Activation energy required to start or change behaviour
Summary
- Activation energy is the energy required to start movement. For example it takes more energy to overcome friction initially than to keep something moving once it is already moving.
Details
- This could apply to quitting an addiction - you need to apply enough energy to propel the action through the breaking of current bonds to building new bonds.
- This will require work to identify the potential downfalls and plan for them ahead of time.
- Sometimes we invest too little energy and then we slip back into the behaviour
References
Quotes
The bigger and more challenging an action is, the more activation energy required. And it’s important to remember that the buildup to doing something is part of the activation energy required—this build up includes everything on the camel, not just the straw.
Figuring out the right amount of activation energy is pertinent to quitting some addictions. It’s not just the moment you decide to quit, it’s everything that had to happen, every crisis you had to face, in order to enact that decision. When considering how much activation energy will be required to finally stop the negative behavior, you likely need enough energy to propel the action through the breaking of your current bonds that facilitate addiction through to building new bonds that are completely different.
Evaluating both your internal and external environment to identify the situations and suggestions that compel you to want to re-engage in the addiction is an important step. These are triggers, and they require energy to resist, and so you must try to change them up. Otherwise, with no new structure to replace the old one, the old bonds will reform.
Change that doesn’t last is easy. Where a lot of people miss the mark on what is required to produce real change is figuring out the initial investment of energy needed to not only start the reaction, but to finish it. When we don’t put in enough activation energy, we fail to produce the results we want. After enough attempts, this failure is discouraging. We think we are doomed to fail or the situation is impossible to change. We rarely consider if we are putting in enough effort to support the formation of a new structure when the old one breaks apart. The reason why so many revolutions fail is that it takes a completely different set of skills to fight than to govern. Most revolutions focus on the energy needed to break apart the existing structure. In most cases the energy requirement to start change is not insignificant: Physical strength in terms of weapons, and ideological strength in terms of support from a significant amount of people. If you were planning a revolution, these two requirements are likely the two areas you would focus on. Who needs to be removed, and where do my opportunities to facilitate that lie? How much firepower and how many supporters do I need? The activation energy required to start the reaction must take leadership changes and weapons capacity into account. But the model of activation energy suggests that you can’t stop there because removing the leadership is not the full reaction. Revolutions are aimed at changing the structure of a society, so the planning must involve