A simple system for breaking bad habits
Tags: Self Improvement, Habit Building, System, Personal Development

Are you happy with your lifestyle? Have you ever wanted to get out of a bad habit but failed as you’re busy and just have too many things to take care of?

I’ve felt that many times in the past year with the expanded scope at work and many personal goals. Just to give you an example: I am very intolerant of coffee so whenever I drink coffee after 2 pm, I can’t fall asleep at night. I tried to remind myself about this but as I get busy, I forget > drink coffee after 2 pm > cannot sleep at night > drink more coffee. I feel so frustrated.

To fix this problem, I decided to start with what I am good at — stick to a routine and gradually developed an effective system. So far I’ve developed 5 good habits based on it and I cannot wait to share with you now.

Diagnose the problem

This might sound no-brainer. However, you have to know what’s the real problem to pick a good strategy. Using my coffee example, in the beginning, I didn’t know it was coffee. All I know is I cannot fall asleep some days in the week. I thought I might be too stressed. Then I found out that I drank coffee for most of those days and then another day with both coffee and sleep problem confirmed my hypothesis — coffee is the cause. I also experimented with a few variants (time of the day, types of drinks). Sadly boba tea is also a no-go for me after 2 pm :(

Tip: The more pain your bad habit brings you, the more motivated you will become to change it. So keep reminding yourself the pain it brings you (e.g. sleepless night, non-productive day)

2. Set up an actionable goal

This goal should be something really simple, super actionable, ideally one-sentence and start with Yes instead of No. Using my coffee example again, the goal is pretty simple — No Coffee/Boba Tea after 2 pm. I used ‘No’ here as it’s the most straightforward way to change this behavior. However, I tried to use ‘Yes’ for most other tasks. For example, I found myself spending too much time on some tasks which resulted in frequent work overtime and stress. Instead of setting the goal to be ‘No working overtime/no spending too much time on a single task’, I set my goal to be — `Set deadline & alarm per task and submit tasks when the time is up (like an exam).

If you’re curious about the effectiveness of ‘Yes’, here is a superstitious explanation by Secret: you can get whatever you want by keeping asking the universe for it. The issue is the universe tends to ignore ‘No’ in your wishes so if you keep saying ‘no more procrastinate’, all the universe hears is ‘procrastinate’.

3. Create a streak tracker for 21 days

The fun part. Once you have a clear goal, grab a sharpie and a sticky note, write it down, draw 21 boxes and put it up on your fridge. (that easy! No additional equipment or apps needed). The ritual of drawing 21 boxes will make you feel very invested in this goal and likely increase your chance of completing this goal. And if you’re like me who is a very visual person, now whatever you do / wherever you go, you know you have committed to this sticky note on your fridge. It helps you remember this goal.

Ongoing goals on my fridge

Cross out one box at a time once you complete the action. You will feel very accomplished at that moment! The reason why some behavior is hard to change is a lack of instant gratification when you try to change it for a day. The ritual of crossing-out one box supplements that gratification and thus reinforce the good behavior. Even better, once you have crossed-out more than 5 boxes, you will feel even more motivated to complete the goal as you have come so far in the journey and you have a better chance to complete the goal now (conditional probability :)

Why 21 boxes? Dr. Maxwell Maltz discovered that it took at least 21 days to form a new habit in his book Psycho-Cybernetics. I like this number and think it makes sense (neither too many to be mission impossible, nor too few to go back to the old behavior). Also, you can draw 4 rows of 5 boxes + one box in the 5th row. Very memorable layout!

4. Celebrate and archive the tracker when you finish the streak!

The highest moment of this journey. When you mark down the last box in the tracker, imagine majestic background music rises and all glory is yours. You made it! But don’t throw it away, it’s your achievement, the more completed stickies you have, the better you’re as a person. So I recommend to archive it by putting it on a corner of the fridge. Also, if you feel going back to an old habit, you can go to the archive, pull it out and do another 21-day challenge.

My archives

Further Reading :

Hope you enjoy this simple but effective system. If you want more practical ideas for breaking bad habits and creating good habits, my coworker recommends James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, which will show you how small changes in habits can lead to remarkable results.

Feedback is greatly appreciated!

As a non-English speaker, I always want to improve my writings so if you find anything confusing (e.g. misuse of words, grammar mistake) in my blogpost, your comment and word suggestion is greatly appreciated!!