Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith - A mini-summary
Habit formation and behaviour changes are a tricky topic of interest for me. I am fascinated to be a student of latticework mental models from various disciplines advocated by Charlie Munger. As a first step, I started reading pop psychology and sift through behavioural economics topics.
It is tricky because all are heavy in concept and theory. Charles Duhigg’s Power of Habit is an excellent source in understanding the habit formation and ideas behind it. Sadly, when I try to implement it, I am clueless on how to benefit out of it. Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith expands the idea from Charles Duhigg’s in a pragmatic and easily implementable approach. It is an excellent resource for that helped me understand the following:
Environment
Impact and influence of environment in our habits are enormous, and we are ignorant about it. Like Steve Pressfield’s "resistance” it conspires against you and derails you.
But there few techniques that Marshall suggests in managing and taming the environment
Structure
Contrary to popular belief, a very well-structured day is very liberating. Marshall argues that a structure can help you tame the environment and ease the way to get discipline out of oneself.
"Having at least two 25-mins Pomodoro sprint in a day to handle major problems” is an example of a structure.
Another example could be “15 mins daily standup meeting with your team” or “Monthly review of your projects and goals.”
“Answering your daily active questions” is the bare minimum structure that the author advocates us to have.
Daily Active Questions
It is the most exciting and insightful learning from the book.
The purpose of these questions is to: Highlight and value the effort put to change a habit. Not the actual change of the habit.
What is an active question? Instead of asking “Did you exercise today?” frame the question as “Did I try my best to improve my health?”. The importance is on the big picture of health. So even you didn’t exercise on that day, you would have climbed the stairs or walked a few blocks.
By answering this question every day on a scale of 1 to 10, you slowly increase the awareness about health. Like a compounding effect, this will impact any habit formation like running 2 miles a day or lifting weights at least three times a week.
Awareness and Engagement
The author uses the tool, daily active questions, to mainly increase our awareness and our engagement with the environment and ourselves.
Our willpower is limited and depletes quickly. Being aware of the environment and aware of one’s mood is very crucial. Everyone faces decision fatigue. By increasing awareness, you know when to make a critical decision and when not to.
Key things to be aware are:
Trigger from the environment,
Impulse it creates in us
Our response to it.
If we are aware of these, we can master the environment. If we can master it, in the long run, we can influence it as well.
(If you have ten more minutes, I recommend you check out my highlights. You can just read the highlighted and bold section to get an overview of this book in the words of the author himself. I learnt this technique from a productivity expert, Tiago Forte, do check it out)
