Identity-Based Habits, To-Watch List, and The Kuleshov Effect
Dec 06, 2020 5:00 pm
Hey friends,
Welcome to the 11th issue of Thought Caffeine, a weekly newsletter where I share my favourite productivity tips, random party facts, and other interesting finds throughout my week.
🤸🏻Identity-based habits vs Goal-based habits
James Clear, author of the brilliant Atomic Habits, encourages us to formulate identity-based habits instead of falling back to the goal-based default.
For example, if you want to become a better writer, it should be your goal to be a person who writes 1,000 words a day. If you want to become a better friend, you should strive to be a person who always stays in touch and initiates conversations.
If you want to lose weight, rather than have the end goal set as "losing 30lbs", which loses all meaning after the goal is achieved, it should be your goal to "become a healthier person". Maybe that means moving more, maybe that means fixing your diet. The point is, the habit becomes to "lose 30lbs and maintain frame/physique. That way, the goal is embedded into your identity and will always be a part of maintenance. It doesn't lose its meaning when the end goal is achieved, because the end goal is not really an end, it merely marks the checkpoint of a continuous journey.
🍿 Things I'll be watching next week
My girlfriend and I have assembled an impressive To-Watch list, a list we keep on putting aside on our weekly Scener movie dates. She's finally coming over this week, so I think we'll be spending a lot of time crossing out names from the list. Here are some titles I am most looking forward to cross out:
- The Haunting of Bly Manor
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Santa Clarita Diet
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Grey's Anatomy
- 500 Days of Summer
📽 The Kuleshov Effect
Is an interesting film-making trick, which legendary director Alfred Hitchcock explains as “a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation.”
Here's a picture to better explain this phenomenon.
✍️ Article: A Quirky Way To Suppress Sugar Craving
I transformed one of last week's snippet into a little 3-minute article. If you're having the same problems I do with sugar cravings, I dare you to try this method out this week.
If you'd like to read more of my articles, click on the little green button down below 🌿
📖 Quote of the Week
“It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows,” Epictetus says. You can’t learn if you think you already know. You will not find the answers if you’re too conceited and self-assured to ask the questions. You cannot get better if you’re convinced you are the best.
From Ego is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday. Resurfaced via Readwise.
🐦 Tweet of the Week
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“Dumb people are too dumb to know how dumb they are. Smart people are clever enough to know how much they don’t know.” - Michael Ndubuaku on why highly intelligent people are miserable. Anyone feeling particularly miserable lately? | ||
2:12 PM · Dec 04, 2020 | ||
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That's all for this week's issue. If you think your friends would enjoy receiving emails like these on the weekly, please share this with them by hitting <Forward> and have them click on the button below to subscribe to Thought Caffeine 🚀
Have a blast of a week! 🏝
John