Intention Archives - Page 2 of 3

What’s Wrong with Precommitment Devices?

August 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 3 Comments

Odysseus tied on the mast. Icon for the Greek ...

A precommitment device is a strategy for forcing yourself to do something you think you should do but you don’t actually want to do. You might resort to a precommitment device if your will power and self-control have failed to do the trick. The most famous example of someone using a precommitment device is Odysseus having himself tied to the mast of his ship to avoid the temptation of the sirens.

The most common precommitment devices involve agreeing to forfeit a certain sum of money if you fail to achieve a goal or accomplish a particular task. You could make an agreement with yourself to donate money to a charity if you fail to attend the gym three times a week, lose a specific amount of weight, or complete the next chapter of your book. Of course, if you’re the only one who knows about this agreement, you can easily waffle and wiggle your way out of it.

A more binding agreement would be to agree to pay a friend that same amount of money if you fail to meet your goal. Not only would you lose money, you would also experience some degree of shame. That’s the premise behind precommitment devices: we will do what’s good for us in order to avoid the threat of negative consequences. That’s also what makes them problematic.

Underlying the popularity of precommitment devices is the assumption that we are, in general, rational beings who want to avoid negative consequences. But there’s not a lot of evidence support that idea, and if it were true, we wouldn’t need precommitment devices to begin with. Rational beings who were aware of potential negative consequences would all be healthy, law-abiding, diligent, honest, tidy, sober, rule-following good citizens. Obviously, we are not all that. Precommitment devices have something in common with affirmations, which is that the people they work for probably need them the least.

Loss aversion is one rationale offered for using precommitment devices. It’s true we are programmed to avoid losses, but a loss of enjoyment can be experienced as a loss, too. In some cases a more significant loss than the loss of a few bucks.

Another problem with precommitment devices is that they are black and white. Either you do it or you don’t. You win or you lose. You avoid temptation or you give in to it. This isn’t a scenario that allows for being present, noticing what’s actually happening, learning something about yourself or what you’re attempting to do, or adjusting your course. This is more about getting the upper hand over your recalcitrant, weak-willed self. And when the next such situation arises, you will have to do battle with that bad boy self all over again.

There’s Another Way to Make a Precommitment

Creating an intention is a form of precommitment, too, but one without the threat of negative consequences. Creating an intention also takes into consideration the fact that what you’re attempting is not easy, but without judging your supposed lack of self-control. Changing any behavior is difficult simply because we’re wired to keep doing whatever we have been doing. Creating an intention—as part of the I.A.P. process—allows you to focus on something you want to do or be as opposed to something you don’t want to do or be. It helps you keep your attention on your desired outcome and motivates you to keep going, one step at a time, even when the going is difficult. Instead of having to be good or pay the price for being bad, you aim to keep getting better. You don’t have to initiate or engage in an inner struggle with yourself. And instead of forking over cash when you fail, you get to reward yourself when you succeed.

Have you ever used a precommitment device? If so, how did it work for you?

What Do Your Habits Say About You?

July 3, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Riding a Bicycle

Once a behavior or routine becomes a habit, it is subsequently initiated by the unconscious, usually as a result of something in the environment—a cue or a trigger. Our resulting behavior is no longer intentional or volitional. We’re operating on autopilot.

We think behavioral habits are just something we do, but in spite of what we think, our habits reveal more about us than our intentional acts do.

Why We Have Habits

The brain creates behavioral habits, with or without our conscious participation, in order to operate more efficiently. It chunks repetitive behaviors and turns the chunks over to the basal ganglia so we don’t have to waste our precious and limited conscious attention on them. Habits are an energy-saving device.

When we’re learning something new (or creating or changing a habit), we have to focus a lot of conscious attention on what we’re doing. Anything that requires conscious attention uses energy, and in any given day we have a limited amount of it. It’s not an easily renewable resource. But once a habit is in place, little or no conscious attention is needed.

Examples:

driving a car
playing an instrument, if you’re trained
raiding the refrigerator in the evening
brushing your teeth before going to bed
checking your email first thing in the morning

Good habits, bad habits, they’re all the same to the brain. It doesn’t care about our opinions of our habits. All it cares about it is being efficient. Do something—anything—often enough and it will become a habit. And habits, by their nature, are hard to change. Trying to exert will power, using positive thinking, engaging in deep soul searching, or looking for the underlying cause of a habit are all fruitless endeavors. Unfortunately, you can’t have a heart-to-heart with your basal ganglia.

But Aren’t I in Charge?

The common assumption is that behaviors are preceded by conscious intentions. We decide what we’re going to do and then do it. But only some behaviors are preceded by conscious intentions, far fewer than we’d like to believe. Estimates are that from 50% to 80% of what we do every day we do on autopilot, which means without conscious intention or volition. We may be operating a 4,000 pound vehicle on a busy highway at a speed of 65 miles an hour or more while our minds are somewhere far, far away. This is especially likely to happen if we’re familiar with the route. We don’t need to pay conscious attention to our driving if nothing out of the ordinary occurs. We can zone out and our unconscious can generally get us to our destination just fine.

But since we tend to identify only with our conscious brain and not with our unconscious, we identify with our wandering mind instead of with what we’re actually doing. And because we’re under the illusion that most of what we do is the result of conscious choice (behaviors are preceded by conscious intentions), we’re not aware of how pervasive habits are in our lives.

When we find ourselves doing something we’d rather not do (or not doing something we’d rather do), we’d prefer to believe we’ve willfully chosen the behavior just so we can maintain the illusion of being in control. But it’s not very satisfying to think that we’re intentionally and repeatedly doing something we have an intention not to do. We don’t understand why we can’t simply will ourselves (or, in some cases, beat our lazy selves into submission) to get the desired results. We end up feeling inadequate, ashamed, guilty, and possibly slightly crazy. The obvious and easy way out is to dis-identify with the behavior. That’s not the real me. That doesn’t reflect who I am. It’s just something I do.

Just as the brain has a habit of generating habits with no regard for our judgments and opinions about them, we have a habit of thinking less of our habits than we do of our intentional acts regardless of what that behavior actually amounts to. It’s not what we do that matters so much as whether we did it intentionally or as a result of a habit.

Not only do we think intentional acts define us more than habits do, we also think that what we think and wish and want is more important than what we actually do. (Rene Descartes would be proud.)

We think that what we think is of supreme importance. Next most important are our intentional acts. At the bottom of the list, getting extremely short shrift, are our habits.

But we have it backwards. It’s what we do that ultimately matters, not what we think or want. And what we do is primarily habitual (unconsciously generated) rather than intentional (consciously determined). Habits actually say more about us than intentional acts do.

Still Don’t Think Much of Habits?

In a study of habits vs. non-habits,” reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that participants thought habits weren’t as important as non-habits in reaching goals and were relatively uninformative about themselves and others.

Given the percentage of time each day we spend engaged in habitual behaviors, this is stunningly wrong-headed.

Another odd finding that came out of the studies on habits vs. non-habits was this:

Feelings of stress increased with the deliberation involved in a single non-habitual behavior rather than as a result of multitasking. According to Roy Baumeister (Professor of Psychology, Florida State University), the act of decision making about a single behavior can deplete self-control mechanisms and impair subsequent acts of self-regulation such as decision-making and performance.

Habits, however, do not drain self-control resources to the same extent as non-habits. Once a behavior becomes a habit, it frees up our conscious attention

There is less emotion associated with habitual behaviors than with non-habitual ones. There is a decreased sense of volition, as well, but that is accompanied by less stress, burnout, and feeling out of control.

It’s a little confounding that we fail to recognize the many benefits habits confer.

We Are What We D0

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

This is actually a paraphrase of Aristotle by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy. One thing Aristotle did say, though, is “these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions.”

It’s easy to see how this works—that is, the positive, productive role of habits—in the development of a skill or craft—that of a musician, an artist, a writer, a quilter, or a cook, for example. We generally expect that the more a musician practices her instrument, the more dishes a cook prepares, the better they will become at doing those things. A musician is unlikely to attain excellence if she only practices when she’s in the mood for it. Skillful musicians develop the habit of practicing regularly whether they’re in the mood for it or not. And they don’t have to be in the mood for it precisely because they’ve developed the habit. They don’t have to waste conscious attention or drain self-control resources by thinking about or deciding each time whether or not to practice.

If a musician’s sense of identity includes her musicianship, then her habit of practice says quite a lot about who she is—as opposed to who a non-musician might be. When she shows up onstage to perform a violin solo, for example, her habit of practicing ensures that her fingers know what to do with the violin. Her habit of practicing certainly contributed to her reaching her musical goals. Without it, she might still be thinking about becoming a violinist or wishing it were so.

Habits and routines make achieving goals considerably easier. Habits and routines can free our conscious minds for greater things, and they are actually essential to people who need to be creative on a regular basis.

Habits Really ARE Us

Our conscious intentions are not reliable when it comes to predicting what we’ll do when well-entrenched habitual behaviors are involved. In such cases, environmental cues and triggers are much more influential and, therefore, much more reliable predictors. What we have done before is what we are likely to do again. (Intentions, however, are more predictive of future behavior in new or novel situations.)

Because habitual behaviors are cued by situations, events, or other people instead of by our conscious prodding, we feel somewhat disengaged from them. It seems that there’s a continuum between intention and habit. It doesn’t much matter whether the habit in question is one we intentionally set out to create or one that was created when we weren’t paying attention. A habit is a habit is a habit, and the further a behavior moves from the intention end of the continuum to the habit end, the lower our opinion of it becomes.

There is an important role for consciousness to play in regard to our habits. If we understand and accept the enormous usefulness of habits, we can use the conscious part of our brain to decide which habits we want to create or change. That’s where the “I” we identify with comes into play. It sets the agenda for which behaviors to chunk and turn into habits.

That requires paying attention to what we’re actually doing. (It turns out that one of the very few ways we can get some idea of what’s in our unconscious is by observing what we do—not by observing what we think, dream, or wish for.) We also need to have some idea about what we want and what it will take to get it.

In any case, we would do well to give more credit to the unconscious part of our brain and recognize that it is just as much a part of who we are as is the conscious part, probably even more so. Then we might be able to start using it instead of letting it use us, which it does in this case by chunking behaviors without our awareness and consent.

Here’s a Question

If you identified with your habits, as much as you do with your intentional acts, how might that change your sense of yourself? And how might changing your sense of yourself alter your relationship with your habits?

The Illusion of Choice

May 13, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

You always have a choice.

Isn’t that what everyone says? No matter what happens, you can choose how to respond. And if you want things to be different, well then just make different choices.

Making a different choice sounds so simple. And it’s appealing to believe you can do it if you really want to. But if you don’t make a different choice, does that mean you really don’t want to? Does it mean you lack self-control or will power? Does it mean you’re trying to sabotage yourself?

If you believe that you could make a different choice but don’t, why don’t you?

When we believe we could make a different choice, but we fail to do so, we’re forced to explain ourselves—at least to ourselves. So we get busy rationalizing, making excuses, or berating ourselves. It’s the start of a vicious cycle, one that can go on for years or even decades. Not only is this a waste of time, it’s also counterproductive to changing behavior.

The truth is that we don’t always have a choice. In fact, we rarely have a choice. We keep doing the same things we’ve always done because that’s how our brain is wired. It conserves precious energy by turning as many behaviors as possible into routines and habits. Once those routines and habits are in place, they’re extremely difficult to disrupt. When faced with a familiar situation, you and I and everyone else will likely as not do what we’ve always done in that situation, even if we want to make a different choice.

Minute by minute, second by second, the unconscious part of your brain is absorbing and processing an unbelievable amount of data, all but a small fraction of which you’re not consciously aware of. So at the moment you’re faced with that familiar situation, your unconscious is picking up on signals, making connections, and initiating the usual response long before you can consciously entertain the idea of doing something different. When it comes to routines and habits, consciousness is simply no match for the speed of the unconscious brain.

As long as you don’t recognize what’s going on, you’re up against an unseen enemy. The challenge is to use the brain’s labor-saving mechanisms instead of being used by them. That’s where intention comes in.

The time to decide how you want to respond in a familiar situation is not when you’re in that situation but when you have some distance from it and can think clearly about it. If you know what you’re up against, you can come up with a plan to outwit your unseen enemy and even turn it into an ally. The plan involves IAP:

Intention
Attention
Perseverance

The IAP process is based on the way the brain actually works.

(1) Plan ahead. Formulate a clear and specific intention.
(2) Don’t count on remembering. Come up with a way to keep your attention focused on your intention.
(3) Assume you won’t be perfect out of the gate. Your unconscious brain is stubborn and set in its ways. With perseverance, however, your desired response will become the automatic one.

Intentional Optimism: Be Bold

October 7, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

At the end of this video, Jason Silva asks a great question: Why shouldn’t we turn our lives into a work of art?

As he says:

I can decide that I’m going to see the world through rose-colored lenses. I’m going to be optimistic. I’m going to look for the beautiful in every possible experience.

That INTENTION, that agency, coupled with action…with editorial discernment…it creates a self-amplifying feedback loop. In other words, the INTENTION to be optimistic makes me stumble upon all these things that make me feel more optimistic and so on and so forth.

But that requires a boldness of character.

Yes, we all view the world through our own particular lens–and the lens through which we view the world has an enormous effect on what we see. Once we recognize that what we’re seeing is not “reality,” but a limited facsimile thereof, we can alter our perception. But wishing it or wanting it to happen won’t make it so.

The magic starts with creating an INTENTION.

Intentions: Mistakes Were Made

July 23, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Creating an intention seems like something that should be pretty straightforward. So why isn’t it? There are three common mistakes almost all of us have made when we’ve set out to do something.

Mistake #1

The clue to Mistake #1 appears in the first sentence of this post: the word should. We have many concepts about the way things should be, but even more about how we should be and what we should be able to do. In the context of creating intentions, the word should needs to be banished. It isn’t helpful, and it sets us up to have unrealistic expectations. Why start out by pitting your actual self against an idealized self who can easily do whatever it is you’re currently struggling with? That makes absolutely no sense, yet we do it all the time.

If you have created an intention to do something because you think you should do it or you should be able to do it, let it go. You’re not going to be able to commit to something you should do, and you’re probably not willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish it since you think you should already be doing it. The fact that you aren’t doing it means you’re just not trying or you’re lazy or incapable or have no will power. You’ve prejudged yourself as somehow lacking, so you’ve lost before you’ve even begun.

Mistake #2

Sometimes there are entire areas of our lives we want to revamp, so we create an intention to do just that. No baby steps for us; we’re going for the gold! But trying to tackle too much all at once is another recipe for failure because the chance of succeeding is miniscule at best. When we take baby steps we have a much better chance of accomplishing what we set out to do. Then we can build on our success. When we aim to do it all at once and miss the mark, we end up with nothing but a reinforced sense of ineffectiveness or inadequacy.

Another thing to remember is that when you try to do many things at the same time, you’re giving yourself many opportunities to fail. If you want to develop a habit that involves doing something multiple times during the day, start out by creating an intention to do it once or twice a day—or even every other day. Once you’ve succeeded with that, you can expand on it. This is the kind of mistake we often make when starting an exercise program. Add Mistake #1 to the mix—the belief that you should be exercising for a certain number of minutes every day—and you might as well just pick up the remote and head for the couch.

Mistake #3

The third mistake we make when creating an intention is that we are vague rather than specific. Maybe we aren’t consciously trying to give ourselves wiggle room, but that’s what vagueness does to intentions: it paves the way for us to wiggle right out of them. There are a lot of reasons we’re vague. Maybe we think just creating the intention should be sufficient. (Is there a voice in your head that says if you really want to do something, you’ll do it? Tell it to shut up.) Or our schedule is too variable for us to be specific. Or we want to maintain our flexibility. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

The reason for being specific when creating an intention is that vagueness simply doesn’t work so creating a vague intention is a waste of time. If you want to do something twice a week, decide on the days of the week and the time of day you will do it. If your schedule varies, make appointments with yourself and write them on your calendar or in your planner. Treat your appointments with yourself the same way you would treat an appointment with someone else. Give yourself a little respect. If you know what result you want, think through the steps you’ll need to take to achieve it. Make the steps your intention and the result will follow.

Creating an intention really is pretty straightforward, but only if we know what works and what doesn’t work.