Building a habit, no matter what anyone tells you, is much, much easier than you think. People tend to overthink it, making it into something more complex than it is. It’s not that difficult. And I’m someone who used to have some serious trouble in developing and keeping good habits.
Ready?
You just have to do it once.
And then do it once more.
And then again. And again. And again. Eventually, it’ll become automatic.
That’s how you build a habit – all you have to do is do something once, then repeat it. But the key here is that you realize that you only really have to do that thing once. Once you do it once, all you have to do after that is do it again. And again.
Basically – if you call a behavior a “habit” when you do it automatically, you can hack the habit-building paradigm by making yourself do it automatically, no matter what. As you do that thing over and over again, you’ll eventually fall into a pattern where you’ll do it without thinking.
The best way to hack habit-building? Give yourself a trigger for your habit.
Building A Trigger
As I said before, when you’re building a habit, what you actually want to do is to make yourself do the action that your new habit requires automatically, so you can be absolutely sure that you’ll repeat the action as many times as you’d like on a given day. The more you repeat the action, the faster you’ll make the action habitual.
The best way to make yourself “automatically” do it – by making yourself obliged to do it – is to give your habit what I call a ‘trigger’. A trigger is a signal or event that will make you do the thing that you want to do.
Say you want to build the habit of daily exercise. To make that happen, you can make your trigger 5:30 P.M. (a time). You’ll say to yourself something like, “Okay, as soon as 5:30 rolls around, I’m going to go to the gym. I want to build this habit of exercising.” You’ll be watching the clock, and when the clock strikes 5:30, you’re obliged to go to the gym. If you practice that for a couple of weeks, you’ll be hitting the gym at 5:30 every single day.
Here’s another example: say you want to build the habit of better focus because you get distracted too much. Your trigger can actually be your distraction. Whenever you feel yourself get distracted from your work and look at facebook, twitter, et al, that’s your trigger to take a deep breath, ask yourself, “Is this really what I want to do with my time?”, and go back to whatever you’re doing.
Triggers are that simple, guys. All you have to do is make your trigger happen once per day, and then you’ll be golden.
Remember, you just have to do things once, then you’re done. Only worry about the moment at hand, and you’ll be fine.
Don’t let the requisite two or three weeks of constant action intimidate you. Remember, for right now, you only have to take care of today. Do things once. Then once again. Then once again…
That makes things much simpler. If you automate things with triggers, then you’ll have no excuse to not make something a habit.
Thank you for this post. My biggest problem is actually doing the action the first time. Working out is a great example. It has been so long since I have been to the gym or done any exercise really.
It is super hard for me to do it once like you said. Any suggestions for making the first step?
Just do it. Seriously. The more you think about the first step being “difficult”, the more you’ll resist it. Instead, just do it, and don’t worry about difficulty.
It sounds so common sense, but it is so true. When building a habit, I have found that the easiest thing to do is instead of worrying about it or caving to fear is just to do it.
Bingo. Just doing it once clears away all the insecurities you have.
I love the way you simplify the method to make something as habit. However, I still train my self to ‘automatically’ do it something. Maybe it still not become my habit yet.
Nice post Brett!
Thanks, Aqif
Don’t get me wrong – sometimes, you’re still going to have to think about doing something even after you’ve made it a habit, but, oftentimes, you’ve made it a habit because you’ve gotten rid of all of your resistance.
Brett,
You’re right. Triggers are an important tool in habit formation. Another important (and to Ryan’s question) element is building a big enough “WHY” for the habit you wish to form. Developing habits is about learning at a level of either conscious competence or unconscious competence. Using all of our senses to imagine a positive future as a result of having this new habit can help.
Hans,
Glad you brought up conscious/unconscious competence. Habit formation is what takes you from conscious incompetence to unconscious incompetence. The real hard part is to go from conscious to unconscious competence… That’s why I’m a fan of doing things ‘once’ until you become unconsciously competent.
Thanks for that Brett. You are absolutely correct. Having the big “why” is what I think stops me often. The perceived benefit of the habit may not be big enough yet. Any suggestions on how to get a bigger WHY?
Ryan,
If you’re struggling to find a bigger why, maybe you need to develop a different habit
One problem that gets a lot of people into trouble is that they overestimate the effect that a new habit or set of behaviors will have on their well-being and quality of life. In truth, most of the time, a new habit will only improve your life by about 1-3%. The key is to find the ones that will improve your life by 5% or more (relative to the time invested and opportunity costs… but that’s another post).
If a habit really doesn’t do much for you – as in, the energy you put into the habit is more than the ‘reward’ the habit brings you – then you should scrap it and find a new one.
Brett, you are amazing! This is all so common sense, but I’m guilty of everything noted, and this is what I need to kick myself in the butt! Thanks as always!
Thanks, Lisa
Thanks again dude. I’ve been tackling with habits in much the same way you have, your post has given me the kick I need to get some new habits in order!
Thanks again =)
No problem, Adam
It’s my pleasure.
They say it takes 30 days to develop a habit. Stick with it and you’ll see amazing results!
Part of the reason that I wrote this post was to combat that idea – or, at least, render it irrelevant. The expectation that a habit will form in thirty days, though true, ends up creating tons of pressure and resistance on the person trying to make a habit (at least, that’s what it did for me). Instead, I say ‘do things once until you can do it without thinking’ – it gets people away from the 30 day barrier and focus on habit forming itself, rather than counting down the days.
Thanks for commenting, as always!
Ryan,
Figure out what your values are, as a start – what things are important to you Freedom? Creativity? Service? Knowledge? Think of a peak experience in your life and figure out the things and the people that were a part of it. Send me an email if you want more clarity on this.
I enjoyed this post. You are very right. That’s practically what I think of habit-building. I developed my bad habits that way eh.
And I developed my good habits that way too.
Have a wonderful day.
Great points. Chunking things down always works for me. Changing too much at one time can be overwhelming and lead to self sabotage.
Im always afraid of making changes, but after reading this i think i should go ahead and make them. Thanks
Merry christmas