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Successful New Year's Resolutions

Most New Year’s resolutions fail because it’s hard to develop or stop a habit. Like, really hard.

Atomic Habits (James Clear) provides the missing training manual. It’s a quick read and was the #1 best seller on Amazon in 2021.

Key Takeaways:

• Real change comes from the compound effects of hundreds of small decisions or habits.
• Focus on who you wish to become (identity) and then what you wish to achieve (outcome).

For every habit, there’s a feedback loop. A cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and ultimately becomes associated with the cue. To create a single habit, use the corresponding 4 laws of behavior change:

• Make it obvious - the habit needs to be effortless for us and require no active thinking. Can’t remember to take your vitamins? Put them on top of your keys. (cue)
• Make it attractive - if the habit is unattractive we likely won’t have enough willpower to do it over and over. Don’t like going to the gym? Restrict viewing time of a TV series to when you’re on the treadmill. (craving)
• Make it easy - the less friction between you and the habit, the greater the chances you’ll actually do it. Drive to the gym parking lot every day. Sit in your car for 5 minutes before you allow yourself to leave. (response)
• Make it immediately satisfying - our brain rewards immediate returns so it’s good to come up with something simple that brings us joy right after we perform our habit. Complete a 25-minute pomodoro, choose a song, turn on the disco ball, and hold your own 5-min dance party. (reward)

To stop a behavior, do the inverse of the above.

Want to stop looking at your phone before bed? Make it less obvious. Put it in another room.

Want to compound a habit? But your vitamins on top of your phone every night.

I have found that starting and stopping habits provide stability and a sense of progress when the world outside is crazy.

Janis Ozolins @OzolinsJanis pic.twitter.com/XmlFcoSSjS December 17th 2021 267 Retweets 960 Likes

A Different Type of Resolution

In 1995, I may have smuggled Russian military maps into India.

India’s first mobile network operator hired engineers from my wireless consulting firm to design their network. I was the sales account manager and learned that our engineers were desperate for better data.

Mobile Network Design 101

Here are the basics of a cell phone tower.

The “panel antennas” blast out a signal to communicate with your mobile phone. Each panel covers a sector known as a…cell. Hence the name, cell phones.

The “microwave dish” enables one tower to talk to another tower.

If towers spoke like humans, it would sound like this:

“Hey, Banana Tower, this is Gorilla Tower. I am supporting Bob’s call. He is driving away from me and our signal connection is weakening! He’s driving towards your sector. I am going to transfer Bob to you in 3, 2, 1,..handoff complete!”

Imagine the image below shows the entire area that Banana Tower covers. The signal strength is excellent in the pink zone, good in the blue zone, and weaker in the green area.

Why is the coverage map so splotchy? Topographical issues. The radio waves are hitting a building, a hill, trees, or other obstacles. This results in imperfect coverage or worse a dead zone.

Higher Resolution Maps

Our engineers tested their initial design for tower locations. They hired cranes to simulate towers, but discovered that several tower didn't cover the areas as expected.

Each tower costs a million dollars. It could take a year to secure construction rights and build a tower. And once built, you don’t move towers.

The modeling software the engineers used relied on 1:250,000 resolution topographical maps. They needed higher resolution maps

The best maps in existence were 1:100,000 resolution. There were three sources.

The Indian versions were classified.
The US versions were not for sale.
A French company had the Russian versions. Voila!

Higher Quality Decisions

The higher quality map data solved the problem. The customer built the towers and Mumbai became the first city in India with cell service.

What about my 26-year-old decision not to explore the legality of entering with the maps? At the time, my intuition said it was a bad idea. But my stronger, louder analytical side rationalized it was for a good cause and logic would prevail.

My primary contact at the customer was a retired Brigadier General in the Indian Air Force. Our engineers told me he knew about my map mission. I assumed he would get me out of trouble.

In hindsight, I should have gathered more data about my own decision or just listened to my intuition.

My New Year Resolution

I make pretty good analytical decisions. My 2022 resolution is to make more space for intuitive decision-making.

It's going well so far. I was tempted to write more. But my intuition says this is enough.

Until next Saturday,

Michael

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