#84： Shock Yourself Into New Habits with Maneesh Sethi
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Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett sits down with Manish Sethi, founder of Pavlok, a new wearable device that helps you form good habits and break bad ones. They talk about the role that social pressure plays in habit formation, and the differences between men and women when it comes to how they form and break habits.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So we've
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written about habits a lot on the website. We've had experts on habits on the podcast before. And
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the reason why I talk about habits so much because I'm a big believer that forming good
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habits and breaking those bad ones is an integral role in becoming the man you want to be, the
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person you want to be. Because the more you can offload those things you're supposed to
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do and make them go on autopilot because of habit formation, the better you are. It frees
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up mental RAM space for more important things, more high level things. So I brought on today's
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guest. And he's Manish Sethi. He's the founder of a new company called Pavlok. And what
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Pavlok is, we'll talk about it in more detail in the podcast, but it's a wearable device that's
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connected to an app that's designed to help you form good habits and break bad ones. And
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one of the ways it does that is that the wearable device shocks you. So it's kind of wicked, but
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it's pretty cool. Anyways, in this podcast, we're going to talk about what the research
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says the best way to form habits are. And one thing that Manish emphasizes that a lot
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of people who write about habits don't really talk about is the power of the stick, the power
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of punishment in helping us get motivated to do things we're supposed to do and stop
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doing things we're supposed to. A lot of times when people talk about habit formation, it's
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all about the rewards because you give yourself a little reward when you form that habit, which
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is an important part. But the stick can also be very powerful. We're going to talk about
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the role that social pressure plays in habit formation. We're going to talk about the
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power of micro habits. And we're going to talk about the differences between men and
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women and how they form and break habits. So it's a really fascinating discussion. Oh,
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and then we'll talk about Pavlok because it's pretty cool. Looking forward to see how that
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shakes out. Anyways, great podcast. So let's do this.
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All right. So give us a little bit of background on yourself for those who aren't familiar.
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You've got a blog called Hack the System where you write about life hacking, productivity
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hacking, hacking habits. What's your focus on with your website and your work?
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Yeah. Well, the irony is that it's super not focused and that's kind of what happened.
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That's been like my background was always being very, very good at coming up with ideas,
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but being very bad at focusing. And so my background started with this website, Hack the
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System, which involved a multitude of different hacks, unfocused, but pretty good content, in
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my opinion. Things like travel hacking, getting free plane tickets, things like productivity
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hacking, how to get, how to improve your productivity instantly. Social hacking, how to become a famous
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DJ in Berlin. Lots of stuff about breaking into new environments and improving yourself.
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But it was all focused on kind of, the main focus was travel and how to do things with
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yourself, like hack your body while you travel, was the main focus. And I noticed the weird
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thing about it was that the more I traveled, the harder it was to actually focus on anything.
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And that's why we started doing these productivity hacks, which became popular in Hack the System,
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um, trying to identify what makes people and particularly myself become focused. That's
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what, that's what, uh, Hack the System has been about.
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All right. So this, this naturally, uh, brought you, um, to start focusing on habits, like what
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gets people to do good habits and how can you break bad habits? Um, is that, yeah, what
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happened was like, as I was traveling, I was trying to do more, but the irony is that I'm extremely
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ADD. That's, that's obvious it's open. Um, and for someone like me moving to a new city
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and traveling is beautiful, but it's extremely difficult to keep any sort of routine or any
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sort of focus. So, uh, when I started doing these productivity hacks, I started to see what
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would work, what could I do in a new city? What could I do anywhere in the world that regardless
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of where I was would help contain my ADDness and help me execute. Um, my, my most well-known
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example, uh, was when I hired a girl whose job was to sit down next to me. And every
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time I use Facebook, she slapped me in the face. Uh, it's called a why I hired a girl
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off of Craigslist to slap me in the face or something. Um, and I wrote an article about
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this because I tracked my productivity during this time. And usually I'm 28% productive.
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That means 28% of my time is spent in productive apps or on productive websites.
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And I use a website called rescue time, which knows what apps you're in and websites. And
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then it comes up the calculation based on what other users have voted that site to be how
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productive it is. Um, so I noticed that when she was with me, my productivity skyrocketed
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to 98%. And I found it really interesting because the act of having a girl sit down next to me
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and every time I use Facebook, she slapped me in the face was motivational from two different
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aspects. First of all, the fear of the, of the slap motivated me, but also she was kind
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of an accountability buddy. Like when I wanted to write an article, one of my, my assignments was
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to write a guest post for someone. And I asked her to like, Hey, could you look up an image while
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I'm typing out this article? How does this paragraph sound? And I found that by having the fear of,
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of her hitting me, if I was bad and the benefit of having a friend to work on a project with me,
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like an accountability partner, I had managed to skyrocket my productivity as long as she was with
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me. That's awesome. I want to get more into detail about the negative reinforcement here in a bit,
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but based on your research, uh, what does the research say on the best way to form or break
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habits? Sure. Uh, the research has shown that the best way to form habits is, uh, I mean,
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you've made a bunch of posts about it. The Q routine reward system is really powerful for forming good
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habits. I have some side analyses that use more physiological information that I'm happy to talk
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about. It's really interesting. Yeah. I'd love to hear that. Um, yeah. So if you're not familiar
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with like the Charles Duhigg Q routine reward method, I think we should talk, uh, take a second
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and define what a habit is. Okay. Um, a habit is, uh, when a trigger, when something triggers you,
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be it an internal sensation or, uh, like a, or an external trigger, like a notification on your phone,
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when this trigger causes your brain to go into an automatic mode. So for example, as soon as you,
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uh, get into the bathroom in the morning, the trigger of walking into the bathroom causes you
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to reach for your toothpaste and automatically put the toothpaste on and automatically start
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brushing your teeth in almost the same way every day. When your brain experiences this trigger in
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the same context, it goes into this automatic mode where essentially your prefrontal cortex stops
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activating your thought process stops activating. And you just go into this basal ganglia habit motion
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where you just do what you've always done. Um, that's what a habit is. So the research has found
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that the best way to change a habit is by identify or to, I'm sorry, to form a habit is to identify
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what trigger is going to form this habit. And you can, uh, depending on what the habit is,
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it could be a, it should be easy, like a trigger that's automatic in your day. And, uh, and it's very,
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very easy to do the action. So, um, explain that if you want to go to the gym, for example,
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you might make the trigger after I leave my house on my way to work, I will walk by my gym
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because it's already on my path. For example, that trigger of seeing the gym will, will be my trigger.
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Now, the next step is the routine. So the, the, the cue or trigger or reminder are all the same.
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That's just, those are just synonyms. Um, the next step is the routine. So that's the action
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you want to do, uh, the action of exercising at the gym. And then the third step is the reward.
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It often starts off with a external reward. Like if I go to the gym, I'll get a cookie. Or if I go
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to the gym, I'll earn money. And it eventually becomes, and it's most powerful when it's an
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internal reward. I want to go to the gym because I want to feel good. The science, the science has
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shown that if you can identify a trigger that you can constantly do every day, you continue to go,
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and do the routine. And you reward yourself somehow that the habit will after 30, I'm sorry,
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after 20 to 84 days, average 66 days, the habit will become formed in your brain to the point where
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it requires more willpower to not do the action than to do the action. When that happens, then the
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habit is a habit. It's actually become so encompassed in your brain. You can't not do it.
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What role does dopamine play in? Cause I know that that plays a big role in habit form or is,
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does it not, you know, I don't want to answer what I'm not a hundred percent sure about my
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thinking is that dopamine acts as a reward. It acts as a reward pathway. So, uh, when you
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experience like the rush of success, you can activate a dopamine pathway. Yeah. Uh, but I don't
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want to, I don't want to be, I don't want to go there if you're not sure. Okay. Okay. So,
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okay. That's how you form habits, but how do you, what does the research stage on research say on
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breaking habits? Like, what do you do? Sure. And so this is where I differ from the masses.
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Okay. Um, people have shown, I mean, if you read Charles Duhigg's books, you read a lot of books,
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they say continuously, there's only the only way to break a bad habit is to substitute,
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to, to, to, to change the habit. You can never break a habit, but you can change it. So every
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time that you get up to smoke a cigarette, if you start to, the trigger is around 3 PM,
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the action is I go outside and smoke a cigarette. And the reward is the burst of chemicals that,
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uh, of pleasure from the nicotine. Um, if you wanted to change that habit, you would start off
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by identifying the trigger, which is about 3 PM. You would change the routine. So instead of going
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to smoke a cigarette, you might take a walk in the park. Instead, a lot of smokers tend to
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replace it with an oral fixation of eating. So they'll go and eat the sandwich rather than
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smoking the cigarette. And then the reward is whatever the reward is. Uh, if it's for smoking,
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a lot of times the reward is based on the act of, of going out and actually taking a break from work.
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That's the reward. So the walk might satisfy that. Uh, it sometimes is the act of putting something in
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your mouth that eating might satisfy that. Um, so the, the research has said that if you identify
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the trigger, you substitute a routine and you attempt to keep the same reward or a similar reward
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after a while, you'll just start doing the proper action. Now there's another type of conditioning
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that's been shown in scientific textbooks and with animals to work called Pavlovian conditioning.
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And I conjecture that this is the system, the best type of conjunction, the best type of conditioning
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to break bad habits at its source in the, in the, you know, deep recesses of the brain.
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And so this is where my product Pavlov, my company comes from. Um, it's similar to having a girl slap
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you every time you go on Facebook, but instead of it being a girl slapping you, it's just a wristband
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that shocks you every time you go on Facebook. Right. And essentially Pavlovian conditioning, uh,
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for most people, uh, if you're not familiar, it's, uh, from Pavlov, Ivan Pavlov, who had Pavlov's dogs.
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He noticed that when he showed them, uh, meat at the same time as ringing a bell, that they would
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start to associate the idea of the bell with the view, the visual, um, hue of the meat. And they
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would start to salivate. Even if he removed the meat, they would just get ready for lunch. Even when he
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started during the bell, kind of like when your cat, if you like turn on the two, the, the food
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dispenser, the cat rushes over, even if he hasn't seen the tuna, he's associated those two stimuli
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together. What I've, what we found is that if you start to add a negative punishment, a negative
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stimulus, and you add that to the moment you do an action, uh, and this is important. The moment you
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do an action, like you're not, not a little bit later, but instantaneously, your brain will start
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to confuse the signals. And it starts to think that the act of the bad habit is causing the negative
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stimulus. So it starts to stop doing that negative action in the first place. So, um, let's look at a
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good example of this. If you have your mother over you when you're a kid and every time you are trying
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to put the dishes away, she reminds you, Hey, put it away this way. No, that goes there. No, that goes
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there. After a while, you'll start to put it where it's supposed to go because each time it's shaped the
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way you, you make your motion. On the other hand, if you go to Taco Bell, it tastes great tonight.
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It feels horrible tomorrow morning because those are so distant apart, you know, from a human
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rational perspective that the Taco Bell is causing the sickness, but you don't, your brain, your habit
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brain doesn't associate those two. So it won't break the habit. Now, experimentation has been done
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with alcohol and tobacco where they'll associate a shock or a chemical that makes you vomit
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instantly at the moment of the cigarette smoke or the moment of drinking alcohol, you'll begin to
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get sick. And that has extremely, extremely high success rates on breaking the habits of alcoholism
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and tobacco cigarette addiction. Isn't there some sort of like drug to overcome tobacco addiction
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where like it makes you nauseous? I think I have a friend that, that took that. Like he just felt sick
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every time, like he smoked a cigarette, he got sick. And then he just like, he just stopped smoking
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because he's tired of feeling sick. Exactly. Exactly. There's actually a treatment center called
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the Schick Shadel treatment center that does aversion therapy, this kind of therapy. And, uh, they did a
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study where they took a bunch of people who were addicted to cigarette smoking for many years. And, uh,
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they're, they're treating the method is a couple of weeks, a few weeks of, uh, about half an hour or so a
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day. They'll smoke a cigarette, a bunch of cigarettes in a chamber. And every time they put the cigarette to
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their lips, the doctor shocks them every time they, then they'll look at some cigarettes and they'll
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get shocked every time they, uh, and then they'll, they'll essentially train them with this period
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over a period of a few weeks to, uh, administer shocks. And then they actually go home and self
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administer shocks for a few weeks where they'll smoke a cigarette and shock themselves. And the,
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the treatment group had a greater than 50% quitting cigarette smoke at rate after a year. So a year
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later, less than half the people had smoked a second cigarette, which is higher than any form of
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smoking cessation therapy in the world, including, uh, nicotine patches or cold Turkey or meditation,
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nothing at all has been as effective as, uh, as a version therapy for cigarette addiction.
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Very interesting. So, yeah, I mean, that's what's it. So yeah, you're right. Like the literature on
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habit formation, they're always focused on like rewarding yourself, right? Like whenever you read
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a blog post or a book, it's like, you know, go to the gym. And if you go to the gym, you know,
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give yourself a cookie or something like at the end of the week. Um, but you, uh, seem to focus on
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this, this stick aspect of habit formation. I mean, what, why are, why are sticks so effective?
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Right. I mean, I guess it just, it feels bad. I mean, is that what, is that the effectiveness
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of it? Cause it, we don't like feeling bad. So we will do whatever we can to avoid feeling
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bad. Is that the power of the stick? The power of the stick comes from your brain. Essentially it's,
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um, the part of the brain that's ignited when the action occurs. So let me give you an example,
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Brett, um, would you run a marathon today? I would not. If I said, Hey, I have your wife
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and kids and I'll only give them back to you. If you run a marathon today, would you run a
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marathon? I would, I would indeed run a marathon at that point. In fact, if I said something
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as simple as, Hey, Brett, I have $50 of yours and I'll only give it back to you. If you run
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a marathon, you're infinitely more likely to do it for that fear of losing the $50 than, uh,
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than not the fear of missing out the fear of losing what you already have motivates your
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ape brain. The act of potentially winning a reward activates your human brain. The trick
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is to identify how those work and how to best utilize that, that fact to form and break the
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best habits. Um, I'll give you an example from my own life. So I started implementing a system
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to, um, to make me do stuff. And I noticed that I tend to get lost. I tend to use Facebook,
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whatever I get lost in the middle of the day. And I don't even know what I'm doing at some
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point. And I decided to say, I noticed that bets worked really well on me. So if I say,
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I'm not going to eat any cookies today, if I see a cookie, sorry, man, I'm going to eat it.
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If I say, I'm not going to eat any cookies today, or I will give James 50 bucks for every cookie I eat.
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Suddenly the conversation in my brain switches from maybe I can just have one. It changes to,
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I'm not going to pay James 50 bucks for that cookie, right? There's no way. But what's
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interesting is from a willpower perspective, your brain utilizes it in a completely different way.
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When you're having to make a decision, like, should I have a cookie? Should I have a little
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bit? Is it okay? Does it meet my carb goals? You're using up willpower with all of those decisions.
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It's called decision fatigue. When it's, I don't want that cookie because it's not worth 50 bucks
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to me. I don't want to lose it. Then you'll instantaneously just not, it doesn't use willpower.
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So, um, one, one really good example of this is an experiment I ran on myself where I said to myself,
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okay, every day that, uh, I did a one month experiment, um, saying if I finished my three to
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do's each day, I get to give myself this reward, um, which is irrelevant. And then I said, um,
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and I noticed that every single one of the, uh, so if I'm sorry, it was, um, what was it? It was,
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if I do this action every day, uh, if I finished my three to do's, I get to give myself a reward.
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What happened was I got it like twice in the whole month. Then the second month I said,
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if I don't finish my three to do's, I have to pay. It was like $50. It was, if I, if I do three to do's,
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I earned $50 that worth like twice or three times. If I don't finish all my to do's, I have to pay
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$50 and I finished it every single day. It was fascinating. The difference was not, was just a
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name, just a word. It was the difference between me getting $50 versus me giving $50, but the result
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was astronomical. And that had to do with the act of willpower and, uh, and the, and utilizing your
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basal ganglia, you know, your ape brain rather than focusing on rewards. Now, one thing, Brett,
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that's interesting is, um, we found, we've done a lot of research with negative and positive rewards,
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and we, in no way focus on negative reinforcement. We do come across as focusing on negative
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reinforcement. So Pavlok Shoxi, that sounds really negative. Yes, it is. Um, Pavlok also
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rewards you though. So it's, what we found is that negative reinforcement is extremely powerful
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to get you started and get you going. Positive reinforcement is important to make that habit
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stick. If you utilize the two in conjunction, for example, every day I don't go to the gym,
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I get charged $50. But if I go to the gym every day for the week on Friday, I get to give myself
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a massage. Suddenly you're getting negative and positive rewards. And after a while, you'll notice
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that you'll not, you'll never miss the negative it's, or it's very rare that you'll miss a
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negative punishment because you just don't want to suffer the punishment. So you stop thinking about
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it. You're just like, obviously I'm going to go. I hope I can go all five days this week. So I get
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that, uh, I get to get myself a massage and, uh, the negative punishment can actually be removed at
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that point. Then keep the positive or don't, it doesn't matter. The habit has become formed in your
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brain. Yeah, that's really amazing. Um, and I I've, I've noticed this in my own life as well.
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Um, because I think, yeah, the problem, like you said, the problem is as human beings, we have a
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hard time imagining what obtaining whatever reward is would actually be like, right? Like you can think,
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okay, you know, if I do all this work, I can make a million dollars one day, but it's like,
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I did so ethereal that it's like, it's not very motivating because you just forget about it.
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But that loss aversion, right? Studies after say, if you said, have shown like, we are loss
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averse creatures. We'd rather lose, uh, you know, we, we'd rather like, well, there's a study about
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like a coffee mug where like people, like researchers gave people like a chintzy coffee mug. Um, and like
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people got really protective of this chintzy coffee mug. They would do all these things to avoid losing
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this coffee mug. But if they said, Oh, if you do this one thing, you get this coffee mug and people
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like, eh, whatever. I don't, I don't need a coffee mug, but once you have it, like you want to keep
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it. Um, so yeah, I've done that before. Like with writing, if I, I've had like, there's like a, an
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article that I just like, I don't want to do like, I'll, uh, put, you know, money on the line and say,
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if I don't finish it by this time, then I'm going to give this money to such and such person. And man,
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I get it done without fail. So Brett, you and I had a call, a podcast interview a few weeks ago,
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and that podcast interview really like changed what I do. I've been planning to two habits almost
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every single day since we had it. And I started to think a lot about the last few days while I was
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prepping for this interview. Um, so we mentioned on our call flossing and we mentioned on our call
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journaling. And I mentioned that I really wanted to start journaling. I think I added you on the,
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on the Pavlok app and you got a download or something. You reported me as not having journaled.
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And I totally journaled, but, uh, but, um, what happened was interesting because I started to
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focus on that as a habit. And I actually have journaled every single day in the last 40 days,
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with the exception of two since then. And I found it interesting to see how I fit that in because
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it came after our call. Uh, and it was different than the way I added the, the, um, flossing habit.
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So those two were formed, those two habits formed using two different mechanisms that I think are
00:22:22.560
interesting. And I want to tell you them because I think you're like, um, the first one about
00:22:26.540
journaling started off with our call. It was an accountability bet. I will journal, or if I don't,
00:22:33.220
I will be, you know, Brett will see that I promise to send him the picture. And that was motivational
00:22:38.780
because I, because I respect you and I wanted to actually get it done. After that happened, I started
00:22:43.760
to, um, I noticed that I made it very simple. It was just right. One page, very easy. You can't fail
00:22:50.160
a few times. I should show you this a few times. I went, I went out for drinks and I came home at
00:22:54.980
like 1148 one night and I had like totally not journaled. And it was 1148. And I was like out
00:23:00.980
of my mind and I'm like, Oh God, Oh God, I got a journal. And I fell asleep with my journal on my
00:23:05.080
chest and I woke up and it was 1.5 pages. I can't read a single word, but it was done. So at least
00:23:13.580
like the habit was formed. The journal might've sucked, but it was done. Um, so that started off with a
00:23:19.740
negative reinforcement bet with the positive benefit of accountability. Um, and it led to a
00:23:25.440
very clear cut goal that formed over time. The second one, uh, flossing was really interesting
00:23:30.640
because flossing we both know has actually really, really positive benefits, like an average of four
00:23:35.920
to seven extra years of lifespan, causally not, not correlative. It's bizarre. Um, and also what's
00:23:42.240
interesting about it is that we already brush our teeth. Flossing is a natural second step. So what I
00:23:49.200
started to do was I wrote this list right here. It's my morning ritual for the morning. And I wrote
00:23:55.500
down 13 things that I've always wanted to do. And I, and the first one was wake up and, uh, HRV
00:24:01.740
doesn't matter. Second was brush. The third one was floss. And then I stuck this in my bathroom and I
00:24:08.080
got up and I said, all right, for the first few days, I'm just going to try to follow the list,
00:24:11.820
all 13 things, noting that journaling is on the list as well. And what happened was because it was laid
00:24:17.860
out for me in a very automatic plan that required no decision, wake up and just go through the
00:24:23.020
checklist. And because brushing was targeted next to flossing. And then thirdly, because I had a friend
00:24:28.920
who was good at flossing, teach me the secret to easy flossing, which is like, I just flossing was
00:24:36.160
hard to me. I just didn't really know if I was doing it right. And he, he bought me the right
00:24:41.980
contraption that makes flossing easy. And now suddenly dude, I floss like twice a day. I feel that weird
00:24:47.700
feeling where I need to get that like piece of something left in my, uh, left out. Uh, and also
00:24:53.600
I managed to do like all 13 of these habits at the same time by chunking, which is a technique that I
00:24:58.440
don't think enough people ever do with their habits. Um, morning routines are really good
00:25:02.400
examples of chunking. You can, I formed four habits I've been working for working on for a year
00:25:07.400
at the same time, because I actually only formed one habit, the habit of doing this list.
00:25:13.200
And because one of them is journaling, you know, there's a bunch of things I wanted to do.
00:25:16.520
So I've managed to incorporate all of that into one chunked habit, uh, starting off with the pain
00:25:22.320
of losing money. If I didn't do all of them and ending up with the positive of just internal
00:25:26.800
feeling being great. That's awesome. That's really cool. So let's, let's talk a little
00:25:30.920
more about that. Let's talk about Pavlok. Cause it's like this, that's what it Pavlok gets a lot
00:25:34.800
of attention. All right. You guys were on the Colberry pour. Uh, it's cause it's a, it's a device
00:25:39.980
you wear around your wrist, sort of like a fitness tracker. Um, and it shocks you, um, if you don't
00:25:47.500
do something that you're supposed to do. Right. Um, and so there's that whole idea, like if you
00:25:53.060
don't journal, so like, how does that work? I mean, so how does it know if you haven't done your
00:25:57.860
things? Do you have to have an account? Is there like an app with it? Like where you have an
00:26:00.900
accountability partner? How does that work? Sure. Um, so for Pavlok, what we found is that
00:26:06.140
operant conditioning or rewards and punishment are extremely powerful for forming new habits.
00:26:12.020
Pavlovian conditioning is extremely powerful for breaking bad habits. So they, it works in two
00:26:16.980
different ways. It kind of tangents with it. Let's, let's know. So what you, what you just
00:26:20.320
mentioned about, um, about, uh, about forming a new habit about, uh, it might shock you if you do
00:26:25.900
something, but if you don't do something good, what this does is it allows you to form a new habit
00:26:30.560
by committing to do something. Anything that's measurable is a really good use case. Like
00:26:35.600
GPS, if you want to go to the gym or 10,000 steps tracked by your wristband or, um, going like
00:26:43.100
writing a thousand words in, in a, in an app each day or, uh, going through a Duolingo class each day.
00:26:50.720
All of those are very trackable habits. So what we do is we have an open API that lets you commit to
00:26:55.380
doing something. If you do it on time, you earn a reward. Uh, it can be points. It can be money. It can
00:27:02.120
be, um, gift cards. If you don't do it, you're charged a larger, a larger penalty. So you might
00:27:08.440
say every day I don't go to the gym, I lose 10 bucks. Every day I do go to the gym, I earn 25 or
00:27:13.620
50 cents. And if I go to the gym for 30 days, I earn a big bonus. Um, and what we found is that the
00:27:20.000
fear of losing money really gets people to get there. The act of making it, uh, the act of adding
00:27:26.220
rewards makes them stick now. Uh, so that, uh, the, uh, the penalties can range. So the first thing
00:27:32.000
we said was money. Another penalty might be a post on your Facebook wall. A third one might be that it
00:27:36.600
lets your friends shock you from across the internet and the fear of the shock might get you there or
00:27:41.780
help helps reinforce you getting there. The fear of the shock is more powerful than the shock. And this
00:27:47.240
is negative reinforcement. Taking away a negative thing is negative reinforcement. On the other hand,
00:27:56.200
if we're trying to break bad habits, we use positive punishment, which is the act of adding
00:28:01.860
something negative to the task that you don't want to do. And this is classical, uh, Pavlovian
00:28:07.100
conditioning. So every time I open my refrigerator door, it beeps and shocks me. Every time I go on
00:28:14.340
Facebook, it shocks me. Uh, every time I open up 10 tabs, it vibrates 11 tabs. It beeps 12 tabs. It
00:28:21.020
shocks me. And what happens is because we've added this instantaneous negative stimulus to an action
00:28:25.980
that's trackable and measurable. And I don't want to do anymore. My brain at the beginning gets a
00:28:31.020
little annoyed and pissed off. Like every time I'm biting my nails, it's vibrating and beeping in the
00:28:34.580
chalking, right? Every time I'm doing that, it's getting annoying. But after a while, it's so annoyed
00:28:38.500
that it just stops thinking about doing it at all. When the punishment continuously is occurring,
00:28:46.480
your brain stops thinking about doing it at all. Let me clean that up because that's a really
00:28:52.880
important point. Um, I measured my Facebook usage and my Facebook usage is very, I never go to
00:29:01.640
Facebook. I always find myself on Facebook. You know, I like, I just sit down and my brain just
00:29:08.100
moves me to like, I open tab F enter something chatting. What we're trying to do is reverse
00:29:14.080
that in the brain. So every time I opened up Facebook for about a week and a half, the wristband
00:29:18.780
shocked me instantly. It just shocked me and stuff. Every minute I was on it, there was shocking again
00:29:22.920
and it became annoying. So I, at the beginning, I got shocked over and over again, over and over
00:29:26.900
again. Then I started to go off a little less than less because I'd remember it. I'll, I'll use it
00:29:31.160
later. But then a week later I took a trip and I went to California and I checked my Facebook and I
00:29:37.900
realized I hadn't logged in in like three days. That's unheard of for me. What had happened is my brain was
00:29:43.600
so used to being shocked when it checked Facebook that it just stopped thinking about ever going to
00:29:51.060
Facebook again. You start at, so does that make sense? Yeah. You don't even like think you don't
00:29:57.400
obsess about, cause I think that's one problem that a lot of people have when they're trying to break a
00:30:00.780
bad habit is that you try to, it becomes the white elephant, right? It's like the, like even when you're
00:30:05.780
trying not to do it, like you think about it because you're trying not to do it. Um, and, but so you
00:30:10.920
end up doing it, like you become obsessed with it. And that's the decision fatigue too. The act
00:30:15.220
of thinking about not doing it is using up your willpower reserves and it makes it harder each
00:30:20.260
time to resist doing it. It's like, uh, it just, you're like the more often you have to think about
00:30:26.200
it and say no, the more often you're likely later on in the day to do it. Um, this is a side note,
00:30:32.960
really interesting for, uh, for, uh, for tricking yourself into not doing something or doing something.
00:30:38.660
They did a bunch of studies where they asked people to like eat gummy bears or not eat gummy
00:30:42.320
bears when they were just left out on the table. And, um, what they found was that if the person
00:30:46.740
made the decision to eat the gummy bear, it used up willpower. If they made the decision to not eat
00:30:51.720
the gummy bear, it used up willpower. The only time it did not use up willpower was when they said,
00:30:56.880
ah, I will eat it later. What they had done was close a loop in their brain where they said,
00:31:02.900
I'm allowed to eat that. I don't have to not eat it, but I'll just eat it later.
00:31:07.720
It closes the white elephant loop in your brain. So if you ever have anything that you're thinking
00:31:11.820
about that, you just can't stop thinking about, and, uh, you're trying to quit and you're just
00:31:16.980
like feeling like you're about to give in one secret is just to tell yourself, I'll do it later.
00:31:20.420
It's okay. I can have it later. Just not right now. And your brain will stop thinking about it.
00:31:24.000
Yeah. That's really interesting. So, so there's, um, so with the Pavlov, there's, there's shocking,
00:31:27.920
um, beating vibrations, there's the money aspect. And I guess that works with an app,
00:31:32.960
right? So you sign up on it with an account and, um, you know, you can connect it to something or
00:31:39.280
other word. Yeah, actually we have a, what we realized is for the operant conditioning,
00:31:43.100
uh, the forming new habits angle, the wristband is really, really, really, uh, it's a, it's a great
00:31:49.660
next step and it's really effective, but it's not necessary. Um, breaking bad habits. You need the
00:31:55.200
wristband. It's important because you need that instantaneous feedback forming new habits. You can make the
00:31:59.120
penalties, things like posting on your Facebook wall or, uh, losing money. And so we're trying to,
00:32:04.000
we're about to re releasing the app early. Even if you don't have the wristband, you'll be able to
00:32:09.320
use it to get accountability partners and form new habits. Um, I'm going to see if I can make a page
00:32:14.180
for you guys that like, uh, it'll be padlock.com forward slash AOM. And, um, I'll try to get an early
00:32:20.780
access app to as many people as I can. That'd be awesome. That'd be really cool. And then I think,
00:32:25.180
I think what's really interesting is that, that sort of, it's like that public shaming aspect
00:32:29.420
of Pavlok where like it posts to your Facebook that you didn't go to the gym. Uh, how effective
00:32:35.940
is public shaming to getting you to do what you want to do or supposed to do?
00:32:41.920
This is a crack me up yesterday on the Colbert report when we have this three minute segment and
00:32:46.100
he tells about a shocking and people in the audience were like, Oh, and then he talks about
00:32:50.620
like a charge of you money. And they're like, Oh, and then he said, and then it posts on your
00:32:54.980
Facebook wall and the crowd erupts in laughter. And like, I'm like, really, is that what motivates
00:33:00.080
you people more than anything? Apparently different people are motivated by different
00:33:04.160
things. In our own research, we found that, uh, men are more motivated by money and women
00:33:10.960
are more motivated by, um, accountability of being seen for their failure. But I think at
00:33:16.880
its core, it's the idea of people knowing that you said you're going to do something and
00:33:23.660
you didn't do something that can be very, very motivational. I honestly believe that
00:33:29.060
teams or a single accountability partner are more effective than a generalized Facebook
00:33:34.360
posting. That said, it's posted on my Facebook wall three times. And dude, the comments are
00:33:39.980
just like, so, ah, like they jump on me. Like, you should be, I'm like, I'm testing the app,
00:33:48.800
That's really funny. So yeah, like, uh, that, that, the fear of being known as a failure
00:33:55.300
at your goals, it can get you to do what you're supposed to do.
00:33:59.540
And this is like the, one of the most depressing things about, about people who are trying to do
00:34:03.920
something new is a lot of research shows that when they talk to other people about what they're
00:34:08.340
doing in their brain, it's actually closing the loop on the reward. It's like the act of telling
00:34:13.820
somebody that they are going to do something. The person's like, Oh, that's awesome. You totally
00:34:18.080
should. They are like, that is awesome. I'm going to go smoke a bunch of pot now. Like it,
00:34:23.120
it doesn't, it doesn't actually make them, uh, do the, it doesn't actually make them clean up and
00:34:28.480
finish up the loop. But being a motivation is a very, uh, precarious slope because it disappears
00:34:34.620
quickly. Uh, what I've tried to do is identify that when you, instead of relying on motivation and
00:34:41.260
willpower to form a new habit or make a new behavior, if you rely on using that motivation and
00:34:47.360
willpower to create the system that won't let you fail that system that won't let you fail.
00:34:53.480
I think that the accountability aspect of, uh, posting your Facebook wall, for instance,
00:34:57.800
is extremely powerful there because you're continuously reminded when you fail.
00:35:01.660
Yeah. If you focused all of your motivation and willpower on that, on, on, uh, sometimes it's not
00:35:07.740
even that hard. It's just pressing the button in the Pavlok app, you know, I commit. Um, or,
00:35:11.980
but for some people it's about finding the accountability partner, then you've suddenly created,
00:35:15.960
uh, you've actually used your willpower effectively and that's the correct way to process a new
00:35:21.700
behavior. Gotcha. Well, that's really cool. Um, so I, I, our time is running up. Um, and yeah,
00:35:27.640
I would love if you can create like a link for our listeners to check out, get an early access
00:35:31.500
to the app. That'd be awesome. Uh, but besides, you know, downloading Pavlok, um, what can, I mean,
00:35:36.900
we've kind of hit on some really great tips that guys can start using today to start making and
00:35:42.220
breaking habits, but if there's like one or two things you would recommend guys do start doing
00:35:47.200
today to, uh, form or break bad habits, what would that, what would those be? Sure. I mean,
00:35:51.980
honestly, man, I want everyone who's watched this podcast to just think about themselves.
00:35:56.200
What's something they know they could do that they know they should and could, but just haven't
00:35:59.980
been. And I want them to tell their friend or loved one, dude, I'll give you 10 bucks tomorrow.
00:36:05.160
If I don't do this act and just watch what happens. It's actually freaking fascinating.
00:36:11.640
Your brain, it's, you're going to wake up tomorrow and all you're going to do is think
00:36:14.820
about, Oh, I just got to do that. I got to do that. I got to do that. I got to do that.
00:36:17.520
I got to freaking do that. And you'll do it. And then you'll be like, Oh, I did it. And
00:36:23.360
that's it. And you'll be like, Oh, and then you'll probably forget about it and be like,
00:36:26.380
Oh, I'm going to go back to my old lifestyle. But then if they started to make that bet more
00:36:30.120
constant, in fact, pre-organizing and pre-engineering a second bet or a week of bets,
00:36:34.920
or three weeks or four weeks of bets, they'll find that after a while, it'll become such
00:36:39.580
a habit that they can't not do it. And, um, the beauty of these things, man, the beauty
00:36:43.980
of habits is that you are what you repeatedly do. And if you take a single person who for
00:36:49.520
the net for one year, his habit of after he comes home, he watches TV and you take a second
00:36:53.860
person whose habit is after he comes home, he writes two pages to a novel. If you look at
00:36:58.460
them a year from today, the first person will have watched every episode of friends once.
00:37:02.320
And the second person will have written a novel of 700 page length and the difference
00:37:07.000
in there. But the interesting part is that neither of them use more willpower than the
00:37:12.340
other person. The first person had the habit of TV. The second person had the habit of writing,
00:37:18.440
but the person they become is astronomical. So starting small, make a bet, see what happens.
00:37:24.460
Um, as for, um, for Pavlok though, we also have an Indiegogo campaign going, I believe right now,
00:37:29.920
if you head over to Pavlok.com, you'll be able to see it and Pavlok.com forward slash AOM. I'll put
00:37:36.000
a bunch of links and resources and an ebook for everybody to read. Awesome. Well, Manish Sethi,
00:37:40.140
thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Sure, man. I can't wait to, uh,
00:37:43.800
to shock you across the internet. Yeah, I know. I'm, I've, I've, I've got one pre-order and I'm
00:37:47.380
looking forward to checking it out. All right. Thanks a lot. All right. Thanks, man.
00:37:50.660
Our guest today was Manish Sethi. He is the founder of Pavlok and you can find out more
00:37:55.840
information about, about Pavlok at AOM.IS slash Pavlok, P-A-V-L-O-K. That's AOM.IS slash Pavlok,
00:38:06.420
P-A-V-L-O-K. And also make sure to check out Manish's blog at Hack the System. Uh, some
00:38:12.580
interesting content there as well. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness
00:38:20.040
Podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website
00:38:23.980
at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the podcast, again, I'd really appreciate it. If
00:38:28.800
you'd go on to iTunes or Stitcher or whatever else it is you use to listen to the podcast,
00:38:33.880
give us a rating. Uh, that would really appreciate that and help us out a lot. And until next time,