Warp Speed Habits - Leveraging Neuroscience to Create Habits

Understand the quest you will undertake, as you assume different avatars in the execution of your voyages and missions, and document the conclusions in your workbook.

Introduction to Clark, who will accompany you throughout your one voyage and six missions as you assume the novice avatar and understand the scope of the journey you will undertake in this role.

Introduction to Albert, who will accompany you throughout your three voyages and seven missions, as you assume the scientist avatar and understand the scope of the scientific journey you will undertake in this role.

Introduction to Frida, who will accompany you throughout your two voyages and nine missions, as you assume the painter avatar and understand the scope of the strategic journey you will undertake in this role.

Introduction to Simon, who will accompany you throughout your three voyages and 20 missions, as you assume the maestro or maestra avatar and understand the scope of the tactical journey you will undertake in this role.

Introduction to Jean, who will accompany you throughout your one voyage and five missions, as you assume the architect avatar and understand the scope of the journey you will undertake in this role.

Introduction to Emma, who will accompany you throughout your one voyage and one mission, as you assume the learner avatar and understand the scope of the journey you will undertake in this role.

Sofia will summarize the voyages you will undertake as you assume your avatars.

At this stage, you will be introduced to Michael, your Habit Buddy throughout your quest. Michael will be sharing his outputs from his quest with you, reinforcing the need for you to document your missions in your workbook.

You are now ready to begin your first voyage. Sofia leaves you a final message before you assume your novice avatar.

As the novice, the objectives for your first voyage are:

• Understand how effective you currently are in creating habits.

• Understand what it will take to create habits successfully.

To succeed in achieving these objectives, you will carry out six missions.

If you are asked what the word “habit” means, what will you probably reply?

The concept of the components of habits was discovered by MIT researchers in the 1990s. These are the core of every habit and is based on a simple neurological loop. We'll look at these concepts through an example in this lesson.

You move through life believing you are an informed, rational, and conscious decision maker. Neuroscience, however, shows that many of the decisions and choices you make every day are based on your habits.

You will now review this aspect in this lesson.

How do habits impact behavioral change?

Does the brain work for or against you?

It is a paradox that the organ that helps you understand and guides your interaction with your world needs to be better comprehended. You will take the first steps to understand this complex organ that is your brain.

Review research results to understand whether your brain does in fact will an action before you are aware of it.

Begin to understand the strategic direction and tactical stage you will need to set.

Understand the strategic and tactical perspectives you will need to define.

What is a Habits Growth Mindset?

You may be unaware, but environmental context is an invisible force that helps create and maintain habits. Understand the different environmental contexts that impact your habits.

Understand what elements influence the time it takes to create habits.

As the novice, you have just successfully completed the first six exploratory missions in your voyage—Brain Science, Business Thinking, Habits Mindset, and Environmental Contexts. Recap on lessons learned.

You will understand that during the voyages as a scientist, you will execute missions that will allow you to assimilate knowledge of your brain, and understand the significant potential that you have to create habits and change behaviors, to learn and grow.

As the scientist, your objectives for this voyage are:

• Assimilate basic knowledge of your brain, the most complex organ in the universe.

• Become aware of the significant potential that you have to create habits and change behaviors, to learn and grow.

• Begin to understand why your brain resists change.

To achieve these objectives, you will need to execute four missions.

In this lesson, you come back to the question, “What does the word ‘habit’ mean?”

Habits form over an identifiable series of four stages along the Habits Formation Matrix. In this lesson, an overview of these stages will be shown.

To better understand the Habits Formation Matrix, imagine that you’ve just successfully learned a process that required the use of new application software. Review what happens along each of the four phases.

In this lesson, you will understand neurons—one of the key building blocks of your nervous system that runs throughout your body—and their fundamental contribution to habit formation.

Understand how complex chains in your central nervous system form networks that specialize in performing a myriad of specific tasks, including the fundamental role in building and changing habits.

It is, however, not the number of neurons that matters as much as the number and frequency of synaptic connections between them that make the brain amazing. You'll understand why in this lesson.

Many studies in neuropsychology have shown that experts who started learning their profession in childhood or who have had intensive training and practice present structural differences in their brains as compared to nonexperts. In this lesson, you will review a few examples.

In your second voyage as the scientist, your objectives are:

• Understand the different intricacies of your brain systems and how these operate in creating habits.

• Comprehend how these systems are interlinked and how they affect the creation of habits.

To achieve these objectives, you will need to execute one mission:

• Mission 11: A Balancing Act

You have an enormous transformative potential to learn, adapt, improve, and grow. Why, then, is it extremely challenging to build or change habits?

Understand how your risk analysis system or warning center functions and its governing foundation.

In this lesson, you will understand your Habits System, responsible for automatic thoughts and movements, and how it works wonders.

In this lesson, you will grasp essential information in relation to the reward system. You will review this subject in greater detail when you explore the reward and craving components of the Habits Quartet.

You have just successfully completed your second voyage as the scientist. In this lesson, you will recap your understanding of this voyage.

As the scientist, your objectives for this voyage are twofold:

- Reflect on the inner workings of your brain systems and their connection to your Identity System.

- Understand how your Identity System illusion and mindset affect the creation of habits.

To achieve these objectives, you will need to execute two missions.

Reflect on the inner workings of your different brain systems, before moving forward the the lesson on identity system illusion.

Understand the flawed perspectives of your identity system.

What if instead of being irresistibly drawn to your destiny, you could plot your own North and systematically design the roads you wish to travel?

As the painter, you will begin to choose and design your habits by looking at the long-term change you want to achieve—to improve your health, your work, and your life.

As the painter, you will be initially tasked with two objectives for this voyage. You need to:

• Understand that it is imperative to align your long-term focus with your short-term actions.

• Get an initial grasp of the strategic–tactical voyages you will undertake based on the Warp Speed Habits roadmap.

To achieve these objectives, you will execute mission 14: Think Strategically, Act Tactically.

In this lesson, you will understand what makes for solid strategy and tactics, understand the strategic-tactical roadmap, and finally wrap up your first important voyage as a painter.

Your objectives for this voyage are:

• Paint your current self-portrait using the Habits Strategic Canvas. This canvas will allow you to enhance your self-awareness and identify areas for improvement in competencies you wish to grow.

• Paint your future Identity System and appreciate its new narrative content.

To achieve these objectives, you will need to execute eight missions.

Before you continue, it is time to meet Michael, your buddy during this journey. He will share his outputs with you as he works on his quest.

A fundamental basis of your quest includes your analysis and appreciation of the narrative content of the self-portrait you will paint using the Habits Strategic Canvas.

You will also understand why this capability is so underdeveloped.

To start developing the capability of self-awareness, you need to commit to doing tough introspection. This is a habit you will need to develop.

You will begin to prepare yourself for mission 16 in this lesson.

In this lesson, Michael will share with you his reflection and shortlist of opportunities.

In this lesson, you will understand the importance of working with a mentor as well as learn the art of exhibiting your self-portrait.

Learn how you will detail areas of opportunities on the self-portrait of your canvas using spheres of action and how these relate to keystone habits.

In the following lessons, you will carry out a fundamental exercise, that of assessing your strategic goals.

You are now almost halfway through your quest. As the painter, you can now see the results achieved in this voyage.

You are now at the stage of your quest where you will move from a strategic to a tactical perspective.

Your objectives, in this fundamental intersection, are as follows:

• Understand how the Habits Formation Matrix overlays your strategy and tactics.

• Define your rules of tactical engagement that orchestrate your strategic goals into tactical objectives. This will impede you from ignoring your tactical objectives or only focusing on your strategy, your desired end state.

• Define how you will monitor the achievement of your desired outcome through targets and metrics of success.

To achieve these objectives, you will need to execute three missions.

You will recall from your mission, Habits Formation Matrix: An Overview, that you will experience varying levels of efficiency, automaticity, and flexibility as you transition from new to habitual behavior.

Through the voyages and missions you have undertaken, you will now be able to further understand how this matrix applies to your quest.

Your strategic goals are conceptual, are large in scope, and have a long timeframe. To circumvent this potential issue, within the strategy–tactic intersection, you need to define the rules of tactical engagement.

In this lesson, you will recap the results of your first voyage as the maestro or maestra.

In this voyage, in the same role, to operationalize your tactics, your objectives are:

• Understand the components of the Habits Quartet that will need to work together for successful habit creation.

• Create Habits Scores for your Habits Quartet, to ensure the alignment and consistency required to build habits.

To achieve these objectives, you will need to execute 16 missions.

In this lesson, you will recall the four components of the Habits Quartet, using the to-do list example, and you will understand how your neurotransmitters (your chemical messengers) "fire" when executing habits.

The mission you have carried out is an important first step to understanding response automaticity. You should learn to listen to, rather than suppress or react to, emotion triggers.

The action-response is the behavior you perform after the trigger. Whether an action-response occurs and repeats over time depends on diverse factors, that you will review in this lesson.

As the maestro or maestra, you have familiarized yourself with the components of your Habits Quartet. You will now recap on this understanding.

You are now at the stage where you will need to build or change a habit and you will need to take an active composer-conductor role. You will set up your Habits Quartet and begin building your Habits Score, working diligently on your compositions.

In your final voyage as the maestro or maestra, you have one final ambitious objective:

• To monitor your goals, objectives, and results.

To achieve this objective, you will need to execute one mission:

• Mission 42: Become a Truth Seeker

As you reach the end of your final voyage as the maestro or maestra, you will recap on your findings from the different voyages you have undertaken through this avatar.

To achieve world-class performance, you will need to set a higher standard. How can you do this?

In your voyage as the architect, you have one objective.

- Design and implement stable environmental contexts that influence you to make better choices and support reoccurring behaviors and actions.

To achieve this objective, you will execute five missions.

To get your Habits Quartet to achieve world class performance, you will

need to design and implement stable environmental contexts that influence

you to make better choices.

In this lesson, you will understand how different spaces within your organization affect the way you think, feel, and behave.

There is no such thing as a neutral environment. If you fail in executing easily triggered action-responses, remember that this may come down to poor environmental design. You will review the concept of choice architecture in this lesson.

In this lesson, you will be able to define actions to take on ANTs—automatic negative thoughts, by taking a daily DOSE of the neurotransmitters Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endocannabinoids.

Everything that was created by a human existed as an image at some point in time in that person’s mind. In this lesson, you will begin to understand how your brain can leverage this innate capability that you have.

In your voyage as the learner, you have one final objective in your quest.

• You will practice envisioning and mentally focus on executing your process and achieving your desired results.

To achieve this objective, you will execute one mission:

• Mission 48: The Power of Visualization

The mental practice of envisioning and focusing on achieving your future goals is the same to your brain as the equivalent physical experience of achieving your goals.

You will review how this works from a brain perspective.

You’ve onboarded brain-based, strategic, and tactical know-how, and you can now create or change habits at warp speed!

Wait, say what, create habits at warp speed! Is this even possible?!

In this lesson, you will review a stuady by a group of psychologists at the University of Zurich, who demonstrated successful and measurable behavior change, with 255 participants in a two-week period.

In this final lesson, it will be clear to you that with Warp Speed Habits, you have acquired knowledge of and learned to use all of the ingredients required to successfully create habits and change behaviors!