The Domino Effect: How to Create a Chain Reaction of Good Habits

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Even the smallest good habit leads to other positive changes. Use this to your advantage and change your life with the domino effect.

An unthinkable story

All human actions are related to each other. Consider the example of a woman named Jennifer Lee Dukes. In the twenty-odd years since her graduation from college, she never made her bed, except when guests or her mother came to see her.

At some point, Jennifer decided to change everything and make the bed for four days in a row. It would seem a common thing. Nevertheless, on the morning of the fourth day, she not only made the bed, but also lifted her sock and neatly arranged the clothes that were scattered throughout the bedroom. Then she went to the kitchen, where she put all the dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher, tidied up the cupboard and put the decorative pig in the center of the table.

I made the bed and it set off a chain reaction of doing small chores around the house. I felt like an adult. A happy adult with a made bed, a clean sink, a wardrobe without trash, and a pig on the table. I felt like a woman who miraculously got out of the energy-consuming Bermuda triangle of domestic chaos.

Jennifer Lee Dukes

Jennifer experienced the domino effect on herself.

Domino effect

The domino effect states that each change entails a series of other changes in a chain reaction, similar to the way dominoes fall in a row.

In 2012, researchers at Northwestern University found in an experiment that when people spend less time sitting down, they consume less fat. Participants in the experiment were not specifically asked to eat less fatty foods, but their nutrition improved in a completely natural way. They began to spend less time sitting in front of the TV and mindlessly overeating. One habit led to another, as one domino pushes the next.

You can find similar patterns in your own life. As a personal example, if I stick to the gym habit, I find it easier to focus on work and sleep more comfortably at night. Although I did not plan to improve anything on purpose.

But the domino effect works for bad habits too. You may notice that constant phone checks lead to the habit of looking through social media notifications and, as a result, mindlessly flipping through the feed in social networks. This will procrastinate for 20 minutes.

You can never change just one habit. All our habits are interconnected. Therefore, as soon as you change one thing, the other will also change.

BJ Fogg Professor at Stanford University

The other side of the domino effect

The domino effect occurs for two reasons:

1. Most of the habits and activities that make up our daily life are related to each other. Choices in one area of life can lead to unexpected results in other areas, regardless of your plans.
2. The domino effect is based on the core principles of human behavior: commitment and consistency. This phenomenon is explained in detail in Robert Cialdini's classic book on human behavior, The Psychology of Influence. If a person adheres to an idea or goal, even a small one, he will fulfill it, because this goal or idea correlates with his self-image.

Coming back to the story at the beginning of this article, as soon as Jennifer Lee Dukes started making her bed every day, she took a small step towards the idea of "I am the person who keeps the house clean and tidy."A few days later, she got used to the new concept of herself and took up other household chores.

The domino effect is interesting for its side effects. It not only leads to new habits, but also provokes changes in personal beliefs. Every time you drop tiny dominoes, you start thinking about yourself in a new way and develop new habits based on it.

Domino effect rules

You can trigger the domino effect yourself. To do this, you need to adhere to three rules:

1. Start with an activity for which you are motivated. Keep it very small, the main thing for you is consistency. This will not only give you pleasure - you will see with your own eyes what kind of person you can become. It doesn't matter which knuckle fell first, when the rest began to fall.
2. Keep your pace and move on to the next task that you can complete. Let the impulse from the first task accomplished propel you to the next action. With each such step, you become closer to your new image.
3. When in doubt, break up a big case into several smaller ones. When you're trying to start a new habit, try to make it easy to do. The domino effect is about progress, not results. Just keep the pace. Let the process repeat and one domino pushes the next.

There are several ways to make the dominoes fall. Concentrate on a habit you enjoy and let the effect of doing it set off a chain reaction for life.