The Mere Exposure Effect.

I want to have a chat about the Mere-Exposure effect. You can read about it on Wikipedia here.

Mere Exposure effect

It's Ok, this isn't real reference material so Wikipedia totally counts as a reference.

Seriously though, the mere exposure is where the more exposed to something you are, the more you are going to like it.

You know how you enjoy a concert way more when you know all the songs? Mere exposure effect
When you're at the pub and the cover band plays one of their originals and the dancefloor empties? Mere exposure effect.

When your local commercial radio station puts a new song on air, they jam it between 2 solid gold hits, so you don't change the station, and they do this because of this effect. While you might be tempted to change the station the first time, after the 27th time, you will most likely love it. Or at least tolerate it.

It doesn't just work for music. It works for food too I've found, and I can give you examples from my life.

I used to hate eggs as a child. When I first started going to the gym in my early 20's - It seemed that eating eggs was a thing that everyone else there did to go with the weights. High protein, low calorie, cheap. So I decided that I was going to learn to eat eggs. I started with cheesy omelettes, and worked my way up. Now I love them, and eat them a lot. They are in 2 of my 3 go to breakfasts.

Here's the funny thing. I generally eat one of three things for breakfast. A banana and berry smoothie made with water ice and protein powder, lean bacon eggs and fried mushrooms. or a 2 egg omelette. You'd think I'd be sick of it, but rather I would go as far as to say I crave one of those breakfasts.

The awesome power of good habits. A bonus side effect here is that I eat a good breakfast out of habit, so don't burn any of my will power store on breakfast. There's a story that Steve Jobs wore the jeans and turtleneck every day for the same reason. One less decision to make every day.

I've now modified my work lunch routine to harness the same effect. At the beginning of the week I buy two bags of kaleslaw (yep, that's a thing), 5 cans of tuna and a squeezy bottle of salad dressing. Every day I just mix it together and make a reasonably tasty lunch for under 6 WW points.

I'm two weeks in and am I sick of it? No, not really. I just eat it and get on with my day. No willpower burnt.

Disruption

So last time, I was so confident I had this shit in hand. I had the answers dammit and all I had to do was let it all happen....

I'm probably using a bit of hyperbole, but that's the way it seemed.

The test was, a short trip to Adelaide, could I maintain the daily workout and a bit of food tracking while I was there? Short answer, no.

I know that excuses are bullshit, but fuck it, here come a few.

So we were travelling to Adelaide for the long weekend partly to catch up with old friends at an Australia day function, but mostly because Karen's mother was ill in hospital.

It turned out she was really ill. So much so she passed away on the 2nd February. It was a crazy couple of weeks, which I don't really need to go into here. Other than to say I ended up in Adelaide for far longer than expected, stayed up too late, drank to much.

I did manage to squeeze a few workouts in to the chaos. Interestingly, they were mostly Monday and Tuesdays, and I think that over a life time of trying to "re-start" the trigger is stronger earlier in the week.

Anyway, I'm back working on the experiment. I'll report how it goes.

My current habits

So now that we have established that I think the way to a healthy BMI is by modifying habits, it's time to get to work on a couple. Remember, a couple at a time was what I am going for, being mindful of a limited amount of willpower and the need to spend it wisely.

Here are the two I've picked. These may seem obvious, but there are reasons for going for these which I will explain as we go.

1. Formal exercise 5 days a week.

Ok, let's get something clear from the outset. If you are going to set out to reduce your body mass - exercising is not the way to do it. I can tell you this from bitter, bitter experience. Over my life, I have always been pretty active and either played sport or been involved in some kind of structured exercise. The catch is, if you aren't careful, exercising is going to make you eat more, and for me, the harder I train, the more I eat and the more the amount of excess fat I carry stays the same.

So why chose this as number 1? First of all, I was already a pretty regular exerciser, I just let the habit atrophy a bit towards the back end of last year. Old habits are much easier to re-instate that new ones are to make, so I wanted some early success. My ban on the use of my smartphone in the morning really helped this one, and today I was in my gym gear and walking down the road before I really thought about it. I am nowhere near 66 days in a row on this one, but it feels like its locked. The test will be a trip to Adelaide this week. If I do it when the environment changes, then it will be truly locked in.

Secondly, going to the gym can help change your mindset, which I will get to in a later post.

2. Food tracking 3 days a week.

This one is absolutely key. I have chosen 3 days a week because this one is hard. It seems easy, but I chose 3 days because I am being conservative on the amount of willpower I have, and I am trying to sneak up on this one.

Here's why this one is so important.

First of all - the program that works is the one you stick to. I chose Weight Watchers, for reasons that will take up another whole post, but I don't actually think this matters.

Secondly, and most importantly, I am trying to solve this problem like an engineer ( I am an engineer).  For this, I am assuming that my body is a largely automated system, and something has gone haywire with the energy intake system. In order to work out what that is, I need to find out where the excess energy is going in, and eliminate it. For this I need data, and until someone invents a device that automatically monitors energy input, I am stuck with tracking.

It's a Plan - Do - Check - Act loop. 

If I can get to the point where I pull out my smart phone and track after eating, as mindlessly as checking facebook, then I am more than halfway there.

The Habit Loop

Go and punch "Habit Loop" into Google images. Go on, I'll wait.

Back so soon?

Ok so what you just saw was 1000 variations of a circle that goes Trigger - Action - Reward, most of which are stolen or adapted from this excellent book


It's not really rocket science, but it certainly is cognitive science. Habit's drive a good proportion of our behaviour, both good and bad. Here's what happens.

1. Trigger

Some external event triggers the habit subroutine in your brain. This cue can take many forms, but the real trick of the trigger is that it switches your brain into auto pilot. Have you ever driven home, and got in the driveway, but then been unable to remember the drive?

2. Action

This is the subroutine, what your brain does when the trigger hits the switch. 10pm on a weeknight? Clean teeth. Sit at desk in the morning? Check emails. You get the idea.

3. Reward.

This is the little high you get when you execute the action, what you brain so powerfully craves when it gets the cue.

So it's time for me to cut to the chase. I've gained weight and lost weight a few times in my life, and each time gets harder. Last year between January and November I lost 5kg. Go me. Between November and January - 4.8 back.

I am convinced modifying habits is the code to getting this done once and for all. I am going to systematically try messing around with each step of this cycle until I work out the best way to do it.

Set up for success

One of the things proper life coaches (as if there is such a thing!) will tell you is that you need to visualize yourself reaching your goal.

I can tell you from my experience that doing this is a load of phooey and doesn't actually work. What you actually need to visualize is the obstacles that are going to get in the way of you achieving whatever it is you are trying to do, and work out in advance what you are going to do about them when they inevitably pop up.

I previously wrote about how I need to spend my limited store of willpower wisely - so before I even start this thing, I need to remove one of the biggest users of willpower going - social media. There is a whole post about why this is the case, which I'll get to, but for now - you know how hard it is to concentrate on something when your phone is sitting there with all those glorious notifications,

So as a set up, I have made 2 small changes in my life to try to give myself a sporting chance.

1. I have moved my mobile phone charger out of my bedroom into the loungeroom. This is about good sleep hygiene - because for me, being tired is the enemy of doing anything useful.

2. I've installed an app on my phone that bans all social media apps (and I use all of them) between 10pm and 12pm. After 10pm - I should be either sleeping, or I can be reading something much more interesting that the inane shit on facebook. For the first half of the day? I've got shit to do. Workout, have a good breakfast, be productive at work when I'm at my freshest and most creative. I ain't got no time for facebook every morning.

Willpower

Before I get into how I am going to hack my habits, I need to set a bit of groundwork.

The first thing to get out of the way, is that the science I quote here will, where possible, come from actual books I've read rather than just random shit on the internet that some troll could have just made up. If I have to use a website, I'll try to make it a reputable one.

So today I want to talk about willpower. What follows below is what I have learned from Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow". He won a Nobel Prize for the science that went into this book - it really is worth reading.


The point is that your will power is a muscle. You can only use it so much before you fatigue it and it fails.

I like to use the analogy of running a marathon. If you have never run a marathon, it's highly unlikely you are going to be able to get off the couch and run 42k, no matter how much you decide you want it. You are going to fatigue and you are going to stop.

So if you have a stack of bad habits, and you burn out all of your willpower trying concentrate on your boring job all day, you aren't going to be able to change them all at once by sheer force of will, no matter how many bullshit JFDI memes you look it. I have failed enough times to know this, and the evidence is clear - most people try and fail. It's not because they are weak, its just they have too many bad habits.

The things you do habitually take no willpower at all, but making new habits and killing old ones takes a lot of willpower.

So I reckon the trick is to slowly and systematically change these habits one or two at a time. This blog is going to be my journey and trying to use the science and hack my stupid monkey brain to make some real progress towards a few goals that have been taunting me for years.

Strap in, it's going to be fun.




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They say it takes 66 days to form a new habit.

So here we go.

Way back in the day I used to love blogging, writing long form bits of prose about the things that were going on in my life. It was a glorious period, where overseas travel and young babies in the house provided ample fodder for things to write about. All writers need prompts, and then there was prompt's a plenty.

This period ran from 2003 to 2006, and it's no coincidence that I stopped once social media really started to take off. As it became easier and easier to share life in little tid bits, the concentration and effort required to maintain a blog seemed to be less and less appealing. I'd suggest my blog wasn't the only one to incur the wrath of Facebook.

I have to say though - the blogger interface has improved somewhat over the last 10 years, and it probably hasn't been updated in 5. I bet wordpress is real fancy.

But here we are, back again - because I've got a stack of stuff I want to write about.

Daily Habits.

I can feel your eyes rolling from here. Here's some middle aged bloke. Of course he's got a self improvement blog. Have you seen that guy? Seriously.

I get it, but I have been reading a lot, and I reckon if I can hack the process of creating good habits and deleting the bad ones, I can take over the world.

This particular post isn't going to be long, because it just needs to exist. Just write every day and after 66 days, writing will be a concrete habit.