How to build good habits

or break bad ones.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

Have you ever read a book so good that you were annoyed you didn’t find it sooner?

I recently read a book like that - Atomic Habits by James Clear. I only listened to the book this summer, but I wish I had read it in January. Earlier this year, like many college students, I was starting a new semester, but I was also living in a new apartment. I have had one recurring thought since then: our environment, systems, and habits influence our choices more strongly than we realize. I observed this when putting a book by my bedside significantly increased how much I read, without increasing my willpower, desire to focus, or discipline to not scroll infinitely on Instagram.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” - James Clear

I will review key ideas from Atomic Habits, but also provide a path to applying these ideas to one of your habits. Breaking a bad habit or building a desirable one depends on hacking one of the 4 stages of the Habit Loop:

1. Cue: Make it Obvious (A book by my bedside makes my night routine obvious)

2. Craving: Make it Desirable (To keep fit, I swim more, instead of going to the gym)

3. Response: Make it easy (All I am required to do is go to the pool. Not to actually swim)

4. Reward: Make it Satisfying (Mark an X on the calendar, when you do the habit)

Before we dive into each step, here’s how to apply this advice. Choose 1 habit. It can be a habit you want to quit or want to build. Ideally, convert a bad habit to a good one like sleeping earlier instead of later. Picking up 1 new habit is easier than implementing multiple at a time: Step 3 is to Make it easy.

As you read, reframe each Habit step for your habit. I will personally use “consistently exercising”. You’ll find that some stages are more relevant than others for your habit. Focus on them!

1. Cue: Make it Obvious

The internal or external cue to take an action is the first step in a habit. When your phone vibrates with a notification, it triggers you to resolve the notification -- checking and responding to messages from friends. But different external cues can trigger different actions. Feeling stressed could trigger smoking a cigarette or biting your nails or possibly a more healthy behavior.

This means we have the agency to not only change cues, but we can choose how we respond to them. I changed my bedside cue. Before this year, I thought it was only common sense to have a phone charger next to my bedside. But this only created a constant cue to check my phone before and after going to bed. I replaced the phone charger with a book and I instead read to end my day.

For bad habits, try to remove the cue.

“The people with the best self-control don’t have to use it very much. They spend less time in tempting situations. The solution is to create a more disciplined environment.”

Question: How can I set up a reminder to put me in the right place and time for the habit?

2. Craving: Make it Desirable

This is one of the harder steps to optimize when building new habits. One tactic Clear recommends is Temptation Bundling: linking what you need to do with what you want to do. The author cites an example of an Electrical Engineering student that hacked his stationary bike, connected it to his laptop and TV, and wrote a program that would only allow him to watch Netflix only if he were cycling at a certain speed. 

But we don’t have to invent a grandiose system. I simply transformed “consistent exercise” from “going to the gym”, to “going to the pool”. I enjoy swimming much more! A close friend also began climbing more often because he enjoyed it, though I don’t know if he was attempting to hack exercise. Another friend shared that he went to the gym after work as opposed to the morning because he would have more time to enjoy his workouts. Most of us can not relate to this love for working out.

That’s the point. We’re all different. Only YOU can design your own incentives to maintain a desirable habit. Also, don’t say you “have to” go workout. You “get to” go workout. Highlight the benefits, not the drawbacks. Language matters.

Question: How can I make my bad habit less satisfying? What would make me enjoy my desirable habit more?

3. Response: Make it easy

When we start new habits, we wield plenty of motivation for the habit. This tempts us to aim for the moon and sky. Many New Years’ resolutions to keep fit start with a plan to go from 0 to 3 gym visits per week. Such ambitions are doomed for failure precisely because they aren’t easy.

Why do our new habits need to be easy? Because there are many critical sub-habits to our bigger habit that we are oblivious to. Let’s apply this reasoning to my swimming experience. It’s easy to underestimate sub-habits: prepping my swimming wear, navigating the bus trip (or walk) to the pool, and learning when the pool is open. None of those actions actually involve swimming. However, by taking small, consistent, and easy steps, we can learn these peripheral habits.

James Clear prescribes the 2-minute rule: When you start a new habit it should take less than 2 minutes to do. Clear cited an example of showing up to the gym and leaving immediately without lifting any weights.

This hack is incredibly powerful, because inertia will routinely help you finish the habit. After I’m already at the pool with my gear, I could leave and it counts towards the habit. But I almost never leave before swimming. Inertia helps me follow through.

“Walk slowly but never backward”

My biggest lesson from the book is that making a small effort is astronomically better than no effort at all. Small efforts cast a vote for your identity as someone who performs that habit. Showing up to the gym three times a week, even if you work out once, makes you a person who goes to the gym. This is much more valuable than having a good workout on one specific day.

“The key part of moving quickly [or frequently] is experimenting and learning about the world, that way your next action [towards the habit] is more effective. This extra understanding means that the returns to moving quickly [by attempting your habit often] are exponential, not linear.” - Shriyash Upadhyay

[Additions are mine]

Question: What is the smallest (2 minute) action I could take towards my desired habits? How can I make it harder to continue bad habits? 

4. Rewards: Make it Satisfying

The most rewarding habits today require delayed gratification. However, our primitive brains are primed for instant gratification, so we take actions that provide instant rewards. My understanding of how to apply instant rewards is still evolving, but Clear’s most effective proposal is Habit Tracking.

You’ve likely maintained a streak on Snapchat. It is very satisfying to see that number increase and it is quite painful to end a long streak. This is why you should track your habit by marking X on the calendar whenever you complete the habit. Habit tracking leverages many aspects of human psychology, such as “what gets measured, gets attention”.

Moreover, It’s okay if the streak ends, for one day only. Never miss twice in a row. Clear’s point is that:

“The problem is not slipping up. The problem is thinking that if you can’t do something completely that you should not do it at all”

This transformed my thinking about building habits. The second time you skip going to the gym, you have now started building a habit,  building an identity, of not going to the gym. This idea of identity is the most important factor in building (and breaking) habits.

The increasing levels of habit change are outcome, process, identity. I first tried to get to the pool consistently (outcome). Over time, I master peripheral habits like packing my gear (process). But most importantly, I now tell people I’m a swimmer because I have mastered the outcome and process of swimming every couple of days (identity).

Conclusion

Whether you are building a new habit or breaking an old one, you will find some parts of the habit loop more relevant than others. Go back and identify just one or two specific stages that you want to modify for that habit you’ve been thinking about. Obviously, reading Atomic Habits will supply more tactics like Habit Stacking, Implementation intentions, and the Physics Principle of Least Effort. 

If you remember nothing else, remember this: every action we take every day, either reinforces our desired habits or entrenches bad ones. 

If you would like to read a more detailed post on how to apply these Habit tactics, like this post. If there is enough interest, I will release the sequel. 

Twitter: @TomiwaAkinyele