Creating New Habits: The Golden Standard of Efficiency

The best kept secret in habits development, plus three resources that support habit-creation efficiency

Efficiency usually connotes with the speed of action and the final results. However, in case of habits, you’d better forget about the speed. Instead, focus on sustainability.

Sustainability is the golden standard of efficiency when it comes to developing habits.

You see, the end result of developing a habit, is having a habit. But if you cannot sustain it, it’s not a habit at all. It’s just a temporary discipline which will disappear from your life as soon as you stop paying attention to it.

The Best Kept Secret in Habits Development.

Loads of people try to start habits, which are simply too ambitious. And they fail in the end. The scale of your habit, especially in the initial phase, doesn’t matter even 1% as much as consistency.

Translating the above blabber into common language: you’d better develop a habit of doing a single pushup than trying to develop a habit of doing 100 consecutive pushups.

Why? Once you have a solid habit, you can easily scale it up. If dropping on the floor and doing a pushup is automatic, doing two, five or three dozens pushups is not much different. You go through the same motions.

On the other hand, doing 100 consecutive pushups takes time. It takes effort. It begets resistance even before you start. And it’s not easily repeatable. Do 100 pushups in a row and if you are not used to it the next day your muscles will be so sore that you can hardly repeat the exercise.

What’s Your Habit Type?

The most efficient method of habit development for you is the one that YOU can sustain.

Gretchen Rubin developed an interesting questionnaire which reveals your habit preferences. Take it and you will know better which method is more efficient for you:

The Four Tendencies Quiz — The Four Tendencies Quiz

Tiny Habits

For most people this method is the most efficient one. They will learn along the way the science of habit development. They will start small and keep it small initially. There will be no resistance and quick easy wins.

Take the free Tiny Habits course and in five short days you can have solid seeds of three new habits.

Infallible Framework

For me, the most efficient way is the Infallible Framework for Habit Development I developed when I was building dozens of new habits simultaneously.

Sustainability is built into this framework in so many ways. Infallible Framework is based on the habit science, mixed with identity, includes tracking to keep my attention glued to a new activity and building streaks to keep my motivation alive.

Repetitions

Habits are formed by repetitions. No matter which approach you take, if you can squeeze as many repetitions of your new habit as possible into a shorter period of time, the development of the habit becomes more efficient.

That’s the power of Tiny Habits; if it takes no more than 30 seconds and is easy for you to repeat, you can perform quite a lot repetitions in mere days.

Originally published in Quora.com.