James Cameron's habit triggers

🧲163: Two types of habits, a manifesto for living and the law of exceptions.

Oct 23, 2023

Welcome to the 163rd consecutive edition of the newsletter.

The greatest skill you can ever learn — and one no one ever bothered to teach you — is how to change yourself.

Knowing how to solve your own problems is the ultimate superpower and the secret to a happy life.

Here are 5 ideas I stumbled upon this week that you can use to change your mind, body and life.

Enjoy.

1/ Two types of habits.

When we talk about habits, we lump them all into one category.

But there are two types → Lead Habits and Lag Habits.

Lag habits measure the goal.

Lead habits are the behaviours that help you achieve the goal.

An example…

I’m 4.5 years into my successful body journey and I still struggle with over-eating. It has never been second nature. But it can be, if I master the right lead habits.

These are the five I have identified.

In the past, most of my focus was on the lag habit. But the secret to my success is the ability to manage then master the lead habits.

2/ The law of exceptions.

There is an incredibly powerful lesson buried in this short story Costco cofounder Jim Sinegal once told.

There is a powerful lesson there about behaviour change.

The moment you make an exception, it’s next to impossible to go back.

Pick any scenario in life and that rule applies.

3/ Habit triggers.

Billy Oppenheimer wrote a wonderful long form tweet about how James Cameron wrote 3 different screenplays — The Terminator, Rambo and Aliens — at the same time, in 3 months.

How?

He wrote each screenplay at a different desk.

Each desk had all the notes and resources necessary to write the story that was being told.

The sciencey term for this is environmental priming, where the environment cues the appropriate behaviour.

I think that terms sucks so I created my own → Habit Triggers.

Habit triggers are cues that trigger specific actions.

For instance, I have a chair that is for thinking and journaling. I have another for reading. And a third for eating.

The idea is to train my brain to know exactly what it’s going to be doing when I sit at any of these 3 triggers.

4/ A mindset for success.

Last week I shared the most recent iteration of my ScoreCard for Success.

The scorecard is comprised of the 10 essential daily habits that I believe lead to building and maintaining a highly successful body.

What I didn’t share is my mindset.

My scorecard is my saviour.

It’s my version of The 10 Commandments.

No matter what life throws at me, the scorecard will act as my saviour as long as I do my best to do it everyday.

5/ A manifesto for living.

I was rereading “The Creative Habit” by Twyla Tharp when I saw this.

While she is talking about creativity, this is also a manifesto for living.

Imagine if we led lives where everything we experienced was useful.

How much more present would we be?
How much more deliberate would we be?
How much more reflective would we be?

This ties into something I have been thinking a lot about lately. What if I built my business and my life around solving my own problems and selling the solutions?

If I did, Twyla’s manifesto becomes my manifesto.

Everything in my life can be turned into something valuable.

That’s a wonderful way to live.

Looks like I got some work to do.