Engineering your Addictions

Boni Aditya
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

I used the techniques from these books “The Power of Habits” and “SWITCH” and “Hooked, how to build habit forming Products”, it is very easy to “cheat” and “coax” your brain, facebook, youtube, and other websites, smartphones and video games do it all the time. — see the book Switch by Chip Heath to understand the essential components of addiction i.e. the elephant (emotions), the path (the environment) and the mahout (logic), this is a framework presented to understand addictions, in Hooked the author talks about the hook cycle i.e. the mental model or the work flow that you need to design so that you get addicted, 3. The power of habits is more about various real life examples of how various marketers created toothpastes with foam to get you addicted to the habit, and stories about why FEBREEZE failed as a product because it could not get people addicted to it. i.e. could not begin the hook cycle, so if you can read these three books, there are others that talk about habits like NUDGE, which does not talk about getting people directly addicted but passively addicted, i.e. with small nudges, there are a few more books that I have read about habits, and understood that it is easy to cheat human mind, but for that you need to pre-design i.e. plot and create the situation, the workflow, the environment and repeat the process, for example if you wish to get addicted to typing, you can do it, 1. you need the tools and environment for addiction i.e. you need to have the software and the computer or the type writer, and you need a room where nobody can enter, anything that interrupts your addiction is bad, once you begin you should let yourself go for as long as it takes 10–12 hours at a stretch is the maximum i have gone before you start going hungry. 2. you need to design a workflow i.e. what will you type, you can just type random non-sense, you need to find material that is exciting to type, i.e. a good novel, a suspense novel or a romantic novel (depending on the taste of the person typing) so that you will actually crave for typing more, 3. A ritual i.e. drinking tea before staring, sipping on honey, or smelling a scent before you begin or taking a bath, you need a cue before you begin, no matter how insignificant, like the PAVLOV dog experiment, so if you actually want to kick start your urge to type, you just need to spray the scent 4. and then after you complete typing you need to reward yourself, i..e you need to give yourself a movie, or your favorite snack or something that is important and after each addictive session you need to multiple the reward, like the video game where you get reward points after each win, you need to do the same, So it is extremely easy to engineer addictions, but you need to be very careful while designing them, i.e. you will end up spending a lot of time planning, and some resources — in the previous example not everybody can afford privacy, not everybody can afford a macbook or a good computer or typewriter for typing, yes there are poor people in this world, unfortunately, they cant choose their addictions, they become victims of addictions.

HABITS VS ADDICTIONS

Yeah about addictions vs sustainable habits — Addictions are extremely powerful than habits, HABITS are things that you do for a specific time, in a specific place and under control, but addictions are extremely flammable i.e. irrespective of the hunger, sleep, or anything else, you pursue, the action like a mad person, you don’t have any limits. A drunkard drinks and keeps drinking, he is aware of the fact that he has lost all his money, that his wife is going to desert him but he can’t help himself. He would sell away his clothes and his body parts to get the next drink. That is the depth of addictions, i don’t think you will go mad if you mill a GYM session, so that is not an addiction, i.e. you are putting in some effort — conscious effort to sustain the habit. On the other hand an addiction is effortless i.e. you lose yourself in the action. There is this book called FLOW where the author discusses about this FLOW that is achieved where you do stuff effortlessly, like right now, how i type this comment effortlessly, the skill required to perform this action is seamless, I’ve been typing for more than 15 years now. I know English good enough that my thoughts are directly transferred to appropriate words without me having to google to find those words because I have accumulated enough vocabulary to represent normal thoughts. Though I might not be able to produce a master piece novel, because, I don’t have the huge vocab required to portray more complex thoughts and actions. Either way — understand that you want to be addicted, not develop a habit, addictions are super powerful, they compound, i.e. every hour you spend in the addiction will not add but it will multiply the effect, so most of these chess grandmasters are addicted to chess, most of the coders are addicted to coding, and many writers are addicted to writing, it is coincidence that they get paid to write, but the fact is that those people will write even if they went bankrupt and start begging on streets they would still write somewhere on the sand. Addictions take you to the next level. Addicted to driving, addicted to gambling, addicted to reading, addicted to movies, addicted to the gym. As you can see, some addictions are good, while others take you directly to the morgue. But addictions are powerful, because they are done with passion, and you forget about the world while you are addicted. Love and Other Drugs!