3 Hacks to Improve Your Habit-Making
How often do you consider your habits? Do you routinely visit them or did these words bring your attention back to them? Let’s take it one step further: how much of your daily life is dictated by habits? 30%? 50%? 80%? Not that there’s inherently wrong with automation, but I’m willing to wager that there are some routine tendencies that you might wish to get rid of. In this article, I’ll share with you three ways to improve your habits.
1.) Maximize or Minimize Friction
I want you to think of something that you want (or outright need) to do more of. Is it working on a passion project? Is it getting more exercise? Reading more? Eating healthier? Whatever it may be, we’ve already established that it needs more doing, so what’s the solution? It’s simple: make it more accessible. It’s enough that you’re lacking in it already, so don’t make it harder to do.
In the case of the passion project, maybe yours is photography, but you’ve been slacking in practicing. To fix this, take your camera with you everywhere. Don’t think about whether the setting it appropriate or not, just do it. For exercise, keep your workout clothes and water bottle at the foot of your bed that way you’re ready to go to the gym when you wake up. In the case of reading, keep a book on your desk or in your bag at all times. To eat healthier, meal prep, that way it’s just grab and go and you can eat better without even thinking about it.
As you may have guessed, to break habits, you must maximize friction, which is simply the opposite and involves making tasks less accessible. Examples include charging your phone on the other side of the room to avoid distractions, keeping the fridge free of alcohol (meaning you’ll have to go out of your way to go somewhere that sells it), and deleting social media apps, that way you’re forced to log in the tedious way through a web browser.
2.) Habit Stacking
This trick involves grouping habits together in a chain, creating a domino effect. The logic is that in doing so, it turns a dreaded habit automatic and shifts your mindset into one of action and not one of thinking.
Here’s a super simple example: brushing your teeth in the shower. These are two habits that you (hopefully) already do, so by combining them, you maximize efficiency. There’s actually a whole science behind this, but all of the details are beyond the scope of this article. In short, habit stacking takes advantage of existing neural pathways to achieve new results, as opposed to creating new ones.
For habits to really stick, they need to have four attributes:
Specificity: what exactly are you trying to do? Remember, the aim is to mitigate the most ambiguity possible as well as the time between tasks.
Brevity: keep it short. While it’s admirable that you want to start doing 30 minute daily meditations, also remember not to overwhelm yourself. Try starting with five minutes first.
Attainability: make sure it’s reasonable. Let common sense prevail and allow yourself to be realistic with what you can or cannot do. If your morning is already packed with activities, don’t force yourself to add anymore to your plate.
Similarity: keep your habits at least semi-related. This will make it much more seamless to move from one to the other. It’s a lot easier to move from from reading to writing than it is from making coffee to working on a home improvement project.
3.) Identity Shifting
This one was a big help in my own mindset. I originally read this in James Clear’s phenomenal book Atomic Habits (which I highly recommend, it’s one of my favorite books ever). Just like tip #1, this one is effective immediately, and I can attest its efficacy.
Identity shifting is inherently a mental shift, and not a something that requires a physical action. In other words, it gets to the root of the habit because all habits stem from the mind. It is akin to treating the cause of the disease as opposed to the symptoms.
Here’s an example: say you’re a smoker who’s looking to quit. If you get offered a cigarette by someone, you might respond with something along the lines of, “No thank you, I don’t smoke.” There’s nothing wrong with saying that at all, but it’s not as effective as it could be. Instead, you want to turn that phrase into, “No thank you, I’m not a smoker.” Even just after reading this, I’m sure you’re able to tell just how much the meaning changes. By shifting the sentence structure from one of doing to one of being, the same thing happens in your brain.
It’s a lot easier to do or not do something when you tie it to who you are. I strongly encourage you to try it out for yourself and see the results. If you want to go to the gym more regularly, tell yourself that you’re someone whose health is important to them and takes care of their body. If you’re want to write more, tell yourself that you’re a writer and writers (obviously) commit time to writing.
Your habits dictate such a large part of your day-to-day actions. How will you dictate them, in turn?
Thanks for reading,
Alan
additional resources
An article that goes more in-depth on habit stacking.
This PDF on identity-based habits complete with information and exercises.
Ali Abdaal’s newsletter, of which a recent edition inspired me to write about this topic.
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