The familiarity effect

“Daddy, why is it hard to start building something [Legos] when you haven’t been doing it much? I want to build something but I don’t feel like it.”

My daughter, 7 at the time of writing this, asked me that question. It resonated. I had been struggling with the same question.

And I think the answer lies in a term I’m now calling the “familiarity effect”.

But let’s back up a bit before we get into the weeds. Or back up into the weeds. Whichever.

Our family watched a documentary recently about a film crew trying to get footage of snow leopards for a documentary. (Very meta concept, right?)

The lead guy on the team explained at one point that it was good for the snow leopards to be aware of their presence and for nothing bad to happen. Eventually, the snow leopards would stop seeing the film crew as a threat, allowing them to get better footage.

Fast forward to reading, “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman and learning a concept called the “mere exposure effect” which basically explains the snow leopard behavior by saying that the way their brains perceive danger is by inversely correlating it with familiarity.

My words. His were better.

The point is, the film crew didn’t have to do anything nice to the snow leopards. They didn’t order in fresh meat delivery. No feathers on a stick to chase around. No drones flying overhead shining laser pointers on the snow.

No, merely being exposed to the video crew with nothing bad happening was enough for them to begin feeling safe.

Which brings us to the familiarity effect

The more frequently you do something, the more familiar it becomes. Our brains equate familiar with good and right and true and even easy. So the more you do something, the easier your brain perceives it to be, and the more likely you are to “feel” like doing it.

Although it’s not so much that you feel like doing it as it is you don’t feel like not doing it. We fear the unknown, which just so happens to be the opposite of familiar.

So one possible answer to our question, “why is it hard to start doing something when I haven’t been doing it much?” is this:

Familiar is feels safe. Unfamiliar is feels unsafe. That’s why change is hard.

The more accurate takeaway that you’re unlikely to remember is this: Rephrase your wants to get beyond the feelings so you can do the unfamiliar long enough for it to feel safe.

But that’s just a small part of what I think is going on with the original question.

What do I want to do != what do I feel like doing

If the answer to these questions is usually the same, you’re either getting terrible results and living an awful life or you’re absolutely crushing it (whatever your “it” is).

Confusing? Let’s get specific.

I want to get out of bed at 5:15 AM every morning.
But at 5:15 AM…I don’t feel like getting out of bed.

Why did I think that I would, and why didn’t I? What exactly is going on here?

Lousy questions, lousy outcomes

I love bed. It’s warm and cozy. I can think there. Bed is my favorite.

And so I almost never want to “get out of bed” at 5:15AM.

When the alarm goes off and I ask the question “do I want to get out of bed right now”, I politely respond and inform myself that there has been an update to our plan and we no longer want to get out of bed at 5:15AM.

We now want to get out of bed at 5:30AM. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I don’t know why we thought that we would want to get out of bed any earlier.

You can perhaps guess what happens at 5:30AM…

Ask better questions

Let’s refine the conversation. What I really want is to “be out of bed and fully awake at 5:15AM so I can start my day strong”. So when the alarm goes off and I politely inform myself that I don’t want to get up yet, I remind myself that we never planned to want to get up at 5:15AM. What we wanted was to be up and fully awake so that we could start our day strong, and no, we won’t know what that feels like until we’ve actually done it.

And so I get up and, sure enough, I’m glad I did and it is what I wanted all along.

No more conflict.

Ok, so that answers the morning routine issue, but what about everything else? What about the less routine tasks?

What about when I want to write 750 words each day but then I don’t want to write 750 words on any given day? Wait, never mind, that’s the same issue. Let me refine that. I want to improve my ability to think and communicate effectively, so I will write 750 words each day. Perfect. Now it doesn’t matter if I feel like it at the time.

At least in theory.

The takeaway

Ask better questions and get familiar with the good stuff.