The Root Cause of Habit Problems

Nobody is ever perfectly happy. This statement may sound depressing, but it’s quite true. And to be honest, I think it is good that there’s no such thing as perfect happiness. If there were perfection in life, a lot of the thrill—the struggle that makes life dynamic—would be lost. I believe that striving for a happier, richer, more fulfilling life is an invaluable endeavor.

Most people I know want to improve certain aspects of their lives. Some want to be more successful or earn more money, some want to be healthier in body and mind, and yet others want to learn a new language or express themselves creatively. All of these worthy endeavors require us to do something: to change. More specifically, to change habits—but how does this come about?

Our desires become reality through action. We may consequently try numerous approaches, only to fail time and again. You may have experienced this on your own, prompting you to ask yourself, why is it so hard to change even when I really want to? The more relevant question, I would suggest, is why is it so hard to make lasting change?

These questions puzzled me for quite some time. What I learned from my own experience is that, to be blunt, there is a huge problem with how most people approach change. Note that I didn’t say that change is impossible, or that we are powerless to change. It is our approach, the way we think of change, that just isn’t working. Therefore, I want to provide you with a different mindset, along with the actionable tools you will need to implement sustainable change in your life.

Let’s start by looking at the current landscape of change-related vehicles. I’m talking about self-help books, magazines, and a fabulous invention called the Internet, home of many self-proclaimed experts on a plethora of topics.

One common theme crops up over and over again: the world is full of quick fixes, shortcuts, and bogus inventions. And many people are happy to swallow these magic pills because it is so tempting to believe that they will help them achieve their goals with little time or effort. But most, if not all, of these quick fixes simply do not work. They may seem effective for a week, maybe even a month. Yet, inevitably, the progress slows and eventually stalls. Why is that the case? Why is the change so fleeting, so unsustainable?

Just go to a gym in January, and then once again in March. You know what you’ll see. You’ll see a striking decrease in attendance. Or take note of how many people have started a life-changing diet promoted by the latest super-guru and see how long their momentum holds. We’ve all heard a fellow student proclaiming, “Next semester, I am going to do all of my reading on time!” In 99% of these cases, there is a flurry of enthusiasm and action that quickly peters out. The result: no lasting change.

I’ll tell you why that is the case. Just wanting to change is not enough. And you know what? Just changing is not enough in and of itself.

Mere desire does not provide an adequate tool kit to attain lasting change. The single biggest problem is that people want to change way too much in way too little time. This is, I repeat, the single biggest problem. Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not condemning big change or big dreams at all. I’m all for thinking big. What I am saying is that the culprit, what gets in the way of lasting change, is the desire to grow too fast. So many of us want immediate results; we want results yesterday, which is not only unrealistic, but undoable.

An oft-cited Chinese proverb attributed to Lao Tzu says, “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” Wise words. To put it another way: in order to think big, you have to start small. You can think back to the oak tree, which takes close to one hundred years to fully mature; all of its growth is solid and lasting.

The truth is, everything in this world starts out small. An enormous oak tree was once a tiny acorn. Each human being takes years to grow from a tiny cell to a full-grown adult. Each computer is the result of a series of steps—electricity, the ability to mine copper and transform it into wire, binary coding—each of which took centuries to develop. This is the essence of life—and a core mechanism in this world.

Trying to change the essence of life is futile. No company started as a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. Every successful company started with a single idea and then, over time, became what is now Apple, Mercedes-Benz, or General Electric. The latter two companies took over a century to become the giants they are today.

The same concept is true for us humans when it comes to changing the way we live. We are simply not designed to change too much at one time. Thus, a core principle upon which HabitSystem is based is:

Start Slow Then Grow

You will read these words again and again throughout this book. Start Slow Then Grow is one of the core tenets of the HabitSystem. Compare it to that old oak again; it took so many years for that acorn to grow but now it is an enormous behemoth. Yes, massive growth is possible, but it will take time.

Since this concept is actually the answer to the question of how we create sustainable change, I’d like to first back up a bit and try to understand the problem of why change is not always easy. This understanding is paramount because it enables us to get a deeper look into what the solution should look like.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that big change in a short amount of time never works. There are some situations where it has. Still, a look at the relative success of slow versus fast change shows us that slow change is heavily favored. Thus, we want to develop a generalized approach—a proven concept that can work for anyone, and one that is not contingent upon a miracle or exceptional luck.

Resistance and Entropy

Without further ado, I will explain the problem in detail: why most of the time big change in a short amount of time does not work.

The goal of change is growth—and the two things that thwart growth are Resistance and Entropy. These two concepts are interconnected. Resistance sounds familiar and you may have heard about Entropy. You may now ask: What do they have to do with habits and lasting change? Let me elaborate.

Every system, including the human mind, has a default state to which it reverts. The default state of nature is chaos. That is, when you allow nature to go unchecked, chaos will emerge. This phenomenon is explained through the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that any system naturally gravitates towards a more disordered state.

Take a garden, for example. What makes it a garden, rather than a wild field, is the planning and work devoted to pruning the trees and bushes, planting flowers, and clearing out the weeds. If you leave the garden alone for long enough, chaos will emerge—the garden will grow ragged, unwanted plants may take over, and the order that characterized your garden will disappear. Essentially, the default state of that piece of land is not that of a garden, but rather a disorganized field. The disorganization may be beautiful in itself, but if you want a garden, it takes effort or energy to maintain the garden. Without your guiding vision and without your effort and energy, nature will resist order and, over time, the carefully cultivated garden will be gone.

This process of the garden, or any system, reverting to chaos is what we mean by Entropy.

How does the concept of Entropy apply to making changes that will lead to growth? More specifically, how does the concept apply to the human brain? Well, when we try to incorporate big changes in our lives, tension is introduced into our systems of thought, mindset, and behavior, and our entire being is affected. The big change we try to incorporate is in drastic opposition to the default state, or the way things are before change happens.

Remember, the order of the garden, as well as the big change we want to implement, naturally tend toward chaos. The creation of a new or more organized state introduces a tremendous amount of tension, or, as we will call it, Resistance.

If you seek to create order or change in your garden or your mind, countering Entropy will create Resistance, which can only be overcome with the expenditure of energy. Because without energy, it is inevitable that systems will revert to their default states.

To illustrate, I will use a real-life example that I am sure you can relate to: if you resolve to go to the gym for two hours, every single day, cold turkey, you create a lot of tension in your system. Because the new habit is so different from the old, the change will require you to put in a lot of energy into maintaining the new. Without that energy, your system will revert to the default state—in this case, it means that you will not be going to the gym at all. Your brain and body will put up Resistance that is equal to the size of the change.

The bigger the change, the more tension is created in the system. The more tension, the bigger the Resistance to change. Working against this natural but ultimately defeating cycle requires huge amounts of energy. And here’s the catch: energy is a limited resource.

As everyone probably knows, the dominant human form of energy in most cases is willpower. Willpower is the energy required to do things that run counter to the mind and body’s Resistance. You summon up willpower to take a cold shower; you draw from willpower to read a book rather than go to your default state, which may be to watch TV.

As I said, energy (and thus willpower) is a scarce resource. Research has shown that willpower is depleted every time we have to make a decision, which explains why it is difficult to resist falling back to the default state. When willpower is depleted, chaos emerges. It’s as simple as that.

But What About Motivation?

You’ve heard it before, how nothing can get done without the proper motivation—but is this even true? Can it help us at all in effecting lasting change? Motivation is actually willpower in turbocharge. When we are motivated, we feel like we have an endless supply of willpower. Motivation is at its peak when we start new projects or activities, and we sincerely believe that we will maintain this level of motivation in the future—a shockingly misguided line of thinking. Experience really ought to remind us that motivation is something we have no control over. It’s fleeting and mercurial. Sometimes we are bursting with it, sometimes we are not in the mood.

Let me tell you what experience conveniently forgets to tell us: relying on motivation will never ever get us to our goals. It will never work in the long run because motivation is just a feeling, and all feelings are subject to change. What can be relied upon, on the other hand, is a consistent approach, a system that is controllable and not subject to our changing feelings.

To reach our goals, we must not and cannot rely on motivation alone. To effect change, we must give up the illusion that motivation alone will lead to growth. This fact is a hard one to swallow, I know. But we all know from experience that while motivation leads to spikes of growth that seem big in the short run, it cannot be relied upon to guide us toward long-term growth due to its very nature.

It is well-known that we live in an increasingly short-term-focused society which is dominated by instant gratification and peak experiences. Just look at movies with fast cuts, and the “always online” mentality. All of this fast-paced fuzz goes against human nature. Yet far too many people let their feelings dictate their level of action. And while motivation can be extremely useful, its fleeting nature is ignored—we optimistically (or foolishly) hope that this time, it will last.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Just like our tree does not grow mature over the course of one day, your life is not going to change by the end of the week. What counts is long-term happiness and fulfillment, not the hunt for constant and short-lived peaks. The reliance on motivation alone is a symptom of the sprint mentality, as it encourages people to gratify their immediate wishes instead of choosing positive habits that lead to sustained happiness.

But now we find ourselves in a tough situation. First of all, we know that willpower is a finite resource that will not suffice in our fight against the powerful forces of Resistance. Secondly, we know that we cannot rely on motivation because it’s fleeting and unreliable. It sounds bad, doesn’t it? Well, take heart: there’s a common sense, realistic, and effective fix that you will learn about in the pages to come.

To introduce this approach, we will begin with shortly revisiting the concept of Entropy because there is something else important about it that you should bear in mind.

The Thing with Entropy

On the previous pages, I mentioned Entropy along with Resistance and made some points about the default state of things and how Resistance makes it difficult to maintain change.

Entropy leads to chaos in a system—the reversal to the default state—if no energy is put into the system. The key takeaway from Entropy is that it requires energy to remain at a consistent level, as otherwise chaos emerges.

Going back to the example of the garden, we know we have to weed, water, and ensure sunlight and nutrients for it to emerge from chaos. Your energy is needed to fight Entropy and keep Resistance at bay. If you till it once in the spring, plant your seeds, and then leave it alone, it will soon transform to its default: a wild patch of weeds.

The difference between maintenance and growth

Now, consider the example of going to the gym once a week. You have built up some muscle; now the default state is some muscle. In order for you to keep that default state, you have to commit to a full body workout once a week. These weekly workouts will help you maintain your current physical level: you will keep some muscle.

Now here’s the deal: what if you do just a tiny bit more than just what is necessary to maintain the default state? In your workout case, this means going to the gym twice a week. In the garden example, this means that apart from your basic garden care, you implement something like an irrigation system or apply extra fertilizer. You decided to put in some energy to make the garden more fruitful. Now, something interesting happens: not only is the current level maintained (as enough energy is put into the system to counter the Resistance), but a tiny bit of growth has occurred as well.

The resulting difference is striking. Let’s imagine two gym friends. Both started with some muscle. One of them has been going to the gym once a week for a full year, the other one has gone to the gym twice a week, also for one year. I promise you that there is a big difference. When this difference is seen as an end result, it is massive. But it was brought about by tiny changes over time that resulted in an intentional expansion of your default state. Here is my proposition: if it requires you to put energy into maintaining the default state, why not put in just slightly more energy to get growth? This additional energy is not very much, but it will make a big difference in the long run. Reading one page a day seems like a small thing, because it is; and it’s totally doable. Reading two pages a day isn’t much more to imagine or accomplish. Making tiny adjustments like this over the course of a year yields significant results.

Distinguishing the starting points

At this point, we need to distinguish the different starting points. When you want to change, that is, when you decide that it’s time to acquire a new skill or change the direction of your life, you either start from scratch or you start with something. Starting from scratch means that you have no acumen in the new area you’re trying to get into. Starting with something means you already have some level of achievement in this area.

When you start with something, Entropy is highly relevant because if you do nothing, Entropy will ensure you’ll certainly lose some of your skills. If you played an instrument as a kid and suddenly stopped, most of your skills would be lost today due to Entropy. Entropy happens in nearly every area of life. If no energy is put into the system, then chaos will emerge. This is the very way of nature. In this case, you already know that you have to put in energy merely to maintain at the same level. So why not put in a little bit more energy to grow?

When you start from scratch, Entropy is the default state, which is chaos. No skill means chaos. As a result, every amount of growth, even if very small, will have an impact. Take a look at languages. If you only happen to speak English, every amount of energy put into learning Spanish will improve your Spanish ability. If you are not physically fit, even light workouts will positively affect your physicality. This is a good thing because if you are starting at the zero level in a desired skill, you know that only a small amount of repeated effort over time will produce massive growth.

The HabitSystem is designed to show you exactly how to implement these small, effective changes to create long lasting habits.