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Just search new here. Welcome to the HBR Idea cast, I'm Sarah Green.

Today I'm talking with Peter Bregman, a frequent contributor to HBO.org, and the author of

four seconds, all the time you need to stop counterproductive habits and get the results you want.

Peter, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Thanks so much for having me, sir.

So four seconds, just about the length of time it takes to take a deep breath,

the idea here being that if we can just pause just for a moment

before we react to something that we will, you know, move past our self-defeating behaviors

and have better outcomes. Is that the idea? Yeah, it is it is you know I mean we talk about 21 days to change a habit or even longer and you know to really solidify it

but it felt to me like my habits change literally instantaneously in the moment if you have

enough self-awareness to see what you're doing and where it's working and where it's not working.

So the four seconds is really a way of interrupting your normal sort of habitual process.

We're all in these patterns.

And our patterns have been born of usefulness at a different time mostly but many of

them are not useful anymore to us and so the idea of before you jump into how you would normally act in a regular situation,

and some of these could be really normal situations, someone's upset about something

...