Warning: May Be Habit Forming

As presented at RailsConf 2017.

Transcript

1. WARNING: MAY BE HABIT FORMING Nickolas Means @nmeans
3. 40% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions.
4. Of those who make resolutions, keep them. 8%
6. But first, a disclaimer.
7. My Story
8. August 2015
9. The Cycle of Non-Finishers 1. Get super motivated. 2. Start doing things. 3. Realize it’s harder than you thought. 4. Lose your motivation. 5. Give up.
10. Dr. Roy Baumeister
14. Attempts Time Spent Radish Cohort Cookie Cohort 19.4 8:21 34.3 18:54 The Baumeister Experiment
15. Lesson #1: Your willpower will fail you every single time. Plan accordingly.
16. The Cycle of Non-Finishers 1. Get super motivated. 2. Start doing things. 3. Realize it’s harder than you thought. 4. Lose your motivation. 5. Give up.
17. The Cycle of Non-Finishers 1. Get super motivated. 2. Start doing things. 3. Realize it’s harder than you thought. 4. Lose your motivation. 5. Give up.
18. Dr. B.J. Fogg
19. Motivation Wave
20. Motivation Wave 1. Be honest with yourself.
21. Motivation Wave 1. Be honest with yourself. 2. Pick your goal. 3. Make a plan.
25. My First Goal Drink a green smoothie 
 for breakfast every day 
 for one month.
26. 1 cup spinach
 1 cup water
 1 banana
 1/2 cup frozen pineapple
 1/2 cup frozen mango
 1 scoop vanilla whey protein
 Beginner’s Luck Smoothie
27. Why It Worked 1. A well-structured goal.
28. Lesson #2: Your initial goal should be so small you’d feel silly not doing it.
29. Why It Worked 1. A well-structured goal. 2. A plan that made it easy. 3. All the ingredients of a habit.
30. Charles Duhigg
31. Charles Duhigg
38. 1. Cue 2. Routine 3. Reward
39. 1. Cue 2. Routine 3. Reward
40. Lesson #3: Deliberately building a habit is far more effective that just deciding to make a change.
44. Habits are just simple systems. Lesson #4:
45. Sam Carpenter
46. Sam Carpenter
48. Where I Went Wrong 1. A choice that required willpower. 2. An unrealistic commitment.
51. February 2017
52. April 2017
53. How To Hit Big Goals 1. Take a long-term view. 2. Set goals along the way that let you snowball success. 3. Build habits and then optimize them with a systems mindset.
54. August 2015 April 2017
55. WARNING: MAY BE HABIT FORMING Nickolas Means @nmeans