How are those New Year's resolutions going?
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Will Durant
Those close to me know that strangely New Year’s Eve is my least favourite day of the year. I find it contrived - the concept of being able to start afresh. I believe you can make a substantial change on any day of the year if you want to. I have particular contempt for New Year’s resolutions. While people’s intention is no doubt good, most resolutions are dead in the water a few weeks into January (January 12th to be precise). Based on a University of Scranton study, about 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail - yet year after year, we set them with minimal effect. The question is, why do so many of us fail at achieving our goals?
Goals Versus Habits
There are a variety of reasons for us not achieving our goals. The two biggest culprits are a lack of definition (e.g. I want to lose weight) or being too ambitious/optimistic (e.g. I am going to lose 3 kgs per week for the next three months). There are tactical solutions - like making your goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) - but I passionately believe that there is a better way - developing habits instead of goals.
I am sure you brush your teeth every morning and every night. I bet you don’t even think about it. You certainly don’t need to set a New Years resolution to brush your teeth. It’s automatic. You just do it. According to a Duke University study, 45% of our daily behaviours are automatic habits performed in the same location. If we want to improve the success rate of our goals, then we need to convert them into daily habits.
Habits Are Powerful
If 45% of what you do every day is automatic, then these habits are the building blocks of your success or failure - good habits will have a positive impact on your life, while bad habits will have the reverse effect.
Now, this all sounds good, but it isn’t easy to build a new habit. Unfortunately, you have been lied to most of your life. The idea that it takes 21 days to form a new habit is an urban myth. In fact, according to research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it takes on average 66 days to install a new habit.
Don’t let this put you off. Habits are fantastic because they are automatic. Much like muscle memory, there should be very little resistance to completing them, and this will help you during your off days. Even when you are tired or have had a bad day at work, you still brush your teeth. This “auto-pilot” like nature of habits reduces your mental workload, allowing you to focus on other tasks.
You should also think of habits as micro-goals. They allow you to break down your more significant objectives into smaller, achievable daily actions. These smaller components are less daunting and easier to complete. Our biology is wired in such a way that completing small tasks triggers the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine - which is linked to the “reward” pathways in our brain. The “instant gratification” of completing your habits supports this. Why fight biology - work with it.
3 Steps To Building Strong Habits
Did you know that weighing yourself every day makes you lose weight? A 2018 study published by the American Heart Association showed that participants who weighed themselves daily over the course of a year lost approximately 1.7% of their body weight. In contrast, those who weighed themselves weekly did not lose any weight at all.
I propose that the reason for the weight loss is because weighing yourself daily is a cornerstone habit - it created a domino effect that caused the participants to think about their weight daily and therefore consciously or subconsciously drove other healthier behaviours. They probably ate healthier or exercised more because they were triggered by the daily weigh-in. So, when selecting your habits, it's worthwhile thinking carefully about other potential beneficial flow-on effects they might have.
Minimise
It may sound counter-intuitive, but when it comes to habits, be micro-ambitious. In fact, “lower the bar”. For most of our lives, we are told to “reach for the stars”. That might make you feel good, but it doesn’t help build strong habits. There is too much ambiguity and way too many opportunities for excuses.
The best way to build a habit is to start small. Take the smallest possible action. I mean really small. “No excuses” small.
Are you looking to take up mediation? Start with a minute of mindfulness. Want to get fit? Start with one pushup. Want to write a book? How about writing 50 words a day. It sounds crazy, but the point here is to eliminate all of your excuses and to lower the bar so you can easily step over it. Then repeat that straightforward habit every day. By actually achieving your daily goals, you will build confidence, muscle memory and a routine.
Then you continue to repeat your habit until you feel motivated to increase it. Maybe you move to 5 minutes of meditation, 2 pushups and write 100 words per day. If you find yourself struggling or not completing tasks, then drop the level back down. The point here is not to focus on the outcome, but to build a consistent behaviour.
The outcome will come eventually. Small, daily, consistent steps towards your goal will ultimately compound - until an unassailable habit is built that will drive your success.
Stack
Once you have mastered the basic premise of small, compounding daily habits, the next step up is to link them together into routines. There are three components to a habit;
a Cue that triggers the habit,
the Action that you take,
a Reward upon completion of the habit.
Through stacking, one habit becomes the cue for another. A great example of this is a morning routine - the establishment of which can be a fantastic performance enhancer. You might start by rising in the morning and exercising, then moving on to some meditation or journalling. Regardless of what you chose to put in your morning routine, stacking habits like this accelerates your outcomes and allows you to complete multiple actions in a single session.
You could stack habits to form a multitude of routines, including your evening routine, a learning routine or a weekend routine. It’s all about using a single habit cue to trigger many other habits - which results in a lot less mental effort on your part, and an increased chance of success.
Become
There is a joke that goes “A vegan, an atheist and a cross fitter walk into a bar. I only know because they told everyone in the first two minutes”.
All jokes aside, these three communities are well known because they are heavily linked with an individuals identity. Being a cross fitter means more than just doing a CrossFit class and going to the gym. It’s almost a way of life.
You can use this technique to take your habits and your performance to another level. By linking your habits to your identity, you essentially become what you want to achieve. It’s subtle, but there is a vast difference between saying “I am writing a book” versus “I am a writer”. Your mental perspective completely changes. So does the perceived level of commitment and accountability.
This mental shift can buttress your resolve and can become a superpower in solidifying high-performance habits. Try it for a few weeks. Take a goal you are trying to achieve. Break it down into daily habits, and then work out how you would “live” those habits and make them part of your identity. This approach is fundamentally different from setting some arbitrary New Year’s resolutions or work goals. If done right, your habits will be so ingrained in your DNA they become part of you.
Breaking Bad
A quick word on breaking bad habits - it can be a tough journey. Habits are powerful, and when installed correctly, are very hard to change. But it’s not impossible. Habits themselves are neutral. Neither good nor bad. Instead, it's the outcome of some habits that can have a negative impact on your life.
Let’s say you have a habit of drinking a glass of red wine every evening when you come home from work. In itself, probably not harmful. But if that habit expands to a bottle of wine every night before dinner then its perhaps not great.
As mentioned previously, the anatomy of a habit has three parts - a trigger; an action; and a reward. To break a bad habit, you will need to work on all three.
Firstly, think about what triggers the bad habit? Is it a situation (e.g. stress), or a time and place (e.g. at home after work)? Take an inventory of what you believe are the triggers. Once completed, then the first step is to avoid or minimise as many triggers as possible. That could mean avoiding certain places, people and situations temporarily while you work on eliminating the bad habit.
Next, it’s easier to kick a bad habit if you can replace it with a good one. Are you trying to cut down drinking alcohol? Then go to the gym after work instead of the pub. It will be hard at first; however, this not only eliminates the trigger of going to the pub, but it replaces the bad habit of drinking with the good habit of exercise.
Lastly, reward yourself every time you complete the replacement habit. Make the reward something small. Perhaps an episode of your favourite Netflix show. It doesn’t matter so long as it gives you that reinforcing dopamine hit.
If you are struggling to break a bad habit, then don’t be afraid to conscript help. This help could be a friend to go to the gym with, or a support group if you are trying to kick alcohol. Having a supportive group of people and professionals around you can make the difference. If you do fail and fall off the proverbial horse, then don’t despair. It has been found that small intermittent failures won’t negatively impact your progress so long as you don’t skip more than two days in a row. Even if you do break, don’t beat yourself up. Just get back to work as quickly as possible.
Maintaining Momentum
Speaking of failure, its time consider some tools and techniques that can help you maintain your momentum and analyse your progress. Now is the time to enter the colourful world of habit tracking.
Earlier I mentioned that it takes on average 66 days to install a new habit. Well, one of the best things you can do during that time is to track your progress. The iconic comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, had a very low-tech but effective way of tracking his daily writing (a habit he identified as being critical to his success). Jerry would write every day and then mark an “X” on a big wall calendar. His goal wasn’t to write good material. It was just to instil the habit of writing every day. He gamified this by ensuring that he “never broke the chain” on his wall calendar. As the chain grows longer, it gives you even more incentive to write every day so as not to break your streak.
If Jerry Seinfeld’s low tech approach doesn’t work for you, then you can take the high tech road. A quick search of the Apple and Android app stores will return hundreds of potential habit tracking apps. My personal favourite is an app called Streaks, which has a straightforward design and is available on my Apple Watch.
Regardless of what technique you use, try not to break the chain, and if you do, then work as hard as you can not to miss two days in a row.