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Buster: I am very much against the idea of a tiny habit
Tony: take a commonly held belief and blow it up
Tony: Hello welcome to Lift habit TV, I'm here with Buster Benson who I consider to
be the godfather of behavior change apps, he created a number of really notable ones,
43 things, health month, and bud.ge, he is someone when i was starting Lift i thought
a lot about his work thanks for coming. So right before the cameras started rolling
you were asking me about Outliers, which is one of those books that everyone assumes they
read without even reading it. Buster: when you ask people the say “The
10,000 hours book” Tony: what do you think of the 10,000 hours
rule? Buster: I love it because it is a way to summarize
my problem with a lot of Tony: I'm about to violently disagree with
you but i wanted your opinion first Buster: but you haven’t read it, people
are all about shortcuts and this book is about avoiding shortcuts and the fact that you can’t
avoid shortcuts and he’s obviously an eloquent person so he states it in a way that i could
have never thought of. Tony: so the 10,000 hour rule is essentially
the point at which you cap out on improvement in the pursuit of mastery. after 10,000 hours
of practice. Buster: no, that’s not what it is
Tony: what is it? Buster: it’s before you can become a master
of something, before you can rise to the top of a particular skill you have to put in your
time. and the people that are excellent that if you go back and you think about the beatles
or steve jobs or bill gates, at what point did they become recognized as excellent? and
they revise the story to make it seem like hey we just started in our garage when actually
they have been programming since they were 14 and had access to free computer time when
no one else did Tony: so this idea of shortcuts is that there
are all these people who want to be steve jobs, want to be justin beiber who is considered
this youtube sensation but he actually probably put in a huge amount of time.
Buster: those 10,000 hours are often cut out of the story after the fact
Buster: habits are not tiny, they are large. they aren’t just like drinking a glass of
water, the habit is rewiring your brain. a habit is not really an extension of your mind
as it is an extension of your body in a lot of ways. you’re not just trying to think
differently, you’re trying to change the way your brain thinks about things around
a whole lot of inputs. For example, running more or changing my diet, and all these things
that need to happen the root goal is to think about myself and believe that i am a healthier
person so that seems difficult its a big huge thing to have to change about myself so i
said lets break it down into 1000 unidentified steps and say I’m starting at 1000 I’m
counting down, game mechanics give me the ability to see it as a journey, when you run
you focus on something that is far away and the bumps that you come across seem smaller,
you are able to pace yourself a little better, the failure, like if i go down the wrong block
once its not like i suck at running, its that i have to get back
Tony: what are the steps that you’ve taken recently ?
Buster: going on a run counts, 7 days of eating salads for lunch counts as a step, having
a meditation practice counts because it requires mental strength, reading books that have something
to do with willpower. the great thing about 1000 is that there are so many of them and
so many things count so i don't have to count things that are specifically toward that goal,
because ultimately i am trying to train for an identity change rather than a behavior
change Tony: is there something in there about momentum?
there are so many things that count so you start to build an upswell of success?
Buster: yes, you see things happening and we react almost as strongly to a small positive
than to a large positive, our hedonic treadmill only recognizes positives and then it usually
simmers down. if i go on a 10 mile run that counts as one, no matter what, it’s not
going to seem like a big deal a couple of days later, but having a lot of small things,
it seems like the stock is going up Tony: so you’ve framed it so that it is
possible to succeed Buster: yes, as long as i start ticking these
things off, and go to the marathon and run it and continue afterwards
Buster: when i make goals, i frame them as a sentence, and the sentence is framed in
a way that it is true or false on a monthly basis. It has to be framed in such a way that
if I fail, i'm disappointed and if i succeed i'm happy so you find that line, maybe hitting
the mile pace wasn't the right goal because you can be a few seconds behind and u are
still doing well so its framed wrong and its built to disappoint you even when u are making
progress and doing well. it should be “run at all” or whatever it is, the least you
can do to be happy that you did it. Tony: Alright so you… it’s already coming
out you’re a fanatic and skeptic at the same time.
Buster: I thought I was a fanatic for a long period of time.
Tony: So just to clue our viewers in, you have no hope.
Okay go. Buster: (Laughing) I have lots of hope, but
I think that I don’t have a strategy for success, I don’t know what is going to work.
I feel like there are 100 or maybe 1000 of us on the starting line trying to figure out
how to finish a marathon. And solving the problem of how do we change ourselves is at
mile 26. Tony: So what are you hopeful for, what makes
you the fanatic? You have put out… I know of 4 products in the space.
Buster: I really, really want to solve the problem. As far as problems go it’s really
the only problem that has any interest to me because it’s the problem underneath all
the other things we want to do in our lives. Knowing how to change yourself is the only
path to knowing how to change anybody else, to then changing the world, to having an impact,
a legacy to feeling like you’ve made meaning in your life. So if we can’t change ourselves,
there is no way in hell we are ever going to be able to do the other things intentionally.
They might happen by chance but why hope that you got the right pachinko ball?
Tony: You know I ended up giving up my Fuel, my Up and my Fitbit for this watch which is
just my GPS Nike Watch, not because I like the data, but because it motivates me to exercise,
like it’s so big… Buster: Like Nike is staring at you.
Tony: Yes I must, it actually plays with my sense of identity like oh ya I’m somebody
who works out, I’m sporty, it’s more impactful than any of the technology.
Buster: Ya that’s why I wear sneakers, it gives me that reminder that I can run whenever
I want, so why don’t I.