I love mental models. They help explain how your brain processes information and makes choices. Recently I have been thinking a lot about how to explain change to people, and came up with a fairly simple model for why radical change is difficult and unreliable. It goes something like this:

Your brain is a cost-reward calculator. It weighs how much it will cost to get the reward you want. The basic premise is that if the cost outweighs the benefit your brain will not attempt to get the reward. This system is flawed, however. Your brain is very good at measuring immediate rewards, but when a reward that pays out over time is considered your brain starts measuring inaccurately. Your brain weighs rewards against time.

Delaying Gratification

Consider this; you meet me on the street in the morning and I offer you a choice. You can either have 100 dollars or 110 dollars, which do you choose? Obviously, 110 dollars is more, it’s the better choice. Now I offer 100 dollars now, or 110 at the end of the day. Which is the better choice? While some people will delay gratification to get that extra 10 dollars, a significant portion of people will choose the 100 immediately. 10 extra dollars isn’t worth waiting all day for. 

You can take this idea a step further though. If I offer 100 now or 150 at the end of the day does your decision change? What about 200 hundred at the end of the day? Suddenly waiting doesn’t seem so bad when you make double the money. Your brain weighs the time it takes to get the reward against the size of the reward and makes calculations about what is the optimal deal. 

Expanding this concept even further, let’s consider I offer 100 now and 150 at the end of the day, but you have to come meet me to get it. Now there is an effort component to consider. Increased effort and time between you and the reward, or getting a smaller but still satisfying reward right away. 

The idea is this; the value of the reward is offset by the time, and effort, it takes to get the reward. Another way to consider it, your brain reduces the perceived value of a reward if it takes more time and effort to get it. Increasing the size of the reward will reduce this effect to a point, but time and effort are the major variables in play. If I offered you 100 now or 200 at the end of the month, you’d likely take 100 now. 

Perceived Value

So what does this have to do with us? First, understanding this concept allows you to better understand your choices and decisions throughout the day, this is essentially what causes instant gratification. More importantly however, we can apply this same framework to making healthy changes in our lives. 

I discuss New Year’s Resolutions a lot. They’re a perfect example of drastic change failing to stick and everyone has likely experienced failing to maintain a resolution. So many people I have spoken to want quick, one-time fixes to their problems. They aren’t willing to consider slower options. This is because their brain is operating in the framework described above. The amount of time needed to get the bigger reward is outweighed by the immediate satisfaction of the smaller reward. 

Let me provide an example. You are trying to lose weight, say 30 pounds. Doing it the way you should, losing at most 2 pounds a week by reducing calorie intake and supplementing with exercise would take 15 weeks provided you were consistent. Nearly 4 months to get the results, or the reward, you want. 

That’s way too much time and effort for the change you want, so the perceived value of losing that 30 pounds goes down. It becomes less important to you. Your brain has valued the immediate satisfaction of continuing to be lazy and eat poorly over losing weight. You can think of it like this:

“All drastic change is measured against your level of comfort. If your level of comfort would be significantly reduced by attempting to make the change, your brain will resist it and you will likely fail.”

Drastic Change Only Works in Discomfort

But plenty of people manage to make drastic lifestyle changes and stick with them, right? Well yes, I was one of those people. Literally over the course of 1 week I committed to the diet and exercise routine that I still maintain to this day, 3 years later. So there’s hope, right? Not really. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to explain this concept and this model finally allows me to. 

I had just ended an incredibly unhealthy 5 year long relationship. My self-confidence and self esteem were destroyed, I had dropped out of college, I was working a dead end job, I was overweight, out of shape, and depressed. Then, a few weeks after the break up I threw out my back at 24 years old. That is what ultimately motivated me to start eating healthier and exercising regularly. 

My relative level of comfort had dropped so low to the point where I couldn’t walk for a few days, which INCREASED the necessity for change drastically. When the need for change significantly outweighed my relative comfort, drastic change became easy. 

As soon as my back healed I cleaned out my apartment of all junk food, planned out healthy meals that hit my nutrient and calorie targets, and began regular exercise. That’s the kind of drastic change New Year’s Resolutions hope to inspire. I was able to maintain it through the development of discipline and using mental tricks to keep the ball rolling. If the first part of the equation is:

“All drastic change is measured against your level of comfort. If your level of comfort would be significantly reduced by attempting to make this change, your brain will resist it and you will likely fail.” 

then the second part is:

“In order to create drastic change your relative level of comfort must be DECREASED enough to increase the perceived value of the change being made.”

Drastic change fails to take root in our lives because we are running the equation wrong. We think that because the change is good and we are motivated in the moment we can pursue anything. Our brain is running different calculations, however.

Change will Kill You

Once you take into account the fact that drastic change has been shown to activate the amygdala, your fight or flight center, we know that your brain’s resistance to change is actually caused by FEAR. Your brain evolved to keep you alive. That’s it’s goal, keep the meatbag alive until it can make more meatbags. Fear, it turns out, is an excellent motivator. Your brain fires up the fear response because change = risk, and comfort = survival. It believes that changing your routine that so far has kept you alive will KILL you. 

So what do we do? We cannot rely on drastic change unless our comfort level gets low enough to make the change necessary. We can’t just go around trashing our lives in order to slim down for summer. So we circumvent the system entirely. Go around the fear center. 

The Kaizen Way

In Dr. Maurer’s book “One Small Step Can Change Your Life” he describes the concept of Kaizen, or “continuous improvement.” The idea is that very small, incremental changes will not trigger your fear response, they’re safe changes. In his book he outlines how to use Kaizen to not only change your habits, but your ways of thinking and lifestyle. 

Dr. Maurer describes two methods of change: Kaizen, taking small steps that add up over time, and innovation, the sweeping and drastic change that I described above. He argues both are good avenues for change, but innovation cannot be relied on due to the fear response. He proposes Kaizen as the solution.

Kaizen is a simple concept: make small, even miniscule, changes, be patient, and wait for those changes to add up over time. If you want to lose weight Dr. Maurer would suggest that rather than try to overhaul your whole diet to change small pieces over time. Let’s say you drink soda 5 nights a week with dinner. Start by skipping one night of soda each week. Over time this will become normal for you, and then you can reduce it again. Continue this process and eventually you will cut soda out of your diet completely. 

Dr. Maurer suggests even smaller changes if necessary. Imagine you bought coffee every morning before work and wanted to cut that habit to save some money. But you try not buying coffee one day out of the week and it’s too difficult. Maurer would suggest buying your coffee each day but consider ordering a smaller size. If that’s too much he would suggest pouring a small amount of the coffee out before drinking it. Just one sip’s worth even. 

That small of a change may sound ridiculous, but it’s so small that it won’t even register on your brain’s “threat detector.” Over time you could begin pouring more and more of your coffee out until you aren’t drinking it at all. It’s simple, it sounds silly, but it works. 

Kaizen Applied

The concept can be applied to just about anything too. Consider building an exercise habit. Dr Maurer details working with a client who was a single mother working a full time job and trying to raise her children at the same time. She had some health problems and the doctor prescribed regular exercise, but she felt she could not fit 30 minutes of exercise into her schedule daily, by the time she got home from work and fed her kids she was exhausted and spent the evening watching TV.

Dr. Maurer suggested that she march in place for 1 minute. That’s it, 1 minute. She started the process and found it too small of a task to fail. Anyone can find 1 minute to march in place. Over time the client eventually increased the time spent marching to the entirety of commercial breaks. After that it increased to walking every morning. Eventually she developed a full exercise routine. 

Resisting Temptation

By making small changes we can create a big impact later on, we just need to have patience. Our society has become so entangled with the idea of instant gratification. Everything has to be faster, bigger, better, now now now. As neuroscientist Stephan Guyenet put it; “We have gotten too good at pushing our own buttons.” You were taught, unconsciously, to always go for the easiest and “best” option. Learn to resist that temptation, through practice, and accept that the without fail the truly “best” options all require consistent and sustained effort to achieve. Use Kaizen to walk the path. 

Begin small, and understand that the more parts of your life you align the easier each individual change will be. Don’t bother trying to completely revamp your diet and hit the gym for two hours if you know you’re likely to fail. We try to convince ourselves that we have enough willpower to push through when motivation fades. We don’t.

Your goal is not to maintain healthy change through force of will, your goal is to create good HABITS. You do this by building the habit up slowly, over time. 

An Example

I break my initial weight loss journey (58 pounds over 2 years) into two distinct sections. Year 1 I weighed in at 225, my heaviest ever. I dropped 25 pounds, down to 200, just by reducing the amount of dessert and takeout food I ate. I limited both to once a week. I allowed myself to order bad food or go to restaurants on the weekends only. I eliminated soda completely, and reduced alcohol consumption to weekends as well.

At the time I was working a low-energy job as a bank teller where I stood around all day doing nothing. After work I would watch Netflix or play video games. That’s it, no physical exercise, no keto diet, nothing but restricting the bad food I ate and eliminating soda. But these diet habits set the ground work for the changes that have stuck around for the last 3 years.

In my second year, after the breakup, I made bigger changes due to my level of comfort dropping. But even then, I built up the habit over time. I changed my diet overnight, but it took months to build up my running habit. I started with a half mile run and slowly increased it to 2.5 miles, half a mile at a time. 

Lessons

If you are looking to make change in your life, pick one area to focus on first. Trying to change everything at once is a recipe for failure. Set up a single new practice that is maintainable and focus your energy on that until it becomes habitual. Then either increase the intensity of that habit or add something else. Reduce your sugar intake, then add in some greens, then start calorie tracking. For exercise start with walking, then bike, then run. 

Whatever it is you are trying to accomplish, start small and in one area. Build the habit up over time and BE PATIENT with it. It will take time, but that’s okay, it’s worth it in the end.