This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 1517, how to create habits that stick with minimum

effort and maximum results by polypant of affordanything.com, and I'm Justin Mollick. Happy

middle of the week Wednesday and welcome to the podcast where I simply read blogs to you for free,

covering personal growth and self-help topics like mindfulness, minimalism, self-care,

meditation, and a lot more, over 1500 episodes worth. But with that, let's get right to today's

post and start optimizing your life. How to create habits that stick with minimum effort and maximum

results by polypant of affordanything.com. You're home alone and you walk into a dark room.

What do you do? You flip a light switch. Duh. But what if an electrician moved the location of that

switch this morning? Would you reach for the new location? Nope, not yet. You'll reflexively

reach for the old location until you break that habit, despite the fact that you know better.

Why? Habits are more powerful than memory or knowledge. Successful people use this to their

advantage. Here's how. I want to wear sunblock daily, but when I leave home, I'm distracted.

Do I have my keys? Wallet? Phone? Do I need a jacket? How's traffic?

Sunblock is the last thing on my mind. There's a biological basis for this. Limited cognition.

Our brains aren't equipped to monitor the weather, plan the best driving route,

and remember the sunblock. We can only focus on a few things. This isn't laziness. This is how our

brains are wired. Here's why that matters. If you want to change some aspect of our lives,

we need to stop relying on memory, motivation, and willpower. Instead, we need to create habits

that stick. But how? How an unlikely ordinary man shocked scientists with this habit.

The story told in my own words is from the power of habits by Charles DuHig. In 1993,

a man from San Diego named Eugene Polly fell victim to a disease called viral encephalitis.

It damaged the section of his brain that forms new memories. Eugene could still walk,

...