Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days

In his talk TED talk "Try something new for 30 days", Matt Cutts suggests practicing new habits for 30 days.

Think about something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit -- like watching the news -- from your life.

I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. There's nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they're a ton of fun. But they're less likely to stick.

Note: The time to form a habit varies a lot, and 30 days is likely just a ballpark number:

The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days; indicating considerable variation in how long it takes people to reach their limit of automaticity and highlighting that it can take a very long time.

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C.H.M., Potts, H.W.W. and Wardle, J. (2010), How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., 40: 998-1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674

A.J. Jacobs: My journey to thank all the people responsible for my morning coffee

 A.J. Jacobs (familiar to readers of this blog from this and this posts) published a new book "Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey", described on the TED talk "My journey to thank all the people responsible for my morning coffee". While doing research for this book, A.J. Jacobs set out on a trip around the world to thank all the people who made possible his morning cup of coffee, from the barista in New York, to the coffee growers in Colombia, to the people who paved the road on which coffee arrived to New York.

Here are several new lessons that A.J. Jacobs learned during this journey:

Look up. [...] When dealing with people, I'm going to take those two seconds and look at them, make eye contact. Because it reminds you, you're dealing with a human being who has family and aspirations and embarrassing high school memories. And that little moment of connection is so important to both people's humanity and happiness.

Smell the roses. And the dirt. And the fertilizer. [...] I decided to really let the coffee sit on my tongue for five seconds -- we're all busy, but I could spare five seconds, and really think about the texture and the acidity and the sweetness. And I started to do it with other foods. And this idea of savoring is so important to gratitude. Psychologists talk about how gratitude is about taking a moment and holding on to it as long as possible. And slowing down time. So that life doesn't go by in one big blur, as it often does.

Find the hidden masterpieces all around you. 

Fake it till you feel it. [...] I would wake up every morning in my default mood, which is grumpiness, but I would force myself to write a thank-you note and then another and then another. And what I found was that if you act as if you're grateful, you eventually become grateful for real. The power of our actions to change our mind is astounding. So, often we think that thought changes behavior, but behavior very often changes our thought. 

Practice six degrees of gratitude. And every place, every stop on this gratitude trail would give birth to 100 other people that I could thank. [...] And it just drove home that it doesn't take a village to make a cup of coffee. It takes the world to make a cup of coffee. 

We use gratitude as a spark to action. [...] The research shows that the more grateful you are, the more likely you are to help others. When you're in a bad state, you're often more focused on your own needs. But gratitude makes you want to pay it forward. [...] And it's why I encourage people, friends, family, to follow gratitude trails of their own. Because it's a life-transforming experience. And it doesn't have to be coffee. It could be anything. It could be a pair of socks, it could be a light bulb. And you don't have to go around the world, you can just do a little gesture, like make eye contact or send a note to the designer of a logo you love. It's more about a mindset. Being aware of the thousands of people involved in every little thing we do.