This whole question revolves around the effort/reward ratio of a behavior. When people talk about ~21 days, they're talking about doing a hard thing until it's second nature and seems easy.

But there are other ways to make something seem easy, and there is another component in the ratio: reward. That is, even if effort stays the same, you can wire a habit by making the behavior more rewarding. (This is why people are able to get addicted to a substance after one dose -- because they can't forget the state they entered ... and it was so easy to get there.)

So the takeaway here is the you can wire habits by decreasing the amount of effort to do something that you think is good for you -- eg if you want to hydrate more, place a glass near the sink so you drink water when you get out of bed in the morning -- *and* by increasing the reward. The whole trick is getting the ratio right.

Cliche Silicon Valley example. I did an ice plunge, and it gave me a day long plunger's high. I didn't need to plunge for 21 days to get the habit. I started doing it 3 times a week after that, because I knew what I had to do to feel good.

This actually gets to something Huberman calls "duration-path-outcome". Getting clarity on what you have to do (path); how long it will take (duration); and what the payoff is (outcome), can do wonders for motivation. Confusion kills action (and for that matter, all deals, since habits are just deals we make with ourselves). If you can get clarity, reduce the effort, and increase the amount of reward and your confidence in it, I think you can get to new habits really quickly.

Fwiw, I wrote a little bit about forming habits here: https://vonnik.substack.com/p/state-changes-work-and-presenc...

Now, China, Iran and North Korea are backing Russia without engaging in direct confrontation in Ukraine; the EU, NATO, and maybe still the US are backing Ukraine. If Trump realigns with Putin against Ukraine, then the axis of authoritarian countries will have won a major battle. Trump will ofc lose many of his old-guard GOP supporters if he does that.

wrote about some of this here: https://vonnik.substack.com/p/state-changes-work-and-presenc...

https://vonnik.substack.com/p/how-to-take-your-brain-back

ultimately, maintaining focus is tied to overall physical energy (because suppressing distractions consumes neurological energy), and that physical energy is dependent on both health and ultradian cycles. best to alternate between focus bouts and recovery periods.

the important thing is to latch onto the the independent variables, the knobs you can turn.

https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Habits-Changes-Change-Everything...

So I think Piers is skating over that very important part of the equation.

Another piece of it is, if you manage to get healthy somehow, sleep better etc, then your motivation changes; the base level is reset. You have more energy to spare which you can devote to goals.

But I think there is a simpler way to think about motivation, which comes down to the ratio of effort to reward. The smaller the effort-reward ratio of a given activity, the more likely one is to do it. That single idea seems to rule my own behavior and that of many people I see. But it's also something you can hack, partly by using Fogg's idea of starting small. To change a behavior (and ultimately, your life), you just need to find a small enough starting activity to trigger action. It's not about motivation at all, and all the "motivational speakers" out there are misleading people in some fundamental way about the path to change.

One of the traps in that dynamic is that as we decrease the magnitude of the activity (drink a glass of water as oppposed to "go to the gym once a week to get stacked"), our motivation decreases as it loses its grandiose visions of change. I don't think task size and motivation necessarily decrease at the same rate tho. And I do think that grandiose visions are sometimes a form of self-sabotage or psychological homeostasis; ie "i'm only motivated to do things that i can't follow through on."

Focus = Energy - Distraction

and

Success = Focus x Time

The way you gain stamina is by doing things to increase your energy and decrease distraction. I wrote and talked about this here, fwiw.

https://vonnik.substack.com/p/state-changes-work-and-presenc...

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stokedlive_focus-is-power-lea...

I wrote about this here.

https://vonnik.substack.com/p/how-to-take-your-brain-back

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

Here's a good map of the bird flu breakouts.

https://investigatemidwest.org/2025/01/21/134m-poultry-and-c...

Most people are not paying enough attention to this.

Another real danger arises with the so-called "mixing vessel phenomenon," which occurs when different virus strains infect the same host simultaneously, particularly in the context of influenza viruses.

This primarily happens in animals like pigs, which can be infected by both avian and human influenza strains. When multiple virus strains infect the same cells, their genetic material can undergo reassortment - where segments of genetic material from different viruses combine to create new viral variants.

So a corona variant could mix with this fast-spreading avian flu and produce something that impacts humans more.

Viruses are like drunken teenagers -- they behave worse when they mix!