Why Building Healthy habits is important
Building healthy habits
It is not an easy process but it is worth doing. Why I say that is because I went through the same process myself and it has helped me so much. Being on your phone 24/7 doesn’t help your productivity at all.
What Are Habits?
Let’s define habits. Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day.
Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits. How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits. How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits.
What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray. Everything I write about – from procrastination and productivity to strength and nutrition – starts with better habits. So, When you learn to transform your habits, you can transform your life.
This blog includes recommended resources on forming better habits and breaking bad ones in any area of life, but if you’d like to explore information on specific types of habits, check out these articles:
Three Ways to Form Better Habits
- How to Build a New Habit: This is Your Strategy Guide: Read this guide right now to learn 5 easy, powerful strategies for changing habits.
- How To Start New Habits That Actually Stick: This helpful framework can make it easier to stick to new habits so that you can improve your health, your work, and your life in general.
- Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals This Year: Most of the time we set our goals in the wrong way. Read this article to learn how identity-based habits can help you achieve your goals more easily.
Three Ways to Break Bad Habits
- How to Break a Bad Habit and Replace It With a Good One: Want to learn how to break a bad habit? Read this article to discover the science of breaking bad habits and practical suggestions for making it happen.
- How Vietnam War Veterans Broke Their Heroin Addictions: By simply removing yourself from an environment that triggers all of your old habits, you can make it easier to break bad habits and build new ones.
- How to Declutter Your Mind and Unleash Your Willpower by Using “Bright-Line” Rules: A bright-line rule refers to a clearly defined rule or standard. It is a rule with clear interpretation and very little wiggle room. It establishes a bright line for what the rule is saying and what it is not saying. Most of us could benefit from setting brighter lines in our personal and professional lives.
How to Make a Habit Stick
- How to Stick to Your Goals When Life Gets Crazy: Having a bad day is just one of the tiny emergencies that prevents most people from sticking to their goals and habits. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
- How to Stick With Good Habits Every Day by Using the “Paper Clip Strategy”: Why do some good habits stick while others fail? Read this article about a strategy you use to stick with good habits every day.
Habit tracking is powerful for three reasons.
- It creates a visual cue that can remind you to act.
- It is motivating to see the progress you are making. You don’t want to break your streak.
- It feels satisfying to record your success in the moment.
Let’s break down each one.
Benefit #1: A habit tracker reminds you to act.
Habit tracking naturally builds a series of visual cues. When you look at the calendar and see your streak, you’ll be reminded to act again.
Research has shown that people who track their progress on goals like losing weight, quitting smoking, and lowering blood pressure are all more likely to improve than those who don’t. One study of more than sixteen hundred people found that those who kept a daily food log lost twice as much weight as those who did not. A habit tracker is a simple way to log your behavior, and the mere act of tracking a behavior can spark the urge to change it.
Habit tracking also keeps you honest. Most of us think we act better than we do. Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what’s really going on each day. When the evidence is right in front of you, you’re less likely to lie to yourself.
Benefit #2: A habit tracker motivates you to continue.
The most effective form of motivation is progress. When we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated to continue down that path. In this way, habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire.
This can be particularly powerful on a bad day. When you’re feeling down, it’s easy to forget about all the progress you have already made. Habit tracking provides visual proof of your hard work—a subtle reminder of how far you’ve come. Plus, the empty square you see each morning can motivate you to get started because you don’t want to lose your progress by breaking your streak.
Benefit #3: A habit tracker provides immediate satisfaction.
Finally, tracking feels rewarding. It is satisfying to cross an item off your to-do list, to complete an entry in your workout log, or to mark an X on the calendar. It feels good to watch your results grow and if it feels good, then you’re more likely to endure.
Habit tracking also helps keep your eye on the ball: you’re focused on the process rather than the result. You’re not fixated on getting six-pack abs, you’re just trying to keep the streak alive and become the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts.
Habit Tracker Ideas
Alright, those benefits sound great, but it’s not necessary to fill your habit tracker with every habit that makes up your day. In fact, if you’re already sticking to a habit, then it seems like extra work to me to track it as well. So what should you measure in your habit tracker?
Habit tracking can help kickstart a new habit or keep you on track with behaviors that you tend to forget or let slide when things get busy.
In Atomic Habits, I recommend using the Two-Minute Rule, which suggests you scale your habits down until they take two minutes or less to perform. You can track whatever habits you want in your habit tracker, but I recommend starting with these super small habits to make sure that you are at least showing up in a small way each day. I’ll share some examples below and break them out by daily, weekly, and monthly habits.
Common daily habits to track:
- journal 1 sentence
- read 1 page
- meditate 1 minute
- do 1 push up
- stretch for 1 minute
- write 1 thing I’m grateful for
- make your bed
- wake up by [TIME]
- go to bed by [TIME]
- take a shower
- floss teeth
- weigh myself
- take medication
- take vitamins/supplements
- play [INSTRUMENT] for 1 minute
- contact 1 potential client
- prioritize to-do list
- say “I love you” at least once
- put all dishes put away
- take a walk outside
- call mom
- walk the dog
Notice that most items on this list can be completed in two minutes or less. Make your habits so easy that you can stick to them even on the hard days.
For something to become truly habitual, you need to repeat it frequently. As a result, most habits are daily. But it can also be helpful to use a habit tracker for various weekly or monthly routines. These behaviors won’t become “automatic” like tying your shoes or brushing your teeth, but a habit tracker can remind you to complete them nonetheless.
Common weekly habits to track:
- publish blog post
- vacuum
- take out trash/recycling
- do the laundry
- water the plants
- tidy up your bedroom
- write a thank you note
Monthly habits:
- review finances
- transfer money to savings account
- pay off credit cards
- pay bills
- deep clean the house
You can also use a habit tracker to simply count how often you do something. For example, if you want to keep track of how many days you travel for work each month.
Other ideas:
- days spent traveling
- conduct weekly review
- conduct monthly review
Finally, you can use a habit tracker to measure what you don’t do. I call these “habits of avoidance” (that is, behaviors you are trying to avoid).
Habits of avoidance:
- no alcohol
- no Netflix
- no online purchases
- no soda
- no sugar
- no caffeine
- no smoking
Again, the Habit Journal offers a proven template and the fastest way to create your habit tracker. No need to spend an hour drawing your own grid. Just write your habits down and you’re ready to go.
How to Get in the Habit of Using Your Habit Tracker
Despite all of the benefits, a habit tracker is not something that makes sense in every situation or for every person. Many people resist the idea of tracking and measuring. It can feel like a burden because it forces you into two habits: the habit you’re trying to build and the habit of tracking it. That said, nearly anyone can benefit from habit tracking in one form or another—even if it’s only temporary.
What can we do to make habit tracking easier?
First, manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits. It is better to consistently track one habit than to sporadically track ten. I tend to keep my habit tracker simple and limit it to my three or four most important habits.
Second, record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs. The completion of the habit is the cue to write it down. This is a twist on the “habit stacking” approach in Chapter 5 of Atomic Habits book.
Here’s the basic formula: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT].
For example:
- After I hang up the phone from a sales call, I will mark the “call 1 potential client” column.
- After I finish meditating, I will fill the “meditate for 1 minute” column.
- After I put my plate in the dishwasher, I will complete the “put all dishes away” column.
Basically, what we are talking about here is getting in the habit of using your habit tracker. These little rules help you remember to pick up your habit tracker and mark off another accomplishment.
How to Recover Quickly When Your Habits Break Down
Finally, I want to discuss what to do when you fall off the wagon.
Every habit streak ends at some point. Perfection is not possible. Before long, an emergency will pop up—you get sick or you have to travel for work or your family needs a little more of your time. Whenever this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule:
Never miss twice.
If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible. Missing one workout happens, but I’m not going to miss two in a row. Maybe I’ll eat an entire pizza, but I’ll follow it up with a healthy meal. As soon as one streak ends, I get started on the next one. I can’t be perfect, but I can avoid the second mistake.
Generally speaking, the first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. In Atomic Habits, “Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”
Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.
Sure, a perfectly filled-in habit tracker looks beautiful and you should strive to achieve it whenever possible. But life is messy. In the long run, what matters is that you find a way to get back on track.
How Long Do I Need to Track My Habits?
One of the most common questions I get is “How long does it take to build a habit?”
You’ll see all kinds of answers: 21 days, 30 days, 100 days. One popular answer right now is 66 days because there was one study that found that, on average, it took 66 days to build a habit. However, even within that study the range was quite wide depending on the difficulty of the habit.
I find that people are really trying to get at something else when they ask, “How long does it take to build a habit?” What they often mean is, “How long until it’s easy? How long until I don’t have to put much effort in anymore?”
Look, all habits get easier with practice. But this line of questioning ignores the real purpose of building better habits in the first place.
How long does it take? The honest answer is: forever. Because once you stop doing it, it is no longer a habit.
A habit is a lifestyle to be lived, not a finish line to be crossed. You are looking to make small, sustainable changes you can stick with for years. And a habit tracker is one tool in your toolbox on the road to behavior change. It is an effective way to visualize your progress and motivate you to show up again tomorrow.
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