The anti temptation bundling hack. Why you shouldn’t carry your phone when you go walking
Do you carry your phone to watch Netflix, or listen to music or a podcast when you go walking or running ?
Most likely you do. You are essentially practising “Temptation Bundling” which is a behaviour change technique popularised by the likes of Nir Eyal and James Clea in which you combine a desired activity with an undesirable activity to increase motivation for the undesirable activity.
One of the most popular examples is combining Netflix with the gym. You want to binge watch your favourite series but suppose you make a rule that you can only do it when you are exercising. The pull of Netflix ends up reducing the inertia for exercise.
There is absolutely no doubt that Temptation Bundling is effective. I have seen it happen firsthand – for myself and many others. I am a believer
So what’s the anti- Temptation Bundling Hack? Isn’t this supposed to be a good thing.
Well it was just click bait. A sly way to get your attention :-)
Just kidding.
The hack came into being when I noticed that there are some unique situations where Temptation Bundling might actually be a bad idea. Not bad in an absolute sense, but bad because in these situations, there is something better than TB. But because we have become such disciples of TB, we can’t think of doing anything else.
So what are these situations ,what is this other thing ( the hack ) and how is it better than Temptation Bundling?
The Situations – These are alone situations mostly where your mind is at rest. It’s not doing anything tasked by you and is not distracted by anything which requires a lot of brain power. Like when you are in the shower. Or when you go running or walking alone or on a long car drive. Also much rarer, but when you are sitting alone and doing absolutely nothing.
The Thing – The thing can be called either Diffusive Thinking or Scatter Focus. They are more or less the same. There are nice books on these topics and you read them if you want to get into detail.
Diffuse Thinking or Scatter Focus is a cognitive mode where your mind relaxes and wanders. You can do it deliberately or it can happen subconsciously.
This is what happens during Diffusive Thinking or Scatter Focus Mode
Your mind is free. It’s not focussed on anything specific. So it wanders aimleslesly. Your head is full of ideas which are based on all the experiences and learning you have had in your life. They are just sitting there, stored in different warehoused in your brain. In this aimless wandering, your brain randomly discovers and opens many of these warehouses of ideas in your head and starts to find connections between them.
Essentially your aimless wondering leads to your brain connecting some unrelated ideas (dots) in your head.
All other times, your brain is doing focussed tasks and there is no scope for this connecting of unrelated ideas.
This is why you get great ideas in the shower. This is also why you get great ideas in your sleep sometimes. You wake up with an idea that you think you saw in your dreams. We are in a Diffusive Thinking or Scatter Focus state.
Why is this useful ?
I think you would have figured this out by now. Because , connecting the dots is one the most important human superpowers of the digital and AI age. It allows you to come up with powerful insights. It increases your creativity.
In the words of the great Steve Jobs, creativity is seeing things others don’t see. By connecting random supposedly unrelated dots, you start seeing things others don’t see.
I think you will agree that becoming creative and more insightful are very powerful superpowers. Far more useful than the benefits of Temptation Bundling. You can find lots of other ways to motivate yourself to exercise.
If you don’t think that becoming better at creativity and coming up with powerful insights is a useful skill for you, then please skip this article. Sorry for tempting you with the headline.
How to use it effectively
We get great ideas in the shower. But we don’t get it every day. So if we want to get more great ideas, we need to do two things. One, we need more dots ( ideas ) in our head. The more diverse and different the better. So we need to read on diverse topics and meet people who are different from us and the people we are surrounded with. Second, we need to practice Diffusive Thinking or Scatter Focus more often. Like when we go for a walk or run. For that, we need to stop carrying our phones for the purpose of – you guessed it. Temptation Bundling.
I have also realised that the more you practise the better you get. You will start connecting dots more often and faster also.
How to practise this
So here are two things that I can recommend you to do. But you will have to do it a few times, before you start seeing the benefits.
Stop carrying your phone when you go for a walk or run. There are lots of other opportunities to practise Temptation Bundling. Do it in the gym for example, where you can’t allow your mind to wander aimlessly.
Before you go into the Diffusive Thinking or Scatter Focus mode, do some reading. Read about any of the problems that you are currently working on. I have noticed that this primes your brain and you sometimes get good ideas about this problem during your Diffusive Thinking / Scatter Focus period.
The best way to do this is by reading before we sleep. We then have a long undistracted window which can allow Diffusive Thinking or Scatter Focus to happen effectively.
