Let’s talk about habits
Tags: Dont Break The Chain, Habits, Productivity

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

There are lots of articles, blog posts, and even research about how to create good habits. You can read about habits from millionaires, habits from most successful people. You can even find websites where you learn that it can take 18 days to develop a new habit! In this post, we will understand what habits are and how to start developing new habits. Then you can alone see how to plan things by yourself to create new habits. Alright, first things first.

Tell me more about what habit is

We need to understand that habit is efficient behavior, with a lack of awareness, unintentional & uncontrollable.

You can read more about it, do more research on habits, but that’s the essence. To put it straight, it’s like doing a particular thing on autopilot. To create a new routine, all you have to do is repeat specific behavior for a more extended period. Repeating one specific action is easy. To stick with it, it’s a different case. It would be best if you were rewarded or feel the benefits. In general, by developing new habits, you will see its advantages after a specific time. Still, to avoid demotivation, you need something to see the progress and be rewarded now or daily. By reading this first sentence, you quickly understand that developing new habits is a very long process. It can take a long time to develop an autopilot behavior. It can happen that it is even not possible sometimes to create a new habit. The same rule applies to bad habits. Enough of theory, practice time.

Developing new habit

Let’s plan together with a new habit:

“Always put dirty clothes to the basket, as opposed to leaving them close to the bed.”

First of all, you need to always be in a room where the basket is. In my case, it’s in the bathroom. Our checklist looks as follow:

Before bedtime, always go to the bathroom

Second, to undress, you need replacement clothes over there not to go out of that room. On top of that, you don’t wash clothes every single time you have them on yourself. So you have to determine which ones go to the basket and which you have to put back in the wardrobe. Checklist:

Pajama is in the bathroom

Before bedtime, always go to the bathroom

Undress and sort clothes which will go to the basket which you will still use

Put pajama on

Go to bed

To avoid any other distractions, you have to prepare clothes for the next day to undress from pajama in the morning and the bathroom. So it stays there. Checklist

In the morning

Go to the bathroom undress pajama and leave it in bathroom

Put already prepared clothes on yourself

In the evening

Prepare clothes for next day

Put clothes for tomorrow into the bathroom

Undress and sort clothes which will go to the basket and which you will still use

Put pajama on

Go to bed

And that’s just one day. You have to stick with it every single day for a longer time.

How to stick with the new habit

You do need to be prepare. Intentionally, I created a checklist to capture all steps I have to do to finalize the desired action. In the next steps, I always create a small table where I track my progress each day. Once I make a specific effort, I put a big X in the corresponding cell. The goal is to have X in every empty cell. This method’s name is “Don’t break the chain.” For the above habit, I created a small don’t break the chain table.

Some of the steps are obvious, and after reading sentences, I immediately know what I have to do. It’s very motivational seeing X in every cell for the whole week. Putting the X mark in the cell automatically feels good. This table is next to my bed, so I will always see this table before I go to sleep. If you miss two straight days, something is wrong, and you need to sit and think about what distracts you from doing it. Nothing terrible happens if you miss a day. Your goal is at the top, and by doing this each day, you move one step up.

How long does it take?

Do I have to do it throughout the whole year to have a new habit ??! It depends. In my case clothes were always in different rooms. Wherever I go, I left something there, but I decided to be more organized in that particular field, and I did everything I wrote in this post. Here are the results.

1st month — I had to stick to the checklist not to forget about it. Many times I was lying in bed and had to get up to do it correctly.

2nd month — I still use a checklist, but I did it each day to avoid situations where I have to get up from the bed.

After three months — I’m no longer using checklists. I see the benefits of doing this for a more extended period; however, it’s still not a habit. If I go to bed and miss some of the steps, I feel that I forgot something (hard to explain).

After one year — Naturally, I always go to the bathroom each morning and each time before I go to sleep. Each day I prepare clothes for the next day.

I can say to leave pajama in the bathroom each day is a habit. Undressing in the bathroom is a habit too each day. But organizing clothes for the next day is still not a habit until now (3 years later). Based on my example, you can see how long it can take to develop a new habit. Removing bad habits will be in other posts.

Summary

Habit is efficient behavior, with a lack of awareness, unintentional & uncontrollable.

To create a new habit, you have to repeat specific behavior for a more extended period.

It’s a good practice to track progress in the daily checklist.

It’s hard to say how long it will take. In my experience, it is usually almost a full year.