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Practical Advice for Changing Your Habits

Summary

This episode of Developer Tea delves into the psychological mechanisms behind habit formation and behavior change. Host Jonathan Cottrell explains why we often do things we don’t want to do, framing it as a conflict between our brain’s fast thinking (automatic, intuitive responses) and slow thinking (deliberate, analytical processing). He discusses how our brains naturally optimize for energy conservation through heuristics and shortcuts, which can sometimes work against our conscious intentions.

The core of the episode focuses on practical strategies for changing habits by working with our brain’s natural tendencies rather than against them. Cottrell introduces the concept of “useful defaults”—setting up systems that automatically opt us into good behaviors. He references research showing that default choices significantly influence outcomes, citing the famous 2003 study “Do Defaults Save Lives?” about organ donation rates.

Several concrete examples illustrate how to apply this principle: automating savings transfers, requiring tests to pass before software deployment, and removing junk food from your pantry to make healthy eating the easier choice. The episode emphasizes that while changing habits remains challenging, we can increase our success by designing environments and systems that make desired behaviors the default option, thereby leveraging our brain’s bias toward the path of least resistance.

Recommendations

Books

  • Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman — Referenced as essential reading for understanding the dual-process theory of the mind—fast thinking (automatic, intuitive) versus slow thinking (deliberate, analytical). Cottrell says it’s ‘one book that I believe that every developer should pick up and read’ because it explains why our intentions don’t always match our actions.

Concepts

  • Useful Defaults — A principle from a previous Developer Tea episode about designing systems where good behaviors happen automatically unless you consciously opt out. This leverages the brain’s bias toward default choices to support habit change.

Studies

  • “Do Defaults Save Lives?” (2003 paper) — Cited research on organ donation choices showing how default settings dramatically influence behavior. When people had to opt in to donate organs, participation was below 30%, but when automatically opted in by default, participation remained near 100% in many cases.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to behavior change and competing motivations — Jonathan introduces the episode’s focus on why we do things we don’t want to do and how to change behavior. He frames it as a conflict between competing motivations within ourselves, referencing the broader field of research on habits, behavior change, and behavioral economics. The episode promises practical advice informed by research and theory.
  • 00:02:32 — Fast thinking vs. slow thinking in the brain — Cottrell explains Daniel Kahneman’s concepts of fast thinking (automatic, intuitive responses) and slow thinking (deliberate, analytical processing). He relates this to programming—fast thinking is like naming a variable ‘foo’ without thought, while slow thinking is like system architecture design. The brain uses shortcuts to conserve energy for important tasks, but these optimizations can conflict with our conscious desires.
  • 00:05:38 — Sponsor message from Linode — A thank you to sponsor Linode for supporting the developer community and betting on listeners’ success. Cottrell mentions Linode’s affordable plans starting at 20 credit.
  • 00:07:27 — The brain’s bias toward laziness and default behaviors — Cottrell asks what the easiest thing for the brain to do is, answering ‘nothing’—the brain strives to conserve energy. Changing behavior is difficult because the brain has a strong bias toward functional laziness and maintaining default behaviors. This sets up the challenge of habit change as an uphill battle against our own biology.
  • 00:08:54 — Using default bias to our advantage with useful defaults — The solution presented is to use the brain’s default behavior bias to our advantage through the principle of ‘useful defaults.’ Cottrell references a previous episode with this title and explains that we should ‘opt ourselves in to our good behaviors by default.’ This means designing systems where desired behaviors happen automatically unless we consciously opt out.
  • 00:09:43 — Research evidence: the organ donation study — Cottrell cites the famous 2003 paper ‘Do Defaults Save Lives?’ which studied organ donation choices. The research found dramatically different rates based on default settings: when people had to opt in (check a box), participation was around 20-30%, but when people were automatically opted in (with the box checked by default), participation remained near 100% in many cases. This demonstrates the powerful influence of defaults.
  • 00:10:44 — Practical applications of useful defaults — Several real-world examples show how to implement useful defaults: automating savings transfers so money is saved before you see it; setting up 401k plans with automatic enrollment and gradual increases; requiring tests to pass before software deployment (making testing the default); and removing junk food from your pantry to make healthy eating the easier choice. The key is to make good behaviors automatic and bad behaviors require conscious effort.
  • 00:12:41 — Cottrell concludes by emphasizing that habit change starts with slow thinking—deliberately deciding what good habits you want. Then you must find ways to make those habits your default actions. While failure is still possible, this approach leverages your brain’s natural workings to support behavior change. He previews more on this topic in future episodes and invites listener feedback.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2017-12-01T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:14:21

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Why do we so often do the things that we don’t want to do?

[00:00:09] How can we change it?

[00:00:11] And how is it possible that we have competing motivations inside of us?

[00:00:18] This is what we’re talking about on today’s episode and on a few of the future episodes

[00:00:23] of Developer Tea.

[00:00:24] My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and my goal on this show is to help you become a better

[00:00:28] developer, to help driven developers become better at what they do, connect to their career

[00:00:33] purpose, and positively influence the people around them.

[00:00:37] And I’ve said this on multiple shows now, and hopefully it’s sinking in that this show

[00:00:43] is for those people.

[00:00:44] So you’ve probably found yourself asking this question if you’re in that group.

[00:00:48] How do I change my own behavior?

[00:00:51] And is it possible to change my own behavior?

[00:00:54] And also, why is it that I have competing motivations?

[00:00:58] What is it?

[00:00:58] What is this thing in my head that’s causing me to have, you know, one part of me that

[00:01:03] wants to do something really badly, and then the other part of me doesn’t really want to

[00:01:09] go through the process of making that happen?

[00:01:11] And this is a huge field of research.

[00:01:14] There’s tons of research on these subjects, on the subject of habit, on the subject of

[00:01:18] behavior change, on the subject of choices and behavioral economics.

[00:01:23] You know, certainly we’ve talked about Daniel Kahneman and his book, Thinking Fast and

[00:01:28] Slow.

[00:01:28] It’s all about this subject.

[00:01:30] And if you want to dive deeper, I very much so encourage you to read that book.

[00:01:34] I don’t encourage many specific books on this show.

[00:01:37] That is one book that I believe that every developer should pick up and read.

[00:01:42] But for today’s discussion, I want to talk about some practical advice that I have for

[00:01:46] you to help change your behavior, and more specifically, some practical advice that’s

[00:01:53] actually informed by research and theory.

[00:01:56] So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk a little bit about how to change your behavior,

[00:01:58] a little bit about why this happens, why we have the competing arguments in our head

[00:02:03] about wanting to do one thing and just happening to do a different thing, you know, what exactly

[00:02:09] that mechanism is and what’s happening when that occurs.

[00:02:12] And then I’m going to give you some advice for how you can better enable yourself for

[00:02:17] that behavioral change.

[00:02:19] And the answer is somewhat complicated.

[00:02:22] As it turns out, our brains are not as simple as we would hope, and our intentions don’t

[00:02:28] always match our actions because of this complexity.

[00:02:32] Of course, we’ve already mentioned thinking fast and slow, but the concept, the kind of

[00:02:37] the core thesis of that book is separating the fast thinking from the slow thinking.

[00:02:44] The fast thinking being the immediate reaction, stuff that kind of happens automatically,

[00:02:49] and the slow thinking being the much more methodical and well thought out kind of processing,

[00:02:56] deeper processing.

[00:02:57] This is the kind of stuff that we’re going to talk about in this episode.

[00:02:58] This is the kind of stuff we do when we’re developing systems architecture or when we’re

[00:03:02] doing some kind of deep analysis in our code.

[00:03:06] But the fast thinking is when we name a variable foo without really thinking about it, right?

[00:03:10] This happens all the time.

[00:03:12] There are things that our brain does, and again, going back to many previous episodes,

[00:03:18] things our brain does to take shortcuts.

[00:03:20] And the reason it does this is so we can save that energy for other stuff, right?

[00:03:25] This is a biological response at its core level.

[00:03:27] It’s so important.

[00:03:28] So we can actually use our brains for the more important tasks in the deep thinking.

[00:03:34] So we use these heuristics, we use these shortcuts, we find ways of optimizing automatically.

[00:03:41] Unfortunately, sometimes that optimization doesn’t fall in line with our desires.

[00:03:47] And when I say desires, I mean the things that our slow thinking has informed our brains

[00:03:53] that we want.

[00:03:55] So instead of thinking of your brain as this unified,

[00:03:58] singular, intentional thing that sits up in the top of your head, you should think

[00:04:04] of it as a series of processes, a series of various components that fit together and operate

[00:04:12] as a unit.

[00:04:14] And sometimes those components quite simply don’t agree.

[00:04:18] And it might feel like a bug, but as it turns out, this is actually really good for us.

[00:04:24] Our fast thinking and the gap between our fast thinking and our slow thinking.

[00:04:28] Very often can be a good thing.

[00:04:31] More particularly, our fast thinking and our intuition is very often correct.

[00:04:37] The fast thinking heuristics are leading us down the right path most of the time.

[00:04:42] But of course, there are problems.

[00:04:45] The problems with this optimization is that your fast thinking isn’t going to shift immediately.

[00:04:52] Your slow thinking informing your fast thinking is not going to happen overnight.

[00:04:57] This is, once again, a very important part of our brain.

[00:04:58] A very slow biological process.

[00:05:01] And you have to kind of rewire your brain.

[00:05:04] And there’s not really a good guidebook on how to rewire your brain.

[00:05:08] Of course, again, there’s been quite a bit of research done on habit formation.

[00:05:14] And we want to kind of dive into a little bit of that research.

[00:05:17] But more specifically, I’m going to give you a practical tip today that will help you develop

[00:05:23] good habits and kind of short circuit that fast thinking so that your slow thinking

[00:05:28] is actually the behavior that you follow.

[00:05:31] And that’s the hope for today’s episode.

[00:05:34] But real quick, before we do that, I want to talk about today’s sponsor, Linode.

[00:05:38] Linode has been a sponsor of Developer Tea for a long time.

[00:05:41] And I just want to take a moment to thank them for allowing me to continue doing this show.

[00:05:47] You know, you’ve probably heard all of the specifics of the Linode plans.

[00:05:51] You know, you can get a gigabyte of RAM for $5 a month.

[00:05:55] It’s an insanely good deal.

[00:05:57] And Linode serves…

[00:05:59] Very early stage, young developers in the beginning of their careers,

[00:06:03] all the way up to the highest level service offering that you can possibly imagine needing.

[00:06:09] And all of that is supported on Linode.

[00:06:11] But they also support the community.

[00:06:13] And this is an important and often overlooked fact.

[00:06:16] When you have a podcast sponsor, this is a big bet that Linode is taking on the community.

[00:06:22] That you are going to be driven enough to care about your careers.

[00:06:25] To listen to this podcast.

[00:06:28] Allow it to affect you positively so that you can succeed and therefore bring your business to Linode.

[00:06:35] That’s how this whole ecosystem works.

[00:06:37] So we’re talking about economics and that is a decision.

[00:06:40] That’s a bet that Linode is putting, not on me, not on this podcast, but on you as the listener.

[00:06:47] And that is a huge bet.

[00:06:48] So I hope you are encouraged by Linode putting that bet on you.

[00:06:53] And I hope you’ll go and check out the services that they offer.

[00:06:56] You can check it out at spec.fm.

[00:06:57] And there’s tons of offerings that they have.

[00:07:01] We’re not going to detail them all in today’s episode.

[00:07:04] Because again, Linode is a continuous sponsor of this podcast.

[00:07:08] And they’re going to continue sponsoring us into 2018.

[00:07:11] And don’t forget, Linode is providing you $20 worth of credit for using the code DEVELOPERTEA2017 at checkout.

[00:07:19] So thank you again to Linode for supporting the development community and sponsoring DeveloperTea.

[00:07:24] So I want you to ask a simple question.

[00:07:27] What is the easiest thing to do?

[00:07:31] What is the easiest thing that your brain can do?

[00:07:34] And it’s kind of a trick question because the answer is nothing.

[00:07:39] The answer is nothing.

[00:07:40] If your brain had to do nothing at all, it would be a very happy organ, right?

[00:07:45] Because it wouldn’t have to use any energy.

[00:07:47] It would be very happy.

[00:07:49] Now granted, you know, if you’ve ever tried meditation, then that feels pretty effortful, right?

[00:07:53] That can feel very difficult.

[00:07:56] To actually silence your brain.

[00:07:57] And actually give it the space to do nothing, that seems pretty difficult.

[00:08:02] So it’s not just thinking that the brain doesn’t want to do.

[00:08:07] It’s acting on those thoughts.

[00:08:10] And even more articulately, acting on those thoughts in a way that you don’t normally act.

[00:08:17] So changing your behavior, this is difficult for your brain to do.

[00:08:20] And the easiest thing for your brain to do and what it’s going to strive to do on its own is not change.

[00:08:27] Not change.

[00:08:27] Not change your default behavior.

[00:08:29] So this is something that we have to investigate a little bit because this is a very strong bias that our brain has towards laziness.

[00:08:39] And functional laziness.

[00:08:41] This is something that we do to protect that energy.

[00:08:44] And this is the seemingly uphill battle that we have to fight with behavior change.

[00:08:49] So what can we do to fix this problem or at least to combat this problem?

[00:08:54] Well, we can use it to our advantage, right?

[00:08:56] We can use.

[00:08:57] We can use this default behavior bias towards our advantage.

[00:09:02] And this is a very simple principle that you can use in so many areas of both your career and your personal life.

[00:09:10] And this goes right back to a previous episode we did called Useful Defaults.

[00:09:14] And the principle is simple.

[00:09:16] Opt yourself in to your good behaviors by default.

[00:09:21] Opt yourself in to your good behaviors by default.

[00:09:24] And what does this mean?

[00:09:26] First of all, let’s cover this.

[00:09:27] Let’s cover some psychological backing ground here.

[00:09:31] Some studies were done on this concept of default choices and having these good defaults.

[00:09:37] More specifically, there’s a famous paper from 2003 called Do Defaults Save Lives?

[00:09:43] And the data gathered for the study is whether someone chose to donate their organs or not.

[00:09:51] And as it turns out, there’s a massive difference between someone who chooses to opt in.

[00:09:57] And someone who chooses to opt out.

[00:10:01] In other words, if you have a box that is unchecked on the form for organ donation, in this case,

[00:10:08] and you have a box that is checked,

[00:10:10] the likelihood that the box is going to remain in that current state,

[00:10:14] whatever that state is by default,

[00:10:17] is pretty large.

[00:10:19] In many cases, the number of people who stayed opted in was somewhere close to 100%.

[00:10:25] This is in six or seven days.

[00:10:27] In different countries.

[00:10:28] Whereas the people who decided to opt in, who had to make that choice to check the box,

[00:10:34] all of the people in the study are below or right around 30%.

[00:10:38] Most of them below 20%.

[00:10:40] So how can you use this to your advantage?

[00:10:44] Well, the first step is to automate your good intentions.

[00:10:48] If you want to save money, and hopefully you’ve heard this financial advice,

[00:10:53] you should be automating those good intentions.

[00:10:55] You should automatically save money.

[00:10:57] And you never even see that decision happen.

[00:11:01] You make that decision once.

[00:11:03] You decide with your slow thinking,

[00:11:05] I want to save money.

[00:11:07] I intentionally want to save the money that I earn so that I can have more later,

[00:11:13] or I can have some in the event of an emergency,

[00:11:15] or whatever your reason for saving that money is.

[00:11:18] And setting up that automatic transfer is going to be hugely valuable to you.

[00:11:23] Companies that run 401k programs,

[00:11:25] they find that automatic,

[00:11:27] opting people in to a slowly increasing rate of their 401k results in,

[00:11:33] you guessed it,

[00:11:35] people with higher amounts in their 401ks.

[00:11:38] In a software project,

[00:11:40] if you require that tests pass before that software,

[00:11:44] that code base is deployed,

[00:11:46] except if you,

[00:11:48] you know,

[00:11:48] override it,

[00:11:49] right?

[00:11:49] If you have to make it to where it’s overridden,

[00:11:52] what this means is you have to opt out of testing rather than opt in.

[00:11:57] Testing,

[00:11:57] automatically happens and that is the default deployment process.

[00:12:01] You’re going to have much more adherence to the test standards,

[00:12:05] especially if you require a few steps to get past it,

[00:12:11] right?

[00:12:11] If you require a few steps to actually override it,

[00:12:14] and this is also more evidence as to why cleaning out your pantry is probably a

[00:12:20] good idea.

[00:12:21] If you want to go on a diet,

[00:12:23] if you don’t have the junk food available to you,

[00:12:27] then it takes much more work to get the junk food.

[00:12:31] Even something as simple as moving something further away from you can make a

[00:12:37] huge difference to your behavioral decisions.

[00:12:41] Developing good habits starts in your slow thinking process,

[00:12:46] and you have to take some time to decide what those good habits are going to be.

[00:12:51] And once you do that,

[00:12:52] spend some extra time finding ways to make those habits,

[00:12:56] your,

[00:12:57] your default action,

[00:12:58] something that automatically happens to you.

[00:13:01] This doesn’t mean that it’s going to be a walk in the park to change your

[00:13:04] habits.

[00:13:04] It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to fail from time to time,

[00:13:09] that you’re not going to take those extra steps to do the thing that you don’t

[00:13:12] want to do,

[00:13:13] that your slow thinking doesn’t want you to do.

[00:13:16] But it does mean that you are making intentional efforts to take advantage of

[00:13:21] the natural way that your brain already works to accomplish the behavior change

[00:13:26] that you are setting out to accomplish.

[00:13:28] I hope this episode has been helpful.

[00:13:31] We’re going to do more on this topic in the next episode of developer T.

[00:13:34] So if you don’t want to miss out on that,

[00:13:36] go ahead and subscribe and whatever podcasting app you use this subject.

[00:13:40] I’m very interested in the subject.

[00:13:42] If you have thoughts,

[00:13:43] if you have studies that you found,

[00:13:45] if you have interesting,

[00:13:46] uh,

[00:13:47] facts or,

[00:13:48] uh,

[00:13:49] theories,

[00:13:49] even that you’d like to send my way,

[00:13:51] please reach out.

[00:13:52] You can email me at developer T at gmail.com.

[00:13:54] You can also find me on Twitter at developer T at gmail.com.

[00:13:56] Thanks again to Linode for sponsoring today’s episode of developer T use the

[00:14:03] code developer T 2017 at checkout to get $20 worth of credit spec.fm slash

[00:14:08] Linode.

[00:14:09] Thank you again to Linode.

[00:14:10] Thank you so much for listening until next time.

[00:14:12] Enjoy your tea.

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