Change Your Core Behaviour Driver Using Infinite Loop Questioning
Have you ever wondered why you always come to a certain state? Have you ever wanted to change a habit, but you don’t really know what to change? Today I will share with you a technique that I know will help identify these core drivers.
In order to give you an understanding let’s get back to the basic of human minds. Anything that you want to change is normally an outcome of your behaviour. We as a human runs a lot of programs which governs our behaviour, those are your ways of working and habits. Each of us has different programs, which is why everyone has different ways of doing things.
Putting it simply, the process looks like this:
[Input] –> [Your Program] –> [Outcome]
The input is any information that got fed to your brain. This can be your surroundings, readings, movies, etc. Input is then processed within your brain and if it’s similar to past experience then your program will execute and you’ll get a predictable outcome.
A simple example is brushing your teeth. You don’t really think about all your movements from getting the toothbrush, the toothpaste, then the movement of brushing and so on. It would take hours if your brain process these actions consciously every time. That’s why you use the “brushing teeth” program in the morning, it’s almost like an autopilot.
The question is, if your program doesn’t really work what can you do to change it?
One way to do that is to identify what is the core driver behind your program. This can be achieved using what I call in my terms “infinite loop questioning”. The steps to do this are quite simple:
- State your behaviour that doesn’t work.
- Ask why.
- Answer or provide reasoning.
- Then ask why again to the previous reason.
- Repeat 2 – 4 until you come to the same answer over and over again.
- The last answer is your core driver. That’s the one that you need to change.
Let me give you an example straight from my own experiences. I love writing articles such as this one, but I found that I haven’t been able to write as much as I wanted. In order to solve this I started doing the infinite loop questioning.
- Problem statement: I can’t seems to write that much.
- Why? Cause I want to write on my train journey but it’s too hard.
- Why? Cause I was using my surface but the keyboard keeps coming off when I put it on my lap and it’s too wide for the train seating space.
- What about the iPad? I have tried it but it proved to be challenging to type long articles using the software keyboard.
- What’s wrong with the software keyboard? I made a lot of mistakes.
- Why? Soft keyboards are not easy to type with.
- Why? It’s just not easy to type on for me, especially I can’t really put it down.
- Why? It’s just that I kept pressing the wrong button.
- Why? It’s just it soft keyboard are hard to type with.
In the above example I have come to an infinite loop where I kept saying that I can’t use the soft keyboard. Therefore, one of the core drivers for this behaviour is that the soft keyboard is hard to use for me.
If I do the analysis further, I can take another branch with my answer about the surface being too wide instead of going with the iPad question. There will be a lot of branches when you do this fully. It’s best to actually map it out on an A3 paper using mindmap or flowchart style so you can trace the ideas.
Back to the example above, I now know that I have to do something with the keyboard. Something not too wide yet easy to type on. In my case I decided to re-use my old netbook (it’s 7 years old). After all these times I just realised that the size was perfect for writing articles. Obviously it’s a little slow, but that’s a different thing altogether.
Since using that good old 10” machine, I have been writing much more than in the past.
In conclusion, if you encounter interesting behavioural problems that you want to change, the infinite loop questioning might just be the handy thing for you to try. Give it a go and have fun, you may encounter things that you never thought of before.