Laws Of Habit Change (Essay Sample)

APPLYING THE LAWS OF HABITS CHANGE Name Institutional affiliations Instructor Date APPLYING THE LAWS OF HABITS CHANGE In his book atomic habits, James Clear highlights four laws of behavior change that can apply to build good habits or eliminate the old bad ones. I have been applying these laws to break my cell phone bad habits. Like many people, I tend to carry my phone everywhere and checking on it whenever I get spare time. I have found myself addicted to my cell phone, and that's why I’ve been applying the laws of habits change to break this addiction. Over the recent past, I have taken the initiative to change my technology habits with the aim of improving my mental health, my focus, and attention. It was then when I realized that my cell phone is a crucial indicator of my peace of mind and mental state. With the learning and exercising the laws of behavior change, I have been enabled to constrain and limit my cell phone usage and thus improved my quality of life. I have been able to break my cell phone bad habits by using the four laws of habit change: Make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult and make it unsatisfying. Table 1: Laws of habits change BUILDING A GOOD HABIT BREAKING A BAD HABIT 1 Make it obvious Make it invisible 2 Make it attractive Make it unattractive 3 Make it easy Make it difficult 4 Make it satisfying Make it unsatisfying Making it invisible I apply this first law by putting my cell phone out of my sight, and I find it easy for me to adhere to it. I keep my cell phone off my desk as long as I'm working. During the weekdays, I keep the phone in the cabinet next to my desk, while on weekends, I keep it in the kitchen drawer along with other miscellaneous tools. After 30 to 40 minutes, I have realized that I forget about my cell phone, but I'm tempted to check it when I see it. To overcome the temptation of checking it every time I see it, I design some routines to keep it invisible. Firstly, to avoid the temptation of checking it in the morning, I charge it far away from my bed. Secondly, I login into all my 2-factor applications during workdays and put the phone in the cabinet. Lastly, on weekends I keep the phone in the kitchen drawer if I'm not on call. To implement these routines, I use the implementation intentions by telling myself that “at 9:00 AM I will SIGN INTO ALL MY TWO-FACTOR APPLICATIONS and then put the phone in the DESK’S CABINET”. Make it unattractive I adhered to this law by putting my cell phone out of sight. However, another problem occurred whereby I realized that I had not put my cell phone on silent mode, and so there were a lot of notifications popping on my phone. I found myself in another scenario where I had to choose whether to keep on getting up to check the notifications or suffer from anxiety about not checking them. It is after this occurrence I decide to introduce the second law to make it unattractive. I make it unattractive by deleting the apps that were making noisy notifications, and those that I cannot delete, I disable their notifications. ...