Positive vs. negative habits

Why HostageFund can’t prevent you from doing anything.

One of the most common request we get at HostageFund is: “Can you help me quit X”. The answer is almost certainly no.

The best way to quickly disqualify a habit is to have it go through the “Is this a positive or negative habit” filter.

The difference isn’t complicated, but it’s worth going over.

Positive habits — Success is defined by something you do.
Negative habits — Success is defined by something you don’t do.

Why does the nuance matter?

Negative habits are unverifiable

You easily prove that you smoked 100 cigarettes in a day — but please don’t. However, there is no way to prove that you did not smoke one unless we hired a full time chaperone.

If you can’t prove it, we can’t verify it. If we can’t verify it, we can’t support it.

Negative habits are unforgiving

Let’s pretend for a moment that you could prove the absence of negative habits. We still wouldn’t support them.

If you commit to 100 pushups per day and you miss a day. You can simply do 200 the next day and get back on track.

However, you can’t un-smoke the cigarette, un-watch too much Netflix or un-eat the McDonald’s. Once you succumb to temptation, you’re doomed and redemption is impossible.

Is there a solution?

Sort of… Meet the keystone habit.

As Charles Duhigg describes in his book, The Power of Habit:

“If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can cause widespread shifts. [...] Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as ‘small wins.’ They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious.”

In other words, HostageFund can’t force you to not-eat-fast-food.

However, if you start working out everyday — which we can enforce — you slowly become the person who wouldn’t eat fast-food in the first place.