How to Completely Transform Your Life in 6 Months (the butterfly effect 🦋)

this video is sponsored by 365 data science in 1972 the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lawrence came up with an analogy it's the idea that a flap of the wings of a distant butterfly can somehow change the formation and course of a tornado thousands of miles away this is the butterfly effect over the years the butterfly effect has become a general concept now that refers to the idea that a small change can have Rippling effects across an entire system so before I unravel the Mysteries and talk about why it works I just want to make a quick plug for my newsletter called Boop's keyboard it's about productivity it's about learning it's also where I drop releases for things like lonely octopus you can sign up for free using this link over here also linked in description let's set the scene our story starts with our friend called Derek is 31 years old and his life is a complete mess Derek drop out of college in junior year but he never really found a career that he was actually into so he just bounced from job to pay the bills Barista to waiter to valet from the stress of the job he also started drinking and smoking a few years back though things change for Derek he met a girl he really loved this girl and he ended up of marrying him promising to her that he will change his ways but alas no matter how hard he tried he just couldn't hold down a drop couldn't stop drinking couldn't stop smoking and at some point the girl got sick of his [ __ ] and served him up some divorce papers Derek was devastated he was married and then divorced by the age of 31. his career never took off his finances were a complete mess he was addicted to alcohol to cigarettes he was overweight and no matter how hard he tried he was just stuck in this pattern and couldn't get up but one day riding the bus home from a very long day he saw an advertisement it was a study being conducted by the researchers Megan Olton and Ken Chang at Macquarie University of Sydney Australia and it was about a new method of improving finances he was absolutely desperate and since his finances of one of the like 20 problems that he had he jumped at the chance and signed up for the study luckily he was accepted the study was over a four-month period and focus on putting participants through what is called a finance monitoring program they were instructed to set financial goals for themselves and asked to exercise self-control in order to meet these goals things like denying themselves eating out going to parties and buying luxury items the study was super annoying in the beginning because it asked participants to write down every single thing that they bought and record down their mental state at that time and what it is that they were thinking about but Derek managed through it every month he would come in for a check-in and towards that it wasn't so bad he got used to having to write everything down by the end of the program Derek was actually really happy he found that his finances were in a much better shape and he had the confidence now to keep going on by himself but what was far more surprising is that he actually realized that he stopped drinking completely he also cut down his cigarette consumption from 15 to 20 cigarettes per day to around five or six he was even more cognizant of what it was that he was putting into his body he started a diet and has lost 10 pounds this is crazy because somehow this one habit of financial monitoring not only helped his finances which makes sense but it also transformed other areas of his life without him even intentionally doing anything so yes Derek is a fictional character but this study was actually done there's also other studies that replicated these findings across people of different ages different socioeconomic class as well as I guess like level of [ __ ] upness like people who are just struggling with their diets for example all the way up to people who had drug abuse problems who are trying to integrate back into society after going to prison all of them somehow just focusing on implementing a single behavior and making that into a habit had positive Rippling effects throughout their entire lives now this behavior is like the butterfly flapping its wings and I didn't even tell you the coolest part yet the exact Behavior which in this case was the financial monitoring program doesn't even need to be that like there's nothing actually special about a financial monitoring program studies were able to show similar results even when the behavior was completely different like dieting exercising cleaning things even developing a study habit so let's talk about this mystery here why does it work you see a lot of things that you want to do or not want to do in your life depends on self-control for example if you're trying to go on a diet and not eat junk food nobody is like forcing a cookie into your mouth you just don't have to self-control to resist the cookie same with exercise probably nobody's like sit on the couch and do not leave it's just like you can't motivate yourself to get off the couch and actually go for a jog research shows that children with better impulse control and self-regulation that is self-control are much more successful in life so before you click off this video and go like life is all doomed because I have no self-control I have good news for you turns out researchers do have a hypothesis that self-control is more like a muscle you can strengthen it and improve it with repeated practice ultang the researchers from previously they were interested in investigating this self-control muscle they hypothesize that if you can pick a habit for example this financial monitoring program and you're able to practice this over and over again this will be like training your self-control muscle and strengthening their over time then with better self-control in general this is going to rate throughout your entire life and make you much more disciplined in everything this study as well as subsequent Studies have provided evidence to support this hypothesis so yay it's okay if you have no self-discipline and no self-control you can actually train yourself to do so

okay so you're probably like excellent and the natural question you're probably going to ask now is what is this behavior that triggers this Butterfly Effect let's talk about that it's called a keystone habit the name Keystone habit comes from the word Keystone which refers to an arc and like the Center Stone within that Arc is called the Keystone because it holds everything together and if you remove it everything comes crashing down so a keystone habit refers to a habit in which all the other things are built upon this was the exercise the financial monitoring the studying that we were talking about earlier but since we know a keystone habit can be many different habits what exactly defines a keystone habit and how do you choose one for yourself so I kind of did some research on this and looked at some papers and things like that and I realized that people would mention certain things like making their bed or like live streaming or you know studying and waking up at 5am like things like that they would give a lot of examples but there was no like specific criteria but it also doesn't seem like you were just like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that one of them sticks it seems like it's very hard to Define because it's very individualized and usually involves a lot of experimentation for example Michael Phelps if you guys I'm sure you guys know Michael Phelps he's the guy that is very good at swimming his keys don't have it which he formed with his coach many years back is him playing a movie in his head of the perfect swimming competition in which he obviously wits so he would play this movie over and over again in his head like before he sleeps when he wakes up and before a consuming competition his coach said um and I don't remember if he said in an interview or it was a book but he basically said that after they were able to establish this Keystone habit everything else like all the other routines they kind of just all fell into place to find this Keystone habit the coach said that they he kind of like look at the traits that Michael Phelps had he was obsessive he was competitive and then he kind of like thought about what are the best habits for someone like that and then they tried a bunch of different things and realized that you know that movie playing his head is the best Keystone habit for him I know it's not perfect and for myself I also did a lot of experimentation to find something that works for me I tried a lot of things like making my bet journally waking up really early now that it really stuck so I try to like be more introspective as well and I thought about like okay like what are the things that make me feel good afterwards match my traits and I realize it's something that usually happens early in the mornings like if I'm productive and I feel good early in the morning that trickles down and makes my entire day good while on the other hand if it's something if I start my morning bad then everything kind of just like goes to [ __ ] as well and then I realized that the idea of talking to someone in the morning like something motivational that involve other people really made me feel good about my day so that's how I settled upon live streaming study with me in the mornings study with Tina so if you're also looking to find a keystone habit for yourself what I would recommend is just like introspecting first of all what do you think matches yourself like what are the things that you do um that you feel a lot better afterwards and then also I would recommend just thinking about like what time of the day it matters the most to you I think a good Keystone habit is something that is also relatively short like you're able to do it at least on a daily basis the last thing is that I think it's something that should clearly Follow The Habit Loop which if you're not familiar with I highly recommend reading two books called The Power of habits as well as atomic habits but basically the idea is that habits come in a loop first you have a cue and then you have a routine that you do to satisfy that cue you end up having a reward and then you have a craving for it so cue routine reward craving for example for live streaming the EQ is a certain time of the day the routine that I do is the live streaming the reward is that I feel energized I feel happy and I meet my friends during the live streams and then the craving is that then I want to like go through this loop again so that I can see my friends again so I couldn't find your research here back since up so this is kind of like my general experience so do let me know in the comments if you go through this exercise what it is that you land on like what works for you so before I end this video I do want to talk about one more secret ingredient that can really help you establish that Keystone habit into your life and that secret ingredient is other people I accidentally stumbled across this myself just because my Keystone habit natural really involves other people I actually saw a lot of research I suggest if you're able to include other people into your habit you're much more likely to stick with it and the reason why this works is that people are important we are inherently social creatures we're greatly affected by people and we're greatly influenced by people if you've ever been in a situation where if you're in a group of friends you over time you actually act more and more like your friends there's a saying for God who said it if you have a person if you want to know who this person is you look at the five closest people in their lives another great example of this is companies have their own cultures and those values that culture is something that when you go into work that's something that affects you greatly and the way that you think as well for example for me I left meta for many months now yeah I realized that a lot of the things that I say to terminology that I use even the way that I just like organize my own life comes from the culture at meta that's how powerful it can be but be careful it also works the other way around of course that's how you get yourself into a bad crowd and then end up being bad situations as well so yeah the people that you choose can make or break you so some examples of how to incorporate other people into your Keystone habit for example if your thing is exercising having an exercising buddy a gym buddy or joining some sort of exercise class that's a really good choice if you're trying to establish a study habit for example studying with other people can

be a really great way which is a perfect transition for the sponsor of today's video 365 data science is an online learning platform where you can learn about Data Business and of course data science I've had a close relationship with them for two years now ever since I started my YouTube channel essentially I personally have two courses now with 365 data science one of them is called SQL for Tech and data science interviews where I go through my five-step framework around how to approach data science interviews I also have another course with them that's about how to use data in order to transform and to grow your business so I have these two courses with them and they also have a variety of other courses 55 courses and Counting you can choose individual courses we're also Define career tracks and certificate programs which is especially helpful if you're in the beginning of your career or if you want to switch careers they've invested heavily in user experience and I really like that their platform is designed to be engaging and to help you succeed in learning a job I love that they really care about their students and what happens after they learn the material and not just about like selling courses in general they have resume builders as part of their platform and once you're qualified you're also given the option to join a group of candidates which 365 data science connects you to the companies and they can interview you directly they carefully screen who it is that teaches these courses so I am very honored to have been included in that catalog if you're interested in any of these courses you can check out the link in the description where you'll get 57 off their complete data science training all right now back to the video so there's one more thing that I do want to confess and it really like makes me realize how important it is this Keystone habit is it's the fact that I'm currently experiencing the repercussions of not doing my Keystone habit so my life has been super chaotic recently I've been traveling around a lot my schedule hasn't been stable so I've stopped live streaming consistently for a few weeks now and this week I haven't live streamed at all and I'm really feeling this because I just feel awful in the mornings like it just feels like I'm just so much less productive I don't feel good about myself I feel a lot lonelier because I don't have my friends that I usually live stream with this really goes to show how important that one habit can be in your life and it's something that I'm really trying to get myself to start doing again so you guys keep me accountable for that all right so that's all I have for you guys today I hope that this was an interesting video and also a pretty actionable video I would love to see you guys start investigating and thinking about what you can establish and report back in like three months for six months or something I want to know where it all ends up for you all right I will see you guys in the next video we're live stream foreign