Making Habits
One of the most common questions that people ask about habits is “how long does it take to create a habit?” The crappy but true answer is that “it depends.” The reason why it depends is because habits are not about time, but about whether the habit loop has become unconscious: is there a cue, a craving, a routine, and a reward that happens without intentional control? If the response is automatic, then the habit’s been developed. The key part of this is the connection between the cue and the routine. To make this work, the process has to be conscious first and unconscious through repetition.
The next most common question people ask is how we create new habits. This newsletter helps to answer that question. The real answer is that we’re always creating new habits; sometimes we’re aware of their creation, but most of the time we’re not. The following gives you strategies for intentionally developing habits.
BJ Fogg speaks about Tiny and Stacking Habits
Tiny Habits
When you take something that requires a lot of commitment and reduce it to something that requires less commitment. For example, you want to floss your teeth each evening, but flossing your entire mouth is in competition with heading to bed. So you commit to flossing one tooth. Once you’re in there, it becomes pretty easy to floss the rest of the teeth. Each time we achieve what we set out to achieve, we should celebrate with something as simple as a “YES!” to reward ourselves for our behavior.
Here’s the formula: “I will commit to 2% of my goal of [habit goal]”. “I will commit to one day of exercise” or “I will commit to doing one pushup per day”
Why this works: We overcommit. Especially around the turn of the year, we overcommit to too many days at the gym, too many days of going without something we enjoy (beer, wine, etc.). By committing to one small thing and being successful at it, we reinforce the habit loop that will make it easier to perform that thing in the future.
Stacking Habits
Take something that you already do as a habit, and add something new to it. For example, you might want to get better at showing gratitude towards people (makes you and them both feel better), so you commit to thanking someone at work for something every time grab your bag to leave for work.
Here’s the formula: "After I [current habit], I will [new habit]”. “After I eat breakfast, I will review my schedule for the day”
Why this works: We are constantly surrounded by habits. 40-60% of our waking life is governed by habits. If we can leverage those existing habit loops and utilize them to build new habit loops, we’ll be in a much better position to build the kind of life that we want.
James Clear in Atomic Habits:
Temptation Bundling
Take something that you don’t necessarily like doing, and bundle it with something that you do like doing. For example, I’m not such a huge fan of picking up our dogs’ poop in our backyard. So I listen to a podcast that I normally don’t get time to listen to; I bundle the thing I need to do with the thing I want to do.
Here’s the formula: “While I’m doing [the thing I need to do] I will also do [the thing I want to do]” “While I’m vacuuming, I will also listen to a podcast.”
Why this works: By mixing something pleasurable into something that is less pleasurable (or downright unpleasant), we’re more likely to be motivated to complete the task that we’ve set out for ourselves.
Peter Gollwitzer in Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans:
Implementation Intentions
“When people encounter problems in translating their goals into action (e.g., failing to get started, becoming distracted, or falling into bad habits), they may strategically call on automatic processes in an attempt to secure goal attainment. This can be achieved by plans in the form of implementation intentions that link anticipated critical situations to goal-directed responses ("Whenever situation x arises, I will initiate the goal-directed response y!"). Implementation intentions delegate the control of goal-directed responses to anticipated situational cues, which (when actually encountered) elicit these responses automatically. A program of research demonstrates that implementation intentions further the attainment of goals, and it reveals the underlying processes.”
Here’s the formula: “I will [behavior] at [time] [location]”. “I will go through my stretch routine at 6am when I wake up and get out of bed”
Why this works: it engages the imagination in a profound way. The more that we imagine a particular situation to come about, the more likely it is to come about. We use the same neural circuitry when we’re imagining a situation as when we’re actually performing that situation. Being very clear and specific about the kind of
Andrew Huberman from the Huberman Lab Podcast
Building new habits
Pick 6 habits you can do each day. Commit to 21 days. Ensure that you hit 4-5 of those habits per day. Whatever sticks after 21 days is most likely to stick for another 21 days.
Why this works: Instead of overcommitting to one habit, you commit to a lot of different habits and you find the spaces in your day where those habits fit. Through this approach, it’s easier to find the habits that fit with you rather than trying to contort yourself into all sorts of different shapes to fit the habits you’d like to develop but that ultimately won’t work.
Quick Tip
This is also from the Huberman Lab. To help focus, especially after I’ve been doing a lot of task switching, I use something called Brain Waves to refocus my attention. It’s a sound that’s repeated at 40Hz. It’s a strange feeling at first, but then I start to notice that my attention is actually focusing. I do this for about 1-2 minutes and then get on with the task. You can find it on the Google Play Store and on the Apple Store
