Member-only story
Want to Create Better Habits? Design Your Life for Laziness
How to use your instincts for laziness to your advantage.
When we think about what’s involved in changing our lifestyles, a large amount of willpower is a given, right? We think it must be used to get our assess off the couch and do the things we really want to do.
However, willpower only plays a minor part in this story.
In her book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett presents the idea that the main function of the brain is to budget the body’s resources. She likens the brain to an accounting department of a large, multi-national corporation. It is constantly determining when and how much resources are spent.
Over millions of years of evolution, the brain has become very efficient with its resources — it doesn’t overspend when it doesn’t have to. So, if you’re trying to start something new, say, getting exercise a couple of times per week, you’re going to bump up against your brain’s body budget and it’s not going to be pretty.
Why is change so difficult? Well, we’ve survived as a species precisely because our body budgets have been effective. Imagine you’re living ten thousand years ago and suddenly decided to get more exercise. You came up with a daily workout that involved…
