The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 197: The 10-Minute Rule That Beats ANY Bad Habit & This Weird Trick Forms Good Habits Instantly! Professor Steve Peters & Nir Eyal
Fri, 24 Jan 2025
In this episode we discover the science behind habits, how they're formed, how they can be broken, and the fascinating role self-perception plays in the process. We explore the power of reframing uncomfortable tasks, how habits are influenced by our self-image, and why pushing yourself too hard can backfire. You'll also learn why willpower is a limited resource, how to use discomfort as a tool for growth, and why small, achievable goals are the key to lasting change. Professor Steve Peters Episode - https://bit.ly/4jqZSGK Nir Eyal's Episode - https://bit.ly/3WuY05U Follow Professor Steve Peters: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3D5YBBA Website - https://bit.ly/3iZtr84 Follow Nir Eyal: Twitter: https://bit.ly/3BJR9uv Instagram: https://bit.ly/43dDHuL Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
There are three systems in your head, keeping it very simple. It's much more complex than that, but simplifying it. One of the systems will help you think very logically, and I call that the human system. It thinks logically, but it's very slow.
which means if you operate with a human, your body and your reflexes will slow down because you're analysing as you go along and it slows the system so you're more pensive. If he goes into the second system, which we'll probably come back to, the chimp system, this is a primitive system which thinks. It's more than just a reaction, an impulsive system. It thinks.
When it moves, it can move at speed. But it thinks emotionally. Finally, the third system is a computer. It just needs programming. The key to the computer, particularly in sport, is it moves so fast. It's approximately 20 times quicker than the human system to execute. And it's about four times quicker than the chimp system. Habits.
A lot of people are thinking about habits. It's January. I made a video on habits a couple of weeks ago today. In A Path Through the Jungle, you talk about how our habits are influenced by our self-image. That was a curious sentence to read and not something I'd heard before. What do you mean by that?
Okay, there's lots of ways we form habits, whether they're helpful or destructive. And I'm giving examples. So that's one you picked out. That's quite powerful if you grasp it. So, for example, I'll take the simple example, which I may have put in the book. I don't remember.
If I wrote down, I'd say to someone, do you see yourself as someone who is a tidy person who gets on with things immediately? Or do you see yourself as someone who procrastinates and is pretty untidy? I'm untidy. Right. So if you've got that self-image and you go home and your room is untidy, I'm being very black and white here, then there's no feelings at all because that's who you are.
You're untidy. It's true. So that you don't do anything. It's true. Whereas if you say, right, change your image and say, actually, my chin being untidy, I'm a tidy person. In some cases, you're now programming the computer. You now go home and say, wow, this isn't me. And that can change. So if your self-image is, I'm not my chimp, that's an untidy little beggar. I am actually a tidy person.
How do I change that self-image? Well, you've got to sit down and reflect on this. I mean, a lot of the things in the book I've done as a young doctor, when I became a psychiatrist, I decided I didn't want to be a psychiatrist who didn't actually manage themselves. And that's no detriment to psychs who struggle because it's not an easy career or any therapist. It's a tough career.
But I decided, look, I'm going to work on me because I can't keep doing this, which is where the chimp model came from. And it was one of my light bulb moments many, many years ago where I would be procrastinating. And then I suddenly thought, you know what? That isn't who I want to be. So I thought, that isn't me. I'm actually someone who gets on with things.
And I used to get in and I'd just go, right, get on with it. And it's never left me. I just thought, no, that is who I am. So I become uncomfortable now. If things weren't tidy, I'd agitate and think, no, get it tidied up. So I start perceiving myself as this energised guy who's going to get up and do stuff.
So if you define your self-image, you're actually programming your computer to say, this is normal, anything else isn't, and that will actually help your chimp to agitate, which will then join forces and tidy the room. So instead of your chimp going, oh, I can't be bothered, suddenly it's saying, wow, I'm being told we're not untidy, so this is unacceptable and not normal. And that's what I did.
And I found that very powerful in my life.
The other thing I found really curious in this section about habits in stage four of the book is when people think about habit loops, they often have a reward at the end of it. You referenced suffering. Now, there's this quote I heard many years ago. I think it was just over 10 years ago. It must have been. God, I'm getting old.
Where I heard this YouTuber say, change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change. And when I'm thinking about friends that I have in my life or myself, where there's habits or there's behavior patterns that I want to break, sometimes I'm thinking about one particular person who's a musician.
Sometimes they have to get to that rock bottom place before you see change happen. Yeah. Is that because of that?
Is that because sometimes the suffering has to... Yeah, I mean, it's sort of self-evident. If you're, for example, in a bad relationship and it's really not doing you any favours and it's not doing them any favours, but it's not bad enough, then you struggle along and struggle along. But if suddenly something happens where it becomes untenable and it's painful now, then you move.
You think, stop the relationship. And then you look back thinking, why didn't I move earlier? And the answer was because it wasn't painful enough. And the same with like untidiness. You leave it and leave it and leave it. And then somebody comes in and says... A partner. Yeah. Blimey. I can't live with this. And suddenly you think, wow, suddenly it's painful.
Is there a way to get there without the person needing to point it out?
yeah there is i mean when i talk about relationships are critical to us and i say to people the way we move is we've got to i have the triangle of change which is really the three key things that cause us to move and with the one you've highlighted is either it's got a massive reward or there's going to be massive pain and suffering so if you're trying to you want it you're courting someone you want to form a permanent relationship when they say i can't stand untidiness you'll guarantee your flat's perfect when they come in
Right? Because you're thinking, if I don't, I'm going to lose this person. So the reward is so big. However, then they marry you, and for some reason we take them for granted, and we forget that bit now. And then the flat becomes untidy, and then she starts saying to you, you know, I'm struggling with this, I'm struggling, but there's no threat yet. So now it's not painful enough.
So she's struggling with it. I love the guy, but this is now what I do. So I say, let's increase the pain. I want you to sit down and imagine... she can't cope and she's had a bad day and someone at work says, oh, come over and chat. And this young man has a tidy flat, naturally. And she goes, oh, wow. And I warn people, how are you going to feel if she walks?
Because once they've gone, they very rarely come back. And if you don't look after them, someone else will. If you reflect on that, that can suddenly make reality come to life to say, I'm not there yet, but blimey, this would be painful. So I'm suddenly going to stop and think, let me look after them. Because if I don't, somebody will.
So you can increase the concept of suffering by reflecting and thinking, what would life be like if she left? There's like the devil's in the detail. Let's say that you go home and you really make an effort. You tidy the house and you really clean it up. And she comes home and she doesn't notice. There's a danger now.
And I do advocate that sometimes you say to them, because your chimp needs to get that accolade. So it's no good not helping it. You don't need that, but your chimp does. So it's worth saying, can I just say, because I love you, I've tidied the flat. Because then your chimp goes, right, good, I get the accolade now. So I'm not saying you should knock the chimp out.
I'm saying you should be getting the chimp so it feels good. And then hopefully she'll say, wow, I love you too and I appreciate that. And then that's nicely rounded up. But you do get circumstances where I'll work with people and say, I tidied the flat, I did everything, and she doesn't even recognise it. I cancelled stuff for my diary, she didn't recognise it.
And I think, well, you know, I'm not saying I'm a goody-goody, but I'm saying let them know because your chimp's saying, please make sure they know. And they've recognised it. And again, I don't know, there may be couples where they say, if I say that, she'll lose it. So I say, well, don't do it then. Tell me and I as a therapist will say to you, well done. And that might be enough for your chimp.
So again, it's that thing which I keep saying to you, Steve, I've got to work with the person in front of me and even potentially their partner or family and say, well, what would they do before we make a plan?
That was step one in your triangle.
Yeah, one of the points. The other two, for people to shift, they've got to have psychological mindedness, which means they've got to understand that it's not about what happens to us in life, it's how we deal with it. That's basically what we mean.
So we understand that just because you've got certain emotions doesn't mean you can't change them and things have to change or people have to change for you to change. It's within your power. to be responsible for the things you believe and change. So psychological mindedness means you get up and start working on this. It's within your power to shift things. That's that personal responsibility.
Yes. And also if you can't shift them, you know, like say go back, let's say life hadn't been great for you. And I'm sure you worked hard to get where you've got. But let's say you still were in that poverty situation. You thought, I didn't have the skill to do what I'm doing. I didn't use that skill because it was never there.
So a lot of people are trapped and they say, well, I'm still living in a pretty bad place and I'm struggling financially. And that's a lot of people. It's painful. But again, psychological mindedness, tough as it is, is to say, well, let me deal with that. I can't change it, but I can change my approach to it. And that's not easy. I'm not saying that's easy.
And then you have to work at how do you do that, and it'll be different for different people. So psychological mindedness means take responsibility, accept what's in front of you, and then move forward.
um so other than that what you do non-psychological mind is where you blame everybody else or blame circumstances or say this happened to me in childhood or these may all be genuine but they're not actually helpful disempowering right yeah yeah you're using them as an excuse not to take responsibility and turn them over and whatever it's like giving your power to something else right yes
And you've got to get the power back and say it's within my power. Why do people like doing that? Why do people like making excuses? Including me, I have to say. Again, it's really difficult to say. I mean, a lot of people, when they're in not a great place, find it very easy to be the victim. They don't want to be a victim, but they find it easy. So they'll use an illness.
as an example, so that it gives them that remit to say, well, I'm not well, I'm not well, when the reality is they don't know how to move forward. So it's easier to just go, I'm not well, and people then go, well, they're not well. And there'll be some truth in it, but actually not fully the truth. So people often use as a defence mechanism the victim role.
Sometimes they have been a victim and then they need to work through that and process it, but there's a danger you start to use it or you start blaming circumstance. Like you might have said to me, I didn't make it because my parents never helped me. Well, you know, there are people whose parents don't help them, but they do make it.
So you have to say, well, hang on, don't use that because it'll keep you in this not great place. There will be truth in it potentially. And then I would give the TLC and the recognition that that didn't help. But on the other hand, let's look at what you can do, regardless of the background.
And then that last point in the triangle, the habit triangle, commitment.
What I'm saying with this is, again, teasing out the neuroscience, if we go on motivation, and again, if people use it, great, but the evidence is that it doesn't really help. It doesn't really work. It's very hard to maintain. Whereas if that's the chimp system, so it can work if your chimp is motivated because the reward is so big, their motivation will follow that and be high.
But we all know that I get a lot of talks, can you help motivate? And I say, no, not at all. I don't want to do that because you're constantly propping it up. My approach, which is not, as everyone will agree, is if you look at the neuroscience, if you use commitment, that means I remove my emotion and I plan on what I have to do and I get on with it.
So commitment, there's a lot of evidence that that makes us succeed. So, for example, if I've got to go and weed the garden, it's not my favourite pastime, but I think, right, you know, the neighbours might complain. I don't have any neighbours, but they might. And my chimp's going, oh, leave it, who cares? There's only weeds and it's going to kill you back.
But I would then say, which I will, right, you stay in here, I'm going out, and if you want to join me, great, but I'm doing the garden. I remove emotion and I say what has to be done is getting done and is getting done now. We're not discussing it and I will start.
Motivation will follow commitment and that means the chimp brain will then get behind me because by the time we've done half the garden, it will say, I can't believe we've left it this long. That's a typical approach by the chimp. And then it tries to make me finish. Now I might have to stop and say, let's respect my back now. We'll stop now. So I manage my emotions by using commitment.
And if they don't marry, I move them to one side. So I don't really work with emotion to drive me to do something. I think if people can use that and use motivation, that's great. My experience has been it doesn't actually hold.
One of the things this podcast has taught me from speaking to all these people across multiple fields is that sometimes we can feel like our body, our wiring is against us, especially as it relates to health, right? So, you know, we know sugar is bad. So why does our brain send us these cravings to go and eat sugar?
And in the case of distractions and sort of behavioral psychology, I know instinctively and intuitively that distractions like hanging out on TikTok for an hour is bad. but my brain is doing it. What does that tell us about how we should go about adopting behavior change?
Yeah, so that's why it's really about this holistic model. So that's what took me the most time to figure out was what are the four mandatory components of living without regret, of doing what you say you're going to do? So the first step is mastering these internal triggers, figuring out why you feel this way, right? What is that underlying sensation?
So if you're trying to avoid that chocolate bar, it might be hunger. Or it might not be hunger, right? So I used to be clinically obese. And I'll tell you what, I did not eat to excess because I was hungry. I was eating to excess because I was lonely. I was eating to excess because I was bored. I was eating to excess because I felt guilty about how much I had just eaten.
It wasn't just about the hunger, right? Very few people who are obese are just hungry all the time. That's not what's going on. It's because we're eating our feelings. That's what's happening. So that's the first step. We have to understand the deeper reason.
I'm really compelled by, really interested in how you figured out the thing you were trying to escape from, because I think that's the starting point, which is a very difficult starting point for most people. They can see the sort of compulsive behavior that's maybe making them live outside of their values or causing them to excessively eat or excessively watch porn or whatever it might be.
But diagnosing the root cause of that is a difficult thing to do. Most of us don't know what we don't know. Yeah.
It is and it isn't. I mean, I'm not... You don't have to go to therapy. No, there's nothing wrong with it. If it's helpful, please do it. But that's not a requirement. Something as simple as, you know, so whenever I work, I have on my desk, I have a little post-it note and a pen handy. And...
When I get distracted or when I even feel the sense of distraction, just noting down that sensation, just writing down what is it that I felt right before the distraction. So I write every day. And all I want to do when I write – you know this, right?
When you write, all you want to do is go Google something or do some research or go check email for a quick sec or let me just find that one thing that might be – And they're all distractions. They're all taking you away from the core thing you need to do, which you said you would do, which is right.
And so if I can just pause for a second and reflect on what was that sensation that I was feeling right before. It was boredom. It was anxiety. It was fearfulness. It was uncertainty. just writing it down is an incredible first step towards gaining power over that discomfort because then you can start to identify it.
And so what I'll do many times is just pause to reflect on, wait a minute, what's going on there, right? What is that sensation? Because then you can begin to do what's called reframing the trigger. So now when I feel the sensation of wanting to get distracted, I say, you know what? What's going on here? Okay, I'm feeling the sensation because I'm stressed. Why am I stressed?
Because this is really important to me. I want to get this right for my readers and for myself. And so reframing it as not a negative, but something that happens not to me, but for me, that that sensation is a sign that I can listen to. I think most of us, we think when we feel this discomfort, that's happening to us, right? But it's not, it's happening for us. It's a signal for us to listen to.
Now, how we interpret it is up to us. And that's where the magic happens. If you interpret it as something that is harmful, is dangerous, that you need to escape, right? You don't want to feel that uncomfortable sensation. You look for distraction.
But what we find is that high performers across every field, when you think about the arts, when you think about sports, business, high performers, when they feel those internal triggers, they experience the same internal triggers the rest of us do. They experience loneliness and stress and anxiety just like everyone else does.
But they deal with it by using it as rocket fuel to push them towards traction. Whereas distractible people, as soon as they feel that discomfort, they try and escape it with distraction. That's the big difference.
And then that second step. So now I'm clear. I'm trying not to do this book because this particular chapter, I just don't feel that competent on. I don't feel like I've researched it. It's making my brain feel a bit hot thinking about it. I reframe it and go, okay, so I've understood it now. Then what do I do?
Yeah. So step one is- Understand it. Yeah. Is master those internal triggers. Yeah. Or they become your master. Yeah. That's step number one. There's a bunch of techniques. We're just covering the surface. There's over a dozen different techniques that you can use. Mm-hmm. to help you master those internal triggers. Now, the second step is to make time for traction.
So when you have those doubts, one of these techniques that is really life-changing is scheduling time for worry. Scheduling time for worry. That what happens is in the moment, we feel these feelings, we think these thoughts, and a distractible person will say, well, I got to deal with that sensation right now. I have to work through whatever it is that I'm feeling right now.
And they stop everything to do that. And that's not the right method. The right method is to write down that sensation and get back to the task at hand as quickly as possible using these four strategies. Then later on, right now that you've written down what that sensation is, you're going to make time in your calendar to think about that sensation.
Start processing it. Using the book example. I've hit chapter 12 and I'm struggling with this chapter. Right.
So step number one, you have these tools. Maybe I can digress for a second. I'll tell you my favorite tool for mastering internal triggers. It's called the 10-minute rule. This comes from acceptance and commitment therapy. And the 10-minute rule says that you can give in to any distraction Any distraction. Maybe it's smoking that cigarette if you're trying to quit.
Maybe it's eating that piece of chocolate cake if you're on a diet. Maybe it's checking social media. Whatever it is. Whatever distraction. You can give in to that distraction, but not right now. You can give in in 10 minutes. Don't misunderstand. Not for 10 minutes. Sometimes people get it wrong. It's in 10 minutes. Okay? So what does that do?
What that does is we talked about psychological reactance earlier, and you asked what do you do about psychological reactance. You're allowing yourself to acknowledge that you are in control, that you decide. What many people do is they have strict abstinence, right? Strict abstinence says, no, I will not do it, right? I won't eat sugar. I won't get distracted. I will do this. I will do that.
As opposed to saying, hey, I'm an adult. I can do whatever I want. I choose not to go off track for the next 10 minutes. That's it. In 10 minutes, I can give into whatever I want. So now I'm in control. You know, the whole just say no technique turns out makes you ruminate and think about and have more discomfort around the thing you want, increasing these internal triggers.
And that actually is what makes you give into that distraction. We know that with smoking, actually, it's very interesting. We're finding that nicotine is less and less part of the reason people get addicted to cigarettes. It's more about the rumination around... I want to smoke, but I can't. I want to smoke, but I shouldn't. I want to smoke. I want to smoke. I want to smoke. Fine.
I'll finally smoke. Now I get relief. How do we know this? If you ask smokers, why do they smoke? The number one reason, it's relaxing. That makes no sense. Nicotine is a stimulant. Makes no sense, right? Why would it be relaxing? It's relaxing because finally I can stop telling myself I don't have to do it anymore. I don't have to fight with myself anymore.
And that eases that psychological reactance. Ha, I can finally give in. So when you use this 10-minute rule and say, okay, I can give into that distraction in 10 minutes from now, what you're doing is you're establishing agency. Right now you're in control and we can do anything for 10 minutes. And if 10 minutes feels like too long, try the five minute rule.
The idea is that you're building that ability over time. So the 10 minute rule becomes a 12 minute rule, becomes a 15 minute rule. And you're learning, wait a minute, I can't actually delay gratification. Remember all these problems of distraction are an impulse control issue. So when you teach yourself, wait a minute, okay, I could delay for five, 10 minutes. That's no big deal.
You're proving to yourself, hey, I'm not addicted to these things. I'm not powerless. My brain isn't being hijacked. I do have control as long as I use these practices, right? So the 10 minute rule is a very, very effective technique.
So what happens then? So I've compartmentalized it. I'm writing my book. I'm on chapter 12. I've got a bunch of worries pop in. I'm scheduling that for later. Step three?
So step three is hacking back the external triggers. So this is when we do talk about the usual suspects, the pings, the dings, the rings. That's where we...
you know very systematically go through what a lot of people complain about but it's really only 10 the problem because 90 of our distractions begin from within but people you know do have these issues you know we talk about the the phone the computer what turns out to be a much bigger problem is not the technology, it's what the technology is attached to, right? So what if it's your boss?
That's the distraction. What if it's your kids that are a distraction? We love them to death, right? Our kids are great, but they can be a huge source of distraction. Meetings, oh my God, how many stupid meetings do we have to attend that are nothing but a distraction, especially now that Zoom makes it accessible so that wherever you are, you know, people can call meetings.
those are huge distractions of course uh slack channels and that's what we get into more in the book in terms of okay systematically what do you do about these various external triggers so we're on step three of the four steps what's step number four so step four is is preventing distraction with packs so packs are these what's called a pre-commitment device so this is what you do after the first three steps so you master the internal triggers you make time for traction you hack back the external triggers
As the last line of defense, as the firewall against distraction, you're going to prevent distraction with a pact. Now, what are pacts? It's when you decide in advance what you will do to keep yourself in that task. And there's three types of pacts. We have what we call effort pacts, price pacts, and identity pacts.
Uh, an effort pact is when there's some bit of friction in between you and the thing you don't want to do. So I'll, I'll, it's just us and your millions of viewers here. So I'll get a little personal. Okay.
Um, a few years ago, my wife and I, and again, we've been married for 22 years now, a few years ago before I was writing this book, uh, we noticed that our sex life was suffering that every night we were going to bed. And I was fondling my iPhone and she was caressing her iPad.
You and me both.
Right? And we were going to bed later and later. And not only were we not getting proper sleep, we all know how important rest is. our sex life was suffering. So when I started this research, I came across this research around the importance of these effort packs. And I went to the hardware store and I bought us this $10 outlet timer.
Now this outlet timer, you plug into the wall and whatever you plug into that outlet timer will turn on or off at any time of day and night. So what did we do with that? We plugged in our internet router into this timer. So every night in our household at 10 p.m., the internet shuts off. Now, could I turn it back on?
Of course I could, but I'd have to go under my desk, unplug this timer, reset it, and plug it back in. That would take effort. So I put some friction in between myself and the distraction. OK, and lo and behold, every night we all knew, OK, the Internet's going to shut down at 10 p.m., finish up whatever you need to do.
And it gave me that bit of mindfulness to say, OK, do I really need to still, you know, check email or social media or whatever silly thing I was doing? Or is it time to do what I said I was going to do, which is get some rest, go to bed and maybe be intimate with my wife?
Someone's also going to say, listen, you've got 4G internet on your phone. You've got cellular internet. So you can just go on.
Again, but now it's effort, right? If I really wanted to lie to myself, of course I could. That's not the point, right? That there's always a way. The point is it adds a bit of friction, right? It's that bit of effort that now I have to take.
And more than anything, it's a statement you're making to you and everyone in your social environment that at 10 p.m. is the shutoff time. Whether people adhere to that, as you say, there's ways to circumnavigate that. But it's the statement of having that shutoff time.
Exactly. And now, by the way, it actually wouldn't even matter because we all know the Internet's going to shut off at 10. We all need to start getting ready to stop doing whatever we're doing because it's going to now we don't even need it anymore. It's become part of our nightly ritual. Right. And by the way, what I want to illustrate is the concept, not the practice, right?
Tactics are what you do. Strategy is why you do it. That's more important. You know, I think a lot of these books around similar topics around, you know, dealing with focus and productivity, it's a lot of life hacks. Right. But what I wanted was more the strategy, the psychological principles around why we get distracted. And then I'll let people come up with their own tactics.
Willpower is not enough. This is maybe the most fascinating study I read of all of them because it really made me ponder and it kind of disrupted my thinking on willpower and strength and mental strength and motivation. And it's probably a huge reason why 91% of people don't stick to their resolutions. Dozens of studies show that willpower is the single most important habit for individual success.
And this is true. But for a long time, people thought that willpower is a skill that you could develop and that therefore remains constant forever. Until Mark Muravan, a PhD scientist, argued that if willpower is a skill, then why does it not remain constant throughout the whole day or even throughout the whole week? Why does willpower seem to fluctuate?
He conducted an experiment to prove that willpower, like all of the muscles in our body, gets exhausted the more we use it throughout the day. In his lab, he did a fairly simple thing. He set up one bowl of freshly baked cookies, and then he set up another bowl of radishes. And listen, everybody hates radishes, including me. Well, you know. Put them up, chop them up, put them in a salad.
Maybe I don't hate them. They're good for you. But anyway, in this example, most people would prefer hot, delicious cookies than radishes, right? And the participants in the study were divided into two groups. One group was instructed to eat the delicious cookies and ignore the radishes. The other group was instructed to ignore the delicious cookies and to eat the radishes.
I know which group I would have rather been in. After five minutes into that experiment, the researchers re-entered the room and gave both groups of people a puzzle. But the thing is, the puzzle was impossible to complete. And here's what happened. The people that had eaten the cookie
with their unused reservoir of willpower, because they hadn't had to use their willpower, they hadn't had to use their restraint, looked way more relaxed when they were trying to solve that impossible puzzle, and they would continue to try and solve it over and over and over again. Some worked for more than half an hour before the researcher told them to stop.
On average, the cookie eaters spent almost 19 minutes trying to solve that puzzle before they eventually quit, on average. Now, in the case of the radish eaters, with their depleted willpower because they had to practice restraint, they acted completely differently. It was a completely opposite story. They vented as they worked to try and solve that puzzle. They got frustrated.
One even complained that the whole experiment was a waste of time. Some of them put their heads on the table, closed their eyes, and one of them even snapped at the researcher when she came back in. On average, the radish eaters worked for roughly eight minutes, 60% less. They tried to solve the problem of the puzzle, the impossible puzzle, for 60% less time than the cookie eaters before quitting.
And when I read this study, I was shocked, but I'm a skeptic. So I tried to think of why this might be. I tried to think of other factors. And I thought of maybe it's the sugar. Maybe the sugar in the cookies are causing them to work harder. But when you look at other studies where there isn't sugar, anytime someone's practicing restraint, the same effects are seen. Willpower isn't just a skill.
It's a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or your legs. And it gets tired and it gets tired as it's forced to work harder. So there's less power left over for all of the other things. And since that cookie study was published, I think in 1998, numerous studies have built a case for the exact same thing. They call it the willpower depletion theory.
In one incredible example, which is almost hard to believe, volunteers who were asked to suppress their feelings as they watched an emotional movie gave up sooner on a test that they did after of physical stamina than than volunteers who watched the film and were allowed to react in whatever way they wanted to.
So if you were asked to restrain yourself, when you then did a physical exercise, people gave up sooner in the physical exercise. In a similar study which pointed at the exact same conclusion, people who were asked to suppress certain thoughts were less able to stifle laughter in a follow-up test which was designed to make them giggle.
So if the science here is correct, which I suspect it is, and willpower is a limited resource, It's really obvious that the more pressure and restrictions and strain you put on yourself when you're trying to make a new habit and break old ones, the less the chance you have of achieving them, the more chance you have of rebounding and relapsing. This is why...
unsustainable crash diets just don't work this is why anytime you feel like you're depriving yourself of something that you really want you nearly always end up failing and falling into relapse this is why in a 2014 study almost 40% of people said they failed on their new year's resolutions because the goal was too unsustainable or unrealistic and 10% said they failed because they had too many goals
This is why it's so important as you think about what goals you're setting to make sure that they're small enough and achievable enough to become sustainable without the need for major sacrifice, which will deplete your willpower reserves. And that for me was a real revelation because I think about all the habits I've tried to set. You know, when I talked about...
trying to get a six pack for summer, think about what I said. I obsessively ate healthy food. I went to the gym every day for six months. My willpower eventually became depleted and I rebounded. Rebounded like a yo-yo, like you've never seen before. And this is why you shouldn't try and give up every bad habit that you have at the same time.
This is why less goals increase the chance of completing all of your goals. Because with too many big, unrealistic, sacrifice-centric goals, your willpower will be under tremendous, unsustainable strain. It will run out. You will fail and it will rebound.
And this is also why so many psychologists and scientists have found that the best way to create a new habit isn't by depriving yourself of all rewards. That is totally counterproductive according to the science. It's by finding new rewards, healthier rewards, less addictive rewards, but nonetheless making sure that you still reward yourself in some way every day along the way.