The Magic Key to Making Habits Sticky
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Creativity, Life, Goals, Productivity, Habits

I have some good news for you.

You’re already really good at creating habits. You are, I promise. You probably have dozens that are so ingrained in you, you don’t even realize you do them. Here are some of mine:

I check my email on my phone first thing after I open my eyes every morning.

I grab a pre-packaged protein shake for breakfast every morning.

I brush my teeth right after the first time I go to the bathroom after my breakfast protein shake every morning.

I check my calendar while I’m drinking that shake every morning.

I read on my Kindle while I eat lunch every afternoon.

I take my vitamins right after lunch, before I go back to work, every afternoon.

When I’m on my computer, I check my email, my Facebook, and my Amazon book sales, every time.

I think about dinner at 5 p.m. every afternoon.

I brush my teeth, take my medication, and wash my face when I’m in the bathroom for the last time before I go to bed, every night.

Those are just the habits I came up with in two minutes while I’m sitting here writing this post.

Habits come and go. I used to be in the habit of checking my Medium stats every time I was on the computer, but lately that one’s fallen off. I’m more into self-publishing at the moment, than blogging.

And I’ve only had my Kindle for a month, so that one’s new. It developed quickly.

Sticky habits that happen without you thinking about them.

You have them. I have them. We all have them. The trick is to figure out why and tap into the ability to develop those habits so that we can do it intentionally.

There’s a magic key.

Habits that become ingrained are tied to either time or an action.

Either you are in the habit of doing something at a specific time every day (I always think about dinner at 5 p.m., for instance) or in reaction to a specific action (I always brush my teeth when I’m in the bathroom after breakfast and before bed.)

In other words, it’s not enough to decide you want to develop a habit. If you want to make it stick, you need to tie it to a time or an action.

I can tell you until I’m blue in the face that a teeny, tiny habit of writing for ten minutes every day is powerful. It won’t stick for you if you don’t decide when you’re going to do it.

Either I’m going to write for ten minutes every day at 8 a.m. OR I’m going to write for ten minutes every day right after breakfast.

It doesn’t matter which. What does matter is now your habit has parameters. It has boundaries. It’s real. You’ve set aside time for it.

Stack that Habit

Even more powerful is if you stack your new habit, time- or action-bound, with another one that’s already ingrained.

So: I’m going to write for ten minutes every day at 8 a.m., right after I check my email.

Or: I’m going to write for ten minutes every day, right after breakfast.

Oh, whoops. See? Tying your new habit to an action often automatically ties it to an ingrained habit. If you don’t actually eat breakfast every morning, then that habit is going to be less powerful.

Resistance is Often Confusion

I don’t mean top-level confusion. If you make a teeny-tiny goal — like writing for ten minutes a day, for instance — there’s no confusion there. It’s simple and straight forward.

But the part of your brain that needs to engage for it to become ingrained? That part of your brain runs on a deeper level and it’s more easily confused.

Because maybe you’re saying ‘I’ll write ten minutes a day’ but you’re thinking ‘actually, I’ll write for an hour a day.’

Yikes. Confusion.

Or maybe you’re thinking ‘I’ll write for ten minutes a day at 8 a.m.’, but you don’t actually ever get out of bed before 9 a.m.

Mmmhmm. Confusion.

Next thing you know, you’re looking around wondering why you can’t manage to write for ten stinking minutes a day. It’s ten minutes!

Resistance often is a mask for deep-brain confusion. I’m sure there’s a more technical term for that. Whatever. I think you know what I mean. You unconscious monkey brain hasn’t got the memo yet.

You need to lay it out super clear and precise for the monkey brain. It’s hard to do that, because the goal here is a minimum, not a maximum. There’s nothing wrong with writing for an hour a day. In fact, that might be the reason for the tiny goal.

But you get full credit for hitting your tiny goal. Talk to your monkey brain and make sure it gets that.

So, think about what time you actually get out of bed before you decide to tie a habit to an early morning hour. And make sure that you’ve actually accepted that tiny goal as the whole, real goal.

The Steps to Creating a New Sticky Habit

If you want to create a new, sticky, small habit — here’s how: