Sure, you might be able to change your behavior for a period of time by putting yourself in an extreme environment (like the military), but once you remove yourself from that extreme context you’ll snap right back into your previously messy ways.

If you hire someone who actually knows the literature inside and out, and has gone through it with a critical mind, they’ll be a huge help. However, based on my experience, only 2-5% of the behavioral scientists out there fall into this camp. Most are walking around with laughably bad beliefs and completely inaccurate models of how people operate and why they do what they do.

Think of personality traits as behavioral thresholds. Someone who's very neurotic is going to have a lower threshold for worrying. They're going to see more things in the environment as threatening. Someone who's very extraverted is going to have a much lower threshold for talking to new people. They're going to see more opportunities for social engagement as they go through their day.

When was the last time you looked at the sky?

I mean it. When was the last time you REALLY looked?

For me, it was this morning. My apartment sits on a lovely hill here in San Francisco, and so I spend about 15 minutes staring out at the Bay and its cloud-ridden neighbor each AM.

It's amazing what you can learn from this simple practice.

Behavioral science is full of ideas that seem really useful but are actually quite useless.

A great example of this is the "operant conditioning loop". This is one of the first things that undergraduates are taught in psych 101. It's also the centerpiece of the blockbuster best-seller, "The Power of Habit".

The other day, I was sitting on my couch and looking for cool new articles.

After a few minutes of scrolling, one caught my eye.

Its title?

I'm a DJ.

So are you.

You see, our brains are just gigantic remixers.

This last weekend, my worlds collided.

I was sitting down with one of my mentors, and favorite copywriters, in Phoenix, Arizona.

He was telling me his approach to behavior-change: take small actions.

I'm going to let you in on a dirty little secret: no applied psychologist, behavioral scientist, or neuroscientist knows how to change all behavior all the time.

*GASP*

We're not magical wizards, bestowed with mind-reading abilities and surefire spells.

I'm sitting at the airport, waiting to fly out of Las Vegas.

I've only been here for 17 hours but I feel like I've been here for 17 days.

It's a draining place to be.
 

The other day, I was talking with a friend of mine on the phone.

He wanted to know my thoughts on what I call the "doggie treat solution" to habit formation.

Here's how it works...

A few of months ago, I was visiting a friend down in Los Angeles.

We were hanging out at his place, chatting and catching up.

His girlfriend was sitting a few feet away, in the kitchen, watching a YouTube video on her phone.

It was pretty loud, so I asked her what she was looking at.