Episode 101 - Listen To This If… You want to start a new habit

Transcript

Michael (00:00:09)

Hello and welcome back to another season of Let's Talk SciComm. We have been on a little hiatus since we published Episode 100, but now we're back with a brand new season.

For this season, we have eight new short episodes, which we call our Listen to This If style of episode. So in these episodes, Jen and myself will deliver a speedy five-minute Friday fix packed with practical hot tips to tackle your toughest science communication challenges.

And we also have some fun social media content to go along with these episodes. So please check us out on Instagram, Bluesky and LinkedIn.

So without further delay, I present to you our latest episode. Listen to This If... you need to start a new habit.

Jen (00:01:00)

Hello everybody, and welcome to an episode of Listen to This If.

And these are episodes where Michael and I, who are the team from Let's Talk SciComm, try and give you just a few thoughts about how to tackle something that you are currently stuck with. Our goal is to give you a bit of a pep talk.

So hey Michael, today's topic is someone wants to start a new habit. What are your best tips or your one best tip?

Michael (00:01:25)

Well, we've all thought about this, haven't we? Especially in January. And we never seem to follow through, do we? Which is why it might be a topic for discussion today. So... My tip is to actually, the thing that you want to do, make it ridiculously easy to get started.

You know, think about what is the most ridiculously easy version of this that I can do even if, you know, doing the ridiculously easy version isn't going to, you know, maybe bring you many benefits. It's really just about getting started.

You know, the example that I think I've heard a lot, which I think is quite funny, is floss one tooth. I'm done now! But yeah, I think it's just that, that idea that you, you really need to make a start on something. And even if it's ridiculously small, you might feel a bit more motivation to continue on and you might floss two teeth.

Jen (00:02:28)

Or even three!

Michael (00:02:30)

Yeah, wow. Might as well go for three. I feel like three is a magic number.

I had this in mind recently at my research job where I started a low maintenance journal club, you know. And the idea is to have it going for a long period of time.

So people rock up and they... We read the paper during the first half of the journal club and then we discuss it. So there's no preparation required. You know, making it nice and easy, because I think that's a really good habit. And it's really just about inserting, you know, an hour of critical reading and and discussion into our calendars.

And you know, even if the thing that you're doing seems quite small, if you're able to keep it up over a long period of time, that's going to be really beneficial. Because I think we really, we overestimate what we can do in the short term and we underestimate what we can do in the long term.

So, you know, bring down those kind of expectations for you know, what we're going to do in the short term, doing something is doing better than nothing. And then over time, the magic happens. So that's my tip.

Jen (00:03:39)

Oh, I think that's absolute gold. I think yeah, you're so right that it's very easy to find it hard to do things in the short term without realising what huge impact small actions in the short term could have in the long term. So yeah, make it easy. I'm 100% with you.

My tip is around recognising that spending time, kind of thinking about being the person who has this new habit. I think we all have this sense that that's a good thing to do. You know, visualizing myself as someone who writes every day or who reads a paper every day or goes to the gym every day. You know, we've heard that visualising yourself as that person can be useful.

But for me, that doesn't work. Because I just then revel in this, this you know, daydream I have of myself being that person who does those things. For me, it's about cutting the daydreaming and actually being very very concrete. And for me, that means writing things down.

And the three things I have to be concrete on is why do I want this new habit? Because unless my motivation is really clear, I'm just not going to do it. You know, unless I know the science behind why flossing my teeth is so important, I'm just not going to do it.

So why do I want to do this habit? How am I going to do it? And when am I going to do it? So the how and the when being clear and very very concrete about those is the key for me.

So if I want to be the person who writes every day, awesome. I have this great vision of myself as being someone who just writes streams and streams and streams of pages. And I'm so, you know, clear on my thinking and my planning and all the rest. But when am I going to fit that into my day?

Because if I want to write for 20 minutes or an hour or five minutes a day, what am I going to not do in that time? So when am I going to do it?

And how? If it's writing every day. You know, is that something I'm going to do early in the morning at home? Is it something I'm going to do on the train? Is it something I'm going to do at a cafe? You know, how is it actually going to look for me to be doing this habit?

And just to be really clear that I do actually have the motivation to have the time and the energy and the conviction to do this new thing. Because otherwise, for me, it's just kind of daydreams isn't it? Never happens.

Michael (00:05:41)

Yeah, that's a really good point, isn't it? 'Cause yeah, it's easy to maybe theoretically add in a new behavior, but practically that means taking out something as well. And that's the hard part. Yeah, I think that's a really good tip.

Jen (00:05:56)

Yeah. So that's our advice. Make it easy. Make it something you can you can begin now and be really clear on why you're doing it and how you're doing it and when you're doing it.

And we wish you all the best for starting whatever this fabulous new habit is that you want to start.

Michael (00:06:11)

Yay, happy flossing.

Michael (00:06:11)

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed the episode and a huge thanks to our production team, Steven Tang and Madeleine Kelly.

That's it for this week. See ya.