How to Change Your Habits Using the Jobs to Be Done Framework [Part 2]

What, are you still unable to change your bad habits with good ones? I mean, c’mon dude. What, you can’t browse? You don’t know how to place your finger up against a ceramic glass and move it slightly upward – a.k.a. scroll? You don’t know how to hit the play button on a video? Because no matter how impressively treacherous your current habits are, there are at least a dozen self-appointed “life coaches” with ready-made solutions waiting on standby to pop onto your screen and tell you about their “magical” approach.

At the core of habit change lies one vital assumption. One concept so overly shared that you’ll never believe it’s false until you experience it on your own. We can find this bogus idea everywhere, from best-selling books on habits to personal growth classes that promise to help us transcend our usually dreary ordinary life.

What is it?

It’s the idea that once a habit is formed through repetition, it becomes automatic and forever present in our repertoire of things we do.

According to literature and the “science-based” short clips circling around social media, self-betterment is something anyone could do. As long as you put in sufficient amounts of grit and elbow grease, you, too, can earn the credentials to call yourself a self-made founder with a wicked daily routine others will want to pay money to copy.

Yet, what is often left unsaid by the protein-shake-preaching, hashtag-hustle type of mentors is that good habits are less permanent than we wish them to be.

Allow me to walk you through my journey…

After a couple of years of tinkering, I created a self-torture morning routine for myself. It involved waking up at 4:50 AM, working out, and then writing for about 2 hours. At first, I wanted to smash my phone against the wall when it woke me up at this ungodly hour. Eventually, I somehow adjusted to this punishing schedule – or at least I thought I did. Yet, no matter how many consecutive days I clawed my way out of bed before 5 AM, this extraordinary morning ritual never became automatic. In fact, I actually changed it recently – after more than 2 years. Why? I was completely drained. It turns out that chronic sleep deprivation brings a whole lot of problems.¹

As I mentioned in the first part of the series about habits and the Jobs to Be Done Framework (JTBD or Jobs Theory). Habits, good habits in particular, almost never become a fixed part of one’s daily routine.

We usually hire them for a certain period until we can’t keep up.

That’s partly why fit people gain weight. That’s why sober people start drinking again. And that’s why productive people became unproductive again.

This post is Part 2 of the series where I look at habits through the prism of the Jobs to Be Done Framework. If you haven’t read Part 1, stop and go to this link: How to Change Your Habits Using the Jobs to Be Done Framework [Part 1]

Ready?

Let’s continue our investigation of how JBTD relates to habit change.

What Do We Know So Far About Habits and the Jobs to Be Done Framework?

Back in the day, before I could triumph over the instant gratification monopoly imprisoning my mind. My daily routine used to involve scrolling through social media, playing video games, daydreaming, binge-eating, and frequently drinking large amounts of liquor. Life felt grand, until it didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I had an awesome time. Anyone who says that drinking vast quantities of alcohol mixed with gaming is wrong for you has probably never tried it.

The problem was that the activities that I was so good at didn’t fit well with what society considers important – having cash to pay for your bills – and what my body was telling me – cut the alcohol and start exercising unless you don’t want to move to a rehab center.

Plainly, I was getting older. And with age, not only do you have to figure out how to transition from a complete disaster to a functional human being. I mean, stuff like quit acting like a spoiled toddler, save more than you earn, actually have an answer when someone asks you, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?“, stop treating laundry as optional, and finally learn the difference between a need and a want. But you also have to realize that your body isn’t going to thrive on pizza and beer forever.

Or if we can make it even more simple, I needed to refactor my day-to-day activities in order to acquire worthwhile routines.

And while I was eventually able to add such, the process was far from easy. It literally took me years to replace the biggest and baddest bad habits with good alternatives.

First of all, my attempt – and desire, for that matter – for change didn’t occur until I was half deep into the swamp of misery.

You might think that a person will take action as soon as there is evidence for his declining position in the world, but that’s a false belief.

We, humans, will wait until we reach rock bottom to realize that, “Oh, shit, I should stop drinking a bottle of whiskey per night.”

As the first law of holes states, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”²

But I kept digging. I kept shoveling my hole. It took not one, but several bad events to realize that I needed to banish the vile part of myself. The liquid-craving spirit who shows up at every party.

This mentality perfectly correlates with what JTBD theory says about your desire to change your circumstances. And in particular, what causes you to want to change your circumstances. It’s reaching a struggling moment.

A struggling moment is a combination of events that act like a catalyst for change. The struggling moment is what causes you to do something you’ve never done before. For example, buy a product you thought you’d never buy, visit an AA meeting, start going to the gym, file for a divorce, quit smoking, or get a subscription to the website of some random dude online.

Simply put, nothing is random. All of our actions are driven by something. However, it usually takes a long time and accumulation of pain for us to want to make something different.

Why?

Because we are creatures of habit. We emerge into this world, and we slowly but surely create routines based on our personal preferences and outside forces – i.e., peers and societal expectations.

My personal routine around my twenties involved smoking and drinking, not only because I was an insecure child, but also because all the people around me were abusing alcohol.

When I reached a point of near-complete self-destruction, I used rock bottom as a foundation to repair the ruins of my life.

I was pushed by my current condition to make some changes in my life, and at the same time I was pulled towards a desire for a better life.

These two: the push and the pull, are the forces that enable change.

In the first part of this series, I label these as Force 1 (push) and Force 2 (pull).

And while these help you fire certain behaviors from your life so you can hire better alternatives, things don’t stop here. There are contra forces, called the forces that block change, that can quickly derail you from the progress. These are called:

• Anxiety of the new thing (Force 3).
• Habits of the present (Force 4).

In my particular case, my attempts to change looked like this:

As said, I was pushed to make something different in my life due to my current condition. At the same time, I was pulled towards the image of a life where I no longer wake up in my own vomit. Although I did make progress, this progress was quickly abandoned because the forces that block change were too strong – pulling me back to my old ways.

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In Part 1, we mentioned that habit change, given all these four forces, becomes like a mathematical equation: F1 + F2 > F3 + F4.

In other words, you will change your behavior only when Force 1 and Force 2 are bigger than Force 3 and Force 4.

But why is that?

Why can’t I change my behavior by only relying on Force 1 and Force 2?

It’s because…

What Happens When The Forces That Block Change Prevail Over The Enabling Forces?

It’s probably 2011.

I don’t quite remember the year. But I remember that it was the first of January of the new year.

I wake up earlier than usual. It’s intentional. I sneak out of bed. I don’t want to wake her up. I get dressed, old sweatpants and an ugly sweater I once wore in public but then realized that it’s completely out of fashion. My head spins. I had been drinking. I make a few steps, and the smell of cigarettes coming from the clothes I wore last night hits me like a brick wall of regret. I wanted to vomit, but I somehow managed not to.

1. If you are wondering why I did it in the first place, here’s the short answer: I love to write. Given that I have a wife and a kid plus a daily job, the only time I can devote to writing is in the morning.
2. Laws of holes. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_holes