READ · GUIDE
Information and support
Mind
Reliable, and specific about what to say when you make the appointment.
Clear information on mental health, treatment options and how to ask for help.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
Resources
Want to go further?
Everything worth your time on the question: What repeatedly changes what I do, whether I intended it or not?
← Back to the sessionREAD · BOOK
Good Habits, Bad Habits
Wendy Wood
Read it if the exercise found you repeatedly doing something you did not decide to do. It moves the problem from your willpower to your surroundings, which is where it can actually be changed.
Wood spent three decades measuring what people actually do rather than what they intend, and her finding is uncomfortable: roughly forty three per cent of daily behaviour is repeated in the same context with almost no decision involved. That reframes the question. Something with a hold on you is usually not a failure of character, it is a piece of your environment doing reliable work.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
READ · ARTICLE
Identity-based habits
James Clear
Best for seeing why repeated action is better evidence than self-description.
A short piece with one idea in it: every action is a small vote for the kind of person you believe you are, and the tally is more honest than the label. It is the clearest statement of the assumption this exercise runs on, which is that what you did tells you more than what you would say.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
READ · BOOK
Why We Do What We Do
Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste
Worth it if the exercise found that something you care about only feels worthwhile once somebody notices. He explains the mechanism without making you feel corrupt for it.
The readable account of self-determination theory, written by the man who spent forty years testing it. The finding that matters here is that rewards and approval reliably change why people do things, and that behaviour which survives without either is telling you something the rest is not. It gives you a usable test rather than a feeling.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
READ · RESEARCH
Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement
Julian B. Rotter
Skim the opening sections. It is worth it if you keep holding yourself accountable for other people's choices and for results that were never in your gift.
Rotter's monograph is where the internal and external control idea comes from, and it is more careful than the pop version. An internal orientation predicts persistence and initiative, but it also carries a cost when someone applies it to outcomes nobody could have controlled, which is where responsibility turns into self blame.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
READ · RESEARCH
Wanting is not liking
Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson
Best for explaining why you keep doing something you no longer enjoy.
Berridge separated two systems that everyday language treats as one. Wanting, the pull towards something, and liking, the pleasure of having it, run on different machinery and can come apart completely. It is the cleanest explanation of a very common report: I do not even enjoy it any more, and I still do it. Useful precisely because it does not require the word addiction.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
Recommended by the TAIU community
What helped you?
If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.
We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.