On Habits and Cyberpunk 2077
Some interesting stories that I read in the last couple of weeks:
During the break, I read Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. After Atomic Habits, The Power of Habits, Good Habits and Bad Habits, this is the fourth book I read on the topic. While I was not hoping to be surprised with anything in the book (since most others have built on Fogg’s research), I was wrong for I discovered a model that made understanding behaviour change much easier for it. I am talking about Fogg’s behaviour change model, which in itself is worth reading the whole book. The model can be found here and describes the correlation between Motivation, Ability and Prompt. Fogg captures this relationship in a simple formula where Behaviour (B) is a function of Motivation (M), Ability (A) and Prompt (P). Prompts work only when they are above an action line, and to keep it above the action line, we have two factors to play with which are: Motivation and Ability. While Motivation is more challenging to modulate, Ability is relatively easier to manoeuvre. For instance, one technique to do so is to make the habit so simple and less time consuming that it’s take minimal effort to carry out. This is the same principle that James Clear also focuses on. There are several key takeaways from the book, however the primary one for me has been the Fogg’s behaviour model that I have kept going back to since I first read it.
This is the time when most of us are considering forming new habits and unsurprisingly there are a number of articles that have come out on this topic. How to form good habits has been a key topic for me as well over the years, and of all the ones that I came across during the break, this one by Ryan Holiday stands out for a good summary of all the key principles it captures. For instance, he reiterates the principle of starting small, and thinking long term. The cost of good habits is in the present, i.e. the results may not be immediately visible and that’s where keeping a long term view helps to keep the motivation high. Another approach he suggests is starting small and celebrating easy wins before tackling something huge. ‘So if you want to become a person that can do something hard like giving up alcohol, start by doing something easy like giving up gum,’ he writes. On breaking bad habits, he suggests to ‘counteract it with a commitment to a contrary virtue,' which I found is easier said than done and requires an aware mind to capture negative tendency in the first place. More important is to build a routine and hand yourself over to a script so that your reactions become almost automated and leaves little space for choices that may go in a direction that you may not prefer.
I am not into video games but this story on Cyberpunk 2077 made for an interesting read. The first part of the essay provides a history of the term cyberpunk itself and how it was defined by Bruce Sterling as a ‘combination of low-life and high tech’. While this whole genre is explored in cult movies such as Blade Runner, it has also become the canvas for several video games, including the much awaited Cyberpunk 2077, which came out during the Christmas break. The game is developed by Warsaw based company, CD Projekt Red. However, when the game came out it was riddled with errors. This piece reviews the game and how after a decade long wait, the game failed to deliver on the high expectations. The divide it seems lay between the artistic vision the founders had, which seemed mismatched with the technical capabilities to deliver on that vision. Though the game has been viewed as a dud on launch, it would be interesting to see how CD Projekt Red recovers in the coming months and years.
A quote that I came across:
Personal epiphanies are great, but they fade within weeks. Upon having an epiphany, make a plan and start actually changing the behaviour.
