Life Hack: Incentivize your Good Habits with Bad Ones

So there I was, minding my own business, when the Digital Wellbeing app on my phone decides to inform me that I’m spending an average of 15 hours a week on Tiktok.

Sir, I think at the app, how could you say something so controversial, yet so brave?

I’d like to say that this was the wake-up call I needed to address my Tiktok addiction, that I promptly uninstalled the app and never watched a short form video again. But, being the flawed human being that I am, it took several weeks (or months – who knows? I was too busy scrolling Tiktok to keep track of time) to actually address this habit that I was indulging in like it was my job.

It’s not that Tiktok is inherently bad, in fact, it’s been a fun way to unwind with Seth at the end of the day. I cast my screen to the TV and we get to watch them together – and have trained the algorithm well to cater to both of us.

However, it was doing it too well. We’d end up losing so much time, we were regretting not having enough bandwidth to dedicate to our other hobbies and goals – or sleeping at a reasonable hour. We would scroll until Tiktok itself would give us the “you’ve been on this app for too long” video. Who would have thought that an app, that is intentionally built to be addictive in every single possible way imaginable, would be addictive?

Developing the solution:

Willpower-only solutions are naïve, lazy and doomed to fail. Obviously we need to have some internal motivation to do things, but you cannot push forward on willpower alone without burning out. To be set up for success, you need a system.

An example of a willpower solution in this context: Every time we feel like using Tiktok, we do one of our other hobbies instead.

Why this solution is stupid: Tiktok is instant gratification. As fun as our other hobbies are, you only really start to feel the benefits over time, so it’s much more difficult to form the initial habit consistently. If it was the other way around, this would not be a problem in the first place.

The key to the solution is understanding your default behavior and then working towards the desired behavior through nudges or sludges. In our case:

Default Behavior: Watching Tiktok at the end of the day.

Desired Behavior: More time towards other hobbies, less time on Tiktok.

Sludge: Create an obstacle to accessing Tiktok by leveraging the desire to dedicate time to other hobbies.

Additional Systemic Support: Leverage the fact that this is something both me and Seth want.

The actual solution:

Seth and I developed a rule that on any given day we are not allowed to watch Tiktok unless we both have:

·       Practiced the guitar (Seth practices the regular one, I practice on my bass)

·       Practiced the drums

·       Read a bit of a book

·       Completed the day’s Pliability

Then Tiktok is Unlocked!

How it has been working:

Great!

Care to elaborate?

Oh yeah, sure.

So, after setting this rule, we immediately started repurposing the small windows of free time we found throughout the day to do these hobbies – especially practicing our instruments. Often, we can only dedicate a non-zero amount, but it still feels good that we are putting in the effort.

What’s really nice is that we built in an incentive to support each other. If it’s 6pm and one of us is behind, the other one takes over making dinner/doing the evening chores so that they can get caught up.

An unexpectedly pleasant feature of this setup is that we have removed the guilt around not hitting our goals. When a day is simply too busy and we have not “unlocked Tiktok” – that’s just it! That’s the consequence. It’s removed all the negative self-talk of ‘you’re wasting your time and your life, etc.’ – now it’s just ‘no Tiktok today, try again tomorrow!’

Another pleasant surprise is how we have naturally become less addicted to Tiktok. There are days that we’ve unlocked Tiktok but we don’t even use it! This may partially be because of how the app as started to become so bloated with ads, it doesn’t always seem worth the effort anymore (i.e. the sludge is working).

This seems too good to be true…

Yeah, there was a loophole I exploited. I started using Tumblr a lot more to fill the Tiktok addiction hole.

I thought about putting up the same barriers as I did to Tiktok, but it didn’t make sense to put them in competition – especially since I haven’t gotten Seth addicted to Tumblr…yet.

Instead, I thought about another habit that I really wanted to improve on – 4am meditation. Now, I am not allowed to go onto Tumblr unless I:

·       Wake up at 4am

·       Meditate until 5am

It does not count if I sleep for most of that time or if I don’t sincerely try to focus.

I instituted this ‘rule’ a couple of weeks ago and it has been astonishing how much more motivated I have become to wake up and put in the effort.

It’s made me add other support systems in place – such as an automation on my phone so that at 11pm it goes into “sleep mode” – meaning all non-essential apps are disabled and my phone colors turn to greyscale so that I actually try to get to bed early.

I am still on the side of the spectrum where I am more motivated by my addiction to Tumblr than by the long term benefits of meditation, but I can see the shift starting to happen, which is crazy because I have been doing this 4am meditation on and off since I was 6 years old. So, if this is the way I ultimately get it to stick for the rest of my life, I will have to give myself a Nobel prize for hacking my brain - well first I’ll have to create a Nobel prize category called “Hacking Salimah’s Brain”, find other nominees for the category, and then rig it so that I win. But I think I have to give it more than a few weeks before I go down that path…

What do you think? Does this system inspire you to make a change in your life? Or do you have an idea that can be a “Hacking Salimah’s Brain” nominee? Either way, let me know.

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