If it's true that we can't change what we do (our actions, behaviors, habits) without first changing who we are, how would you design an app/service/product that helped people change who they are?

And is anyone really trying to do this? Is anyone succeeding at it?

(feel free to suggest new people to add to this branch)

Some links for background on the conversation:

wayoftheduck.com

smallstepslabs.com

brianmwang.tumblr.com

I've spent a lot of time using Lift for iOS: lift.do

After two years of barely flossing (gross, I know), Lift single-handedly changed my behavior for the better. Tapping the checkmark everyday helped me develop a flossing routine. It's awesome!

When it came to going to the gym, and exercising in a meaningful way though, Lift didn't work. For something that meaningful and drastic, you need the personal willpower and peer pressure, I think. For that, I needed a good friend to tell me that I was getting "fat."

Now that I'm working out 4-5x per week, I would love a service that helped me find workout buddies, exercise suggestions (stuff you can do from home, etc), and healthy eating tips.

I love Lift.

I think your second example is interesting in the context of this question. When your friend told you you were getting fat, it revealed a conflict of beliefs about your identity -- a dissonance between the person you think you are and the person they saw. That dissonance between self and perceived identity is what I think is often overlooked as the true cause of change. Your identity was at stake, and provided the motivation for a much larger change in behavior.

We are all much better at building apps that help us AFTER our personal and outwardly perceived identities are in sync. But I think the true holy grail is to help people change identities. That's the real barrier to behavior change.

Wow, that's really interesting: "a dissonance between the person you think you are and the person they saw." You're probably spot on. Let me sit on that for a few hours and chime in again tonight.

thinking, but briefly what is intrinsic motivation is the psychological manifestation of being true to your identity?

I assume you meant "what IF intrinsic motivation is"... it took me a bit to wrap my head around that. :) I think it's a bit more complicated than that, though. For example, we may currently be the person who always takes the elevator instead of the stairs, but it would be a stretch to say that we are intrinsically motivated to take the elevator (or the stairs). Especially if we aren't aware of or necessarily proud of that part of our identities, and/or wish we were different.

I propose the following may be true:

- Dissonance between perceived and actual identities create motivation in the direction of *actual* identity.

- Note that *desired* identity is not part of the equation.

- When perceived and actual identities are in sync AND desired AND being expressed, we feel good in a way that may be labelled as intrinsic.

- Intrinsic enjoyment does not equal intrinsic motivation, because intrinsic enjoyment is a reward in itself, and has not interest in changing anything.

Yes, meant to say IF, but apparently editing isn't a feature here :)

I think you're onto something here Buster with the syncing of the perception of self, the actual self, and self-actualizing desires.

I still remained troubled with labeling things intrinsic/extrinsic. I just don't know if they really are as helpful as we perceive them to be. (and I may be completely wrong and this might be due to my recent anti-theoretical notions about understanding and implementing change).

That being said, I've written a lot on this and if you want some super academic reading you can see this post on the QS Forum: forum.quantifiedself.com

I cosign on striking the word "intrinsic" from the vocabulary of behavior change. I agree that it generally has nothing to do with motivation and if anything is just an emotional reward for being in an harmonious state. Write up a contract and we can pass it around. :)

Further, I think going beyond motivation, the idea of identity being a core foundation of change is fascinating

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. For example, I lost a Fitbit recently and then very soon after was confronted with taking the stairs vs. taking the escalator multiple times during the day. Now, I consider myself "someone who takes the stairs". But, I didn't always take the stairs, sometimes I took the escalator and stood there, sometimes I walked up the escalator. And I didn't feel bad about it.

Why? Because identifying as "someone who takes the stairs" has not explicit qualifier or goal and I think that's powerful. What if everyday you just wrote down one simple sentence - "I am someone who chooses to be healthy."

This goes back to my original point... can we forcefully change our own identities and beliefs about ourselves? Will writing something down every day have a positive (or negative??) impact on our desire to believe something different than we actually do?

An example. I recently promised Kellianne that I'll run a marathon by her next birthday. While I haven't run a marathon before, and didn't think of myself as a marathoner before, it is a pretty easy fit for my identity. In a way, I immediately believed myself to be a marathoner when I first labelled myself as such. No writing every day required. And the newly primed belief has caused me to behave differently.

But what if it hadn't been an easy fit?

A counter-example of a difficult identity fit is as a "whole food / raw food / vegan / local" eater. I strongly want to be all of those things, but I don't see myself as / believe myself to be a vegan or whole foodist right now, and have failed to change my identity and beliefs despite my strong ethical beliefs that it's the right thing to do.

I think we can change who are are and who we identify ourselves to be. The problem is it takes a time and it's hard, hard work.

I think we often think that we need to make things easy for people, but I think we might be better served to tell them the truth. Change is hard. Loosing weight it hard. Running a marathon is hard. Hell, life is f'in hard.

Maybe instead of making it easy and thinking of ways to entice people we just helped people along the way. Sure it takes effort, and it's a slow process, but maybe that's okay.

There is no good reason to move immediately from Buster no to Buster Local Eater Extraordinaire in a day. I think it's okay to let it brew. Eventually that pot will boil. Or it won't.

or maybe I'm wrong.

Hard work is no problem. I love hard work.

Are you saying that I should start writing "I am someone who eats whole food, raw food, and avoids dairy and meat" every day?" It feels wrong to me.

Where does the hard work of identity change begin?

Hmmm..... I would probably take is step back and maybe just think (whether you write it down or just internalize it is up to you) about stating, "I am someone who eats healthy." or "I am someone who makes healthy food choices."

I think the hard, the really hard work begins by being simultaneously introspective and observant of your environment as thinking really deeply about 1) do you really want to be that person? 2) why do you want to be that person? 3) Why are you not that person right now?

I want to be a person who writes, but I don't write all that much. I have lots of ideas. I love writing. But I'm not the writing person I wish I was. So let's go through the 3 questions.

1) Yes, I really do want to be a person who writes. I think writers (all) are amazing and it's a wonderful and beautiful think to express yourself in written words.

2) I've always thought of myself as a writer. I won a writing contest in 4th grade. I think I write decently well. I also love the idea that someone else will find my thoughts so compelling that they're spend time reading it!

3) I want my writing to be good. It's not. I'm scared that no one will read it. I'm more scared that no one will like it. I know this is dumb, but it's my reality.

I like where this is going. Keep going! If by the end you are a writer and I'm a vegan, we'll know we're on to something.

PS. I think you're a good writer, and I read pretty much everything you write. :)

Next question: do the answers to those 3 questions motivate you to change at all? Why and/or how? #devilsadvocate

awe... thanks! You are an awesome

I'm really digging this thrust on identity rather than goals and end-points. Goals have their place, but in the end goals are just another finish line to get to.

Identity if fluid. I'm not a writer today, I may be a writer by the end of 2013, then who knows what the future holds?

The only constant in our lives is change. We can help steer the ship, but the waves will come, the rain will fall, and the course will change. I think the real trick to leading a healthy/fulfilling/awesome life isn't hitting a target. It's making sure that you're heading in the direction you want to be going.

(man I sound like Tony Robbins or something).

So I love the _idea_ of SuperBetter, Jane McGonigal's game: superbetter.com

It's predicated on the idea of writing down what you want to be, in the format of "I'm getting SuperBetter at ____ so I can ____".

I like that this accepts and encapsulates that behaviour change is a journey - 'getting better' rather than 'being better'.

And in terms of belief change, the game is designed to coach you through that process by swapping your default self-image with that of your superhero secret identity. Not fat, lazy Ciaran, but stair-climbing, morning-walking Ciaran.

Re succeeding at belief change, it's working for some but not for me, but as I say, the _idea_ is really attractive.

Honestly, tell someone else that I want to be a person who write helps a lot. And thinking about it. Always thinking about it, but when I do not trying to put a value judgement on if I actually engage in the action the syncs with my identity.

I took the elevator today and I didn't feel bad.

I wrote today and I felt good.

Yay more people!

Oh please. You know I be stalking y'all.

@branch needs a way to favorite posts.

and add linked names.

Duly noted. Feel free to send more feedback to josh@branch.com and/or product@branch.com.

A quick Google on SuperBetter (techcrunch.com) reveals that they have changed their focus to mental health issues (anxiety, stress, depression) because those categories have the most "epic wins".

So now this is laser-focussed on belief change, right? Combatting feelings of powerlessness, self-loathing, disassociation.

It will be interesting to see if the randomised trials reveal anything.

I totally agree that SuperBetter is on the right track with identity and super hero identities. I also think their product is still too unfocused on that particular point (and I've mentioned this to them directly a couple times). Excited to see how they focus on mental health...

Meanwhile, I am still stumped on an actual procedural strategy for changing beliefs that you don't currently have but want to have. Most apps (including ones I've built) take a spaghetti-to-wall approach and hope that of the many strategies, one will work. But now that I'm not in the seat of having to defend my own past strategies, I am willing to be more open about the fact that the spaghetti strategy is more smoke and mirrors than an actual strategy.

This reminds me of something I heard a few years ago while completing my masters.

Dr. Jack Daniels ( en.wikipedia.org)) came the uni and gave a talk about his methods and thought on being a running coach. It was a superb talk and one piece has stuck in my mind ever since. He was asked how come the US doesn't produce good young distance runners compared to other countries. He then went on to talk about how middle and high school coaches train their athletes. Basically they use the same method Buster describes above (except he called it throwing a carton of eggs at a wall). All you need is one egg not to break, one kid to turn out awesome, and automatically that become the training strategy you throw are everyone...cont'd

Now, the problem with this approach is that the coaches spend so much time reveling in the success of that one pristine unbroken egg that they forget the 11 eggs lying in pieces, broken beyond repair. And, the crazy thing about that one awesome kid? Well he/she would probably have turned out amazing no matter what. Some people are just special - but they're the outliers, not the thing you should base your entire ideas about training around.

Dr. Daniels advocated for deep personalization. Get to know your athletes. Test them each individually. Treat them as individuals with different strengths and weaknesses and tailor to those. Using this general framework won't make everyone a success, but at least you end up with fewer egg shells.

So Buster, and anyone else making tools and apps, maybe we need to spend more time paying attention to the failures and less time trying to replicate the methods of the successful few.

Further, I would ask you to challenge the notion that there is a "procedural strategy" for understanding and changing humanity. The wonderful complexities of life are so far from being understood that I believe (and again, I could be completely wrong) that trying to map change is a fools errand. Again, I'm reminded of something Gary Wolf said to the question "what is the key to behavior change?" - "Maybe the answer is there is no answer."

That might seem like a pretentious philosophical non-answer, but I love it. To me that is so freeing. Because it opens up a world of possibilities.

I think another way to think of it is maybe the answer is that there are as many answers as there are people. I think we get exciting about not about solving behavior change, but about scaling behavior change. I don't know if that's possible. It might be so hard and so personal and individual that scaling without a multi-level strategy (that includes environmental and policy/law changes).

I'm rambling. I apologize.

> we need to spend more time paying attention to the failures and less time trying to replicate the methods of the successful few

Agreed... that's what we spent the majority of our time with Budge trying to focus on. But it brought me to a bit of a dead end. You can make failure as friendly as possible, and allow as much self-driven and automated course-correction as possible but we saw an incremental improvement in your chances of long-term success. A tool that can't effect chances of long-term success is not a tool, it's a decoration.

At its worst, it turns the quantified self, behavior change, and health-improvement markets into benign parasites who extract time, energy, and money from people who would've changed anyway.

</cynical>

"we saw" --> "we never saw" (oops)

and "effect" --> "affect" (haven't had coffee yet)

Fascinating discussion. I'm working on this at a health tech startup. One of our core convictions is that behavior change is fundamentally relational. We believe we'll have the best shot at helping people change what they do when behavior change is wrapped in relationship.

It's almost as if relationships counter-balance our innate human irrationality. And isn't that what civilized society has done for humanity throughout history? It's tempered our selfish, destructive tendencies so that we can live in community (and all the benefits that come with it).

Yes, but aren't our relationships also a subset of our identity? If you're an atheist, and you go to church, that won't turn you into a believer. Same if you put a processed foods lover in a paleo community, or a lethargic unhealthy person in a running group.

Those relationships will only form AFTER we identify as belonging in those relationships. And that sense of belonging is something that isn't fully controlled by our consciousness... it's as irrational / sub-rational as identity, and therefore we're sort of back to where we started.

My question to you: If I don't identify as vegan, but I want to be vegan, how would you use relationships to change my eating behavior?

PS. Welcome to the conversation. Sorry I'm being such a hard ass. I have the luxury of playing devil's advocate a bit here and I'm taking full advantage of it. :)

It seems to me that identity drives relationships and relationships help define identity. It's hard for me to separate the two.

My hunch is that behavior change is more likely to happen when the relationship comes first (or is already in place) before behavior change. For example, the relationship you have with your wife is a highly potent catalyst for behavior change. I mean, you are going to run a marathon! How much did your relationship with her factor into your decision to train?

If you wanted to be vegan, I say find someone you know (the stronger the bond, the better) who also wants to be a vegan (or already is a vegan) and go through it together.

BTW, sub-rational is an interesting term. I like that.

I have lots of friends who are vegan, and a couple friends who are trying to be vegan. We talk about it all the time, because it's the right thing to do and I know it... but it doesn't stick. Trying to figure out why it's so difficult is part of why I started down this train of thought.

>> .... scaling behavior change. I don't know if that's possible. It might be so hard and so personal and individual that scaling without a multi-level strategy (that includes environmental and policy/law changes).

I feel like a great deal of behavior change scaling has to happen on the policy/environmental level and on a much longer timeline than we often talk about.

My idea here is that like most change it flows both up from the individuals through communities to large environments and then back down from those environments to smaller systems by constraining/encouraging certain behavior.

What kind of role can technology at the personal level play to influence system level changes? And vice versa?

Buster, with the values and intentions in place, where are the areas that it falls apart?

Just because we know something is the right thing to do doesn't mean it's an easy task to accomplish. I imagine you've examined the "why" of "why it's the right thing to do." Is there a part of the "why" that you know in an intellectual fashion but have a hard time manifesting in a pragmatic fashion?

Hah, I finally caught up with this branch gone wild here. So far my favorite line is from @e_ramires: "Hell, life is f'in hard."

So, I'll add a few of my 2 cents back to the original prompt and my blog post Behavior Change is Identity Change, Who's Building an App for that?: smallstepslabs.com

I've started to categorize apps I see in to basically 2 categories

1) Apps that help people resolve the identity they have already adopted / the change they have already made but are working to realize

2) Apps that try to steer the user in to taking on a new identity trait.

Sometimes apps are a little bit of both, but it's really hard to be good at both at the same time IMHO

For example, @RunKeeper falls in to #1, @DailyFeats mostly in to #2

The problem with classifying apps this way starts to show itself though because of the app store nature. People are self-selecting apps based on who they are.

Researchers (and most product people I'm sure) would love to see an app that could be installed on a random person's device and over time start to see positive changes. But that doesn't happen in the real world. By the time you get someone to create a login, download an app, or subscribe to an email, their identity already includes something like "I'm the kind of person who is interested in my health using digital tools".

So that's the new problem I'm trying to get my head around. Or not.

Still, the change has already happened once the person sees themselves as " a stair taker".

Also, I'd argue that @e_ramirez sees himself as someone who quantifies his every stair (for positive health) more so than someone who always takes the stairs. There are plenty of stair takers who don't wear pedometers.

Aaron, that breakdown makes sense to me but I would argue that no apps live in category #2. But curious about what made you put Daily Feats there.

And I would also argue that there are a ton of people self-selecting into an identity (as healthy person, quantified selfer, etc) that they don't actually have. They might want it, but category #1 apps can't help them become the people they want to be. Wishes + false promises = quick drop off of usage shortly after trying the apps.

Outside category #1, many apps focus on getting us to set our own goals. Often this involves a reward structure of badges, points, graphs, social messaging, etc.

That reward structure is an external motivator. After reading this conversation, it seems as though goal-setting is also an external motivator; setting those goals yourself makes little difference. "My goal is to do X" is not far from "I should want to do X", where "should" carries an implicit "because it's the right thing to do."

Also, @aarondcoleman makes a good point: if you're installing an app to help you do X, congratulations. You've made it to the demand fulfillment part of the funnel. Most people have awareness: they know X is the right thing to do.

The missing demand generation part, interestingly enough, is something that social networks have historically worried about far more than app developers.

@Evan Savage - to your point about goals as external motivators, I recently happened upon a billboard that just went up in my neighborhood that made me think of this concept. It's for a sport drink or athletic shoes (I don't remember which) and it simply states, "Better has no finish line." I like that. I really do. If improvement or reaching your best self, your better self, is your goal then you're never really done.

However, this flys in the face of decades of research on goals and goal setting. Specifically the whole idea of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-based), but now I wonder about the long-term validity of those methods.....hmmm

@aarondcoleman - I disagree with you about why I take the stairs. Recently at a conference I lost my fitbit and was confronted with three flights of stairs and an escalator ride. I took the stairs (until they roped them off for some reason), but I had to think about it. Its something I think about all the time - the choice to take the stairs vs the elevator at the office - I don't think it will ever become what some people call a habit. Each time is a conscious choice, not because I have the number, but because I've made a public commitment to take the stairs, to choose active choices when given the opportunity (hello treadmill desk!). Do I like the fact that my stair taking is measured? Yes. Do I need it to be? No.

Evan - I agree that goals are usually external motivations. It's really just difficult to know, from the outside, whether or not someone has made the belief switch from "I want to do this" (not part of your identity yet) to just "I do this" (part of your identity).

Ernesto - Having been part of the goal-making community for a long time, I have found that all the research etc about S.M.A.R.T. applies best to non-creative, mindless sorts of tasks best. In essence, things that require no identity shift and are mostly just grunt work.

I also agree that most actions don't become habits. We aren't ever able to really hand over 100% of our actions to our subconscious as advertised by some.

I think an auxiliary question (or maybe yet another Branch) is whether or not handing things off to our subconscious is/would be a good thing?

If we could choose, would we choose the ability to not have to choose anymore?

*disclaimer: I took the elevator up 6 floors before writing this. I had food, I was hungry, and I was tired. Sorry for letting you all down ;)

> whether or not handing things off to our subconscious is/would be a good thing?

I'd vote no. I don't see the compelling argument for it other than that it makes it easier to sell.

So much of behavior change (and I know you don't like that term) marketing is around twisting the cost/benefit analysis of personal change. Hide the cost, magnify the benefit, and hope people pay before they find out they've been swindled (and also blame them for failing).

@BusterBenson @candusavage, let me clear up more on the two kinds of apps.

I'm thinking social cognitive theory. If we want someone's behavior to change, there are 4 steps.

1) Knowledge -Do they know how to do the new thing
2) Ability - Are there barriers / Can they do it
3) Intention - Will they agree to do it / believe they should
4) Action - How they do it / how well.

App Type 1, tries to get at 1-3, App Type 2 is focused on just 4. That's why I say a daily action app is explaining / getting commitment falls under the first, RunKeeper under the second. What @cwhogg / @100Plus are working on is a bit of both, but starts off mostly type 1.

Identity is another strand we have to weave in throughout all of these steps.

@e_ramirez -- ok, your identity has "stair taker" baked in. But why the pause when you didn't have your fitbit? At some point stair taking needs to just stick without any other factors? Do we have to make that transition part of the gameplan? Like, here are all these tools and measurements, games, social proof, long term narrative of achievement... go...

Then slowly ween them off??? At some point, you shouldn't need to "check in" to a good behavior, you just do it because that's "you" -- isn't that the hope?

@aarondcoleman (and don't think I'm letting you off the hook for misspelling my name earlier) - I think you're right that that's the hope, to just do things, but it might be a falso hope.

Honestly, I would rather someone choose to be healthy or make healthy decision (and find ways to support those) than just have them blindly make them. See the convo above between @buster and I.

Sure, you can chose to be healthy. But ask the defeated 60 year old who is overweight, and his doctor just told him he has to lose 30 pounds or face a 20 year shorter lifespan and a multitude of high risk factors and outcomes. He's scared, helpless, will try all the stupid quick diets and gadgets. There, he needs to know how to be healthy, what really will work for him incrementally, and some kind of accountability and long term achievement narrative he can contribute to. It's a fostering of identity through new actions, but capitalizing on the fact he's already changed his identity to be healthy.

@Ernesto. Every time you make a decision like that, you're using up willpower. If one is to take the path of continual self-improvement, actions MUST become habits. Otherwise, taking on new actions will necessarily cause the old actions you were doing to be dropped.

Furthermore, I don't think you can lump all goals into the category of external motivation. This is the difference between a SMART Goal (I will cut my cigarrete smoking down to a cigarette a day by december 1st), and a HARD goal ( I will not allow my children to inhale another ounce of MY bad choices by December 1st).

>> Otherwise, taking on new actions will necessarily cause the old actions you were doing to be dropped.

Matt, you can't go from the conclusion you want and retrofit the argument to fit it. Actions *don't* have to become habits. It's entirely possible that new actions will never stop costing willpower, and that new actions will always have some chance of kicking out old actions.

Every action has a consequence for all other actions. It's not as simple as turning something into a habit, forgetting about it, and then having a clean slate for the next action.

Random thought: reading over wayoftheduck.com, it seems like

"Behavior change is belief change"

and

"You can't change what you do without first changing who you are"

are completely different statements. The former suggests a cycle in which behavior and belief continually reinforce each other. The latter suggests a linear progression from belief to behavior.

Yeah, my thinking is still evolving on it... including in this very thread. I am slowly settling on the position that you can change behavior if your beliefs have already changed (or are in sync with the identity required for the behaviors), but that changing beliefs is a dark art that we have very little knowledge about at the moment.

a dark art indeed @busterbenson ... but a noble pursuit!

@busterbenson - this is fair!

My point was that belief/behavior change might be incremental. Maybe you partially change your belief, creating enough motivation to take the first step. You find that this step is easier than expected, or that failure isn't the Worst Thing Ever; either way, this modifies your belief again, which eases the next step. And so on.

Heavily abusing both physics terminology and the Fogg Behavior Model for a second: it's like tracing your worldline through motivation-ability space, where belief sustains motivation and behavior increases ability.

I think what we're dancing around in this conversation, but never quite bringing out into the open, is the Stages of Change (Transtheoretical Model).

When we talk about the fact that we only have apps that that work on people AFTER they have changed their behavior, what we're really saying is that most of the behavior change apps are focused on the Action Stage. I have yet to see an "I'm going to convince you to think about quitting smoking app", or an "I'm going to help you maintain the fact that you quit by helping someone else" app.

Similarly, when we say that you need to change your self-concept before you can take action, that's an insight that's core to the transtheoretical model.

Not only is it core to the model, but in fact, Prochaska and others who study it have in fact identified specific strategies that can help with self-reevaluation, pulled from both studying self changers AND looking at various therapeutic disciplines (I can post these up when I get home and have the book)\.

The obvious approach as far as apps is to create an app that makes explicit each stage of change and gives the tools to use in it, which is something I tried (and failed) with ActionReactor.

Where we're moving with Lets Do Something is to simply provide emails every day that give strategies based on the stage the person is in. Eventually, we hope to provide an individual app for each stage, which I think would be the best approach.

You're right, the Transtheoretical model is pretty much what we're talking about.

One of my big suspicions is that you can't incrementally change a belief. There's no step-by-step process, for example, between believing in God and atheism. In fact, how do you go about intentionally changing a belief? It takes an aha moment (out of our control for the most part), more like a lightning bolt than a slow dimmer switch.

@mattgoldenberg - awesome! I hadn't heard of TTM before. This discussion is becoming a fantastic review of thought on habit design :)

Suppose you have a pipeline of tools that address each stage:

- How do you convince someone to use the first tool?
- How do you seamlessly pass them from one tool to the next?
- How do you design for relapse?
- How do you design for the termination state?

The first question is sticky. As @aarondcoleman was getting at above, installing a tool for self-improvement probably belongs somewhere in Preparation/Action.

Maybe the impasse is this focus on solving *your* problem? What about a tool that helps you convince your friend to think about quitting smoking?

I'm going play to role of the bitter curmudgeon here so Buster can take a break.

I would challenge everyone to try and not use theory to anchor their thoughts and ideas in this conversation. Behavioral Theories are like religions - everyone believes something and is pretty they're right and you're wrong.

I disagree the framing of TTM and how most (all) behavior theories are framed. That is, they are described and prescribed as linear models or approximations of life. Unfortunately, linearity if a falsehood that we continue to try and design for and implement on ourselves and others. You might want to read this excellent post by Gary Wolf that has really made me think: branch.com

Should read >Behavioral Theories are like religions - everyone believes something and is pretty *sure* they're right and you're wrong.

@Ernesto, I agree with Gary's classification of "behavior change" as an intuition pump... in fact, from my understanding, any model of anything in the world is an intuition pump... the only way to make something not an intution pump would be to make an exact replica of the universe... otherwise, there is necessarily simplification and variables left out.

However, I don't think that means models can't be used to help think about and even solve the problem of helping people create new behaviors.

@buster I too am curious if it's possile to "small chunk" self-concept. It's something I'll be playing with over the next couple months... I'm not convinced either way at this point.

The latest from Paul Graham seems to have come to the same conclusion about identity that we're circling around here. Worth a full read:

paulgraham.com

In particular, the idea that in order to get startup ideas you should "live in the future and then notice what's missing."

Same idea here. To change your behavior you should identify as a changed person and then notice what's missing in the present.

Again, easier said than done.

So, I have tried to read up on this conversation and its background so I can jump in. Let me know if I am going in a different direction.

I just finished reading through Switch (Chip & Dan Heath) again, and I think it may touch on some important points when thinking about how to create change.

Any of you read it or have opinions of it?

It takes into account our two selves (emotional and rational) and looks at how different approaches are necessary for different change efforts. For example, if someone is trying to quit smoking, an identity appeal might never work if they are still in an environment where smoking is the norm.

If you just want to focus on identity change, it might not be relevant. As far as identity change goes..

I'm having a hard time seeing how we can identify as a changed person before we see any actual behavior change.

Seems like we can desire to have a certain identity, and even believe we have the potential and capability to 'be' a certain type of person (to get to the point where we identify as a changed person), but actual identity change can only come from noticing certain behaviors that are in line with that identity and realizing we 'fit' that identity.

When I think of identities I have, the first thing I do is bring up my past experiences that support that identity. I can desire to be a writer and know I am fully capable of becoming one, but can I identify as a writer before I have any writing experience to support that identity?

I haven't read Switch, but will check it out now that you bring it up.

I think you're at basically the same conundrum that I'm at. Identity change seems, if not impossible, then at least really difficult.

If you want to be a writer but have no writing experience to support an identity as a writer, then what? Doomed for failure?

Maybe.

Some people might not be doomed, though.

1) Those who identify as being able to pick up new personality traits here and there. Chameleons.

2) Those who identify with something else writing-related... early risers (who write), early adopters (who blog), academics (who think thoroughly), etc. Take an existing identity and expand it.

Does that ring true at all?

For identity change prior to behavior change, I would think that would be true. I just don't see any way you could will yourself to adopt an identity. The nature of an identity seems to require some foundation of past experiences.

I do think there are definitely ways to effectively change your identity. It just gets a little complicated because every change effort is unique and largely situational. Switch does a good job covering all the bases.

There are consistencies across different people as far as what they need in order to change (direction, motivation, a clear path, etc..). It seems like people with similar personalities seem to struggle with the same issues in change efforts (which could open up more possibilities for apps).