How to make new habits stick

This week I visited a workshop called “Prioritas: Achieve Your New Year’s Resolutions”. As part of the workshop, it was looked at habits. How do we develop them and how do we make sure they stick?

As coach explains motivation and will-power poorly predict a long-term habit’s success. As he said “Motivation relates to… temporary behavioral change. (But not long-term change)… relying primarily on your motivation is a losing strategy.” (italics mine) The conclusion: how you develop habits is more important than how much you want the habit to stick.

So, how should we make new habits?

 As Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit”, points out, we should understand how habits work first.

Habits are broken into three parts: the cue, the habit, and the reward

The first step to any habit is a cue. We all have a number of daily traditions. These could range from eating dinner to brushing our teeth. Regardless of what they are, they begin with a primer. Often a cue is time related, but it also can be locational or situational.

Once the cue occurs, the routine begins. The routine is the habit itself. (e.g. brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, or eating a cookie). We’re trying to change this part.

Finally, we receive the reward. The reward is crucial because it reinforces the habit. Though, we often think about rewards as being large (like eating chocolate or going out for drinks), a reward simply indicates completion. Toothpaste, for example, does not naturally have a tingly feeling at the end. Rather, it is artificially added. The tingly feeling is your reward; it signals the completion of brushing your teeth. Once we know the cycle of habits, we can more easily change them.

Here is three step method to creating a new habit.

Step One: Make It Tiny
Real tiny. If your habit is to floss, floss only one tooth at first; if you’re trying to review after class, review for only 10 seconds. As coach explains, “One of the best ways to get people to do the behavior in the long term is to build their confidence and ability through baby steps”. As you repeat the baby step, your confidence increases. Slowly, you can ratchet up the difficulty and maintain the same level of motivation. Starting cold turkey is a bad idea. If you want to make your habit stick, you have to start small.

Step Two: Think of a Cue
For this step, think of your daily schedule. What habits do you already have and what places do you regularly go? This could be “finishing lunch”, “waking up”, or “walking into a cafeteria”. Once you hit the cue, the habit should immediately begin. As research indicates, it is better to make a cue “after” an event than “before”. For example, a habit is more likely to persist if it is after waking up as opposed to before going to sleep. This creates clear reminder for your habit to begin. So, pick a daily habit to place your new habit after. If this doesn’t work, try again. It may take a while to find the perfect cue.

Step Three: Reward Yourself
It’s all about the reward. Think about something easy to do after the habit. The reward should be as easy, fun, and something you personally enjoy.

The key here is to reward yourself no matter what. If your habit is to run, begin by walking five minutes a day. Then tell yourself you’re a bad ass. Reward yourself for the small things you do. Overtime the rewards will help you develop into larger habits.

Now is the time to change. The habits you develop will last for the rest of your life. Or you can change it! Changing your habits isn’t always easy. You have to figure out what cues prime you and what rewards you crave. But, if you do both, you’ll be one step closer to achieving your goals.

For, as Sean Covey says, “We become what we repeatedly do.”

The task for today is to "kill" the habit of being distracted from work on checking mail or messages on social networks.