Habits are one of the most if not the most fundamental way to change and improve your life and make yourself 1% better than you were yesterday. But the struggle of building a habit is quite frustrating so this article will guide you through on how to build habits which and more importantly how to make them stick. (If you directly want to learn how to build a habit go to section 3)
Fundamental of Habits
The best way to build a habit is to make smaller habits which build into a bigger habits and building small habits is way easier then building a big habit all at once. So to build a habit you need to build a system and as James Clear famously said
You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your system
So What is A Habit ?
A habit is a behavior or a set of behavior that has been repeated so many times that it becomes automatic and you don’t need to think before doing it The purpose of these habits are to improve your life and solve the problems of your life.
What is the System of Habit ?
The system of habit is comprised of 4 steps -: Cue, Craving, Response and Finally Reward.
Cue – : A Cue is a action or a place which triggers your habit.
Craving -: Craving is wanting to perform the habit.
Response -: What is our response to the cue and the craving. This ideally should be to perform the habit.
Reward – : What happens after you have completed the response and how you feel after getting the reward.
How To Build A Habit
- Make the habit obvious -: For this the best way is to use this formula “I will do (your habit) at this (time) when I am at (location).” This is going to be your cue. Now let’s take me as an example I wanted to build a habit of doing exercise everyday . So I wrote down on a sheet of paper “I will exercise at 6: 00 AM in the morning at the gym”. Because of this whenever you the time comes or you reach the location your body is automatically going to recognize this as a cue.
- Make the habit attractive -: The best way to do is to join a group where the habit you want to do is considered normal behavior and it doesn’t have to be a full community just a friend is enough. Continuing with my example I decided to join a gym community near my house and all of us decided that we would come at the gym in the morning. Just doing this made it so that you would be reluctant to not go to the gym as someone is relying on you.
- Make the habit Easy -: This is probably the most important part and it’s all about reducing the friction between the habit and you. With my example what I did was keep my shoes on my bed side so that as soon as I woke up I didn’t have to worry about getting my shoes out. And if you require motivation then just say to yourself that you are only going to do the habit for 2 min and not anymore.
- Make the habit satisfying -: This is going to make sure that the craving gets triggered and you get motivated to do the work. To do this just add a reward after you have completed the habit. It can be anything which pleases you. It can be eating a ice cream with your friends watching a movie. or maybe continuing a streak and trying to beat your previous record. The most important tip is to never ever miss a habit for two days in a row.
These simple system is going to help you immensely in building a habit which sticks and slowly but surely improve your life 10 times. If you want some more tips I would recommend you to read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
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