How to Make a Habit Automatic (Without Trying Harder)

Willpower isn’t your real problem. Your environment is. I’m Angela Shurina, and I’m diving into habit formation, aka your brain's automations, through the lens of high performance, neuroscience, and a simple principle I use daily: zonality, or assigning clear locations to specific behaviors so your brain stops debating and starts executing. We talk about why habits are the brain’s automations and how automating more of your routine frees up limited brain power for the work that actually matt...

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  Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, your executive coach, master health, sleep, stress management, nutrition, fitness coach, and just someone who is super obsessed with unlocking, using more of our human potential and doing our best, or simply 1% better every day. And today, guys, we are talking about a very important topic, formation of habits. You know, habits are brains' automations. And the more things, I just finished reading this book on peak performance that we're

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  gonna talk about for a couple more episodes. And in the book, one of those best performance coaches talks about how high performers get really, really good at automating or habituating as many things as possible in their life, in their training, in their day-to-day routine. Because the more things you can automate and shift it to a part of your brain which executes without decision-making, basically your automation machine, the more you can shift towards that, the more brain power, this decision-making, thinking, creative

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  power you have for other important projects in your life, whether that's work-related or personal life-related, or maybe training-related, right? So your job as a high performer, or someone who wants to do better and maybe tap into more of their potential every day, your job is to learn how to get really good at building habits fast, building, breaking, changing your habits, so then you have a lot more brain power available to do other stuff in life, like maybe your book-writing project, or your strategic business planning, or creating some solution or application to change the

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  world and help people live better lives, whatever that is, you need your brain power as much as possible for doing all this amazing stuff. And the truth is, our brain power is limited, and until we figure out maybe how to upgrade it like computer's memory, we are sort of stuck with the same brain, and we gotta learn how to save more of that thinking and decision-making potential for new stuff, for stuff that matters, for stuff that we wanna build and create, instead of thinking about our food choices, which researchers say, when it comes to food decisions, people on average make 226.7 food choices. I'm like, mind blown, can you just automate it and eat the same meals?

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  Even if for the sake of preserving that mental capacity for more essential stuff, not like feeding yourself trivial stuff that should have been automated a decade ago. But anyhow, how do you actually habituate or automate things a lot faster? We're not gonna be talking about all the methods that behavioral researchers and neuroscience and behavioral scientists tell us we could use, we're gonna talk about a very specific method that is one of the most essential ones to habituate, to automate things easier and to execute a lot of habits that are good for you, that you wanna keep on autopilot

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  faster and easier without using willpower, discipline, decision-making. So again, you can use that brain's capacity for something that is more important on your plate right now, something that you wanna create and build and improve.

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  So what is it? And I wanna start with a little story. So I had a coffee with a new friend of mine today, and we, when he learned that I work from home, he mentioned something like, like, "I can never work from home, I need structure, a place where I do things, the gym to work out, and office to work, home to relax."

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  Like, to which I said, "But there is like this principle of the zonality that I use, I work from home, but I have a desk to do my usual work with clients, I have a different location for meditation, reading, studying, eating." But let's talk about this phenomena a little bit more, so you get to see how it works in all areas of your life already, without you having to think about it, and how you can then use it to create more habits faster, even the habits that, at first glance, require discipline and willpower, like maybe eating better, or exercising more, or reading more,

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  learning more, meditating more, whatever that is that you are working on building right now. They say the heaviest weight in the gym is the front door. Once you're through it, you do the thing that people do at the gym, you work out. And you experience this effect of when you go to a place and you just do the thing, you experience this effect many times throughout your day without noticing. You walk into a place with a specific function, the gym, the office, a meditation retreat, and you do the thing, because what else are you gonna do there, right?

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  We sometimes even assign magical powers to those places, like this spot just has energy. You know, I hear people tell, say this a lot, when they go to like a meditation center or retreat, like, "Ah, this spot just has energy." But it's not actually magical energy most of the time that you feel. Neuroscience even has a name for it, context-dependent automation. You can Google it, you can look it up, context-dependent automation. Your brain registers a specific environment and switches off the conscious decision-making areas and switches on automatic execution instead.

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  Like, if you didn't know that you have different parts of the brain responsible for conscious decision-making and automatic execution, your habits. And for those habits, no willpower is required, no negotiating with yourself, no making choices, decisions like, "Should I work out, should I not?" No, you go to the gym and you do the thing, you don't negotiate whether you're gonna do it or not, right? You're already there, that's why the heaviest gym weight is the front door, you just do the thing. It's the same reason that it's almost impossible to change your order at your regular coffee shop, or a regular cafe that you go to, and strangely, it becomes super easy the moment you walk into a different one.

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  Behavioral scientists use this on purpose as well, when they want any change to stick at scale, they build a cue, trigger a specific location, attach a place to a routine, until the two fuse into one simple sequence of action executed without thinking. Want to drink more water in the morning? Put a filled bottle by the coffee machine that you already use, you'll stop, you'll stop thinking about it, you'll just drink it. Same principle for focus, for meditation, for reading more books, build a ritual, give it a location.

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  That's why people feel more productive in an office, any office, a co-working space. The moment you arrive, your brain reads the environment and flips on work mode, flooding your system with dopamine and acetylcholine, the focus chemicals of your brain, before you've even opened the laptop. It's the same reason a dog salivates walking into the kitchen, feeding time or not. Want to meditate consistently? Put a cushion in one corner of your home, go there only to meditate, nothing else, nowhere else. Within weeks, days, sometimes moments, you'll feel calm at the moment you sit, before you've taken a single breath.

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  Want to read more books and stay focused while you do it as fast as possible? Build a reading corner, one chair, maybe the same cushion if you don't have a chair, your book, maybe a lamp, go there only to read. Soon, your super learning mode will be activated the second you sit down there. Want to write more? Claim one corner of your desk for writing and nothing else. Put maybe a notepad, a pen there for a small, long-hand writing warm-up ritual before you start typing, or maybe you keep writing. Very soon, dropping into writing mode stops being a decision, it just happens when you get to your writing shrine.

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  That's the reason why most prolific writers had their place, a space, their special pens, their special typewriter. The moment they see it, their brain reads it and executes their writing mode. No prolific muse or inspiration required, you just do the thing.

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  I sit on opposite sides of the same table in my apartment. I use the same desk to eat and to work, but I sit on the opposite sides of the table, depending on which one I'm doing. One side for food, one side for focus. Same desk, two different brain modes activated. So the takeaway is, what habit have you been struggling with? To make it stick, to make it last, to do it consistently? Think about, have you given it a dedicated place

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  to switch on execution mode on autopilot without willpower? I coach a lot, a lot of people. I've been in coaching for 18 years. And the more I do it, the more I learn how we need to learn how to use less and less willpower and discipline. I need to learn more how to create this habit, this automated loops. So then you can spend your decision making, power, your willpower, your discipline, or something that is more important, that comes into your day unannounced, that you need to be present for. So the more stuff you automate, the more present you're going to be for those challenges

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  where you need to show up as your best. And if you spend all of your willpower and discipline on 226.7 food decisions, guess what? When the challenge hits, you're going to be overwhelmed, not performing, but really surviving, and very often not handling it all that well. So that is the purpose. That's why you want to get as good as possible with habituating, automating as much stuff as possible and creating locations or triggers or cues for specific behaviors is one hell of a hack that will help you get there faster. So now that you know it, you can become a more conscious designer

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  of your habit formation experience. You can dedicate specific places, specific locations, specific rituals, specific clothing. You can create more of those triggers and cues. So your brain registers it, your brain sees the place, you sit down at your desk, your favorite reading corner, and the brain simply executes the program versus you trying to read here, there, different times, different locations. And you're like, I don't know, I'm just not feeling it. Well, the reason you're not feeling it is because you changed so many things that the brain can never habituate things to the point that you execute it without thinking.

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  So again, back to the question of the day, guys. Your homework is to think about one habit that you are struggling with and ask yourself, how can I create a place, a location for that thing to make habit automatic faster? So think about that brainstorming. And maybe share with me on Instagram, Angela Brain Body Coach, Angela Brain Body Coach, or on LinkedIn, Angela Shurina. I'm going to link my LinkedIn in the show notes. Share it or ask a question. How can you automate more things faster? So you get more of your brain power available for your life

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  and other important things on your plate to build, to create, to make more positive impact? Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to share this episode, review, share it with one friend. So together we help each other automate more stuff. So we are more present for life and building great things in the world. It will make my day if you share it with one person and especially if you tag me somewhere and tell me about it. But anyhow, till next time, keep growing and keep automating more stuff by creating better locations. Talk soon. Keep growing.