The #1 thing that has helped me stick to habits over the long term is starting out as easy as I possibly can. I've been exercising consistently for years now, and what finally got me to stick with it was doing 1 pushup per day. That's it. I did one pushup per day for 5 days, then I moved to 2 per day, and started ramping up faster as time went on.
I've applied the same "make it as easy as humanly possible" to other habits (working on something for 5 minutes, for example) and it seems to work really well.
I believe the reason this works for me is because 1) it's laughably easy at the start, and I can knock it out in practically no time, and 2) I ramp up slowly enough that by the time it actually starts feeling difficult, I already have the habit established. The surest way for me to abandon a habit is by trying to do too much early on.
Another thing that is death to my habits is feeling guilt/shame about missing a day. If you miss a day, don't beat yourself up. It happens. Just remind yourself why you picked the habit, and try again. Maybe lower the difficulty a bit next time.
I find it helpful in those situations to remember what David Allen said about when that happens: "you may have fallen off the horse, but you can always saddle up again"
Breaking the chain of habit is something everyone will run into at one point and it's important to understand that it's the natural order of things that it will happen. Inevitably at one point you will either be sick, or have something important, or life will throw a wrench at you — and that's okay. The important thing is that if you still want it, you get back at it. I've been lifting weights nearly all my life and I can't even begin to count the times I've missed days, weeks, sometimes months because of various reasons. What matters is that you get back to it after.
I did something similar with HIIT workouts (don’t be fooled, the intensity wasn’t super high to begin with!) which worked because I couldn’t possibly tell myself I “didn’t have time” for a 10 minute workout.
I don't think this guy has really built or broken many habits. None of what he says is wrong per se, it's just wordy. You don't need such a deep understanding of the brain to build/break habits. You just need a reason.
If you really wanted to do that habit or get rid of a habit, you just would.
Most of you live high agency lives and are making decisions every day that are creating your life exactly how you have decided to make it. A lot of stuff feels "hard" but you just don't want it bad enough.
One example is how easy it is for 99% of women to quit social drinking when they get pregnant. These same people, without such a clear and strong motivation, would probably "slip up" and struggle with 9 months of sobriety.
You're almost right. Habits don't just show up – we engage in them because they give us something useful back. The trouble is this useful thing is often optimised for the short-term, and habits can have negative long-term consequences.
The alcohol thing is a good example: when not pregnant, it gives us short-term pleasure, at long-term cost. When pregnant, the cost of alcohol is moved up to the now and so it's easier to get out of the habit. It's not about strength of motivation, it's about immediacy of consequences.
I have heard rumours that some people are able to channel motivation to pursue what's good in the long term even when it goes against short-term gains, but I believe this ability is more rare than it may appear. For many, it's more effective to try to re-arrange the environment such that the consequence profile aligns with the long-term goals.
"just try harder" isn't a strategy or good advice.
You could copy/paste this paragraph and create the shortest book on self-motivation ever created.
Jokes apart, what you wrote is really true and made really think about it.
Most motivation/self-help books are reiterating the same things in different ways.
And it's probably okay, because each wording/phrasing can make the message "click" for different people. Same thing with the timing. Reading something when you're 18 and when you're 30 can be totally different.
I think Shia LeBouf has this beat with “do itttt!”
> If you really wanted to do that habit or get rid of a habit, you just would.
This is ridiculously naïve. You seem to be completely forgetting the existence of addiction.
> One example is how easy it is for 99% of women to quit social drinking when they get pregnant.
Because they weren't addicted to drinking, like most healthy people.
Do you think a single fat person wants to be fat? It's uncomfortable, inconvenient and embarrassing; nobody wants it, and they know exactly what causes it. The reason more than half of our population is overweight is they are addicted to food and our society not only enables it but encourages and reinforces it. They can't "just stop".
I'm just doing a reread of Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg (one of the OG researchers on the topic). It's really good, and I'm already thinking of dozens of ways to apply this to myself and my kids. (He presents his framework as a model for human behavior, not just what we normally think of as habits.)
I think the key with any kind of self-help advice or book is that you have to study it, not just read it. I plan to be working with this book for at least the next six months. I read too many other "inspirational" books that didn't have a lasting impact; the first read is just research to decide whether it's worth devoting time to. Then the real work begins.
I made flash cards when I read atomic habits as an exercise as I wanted to put some of the ideas from Andy Matuschak to the test. I remember and have internalized more from this book than any other self help book I have read. I can barely remember the titles of the other books I've read.
For some reason, I never read a self help book like this again despite how successful it was.
Seconded. I picked up a copy a few years ago when Costco was selling it. It’s pretty good and seems based on fundamentals and actual research.
I have finally been able to form a habit that I wanted for more than a few decades and the book which helped me finally get it was "Awaken the Giant Within" by Anthony Robbins. This was my third or so reading of the book and this time it clicked! It's a bit dense book which seems to have aged well (and you may have to look past some of marketing for his other events).
"Tiny Habits" by BJ Fogg is another one which I find very useful. Just the basic idea of having tiny/baby steps to take is a powerful one.
"Loop Habit Tracker" app is a great app to keep track of your habits especially the ones where you want to record yes/no responses. It's free app available on android (I am still looking for something similar for iPhone for my wife!).
Streaks is similar on iOS, but unfortunately not free.
Thanks for the suggestion. One time payment is not a problem for such apps (though not a big fan of subscriptions). Will try it out.
if you don't mind sharing, what was the habit?
Getting up early in the morning! It's not a big deal for those who can get up easily, but I struggle to get up even at 8 AM and then have to rush things. I have also tried "The 5 AM Club" by Robin Sharma and excellent "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod but to no avail. Currently, on a 57 day streak! Please don't ask what time I get up as it's still late from the point of view of morning people :)
if I may suggest something: instead of setting an alarm to ring for when you have to get up, set an alarm to get you to turn off all screens, quieten down, and get ready for sleep asap, ten hours before when you have to get up.
"Error 1034: The host (alexy.tech) resolved to an IP address that the owner of the website does not have access to."
is what I'm seeing after clicking that link, it seems to work fine for others in the comments?
Is the webarchive snapshot complete?
I saw people in the comments referencing 4-6 habits but I don't see it in the snapshot.
EDIT: nvm found it in the text.
> Instead of relying solely on penalties for engaging in a bad habit, introduce a positive action right after to replace it.
This seems counterintuitive as I would expect this to reinforce the bad habit. No citation or explanation given. Any ideas?
I understood it as "do the bad habit, regret it, do a new good habit right afterwards." The aim is to rob the bad habit of whatever reward is attached to it and mentally transfer the reward to the good habit instead.
How about a third mindset, where after a bad habit, I do a good habit and feel that my bad is compensated by good one?
It will continue to encourage subconsciously that bad habits are o.k. if I do something else to compensate it.
For a simple example, I eat a lot of sugar and then do a 10minute exercise. Then feel good about it that my sugar eating is fine, as I will exercise afterwards anyways. But the exercise is separated from any rewards or motivation and will likely often get skipped when my willpower is low(time when bad habits set their claws on mind).
You could do that, but then you're being wilfully dishonest with yourself. At which point you'll find that you're not getting any closer to your goals (assuming those who switch out eating sugar for doing exercise want to lose weight). And if you're being (subconsciously) dishonest and self sabotaging, then the level of mind/abstraction this guide targets is not relevant
My go-to for habit formation/breaking stuff is "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, highly recommend. It's one of those books I find useful to re-read every few years.
This is the only self help book that ever actually helped me.
Also there was one about habit forming that focused heavily on the power of compounding returns in terms of habits. Cant remember the name, if anyone can help me out, but that one was great too
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy?
Preach! "Atomic Habits" is the only self-help book that I can recommend for everyone regardless of their particular life circumstances.
Wanted to buy an audio book, but some reviews there suggest that printed version is better. Will audio book work?
I’ll echo this, I found Atomic Habits to be one of the only self help books whose strategies I actually use on a daily basis. Required a lot of work but I really improved myself after first reading this book.
Although I don’t agree with everything the author says (particularly his unrelated political views) I use Scott Adams’s “systems beat goals” idea (from “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big”) almost every day.
No habit book I've read, including this article, has included effective strategies for habit forming for whatever funky funk my brain has going on - most psychs say ADHD, recently one said maybe a spritz of autism.
Medicated or otherwise, the typical habit forming tactics don't work. Reward systems, identity based habit forming, habit trackers, leaving the gym shorts on top of my phone at night so I have to put them on before anything else, I can still kill a year long consistent habit overnight with a single disruption like an early meeting or by straight up forgetting. Gym shorts are there but I have to pee. Boom it's 10pm and I'm doing my habit tracker and damn I completely forgot to go to the gym today. Or I successfully pushed it off again and again until it was too late.
I have no solutions to offer. I keep thinking I've solved it and get ready to write my magnum opus how-to-have-adhd-and-still-be-a-productive-member-of-society blog post and then lose a habit again.
Probably pre planning times to do a habit a day ahead of time would help but I fail to do that daily, lol.
Oh well. I've managed to track my calories for 278 days consistently, but only because I can go fill in the previous day if I forget the day of. One day I'll forget two days in a row and that streak will die too.
Just a heads up I had to go on VPN with a US IP for this to load, strangely a resential UK one didn't
“List six habits you wish to adopt, assign them to different times of the day, and aim
to consistently perform at least four.”
SIX? Um, how about we start with, like, one?
That aside, a concise article with good advice IMO, but I would add “find a partner and be accountable”, especially for eliminating addictive / tempting bad habits or replacing them with good ones.
Looks like the article is saying goal of 4 out of 6 is better than just setting 1 goal because missing 1 out of 1 really demotivates you.
Hmm...
>? You've requested a page on a website that is part of the Cloudflare network. The host (alexy.tech) resolved to an IP address that the owner of the website does not have access to.
I'm getting the same thing. Might be a country restriction thing? I'm in Canada, for example.
Same here, trying from UAE