I don’t need to requote the thousands of men and women who have emphasized how important habits are. From building your character to determining your destiny, it’s safe to say, that the habits you have are an important part of your life.
Yet, even though we know this we go through cycle after cycle of trying to form new or break old habits. Sometimes we succeed, most of the time we fail.
For one, it’s definitely not because we’re not trying. We’re humans, and we try to grow, or at least most of us do.
It’s because we don’t know how habits work, and we fall into the trap of the man with a hammer syndrome.
Take it from me, a guy who’s been trying to improve himself over the past 10 years by experimenting with one method of another. In the process, I’ve come to realize a few things to keep in mind, and also some techniques that have kept me on course without getting too discouraged, because that comes with the territory.
The Hard Facts about Habits
First, not all habits take equal length to form. Yes, this means your friend who’s on his 9th 21-day streak is likely lying about the habits he’s formed or just hasn’t formed any in the first place. This also means you need to be extra careful when setting expectations for yourself when starting down a habit formation path.
In fact, habit formation exists within wide bounds according to Phillippa Lally of University College of London. In the widely cited paper, “How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world”, Lally uses some interesting lingo to refer to habits - automacity - but also, revealed that getting to a fully formed habit can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days.
Second, your environment and motivation matter. In the context of habits, the environment can be viewed as your ability to do a thing, which is of course affected by your access to the behavior.
As a simplistic example - Imagine for a second that you wanted to break a habit of watching excess TV, yet you had a TV in every room of your house and your family wasn’t as motivated by this break as you were. This would make your environment exceedingly difficult to succeed in.
The idea of motivation and ability to perform the habit in behavior change was popularized by BJ Fogg in his B=MAP model. Fogg breaks down the model into motivation, ability, and prompt.
Fogg emphasizes that you need the right chemistry of motivation and the ability to successfully respond to the prompt to change behavior. Without either, or an imbalance of one, you’ll end up with a prolonged process, failure, or false expectations.
So in summary, the hard facts are:
No habit is equal, they all take different times
They all take different times for a lot of reasons, but all those reasons can be distilled into either motivation or ability
My Toolkit
Behavior change is a little more complicated than most people think. However, there are simple remedies to the complexity: the right techniques + dedication.
An important thing to keep in mind when choosing the right techniques is acknowledging that complexity differs from habit to habit. However, for all habits, there are some golden rules I like to keep in mind:
Always start small
It doesn’t matter how you start, it’s that you start
Be patient
The first of my favorite techniques is environment control. Simply put, it means focusing on accessibility and environmental cues when building a habit. A good example of this is learning how to drink water more frequently. A means to achieve this could be as easy keeping a bottle of water near you at all times. Leveraging some of the golden rules - you can start with just a plastic bottle, then upgrade to a reusable bottle. Again, ensuring something is near you so it can get done easily is the key.
A second technique that helps keeps me focused on a single goal each day is the ‘one thing’ method, popularized by Gary Keller in his book of the same name. Though not a truly unique concept, this tactic forces you to stay focused on a single thing each to build towards a greater habit. The simplicity in it ensures you KISS (keep it stupid simple) so you don’t overcomplicate your life with multiple endeavors.
The last tactic is simply a method of tracking and visualizing progress - it’s what I like to call the chain-link method. Popularized by writers, predominantly Jerry Seinfeld, this method requires you to simply tick each day you’ve done or haven’t done something on a calendar. This activates motivation as you become motivated not to break a good thing.
All of these tactics come with their flaws - Environmental cues aren’t always feasible, you could end up focusing on the one thing that doesn’t matter, and tracking via the chain-link can simply become an act of vanity. However, as I’ve always emphasized, starting is the important part. To combat adverse effects, I always like to check in on a weekly or monthly basis to ask myself if I’m progressing towards where I want to be.
A good personal example is writing. For this habit, I use a combination of environmental cues and one thing. My goal is simply to write 25 minutes a day, and the way I do this is by ensuring my writing folder and computer are extremely accessible in the morning. This has led me to discover the golden time to write - the morning.
All this said - keep in mind a few things:
Persistent motivation matters - not only you must start, but you must keep it easy enough to keep going
Your environment can make or break your progress, so either be patient or construct it so its conducive to growth
Start small, always
Use cues, simplicity, or tracking to keep you moving forward - yet, check-in and pivot when needed
Keep these principles and frameworks in mind as tackle your next big step - they’ll keep you from overcomplicating things and lead to a steady path of progress.
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