How to Create Great Habits that will Last throughout 2021
By: Victoria Forsyth
Tags: 2021, New Year Resolution, Goals, Habits, Productivity

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Habits are important, they can create our future, create our lives, create who we are. Being able to create great habits, that stick, matters.

Your habits will determine your future Jack Cranfield

We have all experienced the failed new year’s resolutions though and many believe that habits are difficult to sustain and require a lot of willpower and effort. The good news however is that creating a habit or resolution that lasts has nothing to do with willpower and is all about design.

When created in the right way habits are easy.

Here is how to create habits that are so well designed that they last and become so effortless they become autopilot and we fall back on them even when tired and depleted of energy.

1. What is your ‘Why’?

“begin with the end in mind” Stephen R Covey

Habits are the stepping stones to goals. We need to decide on our end destination before we decide on our habit and this end goal needs to fill us with joy.

A habit can be formed in an instant due to intense emotion, think of a heroin addiction. An intense emotional experience can hook you. Before using your head, use your heart.

Create a powerful emotional vision that will make your heart sing with joy. (if your habit isn’t to create an experience that will fill your heart with joy, why are you doing it?) Numbers are great for tracking habits and measuring progress but the feelings of the dream are important too. The vision, the end goal, should make you feel alive, make you feel excited.

Photo by Brian Metzler on Unsplash

Walking x miles and doing x number of push ups per day is a bit dry, — reducing muscle decline as we age so that we can play with our grandkids is exciting, it is loving. Doing press ups so that we can effortlessly throw them in the air, walking/running so we can have wonderful play with them is full of love and inspiring, we can create a motivating visual image. Get creative with habits so they don’t seem boring, and have a big ‘WHY’ full of love.

Have a vision.

Have a vision full of feeling that you can refer to often, imagine yourself having achieved the goal, imagine all the good feelings that come with it, this will help with motivation whenver you are struggling to do a habit.

2. Make it as Effortless as Possible

“Start with a tiny behaviour” BJ Fogg

Big silicon valley companies spend lots of money hiring clever people, to make their processes as effortless (or ‘frictionless’ as they like to call it) as possible.

Amazon has taken all the friction out of shopping, I can shop for something before getting out of my bed, simply by a few taps on my phone… there is absolute minimal effort. They have removed all friction. There is no getting into my car to drive to high street, there is no finding my bank card to pay, I don’t even need to get dressed to go to the outside world, they have taken away all those effortful things.

Uber and other companies spend millions of pounds to achieve the same minimal effort as possible. With Uber you just need to click ‘I need a ride’ your phone does the rest for you. Netflix has the next episode lined up starting to play without any effort from us. Companies create forces or reduce forces (friction) to influence our behaviours and ultimately have us buy stuff.

We can influence our own behaviours by setting up forces and reducing friction.

A study showed that proximity to a gym was the key factor in determining the number of visits. The closer to the gym meant more visits. Just driving 10 minutes more is ‘effort’. Anytime we see ‘effort’ we are inclined not to do something, we don’t like doing anything that requires effort.

Studies have also shown just the position of food in bowls (both healthy and unhealthy) can determine how much we eat of it.

As an example to create a habit of guitar practice, I have my guitar accessible in a stand in the room I walk through most in the house, it is next to a comfy chair, it is almost inviting me to play, when I am in that room it is an easy, effortless thing to do. Compared to trying to practice keyboard that was in a room upstairs (just the effort of going to another room or up a flight of stairs is enough for us to go ‘nah, another time’.) I also have the external force of a lesson once a week.

Design a habit as if designing it for the laziest person in the world (we all enjoy the path of least resistance and we are all lazy at the end of a working day)

BJ Fogg (Director Behaviour Design Lab, Stanford) explains that “Tiny gives you success” so start small.

3. Make Your Wins Visible and Celebrate them

“Celebrating your achievements and applauding your triumphs is a sure way to refuel your enthusiasm and keep yourself motivated for your future endeavours.” Dr Roopleen

Just doing a behaviour (whether positive or negative) makes us do more of that behaviour, everything is addictive. To supercharge your behaviour though, Seeing your progress is a great motivator, it reminds us that we are still making progress.

Photo by Ambreen Hasan on Unsplash

As Dan Sullivan says measuring the gain is more important than measuring the gap. Often a goal can seem so far away, he gives the example of walking towards mountains far off in the distance, if we just look at where we need to get to, it often feels like it doesn’t move or we aren’t getting closer, but if we look back and see how far we have come and how far away are starting point is we feel a lot better about the progress we are making. It is motivating, as opposed to the gap which can be demotivating.

Take note of your gains, they are important! Congratulate yourself for all your progress and ‘wins’, however small they may seem.

When we do something every day it is sometimes hard to see the progress, you get a better picture when you only see the progress made over weeks or months or years. A friend’s weight loss may be apparent to us as we’ve not seen them for a few months, however to them it is harder to see as they are living with it day to day.

Here is where numbers do come in, whilst it is important to have the ‘alive feelings’ from achieving goals or sticking to habits, numbers can help in tracking. How can you track your goals so you can celebrate them?

I occasionally video myself playing guitar, I can then look back a month or two later and really see the difference. I list songs I can now play. I also remind myself how what seems like an easy song now I would have loved to have been able to play 6 months ago.

How can you celebrate what you have done? How can you track your habit?

4. Link a New Habit to an Existing Daily Event

Piggy backing a habit onto an existing one is a way to create something that already has a ready designed environment. It’s a natural reminder and it can improve an existing habit.

For example, to create a gratitude habit, my partner and I each express what we are grateful for at dinner time. This is a great habit combination, dinner is something we do daily and adding this gratitude element actually improves the experience and sets a great tone for dinner conversation. It gets rid of that tempting habit of moaning and complaining about your day.

BJ Fogg designed this method of ‘finding the good spot’ and and it is a great way to create a cue to do a habit.

He uses the example: ‘After I pee, I will do two pushups’

After[CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

James Clear shows how these stacked habits can create new rules for life:

When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to anyone I don’t know yet

When I see a set of stairs, I will take them instead of using the elevator.

Whenever I pick up the guitar I start with a quick finger picking exercise. It takes about 10 seconds, requires no thought as what to play, warms up my fingers and develops my finger strength.

5. Can this habit fulfil a need?

Everything we do has a purpose and is usually to achieve a goal of some sort whether it just simply being the goal to buy food for dinner from the shop. Often bad habits form to fulfil needs, and sometimes these are emotional.

For example, duolingo is a great thing to do when bored. I used to go to a sudoku game on my phone when bored, I now do duolingo first. It has the same effect of making me not feel bored and I get to learn Italian. I don’t even need to book this into my routine as there are usually times in the day when I’m bored (for example waiting for someone).

Are there any habits that are currently fulfilling needs that you could upgrade? The need for sugar (fruit bowl), the need for a diet coke — (freeze ice cubes filled with slices of lemon and lime put into glass of sparkling water — feels like a treat). Can you replace a bad habit with a slightly less bad one?

For example when I feel the need for a chocolate bar, I now have 85% dark chocolate square instead, it takes away the craving in a healthier way.

What bad habits can you improve to fulfill needs. How can you upgrade some existing habits?