Why we fail at building habits

Make your next habit a lasting one

Have you tried building a habit before and found yourself miserably failing?

If so you‘re in good company.

I‘ve tried and failed. Sometimes the habits stick, sometimes they don‘t.

But what really is the reason behind the succeeding habits and the ones you just give up on after a while?

The structure of habits

It‘s hard to be successful in some area if you don‘t know what it‘s all about. Let‘s look deeper into what the structure of habits is.

In this Forbes article, the author looks at three components, that every habit can be broken down to.

1. The Trigger is the first part of the habit loop. Here you are triggered to take action.

It might be a cue from an outside source. Alternatively, you could suddenly thrive with intrinsic motivation.

For me, it‘s reading an inspiring article on Medium or listening to a blink on Blinkist that gets me motivated.

2. Action is the part of the habit where you go out and execute the habit.

Seems simple, but can be daunting at first. Just give it a good shot and give it your best.

Lacking motivation? Remind yourself what your trigger was and why you‘re doing this. It always helps for me.

3. The Reward is the last part of the habit loop, where your brain craves a reward for completing the habit.

Is it a piece of chocolate or a quick came on the PC? Go for it. This is the reward you deserve. Don‘t skip this step, as you‘ll regret it later.

So if we go ahead and think of all these aspects we might succeed in creating a new habit.

Not so fast

Well if it was that easy, we might not struggle to create habits. But there‘s one other aspect that matters a great deal when forming a habit.

You take on too much too soon.

But how can I make sure I have goals that can be achieved and habits that aren‘t too crazy?

Be honest with yourself.

Inwardly you know, if you can make the habit work or not. It’s easier to start small and then add new aspects or further habits as you progress. You’ll be happy, as you will have achieved a small goal. Additionally, you’ll have that extra motivation to keep going and add a new habit to the list.

So how do I build a habit?

Now that we know what the most common pitfalls are, we can set out to actually building our habit.

James Clear set out a fantastic guide here, that will serve as my basis — why unnecessarily reinvent the wheel?

Start with a small habit

New Years Resolutions are the most common times to start new habits. However, research shows, that over 80% of these resolutions fail.

One aspect contributing to this number is the size of the habit. You often hear people say: “I’ll eat healthier in 2020” or “I’ll run every day”

The big problem is motivation. You can’t just run a marathon or be a dietary expert in a day.

It takes time.

Instead, start small. Very small. If you want to eat healthier create a habit, like: “ This year I want to have a healthy meal per week” or challenge yourself to a short 20 min run every Saturday morning.

Keeping it small will mean you are always able to complete the habit.

Once you get going you can move on to the next step

Increase your habit in small ways

Ever heard of compound investment? All the magic happens over time. If you get 10% interest in one year starting at 1000€ you’ll receive 1100€ at the end of the year. The year after you receive another 10% interest. This time it’s on the 1100€. At the end of year two, you’ll have 1210€. Let’s extrapolate to year 50: 117 390€ from just having the money in an account with 10% interest. The exponential growth of your investment is down to the fact that each year you earn money on the interest of your interest.

Transfer this knowledge to your habits. If you can increase your habit goal by one per cent per day you’ll drastically improve your new skill or goal. You’re basically “earning” knowledge on your skills.

Let’s look at an example.

Want to read more? Start by reading 5 minutes a day. After a few weeks increase that number to 6 minutes. You’ll barely notice a difference but you’ve already increased your goal by 20%.

It goes without saying what this means for missing your habits. A 1% decline each day will result in near to nothing after a year.

So stick to it and slowly increase your time you do your habit!

Break habits into chunks

When increasing your habits by 1% daily you need to watch out, that it doesn’t get too much. An easy hack: splitting the daily habit into smaller sections.

If you’re keen to get more yoga done, do one 10 minute session in the mornings and one in the evenings. This will prevent your habits from getting to big.

When you slip, get on track quickly

We stuff up. And you’ll fail to get your daily habit done. But this is the crucial time to stick to actually not give up. This is when your self-control is most present.

Before you fail you need to consider the case of you actually failing. Think of the reasons why this could happen and write them down.

Is there a workaround? Awesome. Prevent failing at all costs

However, when you do miss a day there is no reason to stress. James Clear advises: Never miss a habit twice. That way you can stay on track, whilst allowing a margin for error.

Be patient and stick to a maintainable pace

Lastly, patience is essential to success. Are you also consistent? Great. With these tools in your toolbox, you’ll achieve great things. Think of your longterm goals and try to envision them daily.

Like time is the key element to successful investing, it’s essential to successful habits as well. Keep on keeping on and you’ll be able to reflect, look back and be proud!

Personal advice

Starting a new habit can feel daunting. But as soon as you have that trigger and you make the first move, you’re ready for the challenge. Don’t forget to keep in mind that you’ll need rewards after habits.

I like my apps for my phone, as they can boost productivity in a big way. So I use an app called Streaks.

Simply set the habit you want to start or note down the one you want to get rid off and you’re good to go. For each habit, you can set a timer, track occurrences or let the app track your progress externally through health apps. Each time you complete a habit a counter counts up. It works like the Snapchat streak, some millennials might know. When you have a streak of 20 or 30 consecutive days, you think twice about breaking a habit.

Timely reminders serve as great motivation. I receive a notification for my bedtime habit at the right time every evening. And when I really don’t feel like tracking a habit, the app sends you a friendly notification.

After a few successfully logged habits, the tracker requests an extension. The app notifies you, asking if you want to extend your timed habit. For example, after reading a book 20 days in a row for 10 minutes I got a notification asking me if I wanted to extend the time to 15 minutes.

This is a helpful automation of the second step in successful habit building: “Increase your habits in small ways”.

Conclusion

Habits can be a challenging thing to manage. We all have positive habits we want to start and negative habits we really should get rid of.

In the first chapter, we looked at the science behind forming habits. With this knowledge, we had a deeper look at why habits seem so hard to keep up and found five helpful ways to build lasting habits.

I hope you found this article helpful and beneficial. If you did, I’d appreciate you sharing this with your friends and family.