Introduce new constraints

Ditch bad habits by making the old way impossible

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to introduce new constraints. If you are trying
to change bad habits or create new breakthroughs, a new

(00:26):
constraint can force you to think in new ways. Today's tip,
like some others this week, comes from Scott H. Young's
new book, Get Better at Anything. This book shares strategies
for how people actually learn and improve. In his book,

(00:47):
Young shares the story of how Tiger Woods, already a
breakthrough golf star, deliberately tried to change his golf swing.
He believed his swing had some weaknesses, and so eventually
he refused to use the old swing. He didn't play
as well as he might have for a while, but

(01:09):
eventually he came back. Young writes that old habits of
thinking can exert a gravity on your performance. You fall
back into routines even if you're trying to do something original.
Young suggests that you can prevent that backsliding by changing
the task constraints, so performing the skill in the old

(01:29):
way is impossible. So, for example, if you find your
fiction to be boringly autobiographical, you can decide that your
next main character has to be someone so different from
you that it can't possibly be you. For instance, you
can write about someone who has a different gender. That

(01:51):
is one way to get out of your own head.
Or perhaps you're a tennis player looking to improve hitting
a tennis shot using any undersized racket face forces you
to hit balls in the center, Young rights. Or maybe
a painter decides to paint without using any color, so
he is forced to focus on light and shadow. I

(02:13):
am sure you can think of various ways that a
constraint can force an improvement in performance. Maybe one team
member always leads your presentations and she does a great job.
Challenge your team to give a major pitch while she
is on vacation. If nothing else, it will force people

(02:37):
to step up. If you normally speak with PowerPoint, try
speaking without PowerPoint? How does that change how you address
the audience. Changing the way you perform is challenging. Simply
focusing on what you are doing wrong can lead to
obsession and make it hard to function at a high level.

(03:01):
A constraint, on the other hand, can push a performer
away from their bad habits without focusing attention on them.
Young rights that can allow new breakthroughs and maybe force
some changes in the process. In the meantime, this is Laura.

(03:25):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

(03:53):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
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