Wendy Wood: Habits to Automatically Improve Your Running - 07/15/2020

Wendy Wood - Habits to Automatically Improve Your
Running

 


Is running a habit for you? If yes, do you believe your running
is a conscious choice? If no, how long would it take you to form
a running habit? (Hint: A lot longer than you probably think.)
What are habits anyway, and how can they benefit you as a
runner? 


 


Psychologist Wendy Wood literally wrote the book on habits,
appropriately called Good Habits, Bad Habits, and she shares with
Coach Claire some of the knowledge she’s gained during her
30-plus years of researching habit-related behavior. She
discusses how habits form and how they overcome your intentions,
how you can create friction to make your bad habits less
attractive, and how good habits can pave the way to expanding
your goals and increasing your creativity. 


 


Wendy is Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the
University of Southern California, where she also served as Vice
Dean of Social Sciences. A 2008 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, and
2018 Distinguished Chair of Behavioral Science at the
Sorbonne/INSEAD in Paris, Wendy has advised the World Bank, the
Centers for Disease Control, and industries such as Procter &
Gamble and Lever Bros.


Wendy completed her graduate degree in psychology at the
University of Massachusetts. She went on to be the James B. Duke
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.
Having published over 100 scientific articles, she received
numerous awards for her research and teaching. For the past 30
years, her research has been continuously funded by the National
Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the
Templeton Foundation.


 
Questions Wendy is asked:

 


3:55 You are a research psychologist who has devoted the last 30
years to understanding how habits work and you are also a runner,
so when I heard about your work and read your book Good Habits
Bad Habits, I knew I wanted to have you on the show.  First
off, what got you started in studying our habits?


 


5:54 In your book you said, "Intentions are no match for our
habits."  Can you describe this and basically define what a
habit is?


 


8:16 A running habit, for example, I can use my own experience. I
can tell you the first year that I was a runner, I hated every
second of it, and then eventually it became just a part of my
identity, who I am. It’s obviously my job now, but it took
forever for it to be something that I really identified with. Is
that really a common experience for most people that you’ve
found?


 


10:10 Does it take a lot less time to establish a running habit
for example if you reduce decisions, like run at the same time
every day, always have the same pair of shoes, always run the
same routes? Is there a shortcut to getting a good habit?


 


12:46 We crave things that are new. We want to do new and
exciting things. But you’re also saying that the repetition, the
doing the thing over and over and over again is also what we
crave?


 


16:48 I would love to talk about goals and how they relate to
habit. You’ve said that when you’re forming a habit at the
beginning a goal is absolutely critical, but as the habit becomes
more established, you might not need the goal quite as much or
perhaps not at all. And how that relates to running, especially
this year so many of our running races, our big goals, have been
canceled, and some of the runners react in one way and they
completely stop training or almost stop training, and other
runners just seem to find brand new goals, other ways to
motivate. I would love to hear your thoughts on that and how
these two groups are different.


 


21:30 One thing that I would love to get your thoughts on are how
do you establish a habit that isn’t daily, like for example,
strength training? I often tell my athletes that they should
strength train, lift some weights twice a week or three times a
week, and for some people that’s a lot harder than doing it every
single day. How do we get ourselves to do more intermittent
things on a regular basis, just not on a daily basis?


 


25:07 You’ve said that bad habits are not that different from
good habits as far as the way the brain works. One study that you
referenced in your book was the famous marshmallow study, which
everybody has heard about where little kids are given a
marshmallow, and if they don’t eat it within a certain period of
time, they’ll get a second marshmallow. And of course all
hilarity ensues and these poor little kids end up eating the
marshmallow in most of the occasions, except for some very
resilient little kids who end up getting both. What I wanted to
ask about, you talk about hiding the marshmallow, hiding the
temptation, getting it out of sight, out of mind. Can you talk a
little bit about how we can change our bad habits?


 


31:28 Now that you’re a researcher and you’ve studied all of this
about habits, does that mean you do everything perfectly in your
life now that you know all this information?


 


34:01 Another great thing that I learned from your books is If
you "remove the friction,” that is what can help you develop much
better habits. Can you talk a little bit about the
friction? 


 


37:44 Another lesson from your book is that we need to take our
thinking brains out of the picture. Is that what you’re
saying? 


 


39:19 Wendy, what’s next for you? What questions are you
researching now?






Questions I ask everyone:


 


41:13 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you first
started running, what advice would you give yourself?


 


41:42 What is the greatest gift that running has given you?


 


42:46 Where can listeners connect with you?


 
Quotes by Wendy:

 


“I had two sons and like many women experienced a weight gain and
I was very uncomfortable after they were born. I didn’t like
being that heavy. And so I would try all kinds of different
things to get myself out running, and it took about a year of
trying different things to figure out exactly what was the right
approach for me.”


 


“Once you become a habitual runner, it’s as if you can use that
pattern in the service of a whole bunch of different goals.”


 


“We all have self control. It’s just self control is much more in
our environment. It’s much more around us than in us.”






Take a Listen on Your Next Run


Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes
channel
Mentioned in this podcast: 

 


Email Wendy


Wendy Wood at USC


Good Habits Bad Habits


Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community


RunnersConnect Facebook page


claire@runnersconnect.net


 


Follow Wendy on:


 


Twitter






We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top.


The best way you can show your support of the show is to share
this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your
Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use.


The more people who know about the podcast and download the
episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running
influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which
hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!