Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,57

discipline.”4

One of the only things that is likely to change your behavior is to make incremental progress. You really don’t want to make dinner? Make something simple for your family to snack on while you cook dinner later. You’re having trouble writing that big speech for next month’s conference? Just write the keynote to the speech now. You’re overwhelmed by the amount of reading you need to do for your economics class? Set a goal for yourself of reading the first chapter. Like the wise counselor, you must take it one step at a time, one day at a time.

What you’ll notice in all of these scenarios is two things. One is that they present you with something achievable—a win on the way to reaching the championship of getting this job done. The other is that they all put you in a situation where you’re likely to get even more accomplished. You’re already in the kitchen now, so you might as well finish making dinner. You’ve gotten through the keynote and you’re on a roll, so maybe it makes sense to draft some more pages. The first chapter of your economics text wasn’t nearly as dry as it seemed from the outside, and you already have the book open; you can handle a few more chapters.

By breaking a task that you’re procrastinating about into smaller pieces, the path to getting it done becomes clear.

The best way to deal with the tension between what you want and what you’ve done so far to achieve it is to remember what the Zeigarnik effect teaches us. You’re not going to be able to ease your mind about this task until you complete it, so get yourself moving toward completion. Start somewhere. Anywhere. Even if you don’t have the energy or the motivation to get the entire thing done, get started on getting it done. You’ll be thankful for the relief.

KWIK START

Think about an important task you’ve been putting off. What is it? How can you break it down into simpler steps that you can do each day?

ON AUTOPILOT

Small simple steps repeated lead to habits. Our habits are a core part of who we are. Various studies have shown that somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of what we do every day is the product of a habit. That means that half of our lives is governed by what scientists term automaticity. This percentage might sound high to you—it certainly did to me the first time I heard it—but consider how many things you do every day without really thinking about them. You brush your teeth without thinking about it. You check your phone at predictable intervals. You drive to the office and don’t particularly recall how you got there. You zip up your jacket, get a glass out of the cupboard, and click on the TV remote automatically.

This, of course, is essential to how we conduct our lives. Could you imagine how overwhelming it would be if you had to think about every single thing you did? If even brushing your teeth required some conscious level of calculation, you’d be exhausted by 10 in the morning.

“Without habit loops, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed by the minutiae of daily life,” writes Charles Duhigg in his best-selling book, The Power of Habit. “People whose basal ganglia are damaged by injury or disease often become mentally paralyzed. They have trouble performing basic activities, such as opening a door or deciding what to eat. They lose the ability to ignore insignificant details—one study, for example, found that patients with basal ganglia injuries couldn’t recognize facial expressions, including fear and disgust, because they were perpetually uncertain about which part of the face to focus on.”5

James Clear, author of the best-selling book Atomic Habits, says, “The habits you repeat (or don’t repeat) every day largely determine your health, wealth, and happiness. Knowing how to change your habits means knowing how to confidently own and manage your days, focus on the behaviors that have the highest impact, and reverse-engineer the life you want.”6

“All habits serve you in some way,” Clear told me. “As you go through life, you face a variety of problems. You need to tie your shoe; your brain is automating the solution to that problem. That’s what a habit is. It’s the solution to a recurring problem that you face throughout life, one that you’ve employed so many times that you can do it without thinking. If the solution doesn’t work anymore, then your brain will