Developing good habits is one of the best things you can do for yourself. By cultivating good, daily habits, you enrich your life with more productivity, greater health, stronger relationships, and less stress. Habits take the guesswork out of your life, the willpower out of daily actions, and allow you to be productive without even thinking. Forcing yourself to study is hard, but having good study habits makes studying easy. Forcing yourself to go to the gym every day is near impossible, but having the habit of working out makes it achievable. Cultivating good habits is how you bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. But first, you must get very clear on something.
How To Pick A Good Habit
Before you can form good habits, you need to identify why the habit matters. You might have a habit you’d like to develop. Ask yourself: What benefit does this habit bring into my life? If you can’t answer that question, you won’t stick with it when things get difficult. I recommend you write down what it would mean to you if it were already a habit, and what your life would look like five years from now. Picture it clearly: your routine, your results, and how you feel on a daily basis. This gives you the fuel to get started. To keep the momentum moving, you’ll need to get clear on what success looks like.
Make Your Habits Specific
If you want to develop the habit of eating healthier, you’ll increase your chance of success if you get specific. Don’t say “I want to eat healthier”, say “I don’t want to drink soda ever again”. See how that’s very clear? With the second example, here’s no guessing what success looks like for you. This scares many people off because it makes it real. With vague goals, you can justify anything to qualify as a success. With specific goals, failure and success are obvious, and people are afraid to fail. But, getting clear and having defined guidelines increases your chances of success. You know exactly what to do, and exactly when you’ve done it. Another way to improve your chances of success forming a new habit is to start small.
Start With Small, Easy Habits
Habits are a big deal, but it’s best to start small. It’s tempting to set an ambitious goal when you’re motivated, but motivation is temporary. Your systems need to work even if you’re not motivated. Always remember, on your worst day, when you’re tired, you’re slightly sick, you had a stressful day at work, you will have to face that ambitious goal. Will you succeed? Probably not at first. This is why it’s important to start with a more conservative goal. If you want to develop the habit of studying everyday, make it your daily goal to study for at least 5 minutes. If you want to exercise daily, make it your daily goal to do the equivalent of at least a 10 minute walk. When these actions become habitual, you can increase the difficulty. Remember, consistency is king in the beginning. One of the best ways to build consistent habits is to stack them.
Use Habit Stacking
Habit stacking is one of the best methods to form good habits. Stacking your new, desired habit on an existing habit significantly increases your chance of success. It removes the need to remember, because the previous habit becomes the trigger for the next one. Learn more by checking out The Complete Habit Stacking Guide.
How To Remember Habits
Many people fail to perform their habits in the beginning, not out of laziness, but out of forgetfulness. When life gets crazy, it’s easy to forget about that new habit. Find a way to remind yourself what habit you need to complete, and what success looks like for that habit. For example, I use a checklist on my phone, and one of my checklist items is to meditate for 10 minutes (specific), and after completing it, I check it off the list (habit stacking). Other ways to remind yourself are to set a reminder on your phone, set an alarm, or write it down somewhere you can’t miss it. By implementing these best practices, you’ll significantly increase your chances of developing good habits that last for life.