Part 2: Secrets to Sustainable Habits
Now that you understand a little more about how habits are created, I’d like to go over some more advice for actually getting them to stick.
Utilize the Habit Loop purposefully.
The simplest method for habit formation is the habit loop, as mentioned before. Remind your brain to do the routine with a cue, and reward it afterward to associate that happy reward feeling with the routine. Do this for long enough, and you’ll find that after a while the routine itself will occur even without a cue or reward! Both rewards and cues can be used, or just one of the two - it’s probably a good idea to target what’s preventing you from forming the habit to remove the “bottleneck”. Using both will be the most effective, and even more so if you anticipate the reward for doing your habit each time. As James Clear puts it in his book, the best cues/rewards follow four rules: they are visible, they are attractive, they are easy, they are satisfying. The more of these checkboxes it hits, the more effective that cue/reward will be. Keep cues simple and obvious, and make sure your rewards are clearly defined.
At our core, we are still mammals that have monkey brains. While our thoughts and goals may be complicated, the truth is our brains simply desire rewards for actions. That’s why quitting an addiction cold turkey or trying to learn a difficult skill can feel so impossible to commit to. Taking away something your brain derives pleasure from or doing something you don’t enjoy (at least in the moment) is a biological challenge. By using the habit loop, you can turn the brain’s craving for rewards to your advantage.
Break the habit loop to stop bad habits.
Just as cues and rewards can be used to start new habits, removing them can get rid of current ones. Many aspects of our environment are cues or rewards for our behavior, without us even realizing it. The four habit loop rules can be flipped to work as anti-habit rules: make cues/rewards invisible, unattractive, difficult, or unsatisfying.
Take our phones for example. If you use your phone too much, one simple way to decrease your usage is to simply turn off notifications, or at least put them on silent - make the cue invisible. Research has shown that our brains get a dopamine hit every time our phone lights up or we hear the notification jingle. Even if you can resist immediately picking up your phone (which many do when they get a notification without even thinking), you’ll be distracted by the notification and it’ll be in the back of your mind. Removing notifications is a simple way to remove the cue to use your phone. You can go even further with this by putting your phone out of sight while working or studying. Instead of keeping it on your desk or in your pocket, put it on the other side of the room or inside a drawer.
Modifying the cues/rewards that trigger bad habits can be done in many different ways. You can reduce social media browsing time with apps/extensions (ex: iPhones all have ScreenTime) that block apps/websites or usage of the device at pre-set times. While you can always disable the blocker, just seeing the block screen or having to enter a password can make you think twice about using your phone. And these rules can be applied to any other bad habits as well: don’t buy sugary or unhealthy food at the grocery store so it’s not in your pantry when you're hungry, set-up automatic deposits with your paychecks so that a portion goes straight into a locked savings account, etc. Another effective way to change a bad habit is to keep the old cue and reward for it, but insert the new habit you want. This makes it incredibly easy to change your behavior, since you’re keeping the already ingrained incentives. And you can always change or remove the cue/reward later on when the new habit is ingrained.
image from someecards.com
Rewire your environment.
Rather than relying on your future self to be disciplined and motivated enough to follow through with your goals, set up your environments now to guarantee success. Removing sugary/unhealthy foods from the home was just one given example of this. If your goal is to eat healthier, make it as easy as possible for the future you to follow through with that goal! Shift how you reward yourself and what you reward yourself with. Doing so gradually will make things much easier as well.
Recall how I mentioned making cues simple and obvious. If your goal is to run every morning, then set out your running clothes and shoes so they’re ready to throw on the moment you wake up. If you want to read more before sleeping each night, place your book on top of your pillow and put your phone charger away from the bed. You want to make it easy to follow through with your habit (pull factors), and difficult to break it (push factors). Optimizing your environment with push-pull incentives will get you to do the habit even when you’re lacking the motivation. Once the habit becomes automatic, you won’t have to rely on motivation or discipline.
Change your default thinking.
As Chris Sparks put it, “If your daily habits require discipline to execute, you’re doing it wrong.” This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be putting in effort to form the habit in the first place, but that if doing your habit requires conscious effort every single time, that’s not optimal. You want habits to be ingrained, basically automatic, so you can spend your energy elsewhere. That’s what makes habits so powerful: once they’re automatic they’re easy to do, and you can spend your limited energy on other things. And that’s why the habit loop is so effective - cues and rewards trigger the habit for you until you do it often enough that the habit itself is effortless.
Another approach is to adjust your default so the habit becomes the natural thing to do. Shift your perspective so that when you are studying for a test, for example, instead of thinking “I need to study for this” or “I have to study for this”, you think “I am studying for this”. It’s a small adjustment, and it may feel silly or unnatural at first, but setting your default thinking to an active and internal focus makes you more likely to do it. This is similar to the concept of internal responsibility I discussed before - how you process your responsibilities is the first step toward actually doing them. If you keep making yourself do this, then over time, that way of thinking will become natural to you. Soon enough studying isn’t something you have to make yourself do - it’s just what you do.
There’s also the matter of establishing a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset - to grow and improve yourself, you need to have the proper mindset for it. That means a curiosity about things, a desire to learn and try new things, and a willingness to fail. If your mindset when you see something new is “I don’t know anything about this, so I’m not interested in it” - that’s a fixed mindset, and not conducive to growth. Becoming the best you can be requires an openness to new and unknown things, so that you can grow from new information and experiences.
image by The Reserves Network
Create SMART habits.
While habits can be just about anything, they’re easiest to form when you make them as specific as possible. Let’s say your goal is to get fit. If your habit for this is “I will go to work out three times a week”, then that leaves a lot of uncertainty. Which days will you actually work out? What time of the day? What sort of work out will you do? Leaving so much ambiguity will make it easy to skip out on a workout day or prioritize other things over the habit and forget to do it. If instead, your habit is “I will go to the gym on X street straight from work on Monday/Wednesday/Friday”, now you have a clear and specific plan to follow. You will know exactly when and where to do your habit, making you more likely to actually do it.
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In addition to all the above tips, we have also written previously on how to form habits, specifically in the context of self-care goals and during this current pandemic. If you would like to read more about habit setting and self-care, check out our Self-Care During A Pandemic map.