The success I am seeing so far in breaking my procrastination habit comes mainly from picking up on the cue and using it to trigger a new behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n
In Duhigg’s book, the “cue” is the signal that sets off a craving, leading in turn to the habitual behavior, which is closely followed by the “reward”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The cue can be the donut box in the teacher’s lounge that sets me on a path to eating pure sugar and fat when, a moment before I walked in, I was not even hungry. It could be a rising stress level that sends someone chewing fingernails. Or a whiff of cigarette smoke that brings a craving for a cigarette break.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In this case, my cue for a new habit is the internal debate I have at the sight of some small chore: Do I take care of it now, or do it later? Perhaps my tendency to favor “later” has been a desire to be free of responsibilities, and the reward is a short-termed freedom from external demands.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It may sound weird, but avoiding a chore has a micro vacation vibe of sorts.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Duhigg says bad habits cannot really be broken; they need to be replaced. So now when that cue comes up and I hear the internal debate start, I choose a different path and think, “Why not do it now?” If I am not in a hurry (and I rarely am), I take care of the task immediately.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I am succeeding because even though the reward is different, it is actually a more powerful and attractive reward – instead of getting a micro vacation, I get to feel good about myself. I tell myself, “I am the kind of person who takes care of things in the present.”<\/p>\n\n\n
And it is working.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The success I am seeing so far in breaking my procrastination habit comes mainly from picking up on the cue and using it to trigger a new behavior. In Duhigg’s book, the “cue” is the signal that sets off a craving, leading in turn to the habitual behavior, which is closely followed by the “reward”.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8681,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680\/revisions\/8681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}