Dopamine based habits building
Dopamine based habits building
graph TD
meaningful_habits ---|need| compounding
compounding ---simplicity ---|need| dopamine
compounding ---consistency ---|need| dopamine
compounding ---patience ---|need| dopamine
dopamine --- set_goal_to_process
set_goal_to_process ---|NOT| to_outcome
set_goal_to_process --- make_process_enjoyable
make_process_enjoyable --- optimize_for_progress
make_process_enjoyable --- daily_leapfrog_mindset
optimize_for_progress --- constant_gain
optimize_for_progress --- every_day/week
optimize_for_progress --- hold_long_enough
If I want to build the reading habit, here are what should I do.
In the beginning, I should change the stereotype first. Reading can be an enjoyable activity, otherwise it won't be so many readers around the world, to read hundred and thousand books per year. It must be a pleased journey during the reading, if I feel boring again hereafter, there is must something wrong with my method of reading. When I get pleasure from reading, I can optimize happiness solidity of my life. It is indeed a meaningful habit for me.
And then, I know there may not result to visible differences after read one or two books. The happiness or the change, is a compound effect, is accumulated by an amount of books. So I need to read simple books, regard them as novels. Maybe some paragraphs can't be understood right away, but I can translate them with tools. As long as this process can be proceed easily and fluently, I'll do what ever I need to do. And then I can read them day by day, don't need to calculate percentage of read neither the due date, as soon as I read a paragraph in a day with pleasure, that would be enough. Finally, be patient. I'm traveling in the countryside of the book, enjoy the scenery, don't be rushed to finish this book.
In order to get dopamine in reading, just like mention previously, I'll treat the reading as a traveling.
If we are in traveling, we'll focus on what we seen, maybe take some pictures, note some feelings, trying to remember something impressed us. Not because these activities are our homework, neither our obligations to "record" things as a report, we just "want" to capture them down ONLY.
Maybe you'll say, isn't it a type of "outcome"? It seems so, but the difference between the outcome and the process is what we regard them for? You absolutely won't feel any pressure if something missing during the journey. After all, you had seen them with you own eyes at least. No pressure, that is the highest priority.
Here comes the most difficult question: How can we make the process enjoyable?
Let's start with a simpler one, the daily leapfrog mindset. You need to know the following fact : Roughly a quarter of American adults (23%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form. If you finish a book hereafter, you just leapfrog 23% people at least. The more books you read, the more people you leapfrog. This is a simple and powerful fact you can keep it in your mind.
The harder one is optimizing our progress of reading. The most simplest gain/feedback form of finish one paragraph is writing anything down. I mean "anything", even it is just one word or a sentence(Of course, it would be nicer when you can spit a whole paragraph without caring grammars and structures). If you don't get use to note anything with texts, you can just speak them out and hand them over to TTS(Text To Speech) service to transcribe them to texts. Hand writings are OK, too. We had some great recognition services of hand writings, we can get texts eventually in the end.
Dopamine? Right now I don't have any definitive way to get dopamine. But if you post your work to Facebook/Twitter, most time you will get some feedbacks, and most of them should be praises. Maybe just a "good" of thumb-up in Facebook, or a retweet in Tweeter.
The most important step is here: You can just treat them as your newsletter readers.
If you just post things out there, and wait (good) feedbacks for readers, you'll give up very, very soon. In fact, every readers in this time, has tons of words need to read(So do you, right?), and they don't have enough time to finish them all the way. Not to mention give you feedbacks. It is absolutely a normal state that you won't get feedbacks.
But if you post your works as newsletters, the meaning is basically different. Readers subscribe newsletters, are based on the intention of reading them, not browsing them. In readers' deep mind, they have more motivations to read. So, no matter you publish newsletters or not, you just regard your works as newsletters, and you have readers to feed and you have to feed them.