,
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allow us to brush our teeth or which side of bed
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we roll out of in the morning.
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And then of course, habits can be more elaborate too.
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We can be in the habit of exercising
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at a particular time of day.
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We can be in the habit of eating certain foods.
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We can be in the habit of saying
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or not saying certain things.
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But of course, there are many habits
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that don't serve us well, or that perhaps even undermine
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our immediate and long-term health goals
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and psychological goals, and even some habits
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that can really undermine our overall life goals.
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So today, we're going to talk about making,
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meaning forming, and breaking,
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meaning stopping various habits.
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There's a lot of information out there about habits.
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You'll find this in the popular sphere.
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There are books, there are articles,
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there are workshops, and so forth.
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However, lesser known is that there's a whole neuroscience
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of habit formation and habit breaking,
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and there's a whole field of psychology
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devoted to understanding habit formation
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and habit breaking.
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And within those scientific literatures,
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I think there are some real gems
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that at least to my knowledge,
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we haven't paid too much attention to
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in the popular sphere.
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So today, we're going to talk about the biology
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of habit formation and habit breaking.
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I'm also going to spell out two specific types
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of habit formation and habit breaking programs.
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I'm going to boil these down to some very explicit steps
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that anyone can use.
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My reasoning for doing that is, first of all,
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it's the end of 2021.
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Many people are thinking about New Year's resolutions.
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They're thinking about leaving some things behind
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from 2021 and previous,
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and acquiring some new behaviors,
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taking on some new challenges
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and trying to bring new things to their lives.
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But regardless of when you're listening to this,
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the programs that I'll outline
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are grounded in the neuroscience
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and biology of habit formation,
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and they map very well to what the psychologists
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have described in terms of habit formation and breaking.
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So today, you're going to learn a lot of science.
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You're also going to come away with some practical tools,
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and I'm certain that regardless of your present state
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or goals, there'll be something of value to you.
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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize
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that this podcast is separate from my teaching
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and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
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and science-related tools to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
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I started taking Athletic Greens way back in 2012,
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so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
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The reason I started taking Athletic Greens,
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and the reason I still take Athletic Greens
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is that because of the ingredients it contains,
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I know that I'm covering all of my foundational needs
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for vitamins, minerals, and probiotics.
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There is a wealth of knowledge now pointing to the fact
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for our brain health, for our metabolic health,
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and many of the other things it contains
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Basically, Athletic Greens has all the things I need,
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nothing I don't, and by taking it once or twice a day,
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I always feel better,
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and I know that I'm covering all my bases.
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If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,
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you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman
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to claim a special offer.
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They'll give you five free travel packs
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Again, go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman
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Today's podcast is also brought to us by Inside Tracker.
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that I truly believe are the best out there.
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Let's talk about habits,
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and anytime we're talking about habits,
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that means our nervous system learns something.
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Now, many people think that habits are just like reflexes,
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but pure reflexes are things like the eye blink reflex.
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You know, something comes toward your eye
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and you don't want it to get in your eye.
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You'll blink, or if you happen to step on a sharp object
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or get too close to something that's too hot,
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you'll reflexively move away.
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Those aren't habits.
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Those are what we call hardwired reflexes.
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Habits are things that our nervous system learned,
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but not always consciously.
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Sometimes we develop habits that we're not even aware of
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until they become a problem,
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or maybe they serve us well, who knows?
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But the fact of the matter is
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that habits are a big part of who we are.
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What we do habitually makes up much of what we do entirely.
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In fact, it's estimated that up to 70%
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of our waking behavior is made up of habitual behavior.
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So you can imagine that there's a lot of biology,
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meaning cells and hormones and neural pathways, et cetera,
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that are going to support the development of those habits.
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So if habits are largely learned,
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consciously or unconsciously,
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we have to ask ourselves, what is learning?
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Well, learning is neuroplasticity.
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Neuroplasticity is simply the process
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by which our nervous system changes
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in response to experience.
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We have to ask, what changes?
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Well, what changes are the connections between neurons.
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Neurons are just nerve cells.
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They communicate with one another by electricity
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and by sending chemical signals to one another
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that inspire the next neuron and the next neuron
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to either be electrically active or not.
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But at the end of the day,
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neuroplasticity is about forming new neural circuits,
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new pathways by which certain habits are likely to occur
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and other ones are less likely to occur.
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So we've got habits.
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We have that habits are learned.
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We have that learning involves neuroplasticity
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and that neuroplasticity involves changes
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in the connections between neurons, nerve cells.
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Okay, so that describes habits
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through the lens of neuroscience and biology.
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But as many of you are well aware,
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there are popular books about habits
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and there's a whole psychological literature about habits.
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And those two areas point to some very interesting aspects
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of habits that I think are worth mentioning.
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First of all, is this notion of immediate goal-based habits
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versus identity-based habits.
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Immediate goal-based habits are going to be habits
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that are designed to bring you a specific outcome
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So each and every time you do them.
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So for instance, it might be that you want to develop
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a habit of getting 60 minutes of zone two cardio each day
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or perhaps three, four times a week
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as we head into the new year.
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I've talked before on the podcast
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about the fact that the scientific literature
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and the health literature really points
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to the incredibly positive effects
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of getting 150 minutes to 180 minutes per week minimum
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of what's called zone two cardio.
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Zone two cardio is basically any cardiovascular exercise
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that gets you moving and your heart pumping and breathing
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but not so hard that you can't hold a conversation.
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As it kind of puts you at the threshold
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of being just able to have a conversation
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that's a little bit strained.
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But if you were to exercise a little bit harder,
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you know, run a little bit faster, et cetera,
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you wouldn't be able to talk while you did it.
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There's a lot of literature that points
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to that as a healthy practice.
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So maybe you're somebody that wants to get more
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of zone two cardio, for instance.
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That would be an immediate goal-based habit.
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If your goal is to get that cardio maybe four times a week,
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every time you do it, you could check off a little box
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and you'd say, okay, I did it, you met the goal.
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That is different than so-called identity-based habits
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where there's a larger overarching theme to the habit
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where you're trying to become quote unquote, a fit person,
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or you're somebody who wants to be an athlete
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or something of that sort.
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It's where you start to attach some sort of larger picture
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about yourself or what it means for you to do that habit
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where there's both the immediate goal, right?
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Complete the exercise, complete the session
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or whatever it is, check off that box,
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but that you're linking it to some sort of larger goal.
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Now, why am I making this distinction?
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I mean, first of all,
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I'm not the one to first make this distinction.
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Others have made the distinction between identity
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versus immediate goal-based habit formation.
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But the reason I'm making the distinction is that pretty
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soon in our discussion today,
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we are going to talk about dopamine,
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a molecule that's associated with motivation and reward
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that we make in our brain and how different schedules
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of dopamine release predict whether or not we will stick
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to a habit or not.
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And in particular, whether or not we will be able
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to form that habit quickly or not.
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Now, this is absolutely critical to understand
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for the following reason.
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Another thing that you'll hear out there in the literature
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is that it takes 21 days to form a habit.
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Some people say 18, some people say 21,
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some people say 30 days, some people say 60 days.
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So which one is it?
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Does it depend on the habit that one is trying to form
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or does it depend on the person
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that's trying to form the habit?
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Well, it turns out that there's excellent
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peer reviewed data on this.
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There's a study published in 2010,
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first author Lally, L-A-L-L-Y.
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This study found that for the same habit to be formed,
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it can take anywhere from 18 days to as many as 254 days
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for different individuals to form that habit.
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The reason I bring this up is that I always get asked,
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is it true that it takes 21 days to form a habit?
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Is it true that your nervous system changes in six days
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when you're doing something repeatedly?
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And the answer is, as I mentioned before,
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it's highly variable.
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What I didn't tell you actually was what specific habit
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they were looking at in that Lally study.
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And it's interesting that the specific behavior
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was a health related behavior.
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That's pretty relevant to our discussion here on the podcast,
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which was taking walks after dinner.
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There's actually a really nice literature showing
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that walks after a meal can speed glucose clearance
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from the bloodstream, can be beneficial
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for not just weight loss,
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but cardiovascular health, et cetera.
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So a walk after dinner seems pretty straightforward, right?
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Well, in order to form that habit,
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it took some people 18 days and other people 254 days.
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How did they know when they formed the habit?
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Well, they were doing it about 85% of the time.
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And they also reported not having to spend
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that much mental effort in order to get into the mode
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of taking a walk after dinner.
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So for those of you listening,
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some of you might be thinking,
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I can't believe that it would take some people 254 days
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to get into that habit.
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But as I said, people are highly variable.
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And if you can't form one habit easily,
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it doesn't mean that you can't form other habits easily.
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The mystery of why certain people can form certain habits
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more easily than others probably has something to do
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with how well people manage what's called limbic friction.
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Now, limbic friction is not a term that you're going to find
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in the formal neurobiological literature
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or even psychological literature.
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It's frankly a term that I coined to encompass a number
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of different pieces of the psychology
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and neuroscience literature.
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Limbic friction is a shorthand way that I use
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to describe the strain that's required
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in order to overcome one of two states within your body.
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One state is one of anxiousness where you're really anxious
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and therefore you can't calm down, you can't relax,
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and therefore you can't engage in some particular activity
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or thought pattern that you would like.
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The other state is one in which you're feeling too tired
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or lazy or not motivated.
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Both of those states, feeling too alert and too calm,
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if you will, relate to the function
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of the so-called autonomic nervous system,
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a set of neurons and hormones and chemicals
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in your brain and body that act as sort of a seesaw.
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You're either alert or calm.
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You're either asleep or stressed.
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Those two states are not compatible with one another.
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You've probably heard of wired and tired,
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but that's really once you've been very stressed
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for a long time to the point where you're exhausted.
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What does the autonomic nervous system
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have to do with any of this?
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Well, limbic friction is a phrase that can be used
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to describe how much effort, how much activation energy
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you need in order to engage in a particular behavior.
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So using this LALI study as an example,
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some people would eat dinner and then say,
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oh, that's right, I'm trying to develop the habit
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of taking a walk after dinner, so let's get up and go.
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Other people will feel like,
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I just don't want to do it today.
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They're going to feel too much limbic friction,
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and that limbic friction could arrive,
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again, from one of two sources.
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It could be because they are too tired to do it,
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or it could be because they're too anxious
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and distracted in order to do it.
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So this is a key distinction.
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A lot of habit formation has to do
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with being in the right state of mind
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and being able to control your state of body and mind.
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So as we march forward,
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what you're going to find is that this phrase
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or this term limbic friction is going to be a useful metric
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or way for you to touch in with yourself
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and address whether or not you are likely to be able
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to form a certain habit easily
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or whether or not it's going to be very challenging.
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And I'm going to teach you a way
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to measure your degree of limbic friction,
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that is how much activation energy it will take
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in order for you to execute a new habit.
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And I'm going to teach you how to measure your limbic
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friction and activation energy for how likely it is
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that you're going to be able to break a habit
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that you don't want to have.
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The other key concept for us to address
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that's really mainly found in the books
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and articles out there about habits
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is this notion of what I call linchpin habits.
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Lynchpin habits are certain habits that make a lot
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of other habits easier to execute.
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Now, the sorts of linchpin habits that I'm referring to
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are always going to be things that you enjoy doing.
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I'll just give you an example from my life.
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I happen to like exercise, not all forms of exercise,
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but I happen to like resistance training
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and I happen to like running.
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So I'm personally in the habit of getting
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cardiovascular exercise three or four times per week,
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maybe 30 to 60 minutes per session.
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And I'm in the habit of doing resistance training
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three or four times per week,
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typically also for about 45 to 60 minutes per session.
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Now I enjoy those.
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And for reasons that I'll get into a little bit later,
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I place those activities typically early in the day
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because of the neurochemistry
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and the various types of hormones, et cetera,
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that are associated with performing those activities.
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But I really place those activities under the umbrella
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of what I call linchpin habits.
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Because those particular habits are easy to execute
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because I enjoy them,
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but they also make a lot of other habits easier to execute.
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Things like being alert for work,
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things like making sure that I get good sleep
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the night before, things like hydration,
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things like making sure that I eat the foods
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that are better for me than maybe some of the other foods
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that I would more reflexively reach to
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if I weren't doing that training.
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So certain habits act as linchpins,
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meaning that they shift a lot of other things.
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They can control and bias the likelihood that in this case,
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you or me will perform other habits
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that are harder to access,
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that we have less of an affinity for.
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So again, there's three concepts
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that we need to include here.
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We've got identity-based versus goal-based habits.
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We've got the concept that different habits
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take different periods of time to adopt
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depending on the person and the habit,
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and that there are these, what I call linchpin habits,
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certain habits that make other habits easier to execute.
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And those linchpin habits always, always, always
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are things that we enjoy doing.
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So our goal throughout this episode
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is for you to identify which habits
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are easy for you to perform,
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which ones are hard for you to perform,
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and which habits you want to break.
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If you want to grab a pen and paper, you can do that,
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or if you want to dictate some of that into your phone,
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you can, but right now, actually,
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if you just want to think about these concepts,
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can always go back later.
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I'll make sure to spell out a very specific way
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that you can chart out a map
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towards forming particular habits
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and breaking particular habits later on.
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What I'd like us to do at this point
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is to take that concept of limbic friction
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and for you to ask yourself
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what habits you perform on a daily basis.
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And these could be things as basic
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as brushing your teeth before breakfast
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or brushing your teeth after breakfast.
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It could be, for instance, that you get exercise
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or you get it at a particular time of day,
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or even that you take a particular route to work, right?
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We are very habitual and we tend to do things
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more or less over and over in the same way
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unless we intervene in ourselves.
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That's just the way that we are wired.
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So now I'd like to shift to thinking
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about a particular aspect of habits,
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and that's habit strength.
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You all have different habits.
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You probably brush your teeth at a particular time of day.
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You probably exercise at particular times a week.
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You probably go to the refrigerator in a very habitual way.
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We are incredibly habitual organisms.
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Unless we intervene in our habits,
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they tend to carry out the same way
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that they always have once they've formed.
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So you can do this exercise now.
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You don't have to write this down if you don't want to,
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but you certainly are welcome.
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We're going to evaluate what's called habit strength.
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That's not a concept that I created.
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Habit strength is something that you will find
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in the psychological literature.
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Habit strength is measured by two main criteria.
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The first is how context dependent a given habit is.
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So context dependence is if you go
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from one environment to the next,
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do you tend to do the same thing in the same way
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at the same time of day?
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So for instance, brushing your teeth
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first thing in the morning,
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maybe some of you do that before breakfast,
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maybe some of you do that later,
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maybe some of you like me don't even eat breakfast.
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But when I travel, I tend to brush my teeth
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at more or less the same time of day
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relative to when I wake up as I do when I'm at home.
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So it's context independent.
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So it's a very strong habit, right?
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There are certain behaviors like perhaps what you eat
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or perhaps how you dress that are context independent
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that you might perform one way in one context
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and another way in another context.
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The other aspect of habit strength
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is how much limbic friction is required
link |
to perform that habit on a regular basis.
link |
This is extremely important
link |
because if you were in the process of building habits
link |
and consolidating those habits,
link |
then it's probably going to take more limbic friction
link |
to execute those habits.
link |
What do I mean by that?
link |
Well, let's say you set out to get,
link |
let's say 45 minutes of zone two cardio exercise every day,
link |
five or maybe even seven days a week.
link |
Well, if at first you're highly motivated,
link |
limbic friction might be pretty low.
link |
Limbic friction is how much top-down,
link |
meaning from your forebrain to your limbic system,
link |
the part of your brain that generates autonomic responses,
link |
how much limbic friction, meaning conscious override
link |
of your state is required
link |
in order to engage in that particular behavior.
link |
So if you're feeling particularly tired
link |
and you don't want to get up out of bed
link |
and you don't want to go out into your zone two cardio,
link |
then there's a high degree of limbic friction.
link |
It takes more, some people think of it as motivation,
link |
but motivation is a bit of a vague concept
link |
whereas limbic friction involves specific neural circuits.
link |
And you can think of it in a more or less quantitative way.
link |
You can think of that your body is very tired,
link |
so it's going to take more limbic friction
link |
in order to get into action, right?
link |
You're going to have to overcome more limbic friction,
link |
excuse me, whereas if you're very, very alert,
link |
there's less limbic friction
link |
because you're moving towards something
link |
that's action-oriented.
link |
However, the inverse is also true.
link |
Let's say that you are trying to get into the habit
link |
or you're in the early stages of forming a habit
link |
to meditate regularly.
link |
That's a pretty quiescent or calming activity.
link |
So if you're somebody who comes home from work
link |
and you're very anxious and you have a lot of work to do
link |
and you have to deal with a bunch of things,
link |
there's a lot of limbic friction to overcome
link |
in order to get into that calm state.
link |
So these two aspects, context dependence,
link |
whether or not you're likely to do the thing
link |
regardless of where you are, right?
link |
On travel, at home, on vacation, with people around,
link |
not people around, et cetera,
link |
and how much limbic friction is required
link |
to execute that habit will tell you
link |
whether or not that habit is deeply
link |
or just shallowly embedded within your nervous system.
link |
The goal of any habit that we want to form
link |
is to get into what's called automaticity.
link |
Automaticity is fancy language
link |
for the neural circuits can perform it automatically.
link |
And that's the ultimate place to be, right?
link |
If you have all these goals and things
link |
that you want to be doing on a regular basis,
link |
you'd love for them to be habitual
link |
because it takes less mental and physical effort,
link |
less limbic friction in order to execute those.
link |
And so much of what's out there, again,
link |
in the popular psychology literature,
link |
in books that you'll find on the bookstore shelf
link |
and on Amazon and in the airports,
link |
are about how to get from that mode
link |
of high degree of limbic friction to automaticity.
link |
And they offer a number of different ways,
link |
I think many of which are useful,
link |
trying to get you to organize different types of habits
link |
into different bins like value-based and goal-based
link |
and trying to persuade you that structuring habits
link |
at the particular times of day
link |
or in a particular way are going to be beneficial.
link |
And indeed, I think they have helped a lot of people.
link |
So what I'd like to do is to take the scientific literature
link |
of how the nervous system learns
link |
and engages in neuroplasticity
link |
and apply that to habit formation,
link |
habit maintenance, and if so desired,
link |
how to break particular habits.
link |
I'd like to give you a particular tool
link |
that's gleaned from the research psychology literature.
link |
I should mention that I learned about this
link |
from an excellent review article that's available online.
link |
It's called Psychology of Habit.
link |
The authors are Wendy Wood and Dennis Runger.
link |
This is published in Annual Review of Psychology.
link |
The Annual Reviews series is a very high quality series.
link |
There are annual reviews of neuroscience,
link |
annual reviews of psychology,
link |
annual reviews of nutrition science, et cetera.
link |
For those of you that are interested
link |
in exploring review articles that are grounded
link |
in hundreds of quality peer-reviewed studies,
link |
the Annual Review series is really terrific,
link |
certainly among the best, if not the best.
link |
And they also tend to be quite long and quite comprehensive.
link |
Psychology of Habit by Wood and Runger, is excellent.
link |
And here I'm more or less paraphrasing from them,
link |
so I want to be clear that these are their words, not mine.
link |
They're talking about the various ways
link |
that habits form in the nervous system.
link |
And they mention with each repetition of a habit,
link |
small changes occur in the cognitive and neural mechanisms
link |
associated with procedural memory.
link |
So I just want to talk for a second
link |
about what procedural memory is.
link |
In the neuroscience of memory,
link |
we distinguish between what's called episodic memory
link |
and procedural memory.
link |
Episodic memory is a recall of a particular set of events
link |
that happened, whereas procedural memory is holding in mind
link |
the specific sequence of things that need to happen
link |
in order for a particular outcome to occur.
link |
So think of it like a recipe or a protocol,
link |
or if for sake of exercise, it's like sets and reps
link |
or a particular course that you're going to run or cycle
link |
or the number of laps you're going to swim
link |
and how you're going to perform it.
link |
It's very clear that for anyone trying to adopt new habits,
link |
getting into the mindset of procedural memory
link |
is very useful for overcoming that barrier
link |
that we call limbic friction.
link |
How do you do that?
link |
Well, a simple visualization exercise,
link |
or it doesn't even have to be done eyes closed.
link |
Oftentimes we hear visualization exercise,
link |
you think about sitting in the Lotus position, eyes closed,
link |
and trying really hard to visualize something.
link |
It doesn't need to be anything like that.
link |
It can simply be if you are deciding to adopt a new habit,
link |
to just think about the very specific sequence of steps
link |
that's required to execute that habit.
link |
And I'll use a trivial example,
link |
but this could be applied to anything.
link |
Let's say I want to get into the habit of making myself
link |
or someone else in my household
link |
a cup of espresso every morning.
link |
I would actually think through each of those steps,
link |
walk into the kitchen, turn on the espresso machine,
link |
draw the espresso, walking through each of those steps
link |
from start to finish.
link |
It turns out just that simple mental exercise done once
link |
can shift people toward a much higher likelihood
link |
of performing that habit regularly,
link |
not just the first time,
link |
but as they continue out into the days and weeks that follow.
link |
So that's remarkable to me.
link |
And the literature is really robust.
link |
Just one mental exercise of thinking through
link |
what are the sequence of steps required
link |
in order to perform this habit from start to finish
link |
can shift the likelihood of being able to perform that habit
link |
from unlikely or to moderately likely
link |
to very likely over time.
link |
And that's because it pulls from this process
link |
that involves our hippocampus and our neocortex
link |
and other areas of our brain and nervous system
link |
that engage in procedural memory.
link |
It shifts the brain towards a mindset, if you will.
link |
It's more of a neural circuit set,
link |
it would be more accurate,
link |
but a mindset slash neural circuit set
link |
of doing things in a particular sequence,
link |
which allows that limbic friction to come down
link |
and increases the likelihood
link |
that we're going to perform that thing.
link |
Simple tool, but very powerful tool
link |
according to the psychology literature.
link |
And actually the cellular and molecular mechanisms
link |
that underlie that sort of procedural memory
link |
stepping through phenomenon are known.
link |
In this article I mentioned, this beautiful review,
link |
they talk about so-called Hebbian learning.
link |
Donald Hebb was a psychologist in Canada
link |
and birthed this field that has now lasted,
link |
gosh, more than 50 years and is still very strong
link |
in neuroscience and psychology of Hebbian learning.
link |
Hebbian learning is when particular neurons are co-active,
link |
meaning when they fire together,
link |
they tend to strengthen their connections with one another.
link |
And it has a number of different
link |
underlying cellular and molecular features
link |
that we don't have to go into in detail.
link |
But for those of you that want to know,
link |
I know some of you are hungry
link |
for a little bit more neuroscience.
link |
This involves things like NMDA receptors
link |
and methyl deaspartate receptors.
link |
NMDA receptors are really important,
link |
I think for everyone to understand.
link |
So I'll just tell you a little bit about them.
link |
These are receptors that are on the neuron surface
link |
and normally they don't contribute much
link |
to the activity of those neurons.
link |
Those neurons are perfectly capable of doing their thing
link |
without activation of this NMDA receptor.
link |
But when a neuron gets a very strong input,
link |
a strong stimulus, that NMDA receptor
link |
triggers a number of mechanisms that recruit
link |
to the surface of the neuron more other receptors.
link |
In other words, it makes that neuron more responsive
link |
to input in the future,
link |
such that it doesn't require so much input.
link |
In other words, it takes a neuron
link |
that is very unlikely to fire
link |
and makes it more likely to fire.
link |
So this procedural stepping through
link |
of the steps of the recipe or the series of action steps
link |
that are involved in sitting down to study
link |
and writing for an hour or generating exercise,
link |
whatever it is, the habit that you're trying to learn,
link |
when you're doing that exercise,
link |
it's not as if your nervous system
link |
thinks you're actually performing the behavior.
link |
Your nervous system isn't stupid.
link |
It's actually a lot smarter than that.
link |
It knows the difference between a thought and an action.
link |
But when you do that, it sets in motion the same neurons
link |
that are going to be required for the execution
link |
And so when you actually show up to perform that habit,
link |
it's as if the dominoes fall more easily.
link |
It's a lower threshold, as we say,
link |
in order to get the habit to perform.
link |
So heavy in learning, NMDA receptors,
link |
all that nuts and bolts stuff,
link |
really the guts of the mechanisms of how this works.
link |
But for those of you that just want to be more habitual
link |
about certain things,
link |
be able to perform certain things more reflexively
link |
that you would like in your life,
link |
simply take the time, do it once, maybe twice,
link |
and just sit down, close your eyes if you like,
link |
and just step through the procedure
link |
of what it's going to take in order to perform that habit.
link |
The psychology literature, as I mentioned,
link |
and also the neuroscience literature
link |
strongly supports the fact
link |
that it is going to make it far easier for you to adopt
link |
and maintain that habit.
link |
And if you are somebody who used to perform a habit
link |
and you don't understand why you dropped it
link |
and you're frustrated with yourself
link |
and you're trying to figure out
link |
how you can get back into that habit,
link |
well, by all means, lean right back into that habit.
link |
But if you're having trouble doing that,
link |
also just use the procedural memory exercise
link |
in order to shift your nervous system
link |
toward a higher likelihood
link |
that you will return to that habit,
link |
just the same way I described
link |
for trying to initiate a new habit.
link |
So now I'd like to discuss a second
link |
and what I think is perhaps the most powerful tool
link |
for being able to acquire and stick to new habits.
link |
This tool is rooted in what we call neural circuits.
link |
And I do think it is important to understand a little bit
link |
about how those neural circuits work.
link |
For those of you that are saying, just tell me what to do.
link |
I have to say, as I always say,
link |
understanding a little bit or a lot of underlying mechanism
link |
will help solidify these concepts for you
link |
and will help ensure that the tools that I offer
link |
are going to make sense
link |
and that they're going to make sense in different contexts
link |
and for different types of habits
link |
that you're trying to learn.
link |
So rather than just tell you what to do,
link |
I'm going to tell you how this particular tool works.
link |
And then in doing that,
link |
you should be able to apply it to any habit
link |
under any conditions.
link |
The tool that I'm referring to
link |
is something called task bracketing.
link |
And the neural circuits associated with task bracketing
link |
are basically the neural circuits
link |
that are going to allow you to learn any new type of habit
link |
or break any habit that you'd like to break.
link |
We have in our brain a set of neural circuits
link |
that fall under the umbrella term of the basal ganglia.
link |
The basal ganglia are involved in action execution,
link |
meaning doing certain things,
link |
and action suppression, not doing certain things.
link |
In the experimental realm,
link |
these are referred to as go, meaning do,
link |
or no go, don't do certain things.
link |
And some of us fall more into the category
link |
of we find it very easy to do certain things
link |
but harder to not do other things.
link |
Some people have a lot of no-go type circuits
link |
that are very robust,
link |
and they have a lot of behavioral constraint,
link |
but they have a harder time getting into action.
link |
And some people have a perfect balance of both,
link |
but I've never met one of those people.
link |
So again, drawing from and more or less paraphrasing
link |
from this beautiful review that I described earlier
link |
in annual review of psychology, excuse me,
link |
by Wood and Runger,
link |
task bracketing involves a particular set of neural circuits
link |
within the basal ganglia.
link |
So I'm going to describe this here, again,
link |
paraphrasing a sensory motor loop.
link |
Sensory means just input coming in about sight,
link |
sounds, tastes, et cetera.
link |
And then the motor systems,
link |
the systems of the brain and body that generate action,
link |
taking that information and generating action.
link |
So it turns out that there's an area of our basal ganglia
link |
called the dorsolateral striatum.
link |
We can use the acronym DLS.
link |
Again, dorsolateral striatum.
link |
Dorsal means up, lateral means to the side,
link |
And striatum is a subdivision of the basal ganglia.
link |
And it's very important for the establishment of behaviors
link |
that are associated with a habit,
link |
but not necessarily the habit itself.
link |
And beautiful studies in both animals and humans
link |
that record the electrical activity
link |
in the dorsolateral striatum
link |
find that the dorsolateral striatum is associated,
link |
meaning it becomes active,
link |
at the beginning of a particular habit
link |
and at the very end and after a particular habit.
link |
Hence the phrase task bracketing, it brackets the habit.
link |
Now, other sets of neurons are going to be active
link |
during the actual execution of the habit.
link |
But what the literature on the dorsolateral striatum
link |
tells us is that we have particular circuits in our brain
link |
that are devoted to framing the events
link |
that happened just before and as we initiate a habit
link |
and just after and as we terminate a habit.
link |
In other words, it acts as a sort of marker
link |
for the habit execution,
link |
but not the execution of the habit per se.
link |
This is very important because task bracketing
link |
is what underlies whether or not a habit
link |
will be context dependent or not,
link |
whether or not it will be strong and likely to occur
link |
even if we didn't get a good night's sleep the night before,
link |
even if we're feeling distracted,
link |
even if we are not feeling like doing something emotionally,
link |
or if we are completely overwhelmed by other events,
link |
if the neural circuits for task bracketing
link |
are deeply embedded in us,
link |
meaning they are very robust around a particular habit,
link |
well, then it's likely that we're going to go out
link |
for that zone two cardio no matter what,
link |
that we're going to brush our teeth no matter what.
link |
In fact, brushing our teeth is a pretty good example
link |
because for most people,
link |
even if you've got a terrible night's sleep,
link |
even if everything in your life is going wrong,
link |
chances are, unless you're very depressed,
link |
if you're going to leave to work, or even if you're not,
link |
that you're going to still carry out the behavior
link |
of brushing your teeth in the morning,
link |
I would hope so actually,
link |
but you are probably less likely to perform
link |
particular habits that are not what you deem as necessary.
link |
But if you think about it, brushing your teeth,
link |
exercise, eating particular foods,
link |
maybe engaging socially in particular ways,
link |
you are the one that places any kind of value assessment
link |
on which ones are essential and which ones are negotiable.
link |
So task bracketing sets a neural imprint,
link |
a kind of a fingerprint in your brain
link |
of this thing has to happen at this particular time of day,
link |
so much so that it's reflexive.
link |
And as we'll talk about in a moment,
link |
there's a way that you can build up task bracketing
link |
so that regardless of what it is you're trying to learn,
link |
there's a much higher probability
link |
that you're going to do that thing.
link |
And when I say learn,
link |
meaning let's say you're trying to acquire a habit
link |
that for you is really challenging.
link |
Maybe it's that you're going to write for an hour a day
link |
on a book project that you've been thinking about,
link |
or you're going to work on mathematics,
link |
or you're going to do any sort of thing that for you,
link |
there's a lot of limbic friction.
link |
While it is important to think about the sequence of events
link |
that would be required in order to engage in that behavior,
link |
that procedural memory visualization exercise
link |
we talked about before, that will help.
link |
There is a way also that you can orient your nervous system
link |
toward this task bracketing process
link |
so that your nervous system is shifted or oriented
link |
towards the execution of a given habit.
link |
So this is sort of like warming up your body to exercise.
link |
When the dorsolateral striatum is engaged,
link |
your body and your brain are primed to execute a habit,
link |
and then you get to consciously insert
link |
which habit you want to perform.
link |
So in order to leverage the neural mechanisms
link |
of task bracketing in order to increase the likelihood
link |
that you're going to perform a particular habit,
link |
I have to break it to you that one thing
link |
that you've probably heard over and over
link |
about habit formation is not true.
link |
And what I'm referring to is this idea
link |
that if you are very specific
link |
about exactly when you're going to perform a particular habit
link |
that you are more likely to perform that habit.
link |
And while that is true in the short term,
link |
it is not true in the long term.
link |
And the reason for that is that our nervous system
link |
tends to generate particular kinds of behaviors
link |
based not on time, but on our state,
link |
meaning what level of activation is taking place
link |
in our brain and body, how much focus we happen to have,
link |
how fatigued we are, how energized we are.
link |
So while schedules are important,
link |
it's not the specific time of day per se
link |
that's going to allow you to get into a habit
link |
and form that habit and consolidate that habit.
link |
Rather, it's the state that your brain and body are in
link |
that's important to anchor yourself to.
link |
So now I'm going to offer you a tool.
link |
It's actually an entire program
link |
by which you can insert particular habits and activities
link |
at particular phases of the day,
link |
not times of day, but phases of the day,
link |
because it turns out that particular phases of the day
link |
are associated with particular biological underpinnings,
link |
chemicals and neural circuits and so forth.
link |
And in doing so, it will make it far more likely
link |
that you'll be able to regularly engage in these habits
link |
and activities over a long period of time.
link |
Now, whether or not that will move you from somebody
link |
who ordinarily would take 200 days to form a habit
link |
to one of those 18 days to habit people
link |
in that earlier study I mentioned, I don't know,
link |
but I am certain that it will have a significant shift
link |
on allowing you to engage in particular habits more easily
link |
and to consolidate those habits more quickly.
link |
So the program I am about to describe,
link |
I formulated for you based on the neuroscience literature
link |
and the psychology literature of learning
link |
and this concept of task bracketing.
link |
It involves dividing the 24 hour days
link |
into what I call three phases.
link |
The first is phase one, which is zero to eight hours
link |
after waking up approximately, okay?
link |
You can put a plus or minus 30 minutes on this for yourself.
link |
The second phase is the nine to 14,
link |
maybe 15 hours after you wake up.
link |
And the third phase is 16 to 24 hours after waking up.
link |
So we've taken the 24 hour cycle,
link |
we've carved it up into three phases,
link |
phase one, phase two and phase three.
link |
Now, everything I'm describing,
link |
or at least the way I'm going to describe it
link |
is based on what I would call a typical schedule,
link |
You've heard of nocturnal?
link |
Well, we are diurnal.
link |
Most of us are asleep at night and awake during the day.
link |
I do realize that a number of people have shift work
link |
or they have newborns or other reasons
link |
why they have to be up in the middle of the night
link |
and sleeping during the day.
link |
If that's the case, please listen to the episode
link |
that we did on jet lag and shift work
link |
because it has a lot of tools
link |
specifically for that population.
link |
But most people go to sleep somewhere around 10 p.m.,
link |
plus or minus two hours,
link |
and wake up sometime around 7 a.m.,
link |
plus or minus two hours.
link |
So today I'm going to use the two bed at 10 p.m.
link |
and the wake up time of 7 a.m. as the framework for this,
link |
but you could adopt it easily to your particular schedule.
link |
Phase one, which again is zero to eight hours after waking,
link |
has a particular neurochemical signature.
link |
Regardless of what you do,
link |
the neuromodulators norepinephrine as well as epinephrine,
link |
so that's noradrenaline and adrenaline,
link |
as well as the neuromodulator dopamine,
link |
tend to be elevated during that first zero to eight hours
link |
There are a number of reasons for this
link |
related to the fact that also cortisol
link |
is higher in our brain and bloodstream.
link |
It's a healthy level of cortisol upon waking,
link |
body temperature is increased, et cetera.
link |
And there are several things
link |
that perhaps we should all be doing.
link |
I've talked about many of these on the podcast before,
link |
that in addition to those chemicals,
link |
further support an alert and focused state.
link |
And I'll just list those off.
link |
I've done many podcasts on each of these.
link |
If you'd like to access those podcasts,
link |
you can find them in the menu of podcasts on YouTube,
link |
Apple, Spotify, et cetera.
link |
They involve, for instance,
link |
viewing sunlight or bright artificial light
link |
if you can't access sunlight
link |
within the first 30 minutes of waking,
link |
physical exercise of some kind
link |
in this first phase of the day,
link |
zero to eight hours of the day,
link |
ideally pretty early in that phase.
link |
But you know, if it has to be
link |
at the seven to eight hour transition point,
link |
Cold exposure in the form of cold showers or ice baths
link |
or outside with minimal clothing,
link |
appropriate yet minimal clothing.
link |
Caffeine ingestion, fasting, for instance,
link |
not ingesting calories also will lend itself
link |
to increase norepinephrine, dopamine, et cetera.
link |
If you are going to consume foods,
link |
foods that are rich in things like tyrosine,
link |
which is a precursor for dopamine,
link |
you can look up which foods are high in tyrosine.
link |
And for those of you that are interested in supplementation
link |
and like to use those routes,
link |
things like alpha-GPC or phenylethylamine or L-tyrosine,
link |
if that's in keeping with what you're able to do,
link |
of course, consult your doctor
link |
if you're going to rely on supplementation.
link |
What's this all about?
link |
Well, the already elevated norepinephrine and dopamine,
link |
the sunlight, exercise, cold exposure, caffeine,
link |
tyrosine, et cetera,
link |
all of those place the brain and body into a state
link |
in which you are better able,
link |
or I would say more easily able to engage in activities
link |
that have a high degree of limbic friction
link |
and where you need to override that limbic friction, right?
link |
We've heard that the morning is kind of sacred,
link |
conquer the hardest things first thing in the morning.
link |
And that's been discussed in the pop psychology literature
link |
and in the habit formation literature,
link |
merely from the perspective of get it out of the way
link |
so you can feel good about having done it.
link |
But what I'm referring to is quite different.
link |
What I'm referring to is a particular phase of day
link |
that after rising, after waking up that is,
link |
for zero to eight hours, right, in that first phase,
link |
your whole system is action and focus oriented.
link |
And we know that when you are action and focus oriented,
link |
and because of the neurochemicals
link |
that are naturally released into your brain and body,
link |
that you will be more likely to overcome any limbic friction
link |
that stands in the way of performing particular habits.
link |
So as you list out or think about the various habits
link |
that you'd like to adopt in your life,
link |
take the habits for which you know
link |
there's the highest degree of limbic friction.
link |
They are the hardest for you to engage in.
link |
They require the most activation energy
link |
and put those in this zero to eight hours after waking.
link |
This will greatly facilitate
link |
your performance of those new habits.
link |
I'm certain of that.
link |
And in addition to that,
link |
by doing them in this particular phase of the day,
link |
not necessarily at the same time,
link |
I mean, if you want to be very habitual
link |
and you want to do the exercise or the sunlight viewing
link |
always at the same time,
link |
or you want to do, you want to drink your caffeine
link |
always at the exact same time, that's fine.
link |
But by placing them in this broader window
link |
of zero to eight hours after waking,
link |
what you're doing is you're creating task bracketing.
link |
You're making it such that your nervous system will predict
link |
when you are going to lean in against limbic friction
link |
in order to perform particular types of habits.
link |
And this is very different than saying,
link |
I'm always going to run,
link |
or I'm always going to study from 10 to 12 AM every morning.
link |
That's great, and if you can do that, terrific.
link |
But the literature indicates that people who do that,
link |
who are very rigid about when they do things,
link |
tend, because of context dependence,
link |
to not necessarily stick to those habits over time.
link |
Some people do, but many, many people don't.
link |
So think about the hardest habits to form
link |
and the habits that you most want to form
link |
that are hardest for you to adopt and to maintain.
link |
And I highly suggest placing those somewhere
link |
within this phase one of zero to eight hours after waking.
link |
Now, of course, some of the things I listed out,
link |
sunlight viewing, exercise, cold exposure,
link |
caffeine, fasting,
link |
those might be the actual habits themselves.
link |
But here I realize, or rather I want to acknowledge
link |
that many people, including myself,
link |
are doing some or all of these things already.
link |
And many people, including myself,
link |
are trying to adopt new habits
link |
that don't fall into the category
link |
of just trying to set your overall state.
link |
Again, norepinephrine, dopamine,
link |
and all these neural systems will be greatly elevated
link |
in this zero to eight hours after waking.
link |
However, the other things I mentioned,
link |
sunlight exposure, exercise, cold exposure, caffeine,
link |
fasting, if that's for you,
link |
or if you're eating during that phase,
link |
eating things that contain some or elevated levels
link |
of tyrosine, maybe supplementing GPC or L-tyrosine, et cetera,
link |
all of those things further facilitate the neurochemistry
link |
and therefore the state of mind that's going to be ideal
link |
for leaning into limbic friction
link |
and overriding that limbic friction
link |
so that you can regularly perform that habit.
link |
What we're really talking about here
link |
is leveraging neural systems
link |
in order to help you make it more likely
link |
that you're going to be able to engage
link |
and maintain a particular habit.
link |
So what I'm referring to as phase one of each day
link |
is useful for acquiring certain habits,
link |
but there are other phases of the day
link |
and those turn out to be useful
link |
for acquiring other types of habits.
link |
Phase two, as I mentioned, is about,
link |
again, these aren't specifics,
link |
but about nine to 14 or 15 hours after waking.
link |
During this phase of the day,
link |
because of the circadian shifts in our biology,
link |
the amount of dopamine and norepinephrine
link |
that's circulating in our brain and bloodstream
link |
tends to start to come down
link |
and levels of cortisol tend to start to come down.
link |
That's the ideal circumstance.
link |
In fact, you don't really want elevated cortisol
link |
That's actually a signature of depression and anxiety
link |
and a number of other unfortunate things.
link |
So nine to 14 hours after waking,
link |
dopamine and norepinephrine and cortisol
link |
are starting to taper down just naturally
link |
and a different neuromodulator, serotonin,
link |
is starting to rise.
link |
Serotonin is definitely going to be highest
link |
in this second half of the day
link |
and tends to lend itself to a more relaxed state of being.
link |
Now, of course, I do realize
link |
that some people are less of morning people
link |
and find that they really come alive
link |
and awake in the afternoon,
link |
but most people don't fall into that category.
link |
Most people feel more alert early in the day,
link |
even anxious early in the day,
link |
and then as the afternoon progresses,
link |
they tend to be a bit more sleepy,
link |
a bit more relaxed, a bit more calm.
link |
There are certain things that we all can and should do
link |
during this phase two of each day
link |
that lend themselves to a state of mind
link |
and a state of body that is going to be beneficial
link |
for the generation and consolidation
link |
of certain types of habits.
link |
What are those things?
link |
First of all, as the day goes on,
link |
you should try, if you can,
link |
to start tapering the amount of light that you're viewing.
link |
Now, this doesn't mean putting yourself into dim light
link |
at three o'clock or four o'clock in the afternoon.
link |
That's certainly not the case.
link |
Simply that you want to start tapering off the amount
link |
of really bright light that you're getting,
link |
unless it's sunlight.
link |
Talked about this before on the podcast,
link |
but if you haven't heard,
link |
viewing the sun as it's what we call low solar angle,
link |
so as it's headed toward the horizon,
link |
you don't necessarily have to watch the sunset,
link |
although that can be nice,
link |
but getting some sunlight in your eyes
link |
in the second half of the day can also be beneficial
link |
for a number of brain systems and psychological systems.
link |
So you can get some sunlight in your eyes.
link |
You can certainly have artificial lights on,
link |
but you want to start dimming those lights
link |
and bringing them actually physically lower in the room
link |
because the neurons in your eye
link |
that view the upper visual field,
link |
they actually trigger this alertness mechanism
link |
in the brain and body.
link |
And in the second half of the day,
link |
even if you're humming around and doing work
link |
at three or four or five or even 7 p.m.,
link |
you are probably headed towards sleep a few hours later.
link |
So things like limiting the total amount of light
link |
if you can, things like NSDR, non-sleep deep rest,
link |
another thing that I've talked about on this podcast,
link |
if you haven't heard about this before,
link |
non-sleep deep rest is an umbrella term
link |
for things like meditation, for yoga nidra,
link |
a very powerful science-supported tool
link |
for teaching you how to relax,
link |
things like self-hypnosis,
link |
which might sound a little kooky to some of you,
link |
but actually is a clinically-based tool
link |
for which there's a lot of scientific literature.
link |
If you're interested in that,
link |
there's a great free resource called Reveri,
link |
There's a app for both Apple and Android.
link |
This is an app that was developed
link |
by colleagues of mine and researchers
link |
at Stanford School of Medicine.
link |
You can do these short 15-minute self-hypnosis scripts,
link |
as they're called,
link |
that can teach you how to relax yourself.
link |
There's even ones for focus, for sleep, for chronic pain.
link |
Again, all very strongly supported
link |
by quality peer-reviewed literature.
link |
So things like reverie, meditation,
link |
things like heat and sauna, hot baths, hot showers,
link |
those are terrific things to do
link |
in the second half of the day.
link |
They tend to support this serotonergic
link |
or high serotonin-like state
link |
and lend themselves to more calm and relaxation.
link |
For those of you that are interested in supplementation,
link |
there's always ashwagandha, which reduces cortisol.
link |
Again, peaks in cortisol late in the afternoon and evening
link |
are associated with depression, anxiety, and so forth.
link |
Ashwagandha is a pretty potent cortisol-inhibiting tool.
link |
I personally don't use it very often,
link |
and I caution people about using it
link |
for longer than two-week periods of time
link |
without taking some breaks.
link |
You can look up more about ashwagandha on examine.com.
link |
There's a lot of terrific literature
link |
with links to studies there.
link |
But basically, this phase two of the day
link |
is one in which you're alert, you are present,
link |
you are working, you are engaging socially,
link |
you're cooking dinner,
link |
probably paying attention to a number of things,
link |
but you should really be trying to taper off your stress level.
link |
So how do you leverage phase two of the day
link |
for habit formation?
link |
Well, given what we know about the neurochemistry
link |
of learning and memory,
link |
given what we know about task formation
link |
and its reliance on certain forms of neuroplasticity,
link |
the second half of the day is a terrific time
link |
to take on habits and things that you're already doing
link |
that require very little override of limbic friction.
link |
So these might be things that you could categorize
link |
in common terms as kind of mellower activities.
link |
It might be journaling.
link |
It might be that you already are performing music
link |
or I should say practicing music regularly,
link |
but that there's a particular type of music
link |
that is hard for you
link |
or that you're working on a particular piece of music
link |
or you're trying to learn a language,
link |
something that's a little bit challenging,
link |
but doesn't require a ton of energy
link |
in order to override that limbic friction.
link |
The second half of the day is a much better time to do that.
link |
Less resistance, as we might say.
link |
But of course, resistance has a neural substrate.
link |
And the reason for doing those things
link |
in the second part of the day,
link |
the so-called phase two, as I've called it,
link |
is because your ability to override resistance
link |
is really diminished in this second phase of the day.
link |
Some of you might say, well, wait,
link |
I like to exercise in the second half of the day.
link |
That's actually when I have the most energy.
link |
That's when I feel warmer.
link |
I'm not a morning exerciser.
link |
That's absolutely fine.
link |
What I'm referring to is the acquisition of new behaviors
link |
and placing those consistently
link |
at the second half of the day
link |
in order to engage this task bracketing mechanisms
link |
that I talked about before.
link |
One of the hallmark features
link |
of those basal ganglia circuits for go and no-go
link |
is that they are associated with certain neurochemicals,
link |
dopamine and serotonin, acetylcholine,
link |
and other neurochemicals.
link |
And by placing particular habits
link |
at particular phases of the day,
link |
those neurochemical states start to be associated
link |
with the leaning in and the process of beginning and,
link |
as I mentioned, ending those particular habits.
link |
And in doing so, they shift the whole nervous system
link |
toward being able to predict that certain things
link |
are going to happen at particular times of day,
link |
that you are going to be leaning very hard
link |
against limbic friction early in the day in phase one,
link |
and that you're going to be doing things
link |
that require less conscious override
link |
of limbic friction in phase two.
link |
And in doing so, set up this task bracketing system
link |
so that the individual habits that you're learning
link |
or that you're trying to learn
link |
have a much greater probability of being executed
link |
and consolidated, meaning that pretty soon
link |
they will just naturally become reflexive.
link |
And as with phase one, many of the things that I mentioned
link |
that support this, what I'm calling a serotonergic state
link |
or a more relaxed state in phase two,
link |
things like seeing some light in the afternoon,
link |
but not a lot of bright light from artificial sources,
link |
things like NSDR, things like heat and sauna,
link |
hot baths, et cetera, ashwagandha.
link |
Again, all of those things themselves
link |
could be habits that you're trying to adopt, right?
link |
In that case, do those if you'd like to explore them.
link |
They are quite beneficial for a number of reasons,
link |
not just related to execution of particular habits
link |
in phase two of the day,
link |
but also for improving quality of sleep
link |
and consolidating any learning
link |
that you might've triggered early in the day.
link |
I've talked about that before,
link |
but just briefly as a relevant aside,
link |
neuroplasticity involves triggering the neuroplasticity,
link |
setting it in motion,
link |
but the actual rewiring of the brain
link |
and the reconfiguration of neurons
link |
that will allow that learning to be reflexive,
link |
that actually occurs during states of deep rest,
link |
like NSDR and like deep sleep.
link |
And I should just mention for those of you
link |
that can only exercise or prefer to exercise
link |
in phase two of the day, right?
link |
Nine to 14 hours or 15 hours after waking,
link |
that's absolutely fine.
link |
However, because of the importance of sleep
link |
and in particular deep sleep throughout the night
link |
for not just neuroplasticity,
link |
but recovery of muscle and other tissues
link |
that are taxed during physical exercise,
link |
if you do train in phase two,
link |
I highly recommend, highly recommend
link |
that you start doing some sort of NSDR type activity
link |
after you train within an hour or two,
link |
because that will allow you to taper down and relax
link |
so that you can get into the next phase
link |
we're going to talk about, which is phase three.
link |
Phase three of the 24 hour schedule runs from about 16
link |
to 24 hours after waking.
link |
During that period of time,
link |
there are a few things that are going to support
link |
being in a state of mind, state of body
link |
that are going to allow neuroplasticity to occur,
link |
that are going to allow the rewiring that you've triggered
link |
during the waking part of the day to actually take place.
link |
Those things are very low to no light,
link |
meaning keeping your environment very dark
link |
or very, very dim.
link |
I don't think it's necessary to sleep in a room
link |
that's complete blackness.
link |
I think that's a little bit overkill,
link |
but for most people keeping the room dark
link |
and keeping the room temperature low
link |
is very beneficial for getting and staying in deep sleep.
link |
The body has to drop by about one to three degrees
link |
in order to get into sleep and to stay asleep.
link |
So low light, low temperature environment,
link |
you can always pile on blankets of course,
link |
if you don't want to be cold at night,
link |
you want to be warm enough,
link |
but you want your environment to be cold.
link |
Typically people aren't eating in the middle of the night,
link |
although one thing that can be useful is to make sure
link |
that you're at least well fed enough
link |
when you head into this third phase of every 24 hour day
link |
that you're not awake because you're hungry.
link |
Now, a lot of people recommend putting a gap
link |
between your final bite of food
link |
and when you go to sleep at night.
link |
Some people will say that gap should be four hours,
link |
other people say two hours.
link |
If you're me, I generally have something, I don't know,
link |
within two hours or 90 minutes of going to sleep,
link |
but it's not a big meal, but that's just me.
link |
And I fall asleep and stay asleep fine with that.
link |
You have to experiment for yourself.
link |
I've talked about supplements that can support sleep
link |
in previous episodes of the podcast,
link |
things like magnesium threonate or magnesium bisglycinate,
link |
things like theanine, apigenin.
link |
If you'd like to read more about those,
link |
we actually have a newsletter
link |
that I'll just quickly refer you to.
link |
This is the Huberman Lab Neural Network newsletter.
link |
You can sign up for it by going to hubermanlab.com.
link |
It's very easy to find.
link |
But even if you don't sign up,
link |
you can go to the toolkit for sleep that's listed there.
link |
And that toolkit is not just supplements.
link |
That toolkit is a number of different things,
link |
both behavioral and supplement-based
link |
and nutrition-based, et cetera,
link |
that can allow you to get into sleep
link |
and to stay asleep more readily.
link |
It's totally zero cost.
link |
You can find that again at hubermanlab.com.
link |
So things like low light, low temperature,
link |
the supplements I mentioned,
link |
adjusting your eating schedule appropriately,
link |
obviously not drinking caffeine in the middle of the night
link |
or too close to bed.
link |
That's going to be critical.
link |
In fact, ideally you wouldn't ingest any caffeine
link |
in phase two of the day
link |
so that you could get into this deeper state of rest
link |
in which habit formation and neuroplasticity can occur.
link |
What if you wake up, right?
link |
The way I've cast phase three
link |
is that you're supposed to be in this deep slumber.
link |
You're not supposed to wake up at all.
link |
You're supposed to be in low light
link |
and your brain is rewiring
link |
and those habits are getting consolidated, et cetera.
link |
Well, if you're like me,
link |
you probably get up once in the middle of the night.
link |
Maybe you go use the restroom, perfectly normal,
link |
but a lot of people have trouble falling back asleep.
link |
Very important if you get up in the middle of the night
link |
to use a minimum of light
link |
in order to navigate your surroundings
link |
just as much as you need in order to safely do so,
link |
because light inhibits the hormone melatonin,
link |
can make it very hard to fall back asleep
link |
if you inhibit melatonin.
link |
The effects of light inhibiting melatonin
link |
are actually very potent, happens very, very quickly.
link |
So try and keep the lights low.
link |
And if you have trouble falling back asleep,
link |
that's when you might also want to use
link |
something like the Reverie app.
link |
They have a sleep script there
link |
that can hopefully help you get back to sleep
link |
or something like NSDR.
link |
You can find NSDR scripts on YouTube.
link |
These are zero cost.
link |
You can look up one that I particularly like
link |
It's a company I'm associated with,
link |
but the NSDR is completely zero cost.
link |
And there are other things like Yoga Nidra,
link |
which you can find scripts for elsewhere.
link |
Again, all of these habits or these behaviors,
link |
these do's and don'ts around phase three,
link |
themselves might be habits
link |
that you're trying to create for yourself.
link |
But again, phase three is really about making sure
link |
that whatever limbic friction you've been able
link |
to override in phase one and trigger some new habit,
link |
forcing yourself to write or forcing yourself to study
link |
or forcing yourself to exercise
link |
during that high limbic friction state.
link |
And then whatever things you've been doing in phase two,
link |
which are habits that hopefully have moved
link |
a little bit further along the continuum
link |
of newly formed versus all the way to reflexive,
link |
or things that take less limbic friction in order to do,
link |
phase three is when all of that gets really locked
link |
into the nervous system through those Hebbian mechanisms
link |
like NMDA receptors, et cetera, that I talked about before.
link |
Again, neuroplasticity is the basis of habit formation
link |
and neuroplasticity and the rewiring of neural circuits
link |
happens in these states of deep sleep.
link |
So if you're not obeying this phase three,
link |
if you're not giving phase three the materials it needs
link |
and you're not avoiding the certain things like caffeine
link |
and bright light and stress during phase three,
link |
you're simply not going to be able to build those habits
link |
that you've been working so hard to trigger in phase one
link |
and phase two of the day.
link |
Again, these are things that I've talked about
link |
in previous episodes of the podcast and elsewhere,
link |
but really this is about habit formation.
link |
And the whole reason for placing particular types
link |
of behaviors at particular phases of the day
link |
is to set a framework for that task bracketing.
link |
Again, task bracketing and those circuits
link |
of the basal ganglia indicate that it's not just
link |
the neural circuits that are engaged by the task itself,
link |
but the neural circuits that are engaged
link |
before and after that task execution.
link |
That's what gets consolidated.
link |
So when you do things at particular phases of the day
link |
under particular conditions of neurochemistry,
link |
what you're doing is you're giving the brain
link |
a very predictable set of sequences that during sleep,
link |
it can start to put into your hard drive,
link |
if you will, it can really program it
link |
into your nervous system so that within a short period
link |
of time, hopefully within 18 or maybe even six days,
link |
or who knows, maybe even fewer days,
link |
you'll find that executing those behaviors
link |
is very, very straightforward for you
link |
and that you won't have to feel so much limbic friction
link |
or override so much limbic friction.
link |
Some of you are probably asking, okay,
link |
if I perform a particular habit during phase one,
link |
and then I do other habits during phase two,
link |
and I eventually get to the point where I'm engaging
link |
in those habits in a pretty effortless way,
link |
do I keep them in the same phase of the day?
link |
And the good news is the literature says it doesn't matter.
link |
And in fact, moving that particular habit
link |
around somewhat randomly can actually be beneficial to you
link |
because actually moving it from one time of day
link |
to the other is that context independence
link |
that we really are seeking.
link |
By being able to do the same thing that we want to do,
link |
regardless of time of day or circumstances,
link |
that's how we know that we've achieved
link |
a real habit formation.
link |
That's how we know that the habit has been moved
link |
into certain components of our neural circuitry
link |
that just allow us to do it what seems like reflexively,
link |
although earlier I pointed out that these aren't reflexes
link |
in the traditional sense.
link |
The reason for that is that this brain area,
link |
the hippocampus that many of you know
link |
is associated with learning and memory
link |
is not actually where memories are stored.
link |
The hippocampus is where memories are formed.
link |
It's where procedures, like I talked about before,
link |
procedural memory of how you're going to execute
link |
a particular sequence where that's maintained.
link |
So like if we use the recipe model,
link |
that's where the recipe is maintained
link |
until you know how to cook that dish.
link |
And then the procedural memory literally migrates off
link |
into a different set of neural circuits,
link |
which are the neural circuits of the neocortex,
link |
where we have maps of sensory experience,
link |
maps of all kinds of experiences,
link |
including motor maps of how to execute things.
link |
So we use one part of the brain to learn something,
link |
but then that information in the form
link |
of the electrical activity of neurons
link |
is passed off to a different brain area.
link |
Now, the neurons themselves don't move
link |
from the hippocampus to the cortex.
link |
That doesn't happen.
link |
What happens is the signals,
link |
the sequence of electrical firing,
link |
much like a script for a movie
link |
or the notes on a sheet of paper
link |
for a particular musical piece
link |
is transferred off to a different brain area.
link |
So that whole process of really leaning
link |
into something that's hard, then it becoming easier.
link |
And then eventually that thing becoming more
link |
or less reflexive involves a migration
link |
of the information in the brain.
link |
And once it's migrated out to a different location
link |
in the brain, at that point,
link |
it's achieved context independence.
link |
It doesn't have to be bracketed by your caffeine
link |
It doesn't have to occur immediately
link |
after your afternoon NSDR,
link |
but before your four o'clock meeting on Zoom
link |
or something of that sort.
link |
So all this is to say that once something
link |
has become reflexive,
link |
you should play with it a little bit about time of day.
link |
If you want to keep it in the same phase of day, great.
link |
But if you one day decide
link |
you're going to exercise in the afternoon,
link |
next day you decide you're going to exercise in the morning
link |
and that's the habit that you're concerned with,
link |
If you're able to do that,
link |
that means that it's truly achieved context independence.
link |
It means that you have officially formed that habit.
link |
And as I mentioned earlier,
link |
much earlier at the beginning of the episode,
link |
the strength of a habit is dictated
link |
by how much limbic friction, that was one,
link |
and how much context dependence there is.
link |
So when it doesn't take much activation energy
link |
to get into the execution of that habit,
link |
and you can do it in any context,
link |
well, then you have formed a habit.
link |
We really can't have a discussion
link |
about learning anything, habits or otherwise,
link |
unless we talk about reward prediction error.
link |
Reward prediction error
link |
is associated with the molecule dopamine.
link |
Although I should say there are other neurochemicals
link |
in our brain and body
link |
that are also related to reward prediction error.
link |
But reward prediction error is a very good system,
link |
or I should say a lens through which to think about
link |
whether or not we should reward ourselves
link |
for performing a given habit.
link |
And this is a much larger discussion
link |
that actually relates to things like parenting
link |
and self-regulation.
link |
Should we reward kids just for effort?
link |
Should we reward ourselves just for effort?
link |
What should we reward?
link |
How much should we reward ourselves?
link |
When should we withdraw reward?
link |
Should we use punishment?
link |
These kinds of things.
link |
This is a vast literature.
link |
We don't have time to go into all the details,
link |
but the notion of reward prediction error is so powerful
link |
that it can predict most, if not all forms of learning,
link |
including habit formation.
link |
And you can deploy or use particular features
link |
of reward prediction error
link |
if you would like to reinforce
link |
or accelerate the formation of certain habits.
link |
So reward prediction error, quite simply,
link |
is if you expect a reward and the reward comes,
link |
a particular behavior that was associated
link |
with generating that reward is more likely to occur again.
link |
That's pretty straightforward.
link |
However, the amount of reward
link |
in the form of this molecule dopamine
link |
that you will experience is even greater
link |
if a reward arrives that's unexpected, okay?
link |
So let me repeat that again.
link |
If I think that something's coming
link |
that's going to be great,
link |
that let's say I lean into a habit,
link |
I managed to override my limbic friction,
link |
and I'm doing my 45 minutes of writing in the morning
link |
with no phone and no internet,
link |
and I'm getting toward the end and I'm anticipating,
link |
oh, I'm actually doing this.
link |
I'm feeling really, really good.
link |
I definitely will receive a dopamine reward.
link |
I'll make my own dopamine reward.
link |
That's where it comes from.
link |
Remember, this is all internal.
link |
However, I will also receive dopamine reward
link |
if unexpectedly something positive happens.
link |
And typically, if something unexpected but positive happens,
link |
the amount of dopamine reward that we get
link |
is actually much greater than in any other conditions.
link |
However, it's hard to surprise yourself
link |
about a behavior that you're deliberately engaging in.
link |
So that becomes a bit of a tricky one.
link |
Reward prediction error also says
link |
that if we expect a reward and the reward doesn't come,
link |
that the pattern of dopamine release
link |
will follow a particular contour.
link |
And that contour is very important.
link |
Here's how it goes.
link |
Let's say that I'm writing
link |
and I'm about 30 or 45 minutes in,
link |
and I'm thinking, oh, this is great.
link |
I'm actually, I managed to do this.
link |
I'm succeeding in executing the behaviors that I need to
link |
in order to perform this habit.
link |
I'm overriding limbic friction.
link |
Just that series of thoughts will start to generate
link |
a dopamine release within my brain and body.
link |
However, if at the 50-minute mark,
link |
the phone rings and I pick up the phone
link |
or I break my own protocol,
link |
I break my own self-discipline
link |
and I go on and check social media
link |
or I do something that takes me out of that,
link |
what's going to happen is that my level of dopamine
link |
is actually going to drop below the baseline,
link |
meaning below the level of dopamine I had
link |
before I even started the habit execution, okay?
link |
So what this is, is this is a system
link |
that predicts whether or not rewards are going to come.
link |
When we think a reward is going to come,
link |
it starts to actually arrive earlier
link |
in the form of dopamine release.
link |
This is the feeling that we experience
link |
as in positive anticipation.
link |
You tell a kid, hey, we're going to go to the amusement park
link |
or we're going to go get ice cream.
link |
They haven't had the ice cream yet.
link |
They're not at the amusement park, but they're excited.
link |
The dopamine release comes earlier, okay?
link |
They get to the amusement park or they get the ice cream,
link |
they will also have some dopamine release
link |
associated with that.
link |
But most of it, believe it or not,
link |
came in the form of the anticipation.
link |
And dopamine has some qualities that make
link |
the actual ice cream and the actual amusement park
link |
experience more pleasureful than it would be
link |
had that dopamine release not happened.
link |
Now, of course, the other way to do it
link |
is to surprise a kid.
link |
You tell them, listen, we're going to the class
link |
that you absolutely hate,
link |
or we're going to go see the person
link |
that you absolutely despise,
link |
and then you drive them to the amusement park.
link |
That's the big release of dopamine.
link |
But reward prediction error also says
link |
that if you tell the kid or yourself,
link |
okay, we're headed to the amusement park,
link |
we're going to get some ice cream,
link |
they're really, really excited,
link |
and then you get there and it's closed
link |
or they're not letting any more people in,
link |
well, then the dopamine level drops way below what it was
link |
before you told them that you were headed there, okay?
link |
I've given a number of different examples
link |
that hopefully make this clear.
link |
Reward prediction error governs virtually all aspects
link |
of effort and all aspects of learning.
link |
Because when dopamine is released in the brain and body,
link |
the neural circuits of our brain and body change.
link |
There's a state change.
link |
Our overlevel, excuse me, our overall level of energy,
link |
but also the sorts of sensory events
link |
that we're paying attention to changes
link |
when there's a lot of dopamine in our system.
link |
Now, you can leverage this for habit formation.
link |
Think back to task bracketing.
link |
Think back to limbic friction.
link |
If you are considering adopting a new habit
link |
or if you are trying to break a habit,
link |
something we haven't talked too much about,
link |
but we will in a moment,
link |
it's very useful to think not just about
link |
the procedural aspects of what you're going to do,
link |
but also think about the events that precede and follow
link |
that particular habit and the execution,
link |
or at least the effort to execute that habit.
link |
What you're doing is you're casting a kind of a spotlight
link |
around a bin of time or a set of events
link |
for which dopamine can be associated.
link |
What does this look like in the practical sense?
link |
Well, again, I'll just try and use
link |
very simple, concrete examples,
link |
but this could carry over to anything.
link |
Let's say I were somebody who has a hard time
link |
getting in that 30 to 60 minutes
link |
of zone two cardiovascular exercise mid-morning.
link |
This is actually an issue for me.
link |
I much prefer to do resistance exercise
link |
than cardiovascular exercise,
link |
although once I do it,
link |
I always feel much better that I have done it.
link |
What I should do is positively anticipate
link |
the onset and the offset of that session, right?
link |
So thinking about leaning into the effort,
link |
going out and doing that zone two cardio session,
link |
and I should think about how I'm going to feel after.
link |
So not just thinking about how great I'm going to feel after
link |
but also thinking about how hard it's going to be
link |
at the beginning and then trying to reward myself
link |
subjectively for the entire experience.
link |
In other words, start rewarding task bracketing
link |
in addition to rewarding the execution of the habit itself.
link |
Now, some of you might be saying,
link |
well, wait, this is all self-talk.
link |
This is just positive self-talk,
link |
but it's not positive self-talk.
link |
It's not saying, you know,
link |
I feel so great about doing something that I actually hate.
link |
You can't lie to yourself,
link |
or you're welcome to lie to yourself,
link |
but the neuroscience literature,
link |
the literature of growth mindset,
link |
all the literature basically of mindset
link |
speaks to the fact that when you lie to yourself,
link |
you know you're lying
link |
and you actually set up the opposite of a reward system.
link |
So you have to be brutally honest with yourself
link |
that for instance,
link |
I don't like initiating this cardiovascular exercise,
link |
but I do like the fact that I've done it after I've done it.
link |
So what you are doing
link |
is you are applying reward prediction error
link |
to the entire sequence of things that's involved
link |
in getting into the habit execution,
link |
getting through the habit execution
link |
and getting out of the habit execution.
link |
How do you do this?
link |
Well, I take us back to our procedural
link |
memory visualization exercise that we talked about earlier.
link |
When I talked about it in that context,
link |
I talked about walking through mentally
link |
the series of steps that's required
link |
to perform a particular habit.
link |
So in the case of the zone two cardio thing,
link |
it would be, okay, I'm going to put on my shoes.
link |
Then I'm going to head out the door.
link |
Then I'm going to drive up the road.
link |
There's a particular canyon near here
link |
that if I'm going to run, I happen to like running
link |
or I don't hate running enough that I tend to do it.
link |
Going through that, heading back, et cetera, et cetera.
link |
That's great, but even better
link |
would be to broaden the time bin
link |
and start to positively anticipate
link |
the period headed into the habit.
link |
So even before you put on your shoes,
link |
the fact that you are successfully placing the habit in,
link |
in this case, phase one of the day,
link |
and that afterwards I'm going to feel
link |
a particular set of positive benefits,
link |
elevated mood, et cetera.
link |
I like being hungry and typically after exercise,
link |
I'm hungry, so I like being hungry because I like eating.
link |
And so there's a whole set of things
link |
that link up with one another.
link |
So I'm not just thinking about habit execution
link |
as this isolated little set of events
link |
or this little time bin,
link |
but rather I'm drawing a larger envelope around it
link |
and starting to positively associate dopamine reward
link |
with that larger envelope.
link |
And for those of you that are thinking,
link |
well, this is just a psychological trick.
link |
This is sort of like lying to yourself.
link |
It's not because you're not actually contradicting the fact
link |
that some of this is unpleasant.
link |
What you're doing is you're taking this entire series
link |
of events, what I'm calling this kind of time envelope,
link |
and you're associating it with a particular reward
link |
that comes later, which for me would be the feeling
link |
that I've completed this, right?
link |
Because for me, that's usually a good feeling.
link |
So reward prediction error is beautiful,
link |
not just because it's a sort of math of anticipation
link |
and reward or a math of anticipation and disappointment.
link |
It's beautiful because you can stretch out
link |
or make more narrow the time bins
link |
in which reward prediction error works.
link |
Reward prediction error is the way
link |
in which people navigate four-year degrees, right?
link |
I mean, you go, sure, final exam to final exam, et cetera,
link |
but ultimately there's a big payoff at the end
link |
and it's all basically for that big payoff.
link |
And of course I understand that it's the journey,
link |
not the destination, but let's face it for a lot of us,
link |
goals and habits are about achieving
link |
some sort of destination.
link |
In the case of zone two cardio, for me,
link |
it's about trying to stay alive for as long as I can,
link |
as long as I can with vitality that is.
link |
And it's also the fact that if I'm doing that,
link |
I get to eat the foods that I like,
link |
I tend to be able to eat more,
link |
which I happen to really enjoy eating so much so
link |
that I'd like it just as an activity.
link |
So basically what you're trying to do
link |
is not restrict your thinking to just the habit
link |
that you're trying to form,
link |
but rather to grab a hold of the timing
link |
before and after that particular habit
link |
and start to positively associate reward mechanisms
link |
in your brain with that entire time bin.
link |
This is a very useful and very powerful tool
link |
in order to form habits.
link |
And I should say that it's not something
link |
that comes naturally to most people.
link |
In fact, even as I describe it,
link |
you might find it's still a little bit abstract,
link |
but what I encourage you to do
link |
if you are finding it to be a little bit vague
link |
would be to pick the habit that you want to form,
link |
write down or think about very concretely
link |
what is the sequence of steps involved
link |
in the execution of that habit,
link |
and then write down or think about
link |
what is the sequence of events
link |
that need to precede that habit,
link |
maybe the immediate 10 or 15 minutes before,
link |
as well as the immediate sequence of events
link |
and or feelings that will occur after that habit,
link |
and then call the whole thing a habit execution,
link |
the whole thing a effort to engage in that particular habit.
link |
And in doing that and in positively associating
link |
with the idea that you're going to complete
link |
that entire sequence,
link |
you will engage reward prediction error
link |
in the proper way that the dopamine surge
link |
can lend itself toward motivation.
link |
Because ultimately dopamine is not about feeling good,
link |
it's about feeling motivated.
link |
This is something that I've talked about
link |
numerous times before,
link |
but dopamine, contrary to popular belief,
link |
is not a reward molecule as much as is a molecule
link |
of motivation and drive.
link |
And the natural consequence of doing the exercise
link |
I just described of writing things out that precede,
link |
are involved in the immediate execution of the habit
link |
and follow the habit,
link |
will allow you to experience an increase in energy
link |
and thereby an increase in likelihood
link |
that you're going to engage
link |
in that entire sequence of events.
link |
And the reason for that is that dopamine gives us energy.
link |
And the reason for that is that the molecule epinephrine,
link |
adrenaline, is actually manufactured from dopamine.
link |
Biochemically, it comes from dopamine.
link |
So dopamine is powerful
link |
and you can access more dopamine around
link |
even habits that you haven't yet formed
link |
by taking this broader time envelope
link |
and task bracketing that specific task execution
link |
or habit execution.
link |
Way back at the beginning of the episode,
link |
I promised you that I would deliver two programs
link |
that are geared towards habit formation.
link |
And I promised that I would give you ways
link |
in which you could gauge whether or not certain habits
link |
had moved from high effort,
link |
what I call high limbic friction, to reflexive.
link |
We talked about a number of ways to gauge that.
link |
In researching this episode,
link |
I found a tremendous number of different systems
link |
for habit formation.
link |
It's really amazing how much is out there.
link |
There are ones that are 60 days to this
link |
or 21 days to that or 18 days to this.
link |
I mean, it's just rampant
link |
in the popular psychology literature
link |
and in the self-help literature.
link |
I want to spell out a particular system
link |
that I think could be very useful
link |
to most if not all people
link |
that's rooted in the biology of habit formation,
link |
rooted in the psychology of habit formation,
link |
and that is entirely compatible
link |
with that phase one, phase two, phase three type program
link |
that I talked about earlier,
link |
but encompasses a bit of a longer time scale
link |
and really arrives at a kind of a system, if you will,
link |
for how to build in habits
link |
and then to test whether or not those habits
link |
and whether or not they're likely to stick going forward.
link |
And so this is, at least for sake of this example,
link |
I picked 21 days because that seems to be the average
link |
or most typical system for engaging neuroplasticity
link |
as it relates to the formation of new habits.
link |
This 21-day system actually is one
link |
that someone I know very well uses
link |
and has used for a long time.
link |
They actually use them, their kids use it as well,
link |
and it has a certain elegance to it.
link |
And I think as I describe it,
link |
that elegance will begin to reveal itself.
link |
So basically what this involves is you set out
link |
to perform six new habits per day
link |
across the course of 21 days.
link |
Why six and why 21?
link |
Well, we'll talk about that in a moment,
link |
but the idea is you write down six things
link |
that you would like to do every day for 21 days.
link |
What phase of the day those things fall into?
link |
Well, that will depend on what they are
link |
and how they relate to those earlier phase one,
link |
phase two, phase three.
link |
But for now, 21 days, six things per day.
link |
However, the expectation is that you'll only complete
link |
four to five of those each day, okay?
link |
So built into this is a kind of permission to fail,
link |
but it's not failure because it turns out
link |
that this approach to forming habits
link |
is based not so much on the specific habits
link |
that you're trying to form,
link |
but the habit of performing habits, right?
link |
It's the habit of doing a certain number of things
link |
So you set out to perform six.
link |
Now, another reason for not necessarily performing all six
link |
is that some activities
link |
probably shouldn't be performed each day.
link |
For instance, in my case,
link |
if I were to weight train or even run every day,
link |
I'm of the sort, or my biology is of the sort
link |
that I don't recover so well.
link |
So I wouldn't want to do resistance training every day,
link |
but I might want to do it four days a week, for instance.
link |
So by having six things in that list,
link |
I could shuffle out that particular activity
link |
on particular days of the week.
link |
And simply do four or five other activities.
link |
So 21 days, you list out four to five things.
link |
So it might be zone two cardio, resistance training,
link |
sunlight viewing, writing.
link |
It could be journaling.
link |
It could be learning a language, mathematics.
link |
Again, this is going to vary
link |
depending on your particular goals
link |
and the habits that you're trying to create.
link |
But no more than six.
link |
And the expectation is that you're not going to perform
link |
more than four to five.
link |
If you miss a day,
link |
meaning you don't perform four to five things,
link |
there is no punishment.
link |
it's important that you don't actually try and do
link |
what in the literature is called a habit slip compensation,
link |
which is just fancy psychological language
link |
for if you screw up and you don't get all four or five
link |
you don't do eight the next day in order to compensate.
link |
This actually brings me back to an example
link |
I had from graduate school.
link |
I remember when I started graduate school feeling
link |
very excited, but a little bit overwhelmed
link |
by the amount of things that I had to do
link |
because I had to both do research.
link |
I was doing coursework at the time,
link |
graduate student stipends,
link |
and still now unfortunately were depressingly low.
link |
So it was financially stressful.
link |
There were a number of things happening.
link |
And I remember a neurologist,
link |
this was at UC Berkeley,
link |
it's really fantastic scientist and person.
link |
His name is Bob Knight.
link |
Some of you may know him.
link |
I remember I went to him and I asked,
link |
what is the process by which someone actually navigates
link |
graduate school successfully?
link |
And he said, listen,
link |
you don't want to do anything or engage in a routine
link |
in any way that you can't keep up consistently
link |
for at least five and ideally six days per week.
link |
I thought, oh, that's pretty good.
link |
And he said, every four or five years,
link |
you might have to update that,
link |
but you need to decide what you can do consistently,
link |
what you can do every day or at least six days a week
link |
or five days a week.
link |
And that was very, very useful to me.
link |
And it fits well with this notion of habit slips
link |
that if you happen to screw up
link |
and not be able to engage in whatever habits
link |
you're trying to learn for whatever reason,
link |
that the next day you just get right back on the horse,
link |
However, there's a really interesting feature
link |
from the neuroscience literature
link |
and from the psychology literature
link |
that says that chunking this 21 days into two day bins
link |
can be very, very useful.
link |
While it is true that the unit of the day
link |
that our cells use is a circadian one, a 24 hour clock,
link |
there does seem to be something powerful
link |
about engaging in particular habits
link |
in a particular sequence for two days in a row
link |
and then resetting.
link |
So thinking, okay, I can do this for a day.
link |
And if I can do it for a day,
link |
I can probably do it for two days and then resetting.
link |
So every two days you're resetting.
link |
So you're kind of chunking this 21 days
link |
into a series of two day bins
link |
in which you are trying to perform four to five new habits
link |
and then completing that 21 days.
link |
Now, everything I've described about this 21 day program
link |
with six things that you're trying to do as new habits
link |
and only performing four to five and not compensating,
link |
There's nothing neuroscientifically unique about it,
link |
except for the fact that it's not just 21 days
link |
broken up into two day chunks.
link |
After 21 days, you stop engaging in this 21 day
link |
deliberate four to five things per day type schedule.
link |
And you simply go into autopilot.
link |
You ask yourself how many of those particular habits
link |
that I was deliberately trying to learn
link |
in the previous 21 days
link |
are automatically incorporated into my schedule.
link |
How many of them am I naturally doing?
link |
In other words, every 21 days,
link |
you don't update and start adding new habits.
link |
You simply try and maintain the ones that you built
link |
in that first 21 days.
link |
And this I think is extremely important
link |
because in all of the habit literature that I could find,
link |
sure, there was a lot of psychological data,
link |
neuroscience data, behavioral science data around,
link |
here's how you form a habit.
link |
Here's how you break a habit.
link |
There was even some kind of tests for whether or not
link |
a habit had really achieved context independence,
link |
whether or not it was a strongly formed habit.
link |
But there wasn't a lot of information,
link |
at least by my search of what to do
link |
once you've formed a habit
link |
and how to evaluate whether or not that habit
link |
is likely to persist long into the future.
link |
So here's the idea.
link |
You set out these six things that you would like to learn
link |
or that you would like to acquire in your life,
link |
You only expect that you're going to perform
link |
four or five each day.
link |
You do that for 21 days.
link |
Again, if you miss a day,
link |
you just hop right back on the next day.
link |
However, you should think about the functional units
link |
within this 21 day period as two days.
link |
You're going to try and nail four to five of these things
link |
If you happen to get all six, great,
link |
but that's not necessarily required.
link |
So you can do two days, then reset two days,
link |
then reset two days.
link |
And then in the next 21 days,
link |
you're not trying to acquire any new habits.
link |
You're not going to throw in six more habits
link |
that you want to learn.
link |
You're simply going to assess how well,
link |
how deeply you've rewired your nervous system
link |
to be able to perform those six habits
link |
of the previous 21 days.
link |
And this is extremely useful, I believe,
link |
because it will allow you to assess whether or not
link |
you can indeed make room, if you even have room,
link |
I should say, for more habits, right?
link |
Many people are trying to cram so many new behaviors
link |
into their nervous system that they don't stand a chance
link |
of learning all those behaviors.
link |
What you may find is that you kept up two of those things
link |
very consistently throughout the 21 days.
link |
And perhaps there was one of them that you did sporadically
link |
and that there were three others that, frankly,
link |
you didn't manage to execute.
link |
You may also be one of these people, one of these mutants,
link |
that sets out to do six new things per day for 21 days
link |
and performs every single one of them.
link |
Terrific, more power to you in that case
link |
for the following 21 days.
link |
Let's see whether or not you can continue to perform
link |
those very same six things every day for 21 days.
link |
And then, and only then,
link |
would you want to add more habits in.
link |
So you could repeat this 21 day process,
link |
21 days of new habit, 21 days of testing those new habits
link |
as whether or not they're reflexive or not.
link |
You could do that forever if you wanted.
link |
But the idea is that this isn't something
link |
that you're doing all year long.
link |
It's that you perhaps starting the new year,
link |
or regardless of when you're listening to this,
link |
you set out to make that 21 day,
link |
really the stimulus period in which the habits get wired in.
link |
And then the following month,
link |
and maybe even the following months or periods of 21 days
link |
are really that kind of thermometer or the test bed
link |
of how well you've embedded those particular habits.
link |
And if indeed you want to continue to add new habits
link |
or you find that certain habits that you weren't able
link |
to embed in your nervous system and make reflexive,
link |
you want to then bring those in, fantastic.
link |
But it's only once you've achieved all those six habits
link |
as reflexive that you would move forward.
link |
And I think this sort of system,
link |
while it could have been replaced
link |
with many other different systems,
link |
again, there's nothing holy about the system,
link |
but this particular system has a number of features,
link |
the lack of compensation for missed days,
link |
the fact that it's a fairly high intensity program
link |
for 21 days, but then you test yourself
link |
a kind of a competition test with yourself, if you will.
link |
Those features and the fact that habit slips,
link |
missing of particular habits and not doing all six
link |
is kind of built into the system,
link |
I think makes it a very reasonable one.
link |
It's very adaptable to the real world.
link |
And I think it's one that provided you obey the phase one,
link |
phase two, phase three type system
link |
that we talked about earlier,
link |
you collapse these two programs with one another,
link |
which hopefully will be easy
link |
based on the descriptions I've given.
link |
Well, if you do that,
link |
and I think there's a very high probability
link |
that the habits that you try and form
link |
will achieve this context dependence
link |
and that it will take progressively
link |
less and less limbic friction to perform them.
link |
Thus far, we've almost exclusively been discussing
link |
how to form habits, but what about breaking habits?
link |
Certainly many people out there would like to break habits
link |
that they feel don't serve them well.
link |
One of the challenges in breaking habits
link |
is that many habits occur very, very quickly.
link |
And so there isn't an opportunity to intervene
link |
until the habit has already been initiated
link |
and in some cases completed.
link |
Well, there are a couple of tools
link |
that neuroscience and psychology
link |
tell us can be very beneficial.
link |
Some of those things are somewhat intuitive
link |
and relate to what I call foundational practices,
link |
meaning things that set the overall tone
link |
in your body and brain,
link |
such that you would be less likely
link |
to engage in a particular habit
link |
or that would raise your level of awareness,
link |
both of your situation and to how you feel inside.
link |
So things like stress reduction,
link |
things like getting good sleep,
link |
things like quality nutrition,
link |
things like having positive routines
link |
arranged throughout your day,
link |
all of those of course will support you
link |
in trying to break particular habits.
link |
And while that can be very useful,
link |
it's admittedly very generic advice.
link |
It doesn't point to any one specific protocol.
link |
In order to identify a specific protocol
link |
that one could apply in order to break habits,
link |
we have to look at the mirror image
link |
of the sort of neuroplasticity that we talked about
link |
at the beginning of the episode.
link |
At the beginning of the episode,
link |
we talked about a form of neuroplasticity
link |
called long-term potentiation
link |
involving the NMDA receptor.
link |
Just to refresh your memory a little bit,
link |
it basically says that if a set of neurons
link |
is very electrically active,
link |
it's likely that over time,
link |
those neurons will communicate with themselves more easily
link |
because of changes in things like NMDA receptor activity,
link |
the recruitment of additional receptors, et cetera.
link |
It's essentially a cellular and molecular explanation
link |
for how something goes from unlearned to learned
link |
Now, in order to break synapses
link |
or to break apart neural connections
link |
that are serving a habit that you don't want to engage in,
link |
we need to engage the process called long-term depression.
link |
And long-term depression has nothing to do
link |
with a state of mental depression or a reduction in mood.
link |
So I really want to be clear
link |
that when I say depression in this context,
link |
it has nothing to do with psychological depression,
link |
it has nothing to do with mood.
link |
It's simply called long-term depression
link |
because just as long-term potentiation says,
link |
if neuron A triggers the firing of neuron B
link |
and it does so very robustly over and over and over again,
link |
then neuron A will not have to fire as intensely
link |
or as frequently in order to activate neuron B in the future
link |
because they become potentiated, right?
link |
The threshold for co-activation has been reduced.
link |
There's a much higher probability
link |
that they will be activated together
link |
at low levels of intensity.
link |
That's essentially what long-term potentiation is.
link |
Long-term depression says that if neuron A is active
link |
and neuron B is not active within a particular time window,
link |
then the connection between neuron A and B
link |
will weaken over time
link |
even if they started off very strongly connected, okay?
link |
So I'm going to repeat that
link |
because this is a pretty detailed neurobiological mechanism
link |
whereby if neuron A is active and neuron B is active
link |
but at a different time or outside of particular
link |
what we call temporal window,
link |
meaning outside a particular time window,
link |
then through long-term depression,
link |
the connection between neuron A and neuron B will weaken.
link |
And just as a point of interest,
link |
the NMDA receptor is also involved in long-term depression,
link |
although there are other molecular components
link |
So how do you take two neurons
link |
that underlie a habit out of synchrony?
link |
How do you get them to fire asynchronously?
link |
This is pretty interesting
link |
with respect to the cellular molecular biology,
link |
but at the behavioral level, it's especially interesting.
link |
The way that one would do this is let's say, for instance,
link |
you have a habit of picking up your phone mid-work session.
link |
Okay, that's a reflexive habit
link |
I think that most people have experienced.
link |
And we often hear the idea that, oh, you know,
link |
the phone is so filled with access to dopamine
link |
and incredible things that we're just drawn to it.
link |
But if you notice what's happened with phone use over time,
link |
most people, including myself sometimes, I admit,
link |
find ourselves just looking at our phone
link |
or find ourselves in a particular app
link |
without actually having engaged in the conscious set
link |
of steps of, oh, I'm really curious
link |
what's going on in this particular app.
link |
I'm really curious what's going on
link |
in this particular website.
link |
And you just kind of find yourself, in air quotes,
link |
for those of you listening, I'm making air quotes,
link |
you just sort of find yourself doing it
link |
because the behavior of picking up your phone
link |
is sort of reflexive or has become fully reflexive.
link |
You see this a lot at meals where multiple people are there
link |
and no one's looking at their phone.
link |
And then all of a sudden someone takes out their phone
link |
and you'll notice that other people
link |
just naturally take out their phone.
link |
It's this kind of observed, observation-induced reflex.
link |
And I would wager that most people aren't consciously aware
link |
of the immediate steps involved.
link |
So the literature says there are a number of ways
link |
to break these sorts of habitual behaviors
link |
or reflexive behaviors.
link |
Most of those approaches involve establishing
link |
some sort of reward for not performing the activity
link |
or some sort of punishment for forming the activity.
link |
I've heard of some basic things that people will do,
link |
like they'll even put like a rubber band on their wrist
link |
and every time they complain
link |
or every time they do some behavior,
link |
like pick up their phone,
link |
they'll give themselves a snap on the wrist.
link |
The rationale there is that you're trying to create
link |
a somatic, a very physical representation of something
link |
that makes it very real and harder to overlook.
link |
Other people will just do a tick mark on a piece of paper.
link |
The sort of what gets measured
link |
is what gets managed kind of mindset,
link |
where if every time you do something,
link |
you take away the judgment,
link |
this is very new agey, I realize,
link |
but this is what you find out there
link |
if you search the literature and even on PubMed,
link |
peer-reviewed articles,
link |
that every time you engage in a behavior,
link |
you just measure the fact that you did that behavior.
link |
You just mark it down at the end of the day.
link |
People are supposed to look at that and say,
link |
oh my goodness, I can't believe that I spent, you know,
link |
three hours doing something or I did it 46 times.
link |
And in fact, a lot of apps, social media apps,
link |
will start to give you warnings now if you opt in
link |
that you've been on the app for an hour,
link |
would you like to leave?
link |
Most people just click right past it and go back in.
link |
I think very few people say,
link |
oh my goodness, it's been an hour
link |
and therefore you're right,
link |
I absolutely shouldn't engage in this anymore.
link |
It's just far too easy to just blow past those reminders.
link |
Well, the literature on habit formation
link |
and habit reduction, breaking habits, has been analyzed.
link |
There's a beautiful meta-analysis,
link |
which involves looking at a number of different studies
link |
all together, comparing the statistical strength
link |
of each of those studies, looking in different conditions,
link |
what sorts of habits we're trying to be made or broken.
link |
The first author on this review is Fritz, F-R-I-T-Z.
link |
I'll certainly put a link to this.
link |
It's Heather Fritz and it's
link |
Intervention to Modify Habits, a scoping review.
link |
And it is indeed a very broad scale review.
link |
It's from the Journal of Occupation,
link |
Participation, and Health.
link |
It's published in 2020.
link |
It's a really nice article.
link |
A couple of things I learned from this article
link |
and then I'll get into the specific tool
link |
for breaking habits.
link |
Perhaps the most interesting thing
link |
that I took from this review was the finding
link |
that notifications to either engage in habits
link |
or to not engage in habits
link |
actually were not very effective over time.
link |
They were effective in the immediate period
link |
when people started using these notifications,
link |
as were little sticky notes,
link |
like don't go into the refrigerator
link |
between the hours of whatever and whatever,
link |
or just visual reminders, physical reminders,
link |
or electronic reminders were effective
link |
in the immediate term,
link |
but in the longterm did not predict
link |
whether or not people would effectively stick to habits
link |
they were trying to stick to
link |
or break habits that they were trying to break.
link |
So sadly, that doesn't seem to work very well.
link |
And perhaps they just need to come up with
link |
more robust reminders,
link |
I don't know, mild electric shock or something like that,
link |
because what we do know,
link |
only sort of kidding about mild electric shock,
link |
but what we do know from both human and animal studies
link |
is that things like electric shock,
link |
things like monetary penalties, right?
link |
Having to pay out every time you engage
link |
in a particular behavior,
link |
those are pretty effective ways to break habits.
link |
The problem is when people are not being monitored
link |
for habit use, for instance,
link |
you can imagine a situation where you say,
link |
I'm not going to pick up my phone
link |
for the four hours in the early part of the day
link |
so that I can get real dedicated focus work done.
link |
Unless someone's monitoring them,
link |
then people don't tend to monitor themselves
link |
completely enough that they punish themselves
link |
completely enough that they break the behavior.
link |
In other words, the punishment isn't bad enough
link |
in order to break the habit,
link |
which just speaks to how powerful these habits are
link |
once they become reflexive.
link |
They're just very, very hard to override.
link |
So it turns out that the key to generating
link |
long-term depression in these pathways
link |
is actually to take the period immediately following
link |
the bad habit execution,
link |
meaning let's say you tell yourself
link |
you're not going to pick up your phone,
link |
you're not going to bite your nails,
link |
you're not going to reflexively walk to the refrigerator
link |
at a particular time of day,
link |
but you find yourself doing it anyway.
link |
And what actually has to happen
link |
is bringing conscious awareness to the period
link |
immediately afterward,
link |
which I think most people recognize,
link |
they realize, oh, I just did it again.
link |
I just did it again.
link |
And in that moment, capture the sequence of events,
link |
not that led to the bad habit execution,
link |
but actually to take advantage of the fact
link |
that the neurons that were responsible
link |
for generating that bad habit were active a moment ago,
link |
and to actually engage in a replacement behavior
link |
immediately afterward.
link |
Now, this is really interesting and I think powerful
link |
because I would have thought that you have to engage
link |
in a replacement behavior that truly replaces
link |
the bad habit behavior, right?
link |
That you would have to be able to identify
link |
your state of mind or the sequence of events
link |
leading into the bad habit,
link |
but rather the stage or the period immediately
link |
after the bad habit execution is a unique opportunity
link |
to insert a different type of what we would call
link |
adaptive behavior, but that could be any behavior
link |
that's not in line with the bad behavior.
link |
So let's give it an example.
link |
Let's say you find yourself,
link |
you're trying to do focused work,
link |
you pick up your phone,
link |
you're disappointed in yourself for picking up your phone.
link |
You could of course just put it down
link |
and re-engage in the work behavior.
link |
But if you were good at that,
link |
then you probably wouldn't have done it in the first place.
link |
And so what turns out to be very effective
link |
is to go engage in some other positive habit.
link |
Now, this has two major effects.
link |
The first one is you start to link in time
link |
the execution of a bad behavior
link |
to this other good behavior.
link |
And in doing so, you start to recruit other neural circuits,
link |
other neurons that can start to somewhat dismantle
link |
the sequence of firing associated with the bad behavior.
link |
In other words, you start to create a kind of a double habit
link |
that starts with a bad habit
link |
and then ends with a good habit.
link |
And that seems to create enough of a temporal mismatch
link |
so that then recognizing when you're heading
link |
toward the bad habit becomes more apparent to you.
link |
So again, I want to make this very, very concrete.
link |
Let's say that the behavior
link |
is reflexively picking up one's phone.
link |
You do that, you think, oh goodness, I did it again.
link |
Here's what I'm going to do.
link |
You would set that down
link |
and then you would engage in some other positive behavior
link |
that you've deemed positive.
link |
And here it's very subjective.
link |
So it's hard for me to give an example
link |
that will necessarily make sense to everybody,
link |
but perhaps you're working on hydration.
link |
So maybe you go have a glass of water.
link |
Maybe you are trying to do breath work or something.
link |
Maybe you are trying to enhance
link |
your language speaking skills.
link |
And so you go and you spend five minutes
link |
doing a particular type of language learning.
link |
You literally exit whatever you are doing
link |
and perform that other new positive habit
link |
in the immediate period right after that,
link |
even for a short period of time.
link |
It's a little bit counterintuitive,
link |
but what this does is it creates a kind of a cognitive
link |
and a temporal mismatch between the initial bad behavior,
link |
which before is what we would call sort of a closed loop
link |
and the engineers out there
link |
will know what I'm talking about.
link |
But in closed loop,
link |
so one behavior or one set of neural firings
link |
leads to another, leads to another,
link |
and then just kind of sets the same thing in motion.
link |
It can be kind of a self-perpetuating system.
link |
By changing the number of features that are in that loop,
link |
it disrupts the closed nature of that loop.
link |
It creates what we call an open loop.
link |
And in an open loop, you are better able to intervene.
link |
So as I mentioned before, this might seem counterintuitive.
link |
You might think, why would I want to reward the execution
link |
of a bad habit with a good habit?
link |
I don't want to reward myself for the bad habit,
link |
but really what you're trying to do
link |
is you're trying to change the nature of the neural circuits
link |
that are firing so that you can rewrite the script
link |
for that bad habit.
link |
A different way to put it would be imagine
link |
that the bad habit is like a chord on the piano
link |
that you play or a chord of notes
link |
or a sequence of notes that you would play.
link |
And it comes very easily.
link |
You can play it every single time.
link |
But let's say, as you're trying to learn a new piece
link |
of music, you're just constantly inserting that
link |
at the inappropriate times.
link |
I think it's a decent enough analogy for a bad habit
link |
because it involves some motor execution.
link |
You just find yourself doing it.
link |
Rather than trying to prevent yourself from doing it,
link |
the next time you do it, add in a new quarter sequence
link |
that you're trying to learn.
link |
What this does then is it changes the whole nature
link |
of the sequence of neurons that are firing from bad habit
link |
through to the end of this newly applied good habit.
link |
So this is the way in which you start to dismantle,
link |
or when I say dismantle, really weaken the likelihood
link |
that if neuron A fires, neuron B will fire.
link |
Because as you're starting off in the mode
link |
of very reflexively performing a bad habit,
link |
those neurons are firing together
link |
without you consciously being aware of it.
link |
It's almost impossible for you to intervene in yourself
link |
without a number of other features like severe punishment,
link |
severe consequence type outcomes.
link |
Rather tacking on some additional sequences,
link |
like if neuron A fires, neuron B fires,
link |
and then you're saying, okay, well, if neuron B fires,
link |
I'm going to start inserting neuron CDEF to fire, right?
link |
That's the CDEF being the positive behavior
link |
that you're going to insert.
link |
And in doing so, you create a chain of neuronal activation
link |
that then is very easy to dismantle.
link |
And so when people have applied this kind of approach,
link |
it removes the need to have constant conscious awareness
link |
of one's own behavior prior to that behavior,
link |
which is very, very difficult to achieve.
link |
Rather, what they find is that they are able to engage
link |
in remapping of the neural circuits
link |
associated with bad habits
link |
in ways that are very, very straightforward, right?
link |
Because you can always identify
link |
when you've done the thing you don't want to do,
link |
and then tack onto that something additional
link |
Now, the nature of that positive thing is important.
link |
You don't want it to be something
link |
that's very hard to execute.
link |
You want it to be something that's positive
link |
and fairly easy to execute
link |
so that you're not struggling all the time
link |
to insert this on top of this bad behavior,
link |
whatever that bad behavior might happen to be.
link |
But again, this is rooted
link |
in the biology of long-term depression.
link |
It maps very well to the behavioral change literature
link |
that I was able to glean that really shows
link |
that rather than just get reminders,
link |
rather than try and instill punishment,
link |
rather than setting up reward for breaking bad habits,
link |
that perhaps the simplest way to approach this
link |
is to tack on additional behaviors to the bad habits,
link |
make sure those behaviors are good behaviors
link |
or behaviors that are adaptive for you.
link |
And in doing so, you will soon find
link |
that the initiation of the bad habit
link |
takes on a whole new form
link |
or that you're not even inspired to do it at all.
link |
And of course, I want to acknowledge
link |
that breaking bad habits is really hard.
link |
We had an episode all about addiction
link |
with Dr. Anna Lemke from Stanford Medical School.
link |
She's a colleague of mine
link |
who runs the dual diagnosis addiction clinic at Stanford.
link |
And in that episode, we talked a lot about how addicts,
link |
for drugs, alcohol, people who have addictions
link |
to certain types of behaviors or avoidance behaviors even,
link |
that in the case of addiction,
link |
there has to be a tremendous kind of full-scale campaign
link |
for them to be able to intervene in their behavior.
link |
So for those of you that are thinking
link |
about bad habit breaking
link |
in the context of addictive type behaviors,
link |
definitely check out that episode.
link |
Addiction does employ some of these principles
link |
around habit making and habit breaking, as it were.
link |
But of course, because the consequences
link |
of certain habits in addiction can be so severe,
link |
there's other sets of protocols
link |
and there's a kind of a psychological backdrop to it
link |
that's very important.
link |
It also relates to the biology of dopamine
link |
and you can find all of that in the episode
link |
with Dr. Anna Lemke.
link |
So today we've covered a lot about the biology
link |
and psychology of habit formation and habit breaking.
link |
We talked about why certain habits are so hard to wire in,
link |
why certain habits are so hard to break down and eliminate,
link |
and how we can determine which habits
link |
are going to be easier for us to access,
link |
which habits are going to be harder
link |
for us to access and break.
link |
We talked a lot about this notion of limbic friction
link |
and we talked about context dependence.
link |
And we talked about a number of different things
link |
as it relates to neural circuits
link |
and the formation of new connections in the brain
link |
and strengthening and weakening of connections in the brain.
link |
We also discussed two programs,
link |
programs designed specifically for you
link |
on the basis of the neurobiology literature
link |
and the literature on the psychology of habit formation
link |
and habit breaking.
link |
Just to briefly recap,
link |
one program involves dividing the 24 hour day
link |
into three phases, phase one, phase two, phase three,
link |
and to try and tackle specific habits
link |
at particular phases of the 24 hour cycle.
link |
The second program involved a 21 day process
link |
of engaging approximately six new habits per day,
link |
although the expectation, as I mentioned earlier,
link |
is that you're not going to perform all six of those,
link |
and an assessment in the following 21 days
link |
as to whether or not you have indeed
link |
formed those new habits or not.
link |
And there were a number of other features that I mentioned
link |
that were related to those two general programs,
link |
phase one, phase two, phase three,
link |
and the 21 day program and how those could be meshed
link |
So I'm guessing some of you will probably have questions
link |
about those programs and how to apply them,
link |
but hopefully they were clear enough for you to get started.
link |
This is a good opportunity for me to mention
link |
that the Huberman Lab Podcast has something called
link |
the Neural Network Newsletter that is sent out
link |
approximately once a month.
link |
For the next newsletter,
link |
I will release a on paper version of these two systems
link |
and how they mesh together for habit formation
link |
and habit breaking.
link |
And if you'd like to access that,
link |
you can go to HubermanLab.com, you go to the menu,
link |
you can sign up for the newsletter.
link |
First of all, it's zero cost.
link |
Second of all, we have our privacy policy there,
link |
but I can tell you right now,
link |
we don't share your email with any vendors
link |
or any other sources.
link |
Those emails stay internal to us.
link |
And if you'd like to see what the sort of flavor
link |
of those newsletters is, the previous newsletters,
link |
for instance, one on tools for sleep
link |
that I mentioned earlier or tools for neuroplasticity
link |
in the classroom and outside the classroom as well
link |
for teachers and for students of various kinds,
link |
those are also posted there.
link |
So you can access any of the previous newsletters.
link |
My hope is that today you've learned
link |
both the biological mechanisms and the practical tools
link |
by which you can start to establish habits that for you,
link |
you deem adaptive, healthy,
link |
and that are going to support you and your goals.
link |
And that you can start to dismantle some of the habits
link |
that you find to be unhealthy or maladaptive for you
link |
and for your goals.
link |
If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast,
link |
please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
link |
That's a terrific way to support us.
link |
In addition, on YouTube,
link |
you can leave us feedback in the comment section.
link |
You can also leave us suggestions for future guests
link |
that you'd like us to host on the Huberman Lab Podcast.
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And please also subscribe to the podcast
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on Apple and or Spotify.
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On Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review.
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And now Spotify has a feature
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by which you can also leave us review feedback.
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Please also check out the sponsors mentioned
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at the beginning of this podcast episode.
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That's perhaps the best way to support our podcast.
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In addition, we have a Patreon.
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It's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman,
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and there you can support the podcast
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at any level that you like.
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During today's podcast and in many previous episodes
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of the Huberman Lab Podcast, I mentioned supplements.
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While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,
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many people derive tremendous benefit from supplements.
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Supplements for sleep, supplements for focus,
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supplements for various other things
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related to mental and physical health and performance.
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One key issue anytime there's a discussion about supplements
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is you have to be sure that the supplements you are taking
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are of the very highest quality.
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And for that reason, we've partnered with Thorne
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because Thorne has the very highest stringency
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with respect to the quality of the ingredients they include
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and the precision of the amounts of the ingredients
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that they include in their supplements.
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If you'd like to see the supplements that I take
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and get 20% off any of those supplements,
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you can go to thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman.
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And in addition to being able to get 20% off
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any of those supplements,
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if you navigate deeper into the Thorne site
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through that web portal, thorne.com slash U slash Huberman,
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you can also get 20% off any of the other supplements
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that Thorne makes.
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If you're not already following us on Instagram and Twitter,
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please feel free to do so.
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There I teach neuroscience and neuroscience related tools
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Some of that material overlaps
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with what you hear on the podcast.
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Some of it is unique and different
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from what's on the podcast.
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And once again, I want to thank you
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for going on this journey of exploring the neuroscience
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and the psychology of habit formation and habit breaking.
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I hope it supports you in your goals.
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And last, but certainly not least,
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thank you for your interest in science.
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And I'll see you in the next one.