The Trick To Making New Habits Stick
Edit What You Repeatedly Do
You don’t have to look too far into your life to understand your current outcomes.
You’re the product of your repeated actions.
Well, most of the time…
There’s outcomes you get that are outside of your control. Maybe we can talk about those another time. Today we focus on the small decisions and actions you make every day. ..
This (and what you spend most of your time thinking about) forms who you are, your beliefs, and your personality.
For example…
If you’re out of shape, you probably don’t watch what you consume.
If you’re unhappy, you probably don’t do things that make you feel fulfilled.
If you’re financially unstable, you probably don’t watch your spending habits.
Changing who you are is simple…
You just edit what you repeatedly do.
By the way, I’ve said nothing revolutionary so far — you already know these things.
It’s likely you’ve read Atomic Habits and The Power of Habit.
You could probably give me an elaborate justification for how habits are formed and highlight all of your triggers.
… Yet you’re still bound by the same bad habits and can’t make new ones stick.
Don’t worry I’m not judging. I’m here to help.
Stay with me for the full length of this story and I’ll show you exactly how to break that cycle.
Default states
The default state of a car is for it to be still.
You must create energy to get it to move.
This is what happens when you turn the ignition key (or push the start button)…
The starter motor spins the engine so a process called combustion can start.
Combustion is just the burning of gasoline to create energy for the car to move, but don’t get too carried away with the meaning of things.
The main points are:
- A car needs energy to move
- Turning the key starts the combustion process
- Combustion involves burning gasoline to create energy.
Gasoline is a key ingredient in changing the default state of a car.
When it’s low on gas, it gets hangry.
You may experience engine sputter, intermittent power surges, or perhaps the engine backfires — don’t worry if you don’t know what these mean cos I don’t either (Google told me).
But why am I sharing it with you?
Well…
You’ve got something similar to the combustion process going on in ya.
Note: The proper scientific folk reading this would cane me if I said it’s the same thing so let me be clear, it’s not the same thing. This is just an analogy.
Your default state is the path of least resistance, but you can alter it.
The ingredient required is called “willpower.”
You use it up by making decisions.
The more decision you make, the more your willpower gets depleted.
When it’s fresh, you have the ability to resist short-term gratification in place of your long-term goals and objectives.
But once it’s spent you revert back to your default state — making short-term, low-level decisions that take a long-term toll on you and typically involve high consumption and high dopamine.
This is the number one culprit for why many fail to stick to new habits and break off bad ones —
They put too much weight on the importance of willpower.
Now I’m not saying it’s not an important part of human functionality, it is…
But it’s not the most effective source of energy if you want to make changes that last long-term.
Let me show you why…
The 20-second rule
Like gasoline, your willpower can be spent.
The majority is used up during the initiation of a task.
This is where you decide to do it or not.
Happiness guru Shawn Achor came up with something called “the 20-second rule.”
The rule states something that takes 20 seconds or more to do is enough reason to not do it.
Let’s put it into perspective…
Say you have a habit of watching TV after work but you desperately want to replace it with working on your side hustle.
After work, you kick off your shoes and hop on the couch. The remote is rested neatly on the arm of the sofa so the automatic response is to pick it up, turn on the TV and start watching.
The laptop you need to start working on your side hustle is lying on the desk in your bedroom.
It takes a few seconds for you to start watching TV but in excess of twenty to start working on your side hustle.
What do you think you’re more likely to do?
Don’t fool yourself and say “The side hustle.”
We both know the truth.
Starting the side hustle is hard.
It involves going to your room, picking up the laptop, coming back to the front room (where a station is set up for you to work), logging on, and then getting started.
After a long day of work, that’s a helluva lotta decisions to make.
It’s easier to stick with your default state which is shaped by your environment.
Yes, you read that right…
Your environment shapes your habits.
The friction created by how long it takes to do what you know you’re supposed to do is enough to not do it.
This makes getting rid of bad habits or creating new ones hard.
Making changes that stick
Change is not as difficult as you think.
We’ve already figured your environment forms your habits…
This means creating habits that stick is about changing your environment.
Basically…
If you want to create a new habit, you must make it easy to integrate it into your life by decreasing the activation energy required to do it.
For example, if you wanna start going to the gym every morning, prepare your gym clothes, the workout you’re going to do, and decide on the time you’re going to arrive the night before.
The same concepts work for habits you wanna get rid of…
If you wanna change a bad habit (e.g., replacing fizzy drinks with water), you must make it harder to access the bad and easy to access what you’re replacing it with—this is the reason I don’t buy fizzy drinks.
You must create friction for things you don’t wanna do and make it easy to do the things you want.
Another thing you wanna do is reduce the number of decisions you're making each day to preserve your willpower.
The easiest way to do this is to change the “who” in the equation of getting things done.
It’s “How can this get done,” not “How can I get this done.”
Let someone or something (i.e., technology) make smaller decisions for you.
I do this with my meals…
My cook knows my fitness goal, the number of calories I must consume to achieve it, and the foods I like.
It’s her job to decide what I’m eating each day so I don’t have to spend energy thinking about it.
Final Thoughts
The secret to making habits stick is to design your environment for success.
It also helps to reduce the number of decisions you make each day.
This allows you to preserve your energy for the most important tasks that move you closer to your desired future.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for reading!
Get your hands on a FREE copy of “Don’t Just Set Goals. Build Systems” if you’re tired of setting goals and not achieving them.