 Previously on the Communist Manifesto for Personal Finance Behold! The human brain! Before you try to improve yourself, understand habits. Half the battle is modifying your environment. Are you having an outside? Emotion f***ing logic. Pacific bunny, I'm pregnant and you're the father. Oh, old BB's done it again! And now the conclusion. Hello and welcome to the Communist Manifesto for Personal Finance. The only program that teaches you how to seize your means of production. I'm Comrade Look. In the last week of December, we human beings partake in a most masochistic ritual. We look back at the previous year and recall all our failings. The amount of money we spent on pointless luxury. The hours we wasted watching dumb internet videos instead of intelligent programming. The amount of desserts we ate instead of vegetables. Oh God. Looking back at the year and seeing all our mistakes, we resolved to do better. To grab the babushka by the horns and make next year our female dog. And thus begins the vicious cycle of New Year's resolutions. We promise ourselves we'll finally write that great novel. We'll jog ten miles every day. We'll save enough money to take our dream vacation to Siberia. Excuse me. And on New Year's Day, we wake up, probably hungover, and start doing our resolutions. Until the third week of January. Then we give up and fall into the same pattern as our previous years, 2020 notwithstanding. Often we fail at New Year's resolutions because we go for broke. We make our resolutions so grandiose, there's no possible way we'll succeed. We shoot for the moon and burn up in the atmosphere. We try to go big and end up going home. The reason massive, life-changing resolutions rarely work is because big resolutions rely almost exclusively on willpower. In the mid-1990s, Mark Munn-Raven of Case Western University conducted an experiment on willpower. He first selected two groups. Group A, Halal, and Group B. Hi everybody! Both groups were presented with two bowls of food. One bowl contained delicious, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and the other bowl contained radishes. Group A was instructed to ignore the radishes and only eat the cookies. As you can imagine, this was not difficult. Cookies! Group B, on the other hand, was told to ignore the soft, chewy, delicious cookies and only eat the radishes. Oh, wait! As a rabbit, wouldn't I enjoy eating radishes? Shut up. After Group A had satisfied their hunger and Group B spent 10 minutes staring at freshly baked cookies, both groups were given an impossible puzzle to solve. Group A, who didn't have to resist the cookies, attempted to solve the puzzle for 19 minutes before giving up. Hmm, oh man, this puzzle has really stumped me. I guess this isn't my day. Are there any more cookies? Meanwhile, Group B, who forced themselves to eat radishes while staring at warm, soft, chewy, delicious cookies, attempted to solve the puzzle for roughly 8 minutes before finally... There have been over 200 studies on willpower since Mun Raven's experiment and all have come to the same conclusion. Lesson 4, willpower is a limited resource. Your limited amount of willpower is why going cold turkey rarely works. Why it's bad to start CrossFit if you spent your entire winter lying around eating goulash, and why we often give in to environmental temptations like Sharon, I swear to Marx. If you bring one more bun cake to work while I'm on my diet, I'm going to s*** with a rusty fishing knife while your cat's watch, and then I will s*** with your blood on my hands, you horny old slut. Point is willpower is a muscle. You can train yourself to have more willpower, but like actual weight training, if you try to do too much too quickly, you're doing more harm than good. To overcome this willpower problem, you need to find the right routine. Routine is the third part of a habit. It's the response to the craving, the flipping on the light switch or the flipping off root drivers. Frequently, when people make New Year's resolutions, they make their new routine too difficult and too vague. Let's look at the most common New Year's resolution. Exercising. Say you resolve to jog one hour every day. First of all, this routine is not very specific. Where are you going to jog? When are you going to jog? Are you going to jog when it's snowing? Are you going to jog when it's 100 degrees outside? Are you going to jog after working a 12-hour shift? I will admit these questions are nitpicky, but if you want to change your habits, these are nits you need to pick. Otherwise, you'll never follow through. Contrary to anarchist belief, people need structure, especially when they're trying to form new habits. The human brain likes specifics. Otherwise, it shuts down and doesn't do the behavior we want it to do. For example, our brains might think it's snowing outside and I don't want to catch a cold. We never said we would jog in the snow. We'll go jogging tomorrow. Or it's dark out there. If we go jogging tonight, we could roll an ankle. We never said we'd go jogging at night. Better to do it in the day when we can actually see. Or we're sore from yesterday. Probably don't want to strain ourselves. We never said we'd go jogging when we were sore. Better go jogging tomorrow. Without specific details, our brains look for excuses to avoid doing a new behavior, especially if that behavior is difficult. This is the second problem with resolving to jog one hour every day. It's difficult to follow through on. Now, of course, for someone who runs marathons all year, jogging one hour a day is probably a run in the park. But for the rest of us who spent all December eating borscht and watching Battleship Potemkin on repeat, jogging one hour a day is difficult and will require a lot of motivation. In Tiny Habits, B.J. Fogg presents his model for human behavior. In Fogg's model, the X-axis represents our ability to perform a routine and the Y-axis represents our motivation. The curved line, known as the action line, represents the relationship between someone's ability and their motivation. As you can see, the less ability you have to perform a task, the more motivation you will need to attempt it. Think back to previous New Year's resolutions where you were trying to do a routine far beyond your ability. Perhaps on the first day you were excited to do that routine, but what about the next? Or the next? Did you see your motivation slowly drop? Did you have to burn through more and more willpower to follow through? In our example of an unproductive New Year's resolution, it's obvious for average people jogging one hour every day is difficult and will require a lot of willpower, which again is a limited resource. So chances are slim that jogging one hour a day will become a habit. In order to adopt a routine that will stick, you can't force yourself to become more motivated. Instead, you should focus on making your routine easier so that it works with your ability. In other words, you have to kiss ass or keep it simple and specific, stupid. Let's think of a simpler and more specific routine for getting into shape. Like after lunch, you're going to take a five-minute walk around your block. This routine is both simple and specific. You've established where you're going to walk around your block. You've also specified that you're going to walk after lunch, so you have a built-in queue for the habit. Plus, this routine is pretty simple. Most people can walk for five minutes. In fact, some might argue that taking a five-minute walk is pretty easy. And this brings up the question, can you make your new routine too easy? And the answer is yes. Yes, you can. In atomic habits, James Clear presents his model for human behavior. In Clear's model, the x-axis represents the difficulty of a new routine and the y-axis represents our motivation. Similar to Fogg, Clear believes that the more difficult a task is, the less likely we are to repeat it. Because attempting a task we suck at makes us frustrated. But Clear also believes we are just as likely to give up on a new routine if it is too easy. Because if it is too easy, we become bored. In Clear's behavior model, human motivation works on a bell curve. Think back to your favorite video games. The ones that really mattered. Chances are the games you enjoyed weren't the ones so difficult you threw your controller against the wall. Nor were they the games so easy you beat them in less than two hours. The games you remember most, that you spent years of your life playing, were the games that challenged you just enough that you wanted to get good. Like that bourgeoisie scum Goldilocks. We want a routine that is just right in terms of difficulty. And yes, for some people, walking five minutes is far too easy. But for other people, walking five minutes is bordering on too difficult. And this brings us to the third problem people make when trying to form new routines. Too often, people try to emulate the exact routines of successful people. Research habits long enough, and you'll come across books or internet videos with titles like 11 Habits of Alphas, or 69 habits you need right now if you want to be rich and have a bigger s***. Often, in these clickbait videos, experts guarantee that if you follow specific habits, you're sure to be sipping Don Perignon out of a myth rule goblet while sitting on your 50,000 square foot platinum yacht. Now, don't get us wrong, we think there are habits everyone should do. Brushing our teeth, getting eight hours of sleep, re-educating fascists on site. And you're more than welcome to experiment and see if the habits of successful people help you. But keep in mind, successful people found habits that worked with their environment and personality. The habits worked because they were the right habits for that person. The point is, any book or video that claims doing specific habits is guaranteed to make you successful should be taken with a block of salt. If you want to find the habits that truly work for you, ultimately you'll have to think for yourself. Oh, Marx, no! But I promise it will be worth it. Because once you find the right routine, you can finally be able to reap Throughout this series, we've tried to answer the question of why people don't do what they should do. Why knowledge of unhealthy habits doesn't mean we'll stop them. And the answer is multifaceted. We see cues for unhealthy habits in our environment. We crave the emotions that go with those habits. Unhealthy habits are easier to perform. But the biggest reason we fall into unhealthy habits, rather than healthy ones, is the reward. The reward is the last part of a habit. It's the light we see when we flip the switch. The dopamine of seeing likes on social media. The sweet, sweet sugar we get from eating a cupcake. I said, Marx, damn! While researching this episode, we came across a lot of differing viewpoints on habits. But if there was one thing all the experts agreed on, it was what constituted a reward. A reward must come immediately after the routine. In other words, for a habit to stick, it must provide instant gratification. If you swim in Marxist waters, you've probably read how capitalism has created instant gratification and how that's destroying the world. Now, we love to blame capitalism for all our problems as much as any communist. But we must admit an inconvenient truth. And as communists, this is the hardest thing we've ever had to say. Instant gratification is an entirely capitalism's fault. Look, wait, look, look, look, don't get me wrong. Capitalism has spent billions, if not trillions of dollars, figuring out how to exploit instant gratification. And let's face it, for the past few centuries it's been pretty successful. But capitalism didn't create our need to be instantly gratified. Evolution did. In Atomic Habits, James Clear points out that animals operate on an immediate return system. Meaning, when animals perform an action, they want the result instantaneously. When a monkey climbs a tree, it wants to find fruit. When a lion pounces on a gazelle, she wants to eat it. When a gazelle runs away from a lion, it wants to reach safety. Evolution favors an immediate return system. The animals that waste time thinking about the long-term consequences of their behavior die and fail to pass on their genes. Chances are the only reason you exist is because long ago one of your ancestors responded immediately to a crisis. The immediate return system is embedded into our genetic makeup. That's why instant gratification isn't a modern phenomenon. It's older than humanity itself. The problem is humans f*** themselves over when they developed higher functioning brains. Brains that use reason and logic. These higher functioning brains led to civilization. And the consequences of civilization aren't based in an immediate return system. They're based in a delayed return system. Educating ourselves, saving our money, avoiding sugar. All of these are habits whose benefits are delayed. We can't see them right now because we are emotionally trapped in the present. Meaning we want a reward right f***ing now. That's why healthy habits are hard to stick to. And capitalism has created an environment where cues constantly trigger our cravings. So, what is to be done? Well, if you're someone who doesn't want to stage a massive revolution and completely overhaul global society regardless of how many people are sacrificed, aka a coward, but still want to change your behavior in this capitalist hellscape we would suggest that you hack the system that drives your behavior. Habits. Meaning if you want healthy behavior to stick, you need to immediately reward healthy habits. Many of the experts have different strategies on how to immediately reward good habits. BJ Fogg recommends using a celebration. Did you put money into your savings account today? Do a little happy dance. Did you take a five minute walk? Give yourself a thumbs up in the mirror. Brush your teeth? Spike your toothbrush like a football. According to Fogg, we change best by feeling good. Of course, you less vivacious individuals might not want to do a song and dance every time you take a shower. Have no fear. There's a subtler way you can immediately reward good behavior. The Habit Tracker. A habit tracker is a visual way to see your progress. The classic example is a basic pen and paper calendar. Every time you do a good habit, like going a day without ice cream, you make a mark on the calendar. The theory is every time you do a good habit, you're forming a link in the chain. Eventually the chain grows large enough you become unwilling to break it. By marking down your progress, you are again coding that behavior into your brain. Ultimately, habit trackers and celebrations aren't the real reward. The real reward of doing healthy behavior is a much deeper concept. Your identity. The hardest question you face every day is, who are you? Most of us want our identity to be a fixed star that we can chart the course of our life to. But the idea that human beings have fixed identities is a delusion. And this is the last lesson. Identity is never permanent. Although at some point you will achieve a permanent identity. But until that time, you are in a constant state of change. Every day you face a hundred different decisions that shape who you are as a person. Do you eat an apple or a cupcake? Do you buy a $5 latte or invest in an index fund? Do you exercise for 30 minutes or watch internet videos all day? The real reward of healthy habits is that each responsible-slash-healthy decision you make is a vote for the type of person you want to become. And while we communists reject most dichotomies, we do believe if you're not getting better, you must be getting worse. Now at this point, you're probably feeling a little anxious by the idea that every day you have to choose whether you're becoming a better or worse person. But this is the power of habits. Because as we've said before, when you do a habit long enough, it becomes automatic. So you don't think about whether you should do the right thing, you just do it. As we've said before, habits are the compound interest of human behavior. Every responsible habit you adopt can lead to an even better habit. And every day you do a responsible habit, you're making progress to the type of person you want to be in the world. But as we all know, progress is never permanent. And while every day presents the opportunity that you'll become a slightly better person, it also presents the risk that you'll become slightly worse. So all your life, you'll be struggling to be the person you truly want to be. And that's exhausting. Many people give up and accept decay. But you don't have to accept decay. You have the power to choose something different. Pabets are the tools you can use to become something more. Something remarkable. Something that can change the world. I'm Comrade Rourke and you are the Revolution. Follow us on Instagram at Comrade Rourke.