When January rolls around each year, there’s a surge in enthusiasm for life changes: gym memberships, dieting, meditation apps. Come February, commitment to new habits wane and most people revert back to who they’ve always been.
Unfortunately, alarming levels of obesity, cardiovascular disease, mental health ailments, workplace burnout, and more signal a catastrophic gap between the changes people aspire to and what happens in practice. Better habits are the way forward.
But even the most radical changes begin as mini, incremental adjustments. To grow a balanced, happy, and healthy life requires aim and intention.
This is your roadmap.
Tiny changes, not goals🎯
For change to last, there must be minimal friction. That doesn’t mean habits should be devoid of all challenge, but it can’t be so imposing that a sense of deterrence overwhelms motivation.
The key is staring small and steering away from goals. Tiny adjustments like making your bed or waking up at the same time every morning come easier than signing up for a marathon or deciding you want to shed 20 pounds.
Imagine a man who has been trying to get fit for many years without success. One tiny change could be doing 5 pushups every morning. It’s a small feat, takes little time, and there’s no friction.
Five pushups at a time won’t turn anyone into an olympian, but that daily action offers a moment to feel and notice progress, and to celebrate yourself.
Habits snowballs naturally. Five pushups could turn to 10, 20, 30, 40. Eventually, a gym membership — which before seemed daunting — may become an organic and logical next step. As Atomic Habits author James Clear writes, goals have little to do with what people achieve. Progress happens in habits.
Tiny adjustments, too, offer regular opportunities to reinforce a habit, whereas a milestone — like a race of a number on the scale — offers a one-off, fleeting celebration.
A lasting approach to self-improvement should be based not on achievement but on a long-term view of compounding interest.
Start with what you want to do💡
It’s hard to force yourself to do something you don’t want to do. If you’ve never stepped inside a gym before, turning weightlifting into a daily habit would be extremely difficult.
To start a habit, pick a behavior you want to change or implement, rather than something you feel obligated to do.
I started journaling every night in college because I wanted to become a writer. The daily habit was how I was going to improve. While it took me only 15 minutes a day, those pages and hours piled up over years. I was able to stay consistent because I wanted to do it, and it didn’t feel like a duty or obligation.
Not only that, but after I finished journaling each day, I felt a sense of accomplishment because I completed the task for the day. The action itself provided constant positive reinforcement, and that gave me momentum to do more.
It isn’t just repetition over time that makes habits stick. It’s the constant reappearance of positive emotion and sense of accomplishment that people get hooked on.
Prompts and cues📲
When you start with a small habit you’re eager to adopt, you minimize behavior you would do begrudgingly. That minimizes the need for motivation.
In an ideal world, there would never be a time you want to skip the habit, whether that’s taking a walk or putting your phone away before getting into bed. In reality, it’s easy to skip or forget even the most desirable habits.
That’s where cues come in — something to prompt the action. Attaching a habit to your environment or things you already do everyday is critical.
Perhaps there’s a meditation app you love. Maybe you open it every time you brush your teeth, or before you put your shoes on before you leave the house.
Habits can be easy to forget without prompting. How can you anchor that to an existing part of your day? Few behaviors happen without some sort of catalyst. Think of it like how you only pull out an umbrella when it starts raining — habits last when attached to a cue.
Don’t start alone🏠
Stanford behavioral scientist BJ Fogg, the author of Tiny Habits, describes a time his team tried to mitigate the impact of nurse burnout at a hospital. There, nurses struggled with basics like drinking enough water and getting regular meals.
He gave them cues for small habits, like taking a sip of water when they logged onto a computer, or taking a deep breath when called to a patient.
But the habits became particularly powerful, Fogg observed, because the nurses began changing together. They celebrated one another: clapping for others drinking water, encouraging each other to not skip lunch.
“Data showed statistically meaningful improvements related to their daily stress levels,” Fogg wrote in describing the community-wide changes. “In a follow-up survey three months later, the improvements were still in place, and more than three-quarters of the nurses reported that they had created other positive changes using the same methods.”
Even without a cohort to initiate change with, the buddy system works just fine. Committing to a habit with a friend or partner brings accountability. It also makes things more fun.
For me, I always exercise harder and there’s less chance I skimp on a workout if I have a friend beside me. That same partnership can be applied to minimizing phone use, sticking to a walking habit, and cutting television or dessert.
When someone else is counting on you to show up or take action, it hurts more to skip because you’re not the only person you’d be letting down.
Start a habit tracker📊
The best athletes, executives, and high-achievers quantify progress. Data provides insight as to whether something is effective or not. “What gets measured, gets managed,” as the saying goes.
For habits, feedback can often be delayed. Your body won’t look any different after one or two workouts. A habit tracker compensates for that — it gives you immediate visualization and positive reinforcement.
A habit tracker — it can be as simple as marking X’s on a calendar — can provide short-term incentive to keep going. There’s research that shows people who track progress are more likely to improve than those who don’t. Seeing that series of X’s makes it harder to miss a day and break the streak, and it’s satisfying to note your success the moment you complete it.
What’s more, this tool keeps your eye on what matters — the process rather than the result. You stay focused on showing up everyday, rather than a certain number on the scale or six-pack abs.
Plus, a habit tracker doubles as the cue or prompt mentioned above. Looking at it every night before bed for example, provides a visual cue to keep going, as well as a map of your progress so far, which can be motivating.
A habit tracker (like this physical one from James Clear, or this iPhone app) usually offers areas to write in daily, weekly, and monthly goals.
Common daily habits to track:
- Journal one page
- Read a book for 10 minutes
- Meditate for two minutes
- Make your bed
- Floss
- Take a 15-minute walk
Common weekly goals to track:
- Call your parents
- Write a blog post
- Watch an online lecture
- Do the laundry
- Clean your room
Common monthly goals to track:
- Clean the entire house
- Pay bills
- Review finances and credit card statements
- Do an extra challenging or long workout
But habit trackers can also be powerful tools for measuring things you want to avoid, too. You can write in your daily, weekly, and monthly habits that you wish to stop doing.
Common habits to avoid:
- Alcohol
- Netflix
- Soda
- Watching pornography
- Excessive caffeine
- Smoking
Don’t fall off the wagon👣
Even in tracking only the habits you want to do, habits break down. You shouldn’t aim for perfection. Life happens, and that’s okay.
But these two rules can help you maintain course:
- Keep the streak going
- Never miss two days in a row
Missing a day here and there is natural, but momentum slows dramatically after two missed days, compared to one. Here’s how Clear explains it: “Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”
Identity-based goals🧍🏽♂️
Ultimately, habits are something to be lived out and integrated into your identity. Making them identity-based, rather than goal-based, can help facilitate a more sustainable mindset.
I am the type of person who exercises everyday.
I am the type of person who reads every night before bed instead of watching television.
I am the type of person who cares about what I put into my body.
Habits are a path toward being healthier and happier, and that cannot be mistaken for a selfish aim.
Being happier and healthier means you can offer a better version of yourself to those you love and care about. It means you can be more effective at work and in school. That, too, becomes your identity.
I am the type of person who cares about being the best version of myself for my loved ones.
Conclusion☀️
Remember, habits aren’t a way to punish yourself. They are tools to build a more balanced, happier, and healthier life.
Doing a habit for the sake of the habit shouldn’t be the end goal. They must be taken in stride with the right intentions. Eventually the good habits you do and the bad ones you shed will become who you are.
Use this guide. Decide what small changes you want to make, implement habits using prompts and cues, bring a friend along, start a habit tracker, don’t break your streaks — and turn yourself into who you aspire to be.
Complement this guide with the Ultimate Guide to Focus for Creatives.
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