1. Write them down.
Writing the new habit down you’re trying
to form only strengthens your commitment. When you resolve to committing
to something you’re mentally affirming that this is of significance and
worthy of your time and effort. Journal it; write it on a post-it and
stick it somewhere you can see it and be reminded of everyday, or mark
it on your calendar. {hint my ebook has got some great tools that are
going to help keep yourself accountable, so stay tuned!}
2. One at a time.
Go easy on yourself and commit to
changing one habit at a time. Save yourself the headache of trying to
change several at once as this is only going to see you face resistance
which means you’ll be less likely to make the habit stick over the long
term. If there a number of behaviours you’re trying to shift, why not
try starting a new one each week to soften the blow rather than driving
yourself crazy with taking on too much at once?
3. Know your triggers.
Being able to identify your triggers is
key because once you know this you can use it in your favour to prevent
your unwanted behaviour. For example, if you know that you’re always
checking your social media on your phone and it’s proving a distraction,
then remove the apps from your phone so you’re automatically creating a
barrier for you to ditch this habit. If you have a similar problem on
your computer, check out Self Control as
you can block specific websites from your computer for a set period of
time {this is one of my favourite tools to reduce distractions when I
know I need to focus!}.
4. Track your progress + review often.
Have you heard of the Jerry Seinfeld
procrastination method? I personally think it’s genius and holds a lot
of merit – so much so that I’ve been using recently it to help motivate
my own shift in habits. And the best news? It’s super simple. All it
relies on you doing is using a printed calendar and crossing each
day with a marker pen that you successfully keep the new habit. The
trick is to keep the chain of crosses going so as not to break the
chain. Genius, right?
5. Reward yourself.
Create weekly + monthly milestones and
when you reach these, treat yourself! Whether it’s watching a TV show or
indulging in that manicure – making sure you celebrate your wins will
only help fuel your motivation. Plus, it’s a pretty good feeling to be
able to look back and witness just how far you have come!
Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with one small thing that you
can definitely do everyday, no matter if you’re travelling, or working
weird hours. BJ Fogg gave a great example of this in his November 2012 TEDx talk,
by getting the audience to floss a single tooth. You can build on one
tiny habit, stacking on top of it until you reach your goal.
Build One Habit At a Time. Changing your behavior
requires willpower, and willpower is a limited resource. That is, you
simply do not have enough willpower to tackle several habits at once.
Therefore, you should only try to build one habit at a time.
Well, according to one study, habits take 66 days to form. That's right; it takes the better part of 10 weeks before any sort of new behavior you're trying to adopt starts to feel automatic. That means you're looking at over two months before that treadmill at the gym becomes more "weekly routine" and less "Spanish Inquisition."
Read more...
The usual argument for sticking to better habits is that you need more willpower, motivation, and discipline. But studies like this one showcase just how important your environment can be for guiding behavior.
Read more...
What if I want to start going to the gym, meditating, eating more kale, making a budget, taking vitamins, creating firmer boundaries around work time …
Whelan: We all usually make a laundry list for everything we want to do differently and then attempt to change them all at once. That’s a recipe for failure.
You can basically do one at a time. If you’re going to go to the gym, that’s the one thing you’re going to do.
This year, I’ve been trying to reach out to more friends. That means I’m going to have to do a little less paid work, or get less sleep. And I have to acknowledge that getting less sleep is a losing proposition for me, so, I have to ask, ‘Are my friends worth more than an hour of paid work?’ If the answer is yes, then that’s a choice I’m willing to make. That’s it. That’s the one thing I’m trying to change right now
Read more...
Pick Habits that Reinforce Each Other
Our habits are not standalone; they are interlinked. Some habits have a stronger linkage with each other than others. For example, sleeping early and waking early are obviously linked to each other, while sleeping early and reading a book a day might not be so closely related. If you want to cultivate a habit, identify the other habits that are tied with it and make a holistic change. These habits will reinforce each other to help make the change seamless.For example, my new habits to: (a) Wake up early at 5am (b) Sleep before 12am (c) Be on time (d) Meditate (e) Have raw food diet are all interlinked.
- Waking up early means I more time to do my tasks, which helps me to sleep earlier in the night. This helps me to wake up early the next day.
- Being on time helps me to get my tasks completed on time, which helps me adhere to the day’s schedule. This means my sleeping time and subsequently my waking time does not get affected.
- Meditating clears out mental clutter and reduces the amount of sleep I need. Usually I sleep about pro6-10 hours, but on the nights I meditate, I require about 5-6 hours.
- Switching to a raw vegan diet has helped to increase my mental clarity, which meant I don’t need to sleep as much as before. I’m not saying that you need to go raw vegan just to cultivate a habit of sleeping/waking early, just that I noticed this particular benefit when I switched to this diet. You can sleep and wake up early perfectly fine by changing other habits.
1. Commit to Thirty Days – Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.
2. Make it Daily – Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.
Read more...
Every habit you have — good or bad — follows the same 3–step pattern.
- Reminder (the trigger that initiates the behavior)
- Routine (the behavior itself; the action you take)
- Reward (the benefit you gain from doing the behavior)
I first learned about the process of habit formation from Stanford professor, BJ Fogg. More recently, I read about it in Charles Duhigg’s best–selling book, The Power of Habit.
Duhigg’s book refers to the three steps of the “Habit Loop” as cue, routine, reward. BJ Fogg uses the word trigger instead of cue. And I prefer reminder since it gives us the memorable “3 R’s.”
Read more...
A Tiny Habit. Do not focus on results as you’re forming the habit. I recently mentioned that I’m doing 3 yoga poses every morning — doing more than an hour is too difficult for me and I tend to quit when I do long classes. Will I get a good workout with only 3 yoga poses? No! I’m not trying to get a good workout, get flexible, become more mindful, or get in shape. Eventually, yes, those results will probably come. But for now, I’m only doing one thing: forming the habit of doing yoga each day. Make the habit as tiny as possible. Whatever you think you should do, cut it in half. Then, if possible, cut it in half again. Maybe once more if your time to do it is longer than 2 minutes.
Read more...
Make “micro quotas” and “macro goals”
In a fascinating study on motivation, researchers found abstract thinking to be an effective method to help with discipline. In the most basic sense, “dreaming big” is pretty good advice after all. And since a variety of research around the self-determination theory shows us that creating intrinsic motivators (being motivated to do things internally, not through punishments or rewards) is an essential process of building habits that stick, you need to find a way to balance this desire to dream big with your day-to-day activities, which often do not result in quick, dramatic changes.The answer is to create what I call “micro quotas” and ”macro goals.” Your goals should be the big picture items that you wish to someday accomplish, but your quotas, are the minimum amounts of work that you must get done every single day to make the bigger goal a reality. Quotas make each day approachable, and your goals become achievable because of this.
Writer/developer Nathan Barry has made for a great case study of the use of these quotas as someone who forced himself to write 1000 words per day come hell or high-water. The result was three self-published books resulting in thousands of dollars in sales.
Read more...
One of the big habit myths is this belief that it only takes 21 days to form any habit. Through the use of weasel words and un-cited “research” (scare quotes are justified here, ha!), personal development dweebs try to sell programs on forming any habit in this magic 3-week span.
Actual academic research on the subject shows us this popular belief just isn’t true at all: how “long” it takes to form a habit depends on the individual, the habit being formed, environmental factors, etc. Just like most research, it’s far more messy, and doesn’t make for great book titles like 21 Days to Blah Blah Blah…
Read more...
This is certainly worth looking at - it is free...
No comments:
Post a Comment