Combine First Principles and Habit Mapping to Transform your Life

Rishabh Malik

6 min readJul 13, 2016

Let’s Meet Joey.

Joey carries around a belief system.

Out of habit, every time a situation strikes, Joey’s beliefs float out from his belief system and go into his head.

These beliefs instigate a response in Joey, within a matter of micro-seconds.

Confirming to his beliefs, usually out of habit, makes Joey feel good.

Although, this is not right. Things could have been different. Things could have been much better. One Joey-response could have been:

Let’s take another case:

Or another way:

This is called thinking by first principles. It is not always the easiest way to do the thinking, but it always, always generates much better outcomes and more self-belief. It opens up numerous new channels of innovative thinking.

Now, we’re humans and we’re not perfect. We make mistakes and we think in a hurry a lot of times. But, if acted right, we can come real close to first-principles thinking every time. So close that it becomes our habit.

Sometimes though, the situation demands for us to act on our beliefs, where we need to take some decision real quick. For this to happen right, we need to replace all of our foul beliefs engraved within our brains. And to do all this, we need to extract the power of habit.

So, let’s talk about Habits.

Habits

The best possible way to make transformative changes within yourself is to create habits. Habits are what humans work on.

About 40% of the actions that people perform each day aren’t actual decisions but habits.

How is a habit created? — The habit loop

The habit process within our brain is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and to use one habit. Then there is the routine — the thing you do automatically — which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for in the future. Cue-Routine-Reward.

for ex. I just felt thirsty, let’s say. This is my cue.
I walk to the refrigerator, open its door, take out the bottle and drink while the refrigerator’s door is still open. Then I put the bottle in and bam — close the door. This is my routine. All the while I’m doing it, I’m thinking about something else, and never about how I’m drinking the water.
I didn’t have to close the refrigerator’s door two times (open the door and take out the bottle- close the door- drink water- open the door again- put the bottle in- close the door again) This would have been hard work. I saved some labour by opening the door just one time- that’s the reward right there. And that is why I remember this routine. Over time it has become a habit. Every time I do it, the routine becomes more automatic.

How to create new habits?

We must put together a cue, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivate a craving that drives this habit loop.
A cue and a reward on their own aren’t enough for a new habit to last. Only when your brain starts expecting the reward — craving the endorphins or a sense of accomplishment — will it become automatic.

How to change old habits?

You can never truly extinguish the bad habits. Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine. That’s the rule; if you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.

Now, to extract the power of habits you must first know what your habits are. And the way to do it is by —

Habit Mapping

If you think about any of your habit, you’ll find that it always signifies an underlying belief. And mind you, that belief may be truly yours or may have been dumped onto you by the society around you. That belief maybe true or untrue.

For instance, let’s say every time a big running challenge throws itself at you, you are habitual to say, ‘Uh, no man! No, I can’t run. My body doesn’t allow me.’

This habit shows your underlying belief about your body. You believe that your body is not capable of running. And if you dig deeper, you will find many mini-beliefs that lead up to this big belief. Big beliefs are the root cause of your habit. They are the reward (in the habit loop), as confirming to this belief of yours makes you feel really, really good.

But there aren’t just beliefs inside a habit, there are fears too. You might be habitual of not running because you’re afraid of people laughing at you. The fear of people judging you holds you down. Again, this acts as a reward, as acting on your habit saves you from your fears.

So the complete mapping of a habit would be like (The Habit Chart):

So to transform your life in fascinating ways, you must first use the Habit mapping to realize your habits. Then use the knowledge of habits to replace your foul habits with first principles thinking.

Through combining these two big ideas of First principles and Habit mapping, you can forever change your view of life. You can remove your trashy, old rigid habits to pave way for a more humble approach of scientific reasoning through first principles.

P.S If you liked this, do support me by hitting that ❤ below.

P.P.S Thanks for clicking the ❤, here are some resources for you:

1. The power of habit by Charles Duhigg.

2. First Principles — Elon Musk’s way.

3. Project Dead Poets Society