Day 4 – Automate Super Habits: How to Coach Yourself and Thrive in the AI Era

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In Day 4 – Automate | Build Super Habits: How to Coach Yourself and Thrive in the AI Era, we move from knowing what to do to making it automatic — using the Nine Action Factors and a simple habit-building plan anchored by a daily Willpower Story.

You’ll learn how to coach yourself, use AI to cut busywork, and design smart routines that target Recharge, Medium-Charge, and High-Charge Brain States for sustained performance.

You’ll explore:
• How routines work as linked chains of Super Habits
• Why knowledge fails without automation
• Using the Willpower Story at a set time and place
• The Nine Action Factors and ten practical prompts
• Mapping habits to Recharge, Medium-Charge, and High-Charge tasks
• The personal research loop — observe, adjust, repeat
• Coaching yourself with lessons from elite sport analysis
• Using AI to reduce Medium-Charge work and enhance deep focus
• The path to certification and structured three-month training

🎓 Note: We’re currently offering 75%-funded training grants for people who want to become Certified Human–AI Performance Psychology Coaches.
If you’re not seeing our messages about this, just reach out — we’ll confirm if any grants remain and whether it’s a good fit for you.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hello, Habit Mechanics, Dr.
John Finn here.
I hope you are well and having agreat week so far, especially if
you've been working through thefour-day challenge with me.
And today we're on day four andwe're going to get into the
fourth step.

(00:21):
I do apologize again that we arehaving building works not inside
the Habermechanic office, butjust or the tough minds office
rather, but around.
So if any of that noise comesthrough, that's what it is.
I don't think it will.
Also shows you it's not an AIgenerated podcast.
We are doing this real.
You don't tend to get those uhthose uh noise effects in uh AI

(00:45):
generated podcasts, which in myexperience you you do actually
sometimes get in professionalrecording studios.
Um you'll get a noise comingfrom somewhere where you have to
having paid all that money to gointo the professional studio in
the first place.
Yeah, in my experience, you dosometimes have to stop because

(01:05):
there's noise seeping into thevery expensive soundproofed
room.
Um but at least in those uhsituations you have an editor
with you to uh tell you.
But anyway, I think we've Ithink we've gone beyond having
uh having uh massively fundedbroadcast broadcast quality

(01:31):
content.
Um I think COVID kind of killedthat and uh for the better, I
think, because it just meanscreating insights for people is
just easier and you can do itfaster and therefore do more of
it, and um that's why I I likeit, but anyway, it's not an AI,

(01:57):
this is me, Dr.
John Finn.
Um, okay, so we have gonethrough the first four steps of
the AI edge success cycle, andhopefully, there has not only

(02:17):
been some light bulb momentsgoing off in your brain, but
you're starting to see someprogress just in the last three
days, even if you're gettinggetting a little bit more
recharge, or you've been doing abit more high charge or a bit
less medium charge or a higherquality medium charge, or just
you're just understanding thosebrain states more, that's a

(02:41):
really good result.
And what we want to do today,and reminder this is a YouTube
video as well, has been apodcast.
So I'm going to share my screen,just bring up that four step AIH
success cycle.
Um, so where we're moving todayis automation.

(03:05):
So we know that we don't wedon't do what we always know we
should necessarily do, and thatclassic example is more people
than ever before agree it's agood idea to walk 10,000 steps a
day, but they don't.
More people than ever agree it'sa good idea to eat five portions

(03:25):
of fruit and vegetables, butthey don't.
And we can see that in big setsof compelling data.
The most compelling being thatthe National Health Service, the
essentially the biggest companyin Europe, spends most of its
budget every year treatingdiseases that emerge because

(03:46):
people don't walk 10,000 steps aday and they don't eat five
portions of fruit andvegetables.
They don't do those basic thingsthat most people agree is a good
idea.
So if we're going to helpourselves to build what I would
call complex new behaviors, uhcomplex new habits, we need to

(04:08):
recognize that knowing isn'tenough, and we need to give
ourselves the best chance ofactually habitualizing, in this
case, doing something like thewillpower story every day, so
doing that very deliberate,intelligent, self-watching and

(04:30):
intelligent planning exercise.
And that's why we've created thenine action factor framework.
So this is the uh uh willpowers.
So yesterday I did a bit of arecap on the lighthouse brain,
and again, if you have if you'rejust dropping into this on day

(04:52):
four and thinking, wait aminute, where's where's the
other episodes here?
Just go backwards in the feedand you'll see the last uh three
days.
If you haven't gone through itum systematically, starting at
day one, to day two, to daythree, to day four, go back to
day one.

(05:13):
Maybe even thinking, oh, Iforgot what he's talking about
here.
Um, so go back to day one and doit again.
That's why we've created it likewe have done, so you can just go
back and keep cycling throughthis process.
So the lighthouse brain that Iintroduced uh or recapped on
yesterday, I talked aboutwillpower's assistants.

(05:37):
So you've already met the taskdirector and the day designer,
and today we're working with theroutine engineer.
So, what's the differencebetween a routine and a habit?
It's really that routines arestrings, sort of interconnected,
uh like a linked chain, if youlike, of habits.

(06:01):
That's a good that's a good wayof putting it.
I've never said that out loudbefore.
That's good.
I like that.
So it's like a a routine is likea linked chain, a chain of
habits, uh where you're pluggingyou know lots of um helpful
habits together or what we callsuper habits.
You also have linked chains ofuh destructive habits, so

(06:22):
they're destructive routines.
But essentially the routineengineer is gonna help us to
think about and plan ahead toget the behavioural science, the
the factors that actually drivewhat we think and do every day
on our side.
And so if you've got your copyof Train Your Brain for the

(06:43):
Higher Revolution with you, andwe go to um, we're gonna go down
to step four.
So this is in step four, butactually, before we go there,
we're gonna take a little kindof detour because the visual I
want to share on the screen is anine action factor model, and

(07:05):
that actually is a bit furtherup.
Um so we when we've looked overthe years at behavioral science
in terms of what's coming out ofacademia, um, and I say looked
at, I mean I I was I've taughtthis stuff for over 25 years
now, you know, and you literallyfind yourself often and less so

(07:32):
recently, but more at thebeginning of my career, when
you're kind of starting out,you'll often deliver the same
session again and again andagain.
So there were periods where Iwas delivering the same session,
I think it was so the same sortof one-hour session, something

(07:53):
like 14 or 15 times in a two-daywindow, doing that consistently.
That's when you really get toknow your stuff, but it's also
where you get critical about theaccepted way of thinking and the
accepted way of doing things.
I remember that very clearly,just for example, with teaching

(08:14):
smart or smarter goal setting,um, and thinking there must be a
better way to do this, surely.
Come on.
So when you look at thebehavioral science literature,
essentially it's dominated byquite a small group of acad of
academics.
Nothing against academics, bythe way, that is my background.

(08:36):
I still think of myselfpartially as an academic, but it
the the science is kind ofdominated by a small group of
academics throughout the world,some groups in the US, some
groups in the UK, some groups inin other parts of the world, and

(08:57):
often you have one group thatreally champions just one
element actually of the thingsthat drive our behaviour, and
they'd be very antiacknowledging that anything else

(09:18):
is important in behavior change,or they'll be very reluctant to
you know give credit to othertheoretical models because
that's kind of how academiaworks, it can be very tribal,
people can be very defensive.
So when I started my career,there wasn't a playbook like the

(09:38):
Nine Action Factor model, didn'texist.
And just to give you someexamples of what I'm talking
about, so if you look at uh oneof the founding fathers of
behavioral science, um B.F.
Skinner, he would be seenprobably as one of the most
prominent behavioral scientistsum with his kind of pigeon

(10:03):
research way back in probablythe 50s, if not before that, um
where he showed the importanceof reward and penalty systems,
and in particular the importanceof variable reward systems in
driving behaviour.

(10:23):
But that isn't the only thingthat drives behaviour, it's an
important driver, but it's notthe only thing.
If you look at uh Carol Dweck'swork on what is now called
mindset, didn't used to becalled mindset.
Dweck's been working on thatsince the 60s, and it's a very
important insight that you needto believe that you can change,

(10:48):
because actually you can, asCarol Dweck rightly talked
about, way before we couldactually see inside human brains
that brains actually do changeand they're like plastocene,
they're not fixed.
So Dweck's kind of popularizedframework is you know the fixed
mindset versus growth mindset.
Well, that's important, it'simportant to believe you can

(11:08):
build a new habit.
Um, but again, it doesn'texplain everything about
behavior change, and we've gotthe nudge guys who I forget the
name, they're associated toChicago Booth University.
There's a there's a group ofthem.

(11:28):
Um, I know that because I'vedone a talk at City of London,
Chicago Booth University campus,and their uh books are plastered
all over the place.
But nudge theory is great.
This idea that we need to bereminded and triggered, but it
doesn't explain everything abouthow we get good at doing new

(11:50):
things, practicing new things,so we can automate them.
And this is why we created thenon-action factor model because
we wanted to give people, well,first of all, we wanted to give
ourselves a systematicunderstanding of what actually
drives behavior.
How can we create a belt andbraces approach to make sure we

(12:13):
have the very best chance ofhelping people to actually get
better at the things that theywant to get better at, like
being more focused, being lessstressed, sleeping better, being
a better leader, being a betterteam member, being a better
parent, eating more healthily,being more confident, all that
great stuff, performing underpressure.

(12:35):
So we researched and we triedand we tested and we researched
and we tried and we tested, andthat's what that's how the nine
action factor model emerged.
The nine action factor modelactually used to be um it was a
seven-factor model, probablyabout 10 years ago now.

(12:57):
Again, we refined, refined,refined, and what actually sits
behind the national factor modelis about 250 different tactics
that you can use that we use inour consultancy work.
But the simplest application ofthis when we're coaching people,
we're working with themone-to-one, is we use the habit

(13:18):
building plan.
So by answering the questions inthe habit building plan, and if
you've got the book in front ofyou there, this is in step four,
and it's in um so yeah, so stepfour has three chapters: chapter
23, chapter 24, chapter 25, andthe habit building plan is um we

(13:42):
I I unpack the nine factors inchapter 23.
Um I do another assessment inchapter 24, the how you hinders
change, and then we create thehabit building plan in chapter
25.
So in chapter 25, so that youdon't have to know all of the
nine factors inside out, we havethe habit building plan where we

(14:05):
ask you there are ten reflectivestatements, and across those
statements, um where umimplicitly getting you to kind
of tackle each of the ninefactors, and the nine factors
are all interconnected, sothere's lots of crossover.

(14:27):
But if you go through these 10questions, it's a real belt and
braces approach to givingyourself the best chance of
getting those factors workingfor you instead of against you
because those factors are alwayson if you're really good at
being stressed, and I knowJustine is saying that sounds
odd.
What really good?
Because we think about goodthings as being positive, right?

(14:49):
Or being helpful, but we can begood at really unhelpful things,
right?
So getting stressed, we can bereally good at being a poor
sleeper, we can be really good,can be excellent at being uh, we
can be an excellentprocrastinator, right?
That means that well, it meansyou've got a load of a ton of
neurons in your brain for thosebehaviors, and um, I'll do one

(15:15):
more.
You can be a you can be a worldchampion whole leader or a world
champion, um not very goodleader, but which means you've
got a ton of neurons in yourbrain for bad leadership
behaviors or unhelpfulleadership behaviors.
So um, in order to get good atthose things, the nine factors

(15:45):
were on your side, and they'restill on your side now.
So, what you have to do is wehave to target the new thing we
want to get good at, and in thiscase, we're going to target
creating a willpower story.
And my example in the questionone of the habit building plan
is create my willpower story inmy workbook at 8:30 a.m.
at my desk in my 10-minuteplanning meeting with myself.

(16:09):
Um, and then the next thing wedo is we say, right, what's the
competing behavior?
But I'll come on to that in asecond.
So you've got to pick that newthing that you want to build.
And by practicing, creating mywillpower story in my workbook
at 8:30 a.m.

(16:30):
at my desk in my 10-minuteplanning meeting with myself.
Just by practicing that, I'mstarting to build neural
networks for it.
And you know, the way our brainworks is just like, because it's
all interconnected, it's justlike how physical skills work.
Psychological skills work in thesame way as physical skills.

(16:52):
Even if you just think ofwriting with your left hand, if
you're not left-handed, youwon't be very good at it because
you've never practiced it, oryou've very rarely practiced it.
If you add up the amount of timeyou've practiced writing with
your right hand, if you'reright-handed, it will be tens of
thousands of hours.
And that's why it's so fluid,because there's so many neurons

(17:13):
in your brain for it.
Then we talk about musclememory, which doesn't really
doesn't actually exist if youlook at dynamic systems theory,
and a theory about learning thatwas driven by a group of
scientists that I was like Iactually studied under, um, very
fortunately, back then atManchester Met, um, and those
guys went around the world andspread that theory.

(17:35):
We're not going to get intothat, it's quite complex, but it
basically shows muscle memorydoesn't exist.
But it's a nice, it's a niceterm, and we kind of get what it
means.
But whatever we're good at, wehave a load, we have a lot of
neurobiological connections forthat thing in our brain.
Whatever we're not good at, wedon't have a lot of
neurobiological connections for.
So we need to build up new ones.

(17:57):
Um, and the questions in thehabit building plan help you to
do that.
I'm not going to go through themall right now.
You can do that yourself.
But essentially, what we have todo is we have to get the nine
factors working for us.
Um, and what we're starting toget into now as we close the

(18:22):
loop, as we go from step one,measuring brain states, to step
two of essentially creating ourfam story, our future ambitious,
meaningful story, which is along-term strategic plan for
ourselves, but that starts tostarts today, it starts in that
next 30-day period.
Then the willpower story, whichis a daily strategic plan, and

(18:46):
then um the habit building plan,which is the practical way of
getting the nine action factorsworking for you.
What we're starting to do is getin a cycle of personal research.
You are doing this researchproject on yourself to work out

(19:07):
where are my brain status rightnow?
What do I need to do to help meto improve my brain status?
And this is what we mean bycoaching yourself.
You are working on yourself.
Um, I cut my teeth inprofessional sport, that's my
you know, background, and thetechnology company I work for,

(19:32):
called Prozone, which nowdoesn't exist, it's owned by a
much uh bigger company.
I'm not sure who owns itanymore, actually.
It's owned by a massive US hedgefund.
But anyway, they were pioneersin making it easier for soccer
coaches, or as we say in the UK,football coaches, and um rugby

(19:57):
coaches as well, and some othersports.
They're pioneers in helping thecoaches analyse, and the players
analyse what was going on in thefield.
So, how far did players run?
So, you know, before we had GPS,we were using trigonometry to
work out how far players hadrun, how many passes did a
player make, how many longpasses, how many short passes,

(20:18):
how many headers, how manytackles, how many of those
things were successful?
And they were making it easierfor the coaches to take what
they were seeing, because that'sdata, um, and to amplify that
and to see you know, are thereany patterns emerging?
It's much harder to do that forour own behaviors for the things

(20:42):
that we think and do every day.
But what we're trying to dofundamentally with this process
is we're trying to get aboveourselves and we're trying to
look at ourselves in a much moreum constructive and detailed
way, so that we can see what amI doing every day, and how does

(21:05):
that um fit in with the kind ofstuff that I want to be
achieving this month or in thenext 12 months or in the next uh
year or the next 10 years.
And by connecting those twothings together using the AI
edge success cycle, we can onesmall super habit at a time, we

(21:28):
can start improving the way thatwe think and what we do, so it's
more helpful in helping us dothe things in our lives that we
want to do, achieve the thingsin our lives that we want to
achieve.
So that's what we're doing, andthat same methodology, same
simple four-step process thatyou've gone through.
If you're listening to what I'msaying right now, so you've

(21:49):
worked through the four days,probably you've done this in
under an hour, maybe slightlylonger.
That's the same process that youuse to coach others.
And when we talk about becominga certified habit mechanic
coach, we're not talking aboutnecessarily setting up your own
coaching business, or you canabsolutely do that, and people

(22:10):
are are doing that and havinggreater success.
But fundamentally, we're talkingabout learning how to coach
yourself, and it's simple, butalso it's complex, and that's
why we have this structuredthree-month uh training program
that we've created um that's gotin it everything that I've

(22:32):
learned about coaching myselfand others um over the last you
know 25 years now, so thatpeople can access that same
learning as well.
And excitingly, they can alsounderstand how to deploy that
those skills to optimize andcapitalise these new neural

(22:57):
network AI technologies that areemerging that can help us to
essentially improve our brainstate scores.
That's what they fundamentallycan do because they can help us
to do less medium charge, doless busy work, help us to do
more high impact, high chargework, do it faster, but also get
more recharge done.

(23:18):
That's why we're so excitedabout the uh AI.
That's why I wrote Train YourBrain for the AI revolution.
Um, so that's what you're doing.
So this cycle isn't justdesigned to be gone around once,
the AI edge success cycle, it'sdesigned as a foundational
framework.
And we have other we have aleadership model that we also

(23:41):
use that builds on this, and wehave a team model, but that's
not for today.
Um, this is the foundation.
So that's all I want to say.
I hope that's got you thinking.
I hope that's been reallyhelpful.
I'd encourage you to revisitthis.
We are periodically at themoment uh giving 75% funded

(24:06):
training grants to people thatwant to become certified
coaches.
So if that's of interest to you,you'll probably see some
messages about it.
If you're not seeing themessages, just reach out and ask
us and we'll let you know ifthere's any less available and
see if it's a good fit for you.
I think that brain stateintelligence and especially

(24:34):
those who can help others to doit is going to become one of the
most sought after skills on theplanet, and currently there's
only a handful of people whoknow how to do it.
So this just learning how tomanage your own brain states and
helping others to do that is amassive opportunity.

(24:54):
So if you like this, you thinkit's interesting, the next step
is to put it into practice foryourself.
And then I just really encourageyou to do the formal training so
that you actually understand howto go beyond just knowing this

(25:16):
four-step cycle and just kind ofdoing the the free level as I'd
call it, and um, you know,really get into the in-depth
expert level so you can see allof the all of the playbooks
we've created, all of the hacks.
Um I don't like that wordparticular, but what I mean is

(25:37):
there are there are shortcuts todoing very robust behaviour
change, if you know how.
And I I share all of that withyou in the in the certified
mechanic coach training program.
So thank you for listening.
Thanks for taking the time.
What should starting to beconnecting now actually also is

(26:02):
that although it's notcompletely obvious, so I will
say it out loud, every habit webuild fundamentally should be
focused on three core things.
One is helping us to get betterquality recharge, two is helping

(26:25):
us to optimize our medium chargebrain states, and three is
helping us to optimize our highcharge brain states.

Um, or I could say that again: one is optimise recharge, two is (26:33):
undefined
optimise medium charge, three isoptimise high charge.
That's you know, everything thatyou're doing in terms of habit
building really is focused onthose three areas.
So that's why brain states areso powerful, they're so

(26:55):
important.
And we need to develop alanguage to help us to
understand how to how tooptimize how we use them, and
people need teachers to helpthem to do that, so they need
people like you to see thissystem at a high level in what
in practice for yourself, andthen you know, share it with

(27:16):
others.
But that's also why I say youonly ever one brain state habit
away because the brain statehabits are just are so they're
everything, really, once youunderstand that it's a
breakthrough moment.
So thanks for listening.
Revisit the four days if that'shelpful.
Remember, this is an evergreencycle, and uh remember you're

(27:38):
only ever one brain state habitaway.