Hey guys and welcome to another episode of Change Wired Podcast, the podcast for leaders, creators, change agents and everyday superheroes, reshaping how we change to grow continuously, work impactfully and lead to the better future. I'm your host, angela Sharina, your executive coach, transformation transition guide, change leadership and culture transformation consultant and strategist, and here sharing my passion and the best tools strategies, research, applied research to help you, help myself, help the world rewire for change. One mindset, one habit at a time, and today we are talking about habits. Guys, by the end of today's episode, you're going to get three habit building amplifiers so you could get out there and do work on multiple goals at a time in your already, I'm sure, overwhelming and over busy life. The question of today is how do you work on many goals Personal, career and business, growth and fitness relationship All at once Without being or feeling overwhelmed and like your heart is just about to blow up? How do you make achieving multiple milestones in multiple areas simple and not overwhelming and doesn't feel like a lot of work or doesn't feel like you are every day just working so hard that by the time you go to bed, you feel like you can't really continue like this and you are getting yourself to the burnout sooner than later. So today, guys, I'm going to share with you science that much smarter scientists than myself developed. And Graybiel from MIT, bj Falk from Stanford, gabrielle Oitinjin from New York University and University of Hamburg All these amazing scientists, researchers, did the work, spent decades of their life, to help us figure out how habits work. Yes, we're going to talk about habits how to build them better, simpler, in a non-overwhelming way, so we could get out there and work on multiple goals, as we humans kind of have to.
You do have your career or business. You do have your personal development and growth. You do have your fitness and health and relationship and other people, and you kind of we can't just quit something completely or not have some sort of success in one of the areas, or completely again, just disregard and don't look into some areas while working on others, and when we do, it doesn't end up to good life. So how do we work on multiple things when life is already too busy and overwhelming? That's the question we are answering today. So how do you work on all of the things all at once? In one word, guys habits. One habit at a time. You probably guessed already, but the point of today's podcast is give you three tools just three tools which make habit formation faster, easier, simpler and sense-backed.
Speaker 1You might be juggling a full-time job or running a business, raising a family, taking a ride, trying to make your toddler behave or maybe your toddler slash spouse as well and still trying to squeeze in fitness, personal growth and development. Some reading, learning about AI Is it all possible, or should you just focus on only one thing at a time? Well, in the ideal world, yes, you would focus on only one thing at a time. Then the chance for you succeeding and really making a difference in that area would be really, really high. But sometimes you can't just work on one thing and you kind of again have to take care of multiple areas and be okay with you never going to have your life where you have all of the time, all of the resources and all the brain and mental space to just dedicate yourself entirely to one pursuit.
Speaker 1A lot of clients, when they come to me, they're like Angela. At first I tried to wait till I have time for myself, for my personal growth, for my fitness, for my self-development, for my health, for working on my recovery and sleep and stress management, and then I realized that it's been years and I still haven't done anything. Because, you know, life just always gets busy and my work on recovery and learning how to have more energy just always pushed somewhere at the back of my schedule because other things just more urgent. You know other people's requirements or expectations of us, and then I don't know, you have work to do, you have family to take care of, so all of that stuff and then they come to me and I come to you because I need a system, I need an accountability, I need some schedule and I need to work on this in a sustainable way, one small thing at a time. So teach me how to do it simpler, in a non-overwhelming, sustainable way. And so today I'm going to share with you some of this toolkit that I learned getting certified as a coach, getting into the field and working with other people and reading research, but again, people much smarter than myself who dedicated decades and still dedicated decades of their life to pursuit of these tools, so then we could enjoy the results and do things simpler and better, saving ourselves time and a lot of headache.
So, habits it doesn't have to be overwhelming to achieve multiple things, yes, all at once when we use our brain's built-in shortcut, fine-tuned by evolution, and it's called habits. So let me give you an official definition of habits in the brain. Those are automatic behaviors resulting from the strengthening of neural pathways. So actual stuff is getting guys changed in your brain when you form habits, particularly within the. There is this area in the brain, basal ganglia, which you don't need to know about. Through repeated actions and reinforcement. These behaviors are triggered by specific cues. Those are things, guys, that sort of give your brain a signal like push of a button to start an app. These things give your brain a signal that hey, you need to start this habit. So habits depend on cues or triggers or reminders in our environment and executed with minimum conscious thought, becoming increasingly ingrained with repetition, habits develop as the brain shifts from relying on conscious decision-making to relying on established routines. And that's, guys, what you want to understand why habits are so powerful. They are your original automation software in your brain, no Zapier required, and they actually live in different brain areas or specifically, they go through different loops and pathways in your brain.
Speaker 1So habitual stuff doesn't require your decision-making. That is where your brain spends most of its energy. So decision-making conscious decision-making is very costly and that what overwhelms your brain when done excessively. So, in example, if you make decisions about every meal and they say people make like 200 to 300 food decisions that is when they don't use automation that is building in your brain. So people make 200 to 300 food, food decisions, and guess how much is left for work, for relationships, for personal growth, for business development? A lot, lot less. I don't know how much less, but less. And compare that to when you outsource that decision-making that on average people do two to three hundred times a day to the automation part of your brain which is in charge of habits and you define in advance the choices you're going to make about food.
Speaker 1Like, for example, from now on, I'm going to have for breakfast three eggs, some fish or some other protein, whichever protein I find, and a couple of pieces of fruit. Or you are traveling and you have your breakfast on the airplane, at the airport or in some hotel or at the conference. This is what I'm going to choose, right, because it's super simple. Eggs are available almost everywhere and I can find some fruit, even if it's two bananas anywhere, and that's what I'm going to do from now on. And so the cue or the trigger for that behavior is obviously your morning when you decide to have your food. So hunger is your natural cue. It doesn't have to be something in your environment. You are going to eat something at specific times of the day and then. So that is your cue, and then the procedure is to have your eggs and a couple of pieces of fruit and then feel good about the behavior which, also with food, comes naturally.
Speaker 1It's just your satisfaction from having a meal and also probably satisfaction for taking care of yourself if you decide to make better choices of food which are nourishing and promote your well-being and good health. So that is an example of automated behavior or a habit which does not require you making any decisions. So when you automate all of the food decisions, you make close to zero decisions every single day and you just have your food and you can save those two to three hundred decisions on something better, something more meaningful besides food. So that is an example how you use automation capability of your brain versus the most resource demanding decision-making power which ideally, again, you want to reserve for things for circumstances where it's unpredictable and you have to make decision on the fly and you have to evaluate many options. And, by the way, guys, there is such thing as decision fatigue.
Speaker 1So when you sort of exhaust your mental capacity to make decisions, your brain starts relying on automatic responses, shortcuts, biases, your previous beliefs versus thinking through the situation. And why it's bad is because automatic responses are not adaptable. So if you are presented with a novel situation but your brain applies some shortcut, it doesn't always work Because the situation like we have now all this AI. It requires new thinking because the situation has never been done before like this. And when you start relying on all the shortcuts and biases because you spent your decision-making power on your food choices, what's going to happen is you're not going to make any good choices, you're not going to be that adaptable, you're not going to be seizing the opportunities, and what's going to happen over time is you're going to get a lot more suboptimal future outcomes. That's how we get at scale companies repeating the same stuff, giving the same responses to the market, and then the market adjusts and moves on. Customers move on as well with the competitor, because the company just stayed with the status quo. So that is just one example of implication.
Speaker 1But what you want to understand is you want to automate as much of stuff which is non-essential, like your food, meaning non-essential develop some good routine and stick with it. Making 200 to 300 decisions is not necessary. It's actually quite dumb from the perspective of using your brain energy, which is limited on something trivial again, which does not need to be decided upon every time, and you'll do a lot better when you automate good enough choices in that case. So want to pursue multiple goals at once. And now you know how it is important to actually habituate a lot of non-essential choices or non-novel choices.
Now let's talk about the tools. So first you want to understand that any habit, like your automation software, has to have a cue or a trigger. It's like, again, that push of a button, what's in your environment, in your routine, like your hunger, going to remind you to do the behavior, so it jump starts, just like an application on your phone would the behavior. So it jumpstarts, just like an application on your phone would. Then you have the behavior. So let's say, having breakfast. Then you have your reward structure and that reward structure is whether that's internal reward, like you have your hunger satisfied, or giving yourself a feeling of accomplishment, of progress, pointing your focus, your attention to that accomplishment. The most important thing is to acknowledge internally, acknowledge the positive progress towards some objective that you find meaningful and rewarding. So that is how habit works, how automation in your brain works A cue, a trigger, then the behavior that is repeated and then the reward that is ideally also repeated or gets bigger or unpredictable, but there is some reward. So that's the wiring diagram for your brain's automation system. So examples, a few examples.
Speaker 1You want to lose weight and eat healthier? Stop thinking, start automating. What it means is set your rule for your meals Three meals a day. Design a simple structure half a plate vegetables. One quarter of a plate carbohydrates like potatoes I don't know sweet potatoes quarter of a plate protein, like fish, meat, eggs. You know, start simple and you can then adjust this habit, this structure to wherever you go, whether that's home, airport lunch or you do your grocery shopping. Focus on this ratio of protein, vegetables, whole food, carbohydrates and just have three meals a day. You know, when I coach nutrition, I always coach this process of simplify stuff. Eat three times a day, not because it's magic, but because it's simple and it makes sense. And decide what are the food groups and how it looks on your plate and even when you go to a restaurant where you don't know the choices, you can still do the same. Half of my plate is it covered in vegetables Quarter? Is it protein? Half of my plate is it covered in vegetables Quarter? Is it protein Quarter? Is it some sort of starchy carbohydrate? Want to learn AI? And again, for meal, for eating habits the trigger is your natural hunger. You have breakfast, you have lunch, you have dinner. You don't need additional reminders for that.
Speaker 1And then let's talk about AI. Want to learn AI how to use it well in your career, in your business? Hey, decide on a 30-minute block like 30, you know it can be 20, 10, whatever and put it in your calendar, make it habitual. But that's not enough. What you want to do is create some sort of natural trigger, like, for example, every time when I finish my dinner, I'm going to sit down and do 20 or 30 minutes of AI learning, and you usually would have dinner. Or, if it's not appropriate, let's say you're traveling or you're on a conference and you're having dinner with other people. So then you say, when I get to my hotel room before taking shower, I'm going to do 20 minutes of AI learning and automate that and forget it. Right, obviously, you have the course, you have clarity around what exactly you're going to learn and how you're going to learn it. So all the resources are available and then just repeat, repeat, repeat to automate that behavior.
So again, we have here Q, the actual behavior, which needs to be clear, or what you're going to learn, how you're going to learn it, where you're going to learn it, and then give yourself a sense of accomplishment, maybe even track progress in some app or on your calendar or in some notepad. But first and foremost, right at the end of this learning bout, you congratulate yourself like high five, angela, this learning about you. Congratulate yourself like high five, angela. I've done it again, another day on learning AI. Right, the most important part for automation and we're going to talk about that in a minute is making yourself feel good about the behavior that you finish. It's like kind of like tattooing new behavior in your brain, and again we're going to talk about how it works right now.
Speaker 1So let's start with this actually Habits on fire, how to accelerate based on our understanding of how the brain and reward system works, how the dopamine works, how to accelerate habit formation. Well, basically, one of the purposes of the dopamine is to make sure that the rewarding behavior gets repeated, so you keep getting the reward you are getting. And so every time you accomplish something and you feel good about that, dopamine is released and what happens is that habit. That's how drugs can become a habit after one single use, because of the dopamine spike. So every time you have a good feeling and you can create that feeling acknowledging your progress every time you have a good feeling, dopamine is released and it wires that behavior in your brain, physically strengthening connections between your neurons. It strengthens that pathway, this habitual automation pathway, and you form habits a lot, lot quicker. So that's why make yourself feel good, and it has to be right away. You have like about 20 second window to associate the behavior with the reward. So make yourself good with some power, move right away. So this is a habit formation hack, or automation hack number one make yourself feel good right after behavior.
Speaker 1So the next one is how do you actually create these programs that you're going to try to automate? And that's where implementation intention or if-then plans work really, really well. So what you want to do, for example, for food in AI learning, you would tell yourself out loud or out loud always works better out loud. Or to yourself when I finish dinner, I'll do 30 minutes of ai learning and you repeat it and you imagine it. When I finish dinner, I'll do 30 minutes of ai learning.
Speaker 1So this is the sort of pre-writing, your automation sequence. Write them like recipes in your brain and follow them like rituals. So this is this repetition. After I finish dinner or before I take my shower, I'm gonna do my ai learning with a lot of my clients. When we work in our fitness, we create recipes like after I brush my teeth, before I take my shower, I'm gonna do to do 15 push-ups. Or right before I have my breakfast, I'm going to do 15 jump squats or jumping jacks. So you write those routines. Or right before I start my workday, I'm going to check in with these members of my team to make sure they have everything they need to succeed. And that's how you wire in a new leadership behavior as well.
Speaker 1So if-then plans or implementation intentions. That's how, in research, they made people show up more for voting. That's how they make people do anything really. They literally researchers ask people and people in the field who use behavior science and science that talks to habit formation. So they ask people to tell when, how they're going to perform the desired behavior. I think they would call people up and ask, hey, you signed up to vote, so when are you going to do that? How are you going to do it? And people then say, okay, I'm going to come and vote on that day at that time and I'm going to take a subway to get there. And what researchers found is that follow through on that increased a lot by again just when you ask people to restate when they're going to do the desired behavior. So that's implementation intention or even then plans in action. That's how you create programs of automation in advance to actually make them happen when I don't know, you need to have your breakfast, learn AI or do your push-ups or get people voting.
Speaker 1The second well, actually the third one, because we already talked about dopamine and making you feel good. So the third one is WHOOP method W-O-O-P which stands for Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan. So this is the next step. From Even Plans Wish, you state what you want to do, like I want to learn AI Outcome. Why is it you're doing that? We humans are reward-driven creatures and why is that reward? Explanation on what's in it for me on the other side. So I want to learn AI to future-proof my career or to get more career or business opportunities right. So that is the outcome.
Speaker 1Obstacle when I get home late or miss dinner, I'll study right after shower. Or, in terms of breakfast, when I don't have eggs, I'm going to have a piece of meat that I find, whatever works. Or when I don't have the opportunity to check in with my team because I'm traveling or on vacation, I'm either going to delegate it to Mary I don't know who Mary is that might do that responsibility or I'm going to Zoom, call them or WhatsApp or whatever the method the technology is. The WHOOP method is designed to to help you overcome obstacles, because obviously life is not perfect and there are going to be obstacles, whether that's external obstacles or internal. Like, let's say, on the mornings, when I wake up and I'm feeling extremely hungry and not feeling like I'm going to have my eggs, I'm going to go for a walk or call my friend to talk me back into my nutrition routine, or I'm going to call my coach, Angela, so she helps me to get back to my motivation, or I'm going to ask my spouse to keep me accountable, whatever that is, but you troubleshoot the obstacle in advance and you pre-plan your response. So again on the morning, when I feel like that, I'm going to do X. So then I still get to eat healthy or learn AI, or check in with my team and I get to my desired outcome becoming a badass leader, getting my six-pack abs or becoming an AI front runner, increasing my job and business opportunities.
And here you go, guys. But before we sum it up and give you the formula for automation software in your brain, so you get reach multiple goals all at once, guys, don't forget to share this podcast episode with at least one other person who absolutely needs to nail. Working on multiple things without overwhelm and burning out and feeling like they're about to collapse every day. Who do you want to be able to handle more with ease? Maybe your team, maybe your spouse, maybe your kids? So help them by sharing this podcast and these tools and then learning them and practicing them together. Social learning is learning on fire. A lot of dopamine is released as well as oxytocin. That actually helps you to learn. But besides that, share rate review, we don't run any ads, but working on changing the world one pair of ears at a time. So let's do it together.
Speaker 1And then, to sum it up, guys, you want to automate a lot of things in your life because that requires a tiny fraction of your mental resources instead of your most energy-hungry part of the brain, prefrontal cortex, when it does conscious decision-making. So you want to automate as much of non-essential stuff as possible. So A also in terms of stress, your brain relies on automatic responses. So the more good stuff healthy meals you can automate, the more you're going to do, even under pressure. So that's one. The second thing you're going to save energy as you go. So you have more brain's capacity to deal with novel things, actually engaging your thinking muscle versus doing knee-jerk reaction or automatic responses that might not necessarily work well for you in this novel situation, like AI adoption, rollout, making new strategic and business decisions or dealing with AI and kids in this new environment right? So working on multiple goals without overwhelm, making better decisions, not feeling fatigue like all of this you get from using automation software of your brain.
Speaker 1Well, and there are three methods that are developed by great scientists from MIT, stanford and New York slash Hamburg universities that can help you to become a badass at automation with your brain Number one, implementation intentions or if-then plans. Whenever you want to create automation faster, repeat to yourself when I finish dinner, I'll do 30 minutes of BI learning, or whatever that recipe is, and repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. So in the actual situation, you do this a lot more and faster and you form automations a lot again faster. Then the second one is whoop method wish outcome obstacle plan, which allows you to deal with life and using still automation when life gets unpredictable and you have less than optimal circumstances, like you get too busy or you don't have eggs or you can't check in with your team. So you're going to use whoop method, which is you state to yourself what you want to do and why I want to learn AI to future-proof my career. And then the obstacle when I don't have time for a 30-minute bout of learning. I'm going to do five minutes after I finish my dinner, no matter what, and I'm going to do that by opening my chat GPT and using the plan that it created for me. So that's an example, right?
Speaker 1So the second one is whoop method to deal with challenges of life. And the third one, to get your automation on fire is using your dopamine system, and that means celebrating your progress, your wins, every time you do the automation successfully. So implementation intentions, even then plans, a whoop method for when life gets challenging and to set to tattoo at speed your new automations or habits. Use dopamine, aka get yourself feel good about habits, so want to grow in multiple areas in life and business and fitness and would help others do the same. This is how you do it. Thank you for learning, thank you for tuning in, thank you for your attention, guys, and until next time, put all of this in practice. After we finish this podcast episode, review it in your head that how you learn and remember better and faster again, based on neuroscience research for learning and memory formation. So do that and then continue with your day. Keep learning, improving, changing and keep growing.