Джон Харгрейв - Mind Hacking [How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days]

• Silence:speaking only when it benefits others or yourself

• Order:letting everything have its place

• Resolution:resolving to do what you should; doing without fail what you resolve

• Frugality:being careful with money and resources; wasting nothing

• Industry:working hard but efficiently

• Sincerity:meaning what you say; saying what you mean

• Justice:wronging no one, either by what you do or don’t do

• Moderation:avoiding extremes and letting go of grudges

• Cleanliness:keeping your body, clothes, home, and workspace clean

• Tranquility:calmly accepting small misfortunes that are common and unavoidable

• Chastity:moderating sexual activity

• Humility:imitating “Jesus and Socrates”

These virtues became Franklin’s positive thought loops . His method of reprogramming his mind with these values was both simple and ingenious. In a diary, he made a simple grid with columns representing each day of the week, and rows representing each of the thirteen virtues:

S

M

T

W

T

F

S

T

S

••

•

•

•

O

•

•

•

•

•

•

R

•

•

F

•

•

I

•

S

J

M

Cl.

T

Ch

H

Reasoning that it would be easier to tackle one virtue at a time, he listed them in order of importance, so that one habit built upon the next. Temperance came first, because you couldn’t make progress on the other virtues if you were drunk all the time. Once you had Temperance under control, it would be easier to tackle Silence. Once Silence was conquered, Order would follow, and so on.

Each day, Franklin reviewed his progress across all thirteen virtues, marking with a black spot any day in which he did not live up to his ideal. But each week he also had a “target virtue” (or thought loop) that he would strive to keep clear for the entire week. Thus, in the first week, his thought loop would be focused on Temperance. Having strengthened that virtue, he would focus on Silence in the second week, and so on.

Since there are fifty-two weeks in a year, Franklin was able to go through the list of thirteen virtues precisely four times in a year—a mathematical system any geek can appreciate. Perhaps Franklin expected to be done with it in a year, but he ended up using the system for most of his life. “I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined,” Franklin recalled later, “but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.”

Indeed, Franklin’s life is powerful testimony that these positive thought loops worked: although he was only human, he died an accomplished and respected man who certainly left the world a better place. Not only did he invent the lightning rod, bifocals, odometer, urinary catheter, and swim fins, he also invented the self-help book.

Positive vs. Negative

Multiple studies show that we respond better to positive than negative feedback. One of my favorite examples is the “Speed Camera Lottery,” an experiment run in Stockholm, Sweden. In many cities, speed cameras are used to automatically issue tickets when a motorist is caught driving over the speed limit. Kevin Richardson, a gaming producer for Nickelodeon, had an idea to flip the model on its head.

In his version of the speed camera, everyone who was caught driving under the speed limit would be entered into a lottery to win a portion of the speeding fines. In other words, drive over and you could get a ticket, drive under and you could win it.

Richardson’s idea was tested out on a street in Stockholm. The results were fascinating. As the New York Times reported, “Average speed before the installation of the Speed Camera Lottery sign on a multilane street was 32 kilometers an hour. That figure dropped to 25 kilometers an hour during a three-day test, despite the device’s inability to issue financial penalties.” 3

“Thinking of all the interesting ways we can penalize a few bad or distracted apples,” Richardson was quoted, “is a mis-distribution of energy and attention.” While this is true for distracted drivers, it’s also true for our distracted minds. Once we become aware of our negative thought loops, we may start berating or penalizing ourselves for them. Just as with math, adding two negatives does not bring you to positive.

Still, negative feedback feels more “natural.” When your child is climbing on top of the glass coffee table with a hammer, the most natural thing in the world is to scream, “NO!” My wife, who is an excellent parent of our two kids, taught me early on to resist the natural urge to say “No” and to instead reframe it in the positive . What is it that you want your kids to do? “Hammer in the garage,” or “toy hammer only,” or “shop eBay for new coffee table” are more constructive alternatives, because then the kids know what is acceptable .

Your mind is like a child. You need to condition it by continually reinforcing what you want it to do, not what you don’t want it to do. If you think, I don’t want to feel anxious anymore , or I don’t want to fail at work , or I don’t want my life to look like this , you’re just defining the absence of the negative loop. It doesn’t work to just cut out the problem code; you have to rewrite it .

It’s more work to define what you want. It’s harder to tell kids what they should be doing than to shout “No!” It’s more difficult to explain to your partner or your family or your friends what you need than what’s annoying you. But if you don’t take the time to do it—if you can’t articulate it to yourself and to someone else—then you’re expecting the world to figure it out for you and serve it up like a robotic butler.

The Story of The Story of Mel

One of the classic pieces of hacker literature is a text document called The Story of Mel . Originally circulated on the Usenet newsgroup net.jokes, the story recounts the godlike programming abilities of a developer named Mel. Written in a reverent poetry-prose, the story has the cadence and feel of a piece of holy scripture.

Little is known about Mel, but subsequent generations of geeks have theorized he was an actual person: Mel Kaye, who wrote the software for the 1959 Royal McBee LGP-30 computer. Mel had created a blackjack game for the LGP-30, one of the first of its kind. The Royal McBee sales reps would take the LGP-30 to trade shows, where they would let prospective customers play the blackjack game. It’s hard to remember there was a day when most people had never played a computer game, and the experience was so thrilling that it usually sold the LGP-30 on the spot, even though it was a business computer.

There was only one problem: Mel’s blackjack game was too good. Sometimes the prospective customers lost , if you can imagine that. Concerned they were losing out on valuable sales opportunities, the Royal McBee sales reps approached Mel and told him the game was “too fair.” They asked if he could modify the blackjack game so they could secretly flip a switch on the LGP-30 when they wanted to let prospective customers win.