The Process
The Philosophy of Success
After reading numerous books on the topic of habits I came away with the same conclusion as Will Durant in his book The Story of Philosophy.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
This quote is often attributed to philosopher Aristotle, in fairness Aristotle’s writings on morality did inspire this quote. From the Aristotelian perspective good character derived from consistent action, it was and is about the virtues or values a person possesses that makes them moral nothing else. In the modern renditions of Epictetus’s Enchiridion the idea of habits are mentioned in a similar context, we want to cultivate helpful habits while neglecting harmful ones such as anger.
In essence habits mean repeated action. Many would argue this is “unconscious” or automatic actions that do not require much thought but they’re extremely important for being a better person.
In a more contemporary sense three books on the topic of habits come to mind:
The Power of Habit, Atomic Habits, and Tiny Habits.
The premise is relatively similar, if you want to achieve a specific goal you should not focus on the outcome but the process by which you get to that goal. That process is through repeated daily habits. The goal for Aristotle and Epictetus was to be a better person, the goal for us is still the same but with a few caveats.
People often attribute being better with their bank account, material possessions, physical appearance, and status. Whether that’s synonymous with being a better person or not is another discussion but these are the type of goals these books discuss.
Let’s discuss the major ideas of the three books and how they’re all connected to this concept of “the process”.
The Power of Habit
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg was one of the catalyst for the self-help industries focus on habits for achieving success. This is tongue and cheek but the previous focus seemed to be on grit, delayed gratification, and general motivation. However, in good ole’ marketing fashion The Power of Habit seems to offer you the world with its NEW solution… mastering habits.
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.
- charlesduhigg.com
Books in this genre typically try to mix in science, anecdote, and an overarching narrative to sell their idea. This book does just that but in fairness it gives us an important concept in the habit space. This concept is the break down of habits into the cue, routine, and reward aka the habit loop.
The Power of Habit then gives some advice on how to manipulate each of the three factors in order to build good habits and break bad ones. The cue initiates the routine or behavior and the reward reinforces the cue. For example, you walk next to a bakery and smell fresh cookies (the cue), this influences you to go into the store to buy the cookies (routine), and then you proceed to eat the delicious cookie (the reward). Now, imagine if you repeatedly passed this store at a certain time, smelled the cookies, and proceeded to buy them… well congrats that’s a habit.
Duhigg gives us a few insights on how to change that habit if we do not like it. Probably the easiest way is to change the cue, we can take a different walking route to avoid the smell all together. Maybe we can change the routine, when you smell the cookies walk inside the convenience store next to the bakery and buy an apple. Getting an apple might change the reward all together, transitioning from the cookie to the apple.
After the basic premise of the habit loop, Duhigg tries to apply these concepts to specific athletes, celebrities, and companies.
Atomic Habits
From my experience, everyone and their mother on social media recommends Atomic Habits by James Clear after they read it. I personally have the book, read some of it, and had some helpful takeaways but I do not rave about it as much as others. Clear essentially repeat’s Duhigg but with his own little rendition of the habit loop.
The cue, response, and the reward portion are synonymous with Duhigg’s habit loop breakdown but Clear adds “craving”. Clear describes “craving” like this:
Cravings are the second step of the habit loop, and they are the motivational force behind every habit.
Anecdotally people describe Atomic Habits as more practical and actionable than The Power of Habit. I tend to agree, Atomic Habits seems to have more practical takeaways than the Duhigg’s journalistic take on habits. I see it as building on top of the work previously done, with the unique emphasis on identity’s interaction with habits.
This is based on empirical evidence. How a person identifies can connect to their past behavior and likelihood to engage in other behaviors. However, this work is largely based on correlations, some of which are pretty weak but they’re the best indications we have for this identity and habit relationship. Nonetheless, Atomic Habit’s states nothing relatively groundbreaking or new in my honest opinion.
Tiny Habits
Tiny Habit’s by BJ Fogg is a newer iteration in the habit craze. Fogg frames his approach under the banner of “behavioral design”, in his defense he runs a lab in Stanford University called the Behavior Design Lab. His approach to the traditional “habit loop” is the Fogg Behavioral Model or MAP. According to Fogg behavior can be broken down into three parts which are motivation, ability, and prompt.
Unlike Charles Duhigg or James Clear, Fogg does not claim a special order between motivation, ability, and prompt merely how they all interact to produce a given behavior. Behaviors often need a prompt, like to cue, to trigger the given behavior to be completed. The prompt can be a given time, place, situation, or action… like a cue. Motivation is similar to Clear’s “craving, it merely refers to the reasons that pull us towards completing a specific behavior in the first place. Lastly, probably most importantly, is ability which refers to our actual competency to do something.
MAP acts in tandem to produce a behavior so to change a behavior we need to manipulate MAP. Each of the three cores of MAP can be manipulated to a given extent in order to elicit a certain behavior.
The hardest factor to probably change is motivation as our motivated factors can compete, maybe you want to lose weight but your friends enjoy eating out. The easiest factor to manipulate is probably ability, literally starting as small as possible in order to build up towards what we want to accomplish. Losing weight can start as small as eating one apple during your lunch break. Prompts can also be changed, maybe make a new group of friends who are into working out. That last solution might seem a bit cold but the lesson is there are many ways to manipulate MAP in order to influence our behaviors.
The Process
Even as a person with a psychology degree I have to admit “unlocking” the secrets to behavioral change is tough. Outside of the self-help industry nonsense there is an empirical basis for behavioral change. We have work from Edward Thorndike discussing the law of effect, B.F. Skinners development of operant conditioning, Albert Bandura’s ideas of modeling, and various cognitive psychological theories.
However, many of these ideas are just that… ideas. They’re interesting theories to describe the complex phenomena of human behavior. To think one theory, model, or description of human behavior is wholly correct is foolish. Through my ponderings of process philosophy it’s essential we label human behavior and its constituents an important part of being. Process philosophy applied to the human mind sees the mind as a dynamic entity, it is not static. Our motivations, prompts/cues, routines/ability consistently changes throughout our lifespan.
All three books outline the basic premise, if you want to succeed at something figure out how to turn it into a habit and then start small. This is almost counter intuitive for many of us who want our goals as soon as we think of them. Many do not think of the time, dedication, and hard work it takes to get to a particular place in life. While process philosophy is concerned with metaphysics and ontology, I am concerned with being a better person like what Aristotle and Epictetus were striving towards. Life is a process in of itself, the world constantly changes and so do we. This change isn’t necessarily drastic, it’s not like gravity was turned off, but it’s often more subtle and personal.
Our aspirations change, our relationships change, our physical ability changes as we grow older, and our perspective changes. I am proposing we stop caring about the promise of success, reputation, and material wealth. I propose we instead focus on the process of living our lives. Doing the smallest action possible towards being a better person whether that’s pertains to morals, physical health, our relationships, and our society.
What I am suggesting is questioning this modern rendition of “productivity” through habits all together. Why do we want to do the things we aspire to in the first place? What’s the point of cultivating a habit for meditation when you aren’t addressing the stressors in your life to begin with? We need to question every action we do and scrutinize the habits we possess if they do not serve us on our particular mission. But what is that mission? Aren’t we more than just a cue, routine, and reward?
If we want to be successful maybe we should question this idea of success and stop reading books that essentially state the same shit. You are not going to be a better human being with a magical productivity “hack”. Habit’s are about being better every single day not to lose 20 pounds in the shortest time possible.