Habit Creation

We are creatures of habit. Most of our daily actions are a result of our habits. Understanding this, habit creation and habit maintenance are two very important processes. Through changing our habits, we change our life. It’s that simple.

Yet, habit creation itself is a difficult process. It takes time and many are unclear on how to actually form habits. In this post, I’ll be helping you to do just that.

In the past, I’ve covered three of the best positive habits, so if you’re quickly looking for a habit to form, check out that post.

Now, let’s get into it.

The Basics Of Habit

Before we can cover how to create habits, it’s important to understand what habits are. How do we install habits into our lives? I won’t be covering this in significant detail. If you’re interested in learning further, you can either read ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear or ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg.

In essence, all habits exist within the ‘habit loop’. This consists of 3 or 4 key stages:

• Cue
• Craving
• Routine
• Reward

‘Craving’ is the extra step and drives the habit forwards. I’ve included it here as it helps to form a better understanding of habits. Let’s use meditation as an example habit, as that will help to explain the concept. This is how my morning meditation habit runs:

• Cue – Finishing showering
• Craving – Wanting to clear and relax my mind
• Routine – Opening Headspace app and meditating for 15 minutes
• Reward – Clear mind, mental clarity, greater focus, feeling ready for the day

All habits follow some variation of this loop. You may be conscious of this process, you may not. The nature and power of habit is that you don’t need to be conscious while running the habit, once it has been installed. You can be thinking of other things while you habitually make a coffee, for example.

This is useful for saving brainpower and allowing your life to run smoothly. Yet, this can make it hard to identify each stage of the habit loop. Using this model can help to identify the different stages of your existing habits.

Breaking down habits you want to form into these four stages makes conscious implementation much easier. This increases the likelihood of the habit sticking.

How To Form A Habit

Habits take an average of 66 days to form. For a habit to become fully implemented into your life, you have to stick at it for 66 days. Not 21, not 28, not 30. If you miss a day or two, that’s fine. But you must ensure you rebound. If you don’t, all of your progress was for nothing.

The challenge is to stick at a habit for the 66 days. This is where you can make use of the habit loop. Focus on making each stage of the habit loop as easy as possible. Ensure you have a proper reward to motivate the habit. Without this, you’ll struggle with conscious implementation.

By using the habit loop, we can break habit creation into four stages. Take a habit of stretching in the morning, for example. We know that this is a good habit and will help with how we feel throughout the day.

Cue

The easier it is to identify a habit Cue, the easier it is to run a habit. With a clearly identifiable Cue, it’s easier to install a habit. For our stretching habit, the Cue needs to be something we do or see every morning, which we can then use to prompt the habit. This may be an existing part of your morning routine, such as making your bed, or after getting dressed. If we want the habit to run daily, we need a Cue that occurs or can occur daily.

Cue – Getting dressed

Craving

Next, we need a way to drive the habit forwards. This comes from the Craving of the habit. An obvious example of Craving is with smoking; the desire to smoke to relieve negative feelings or twitching. Again, the stronger the Craving, the easier it is to form a habit. Craving is often tied to the Reward of a habit – the Reward satisfies the Craving.

For our stretching habit, we can think ahead to what the reward will be. When doing so, it’s most effective to think of an immediate reward. This is because it’s easier to tap into motivation when a reward is instant, compared to at some point in the future.

Our reward, then, will be feeling good and loose – feeling ready to start the day. That makes our craving:

Craving – Wanting to loosen body and feel good

Routine

The Routine is the act of doing the habit itself. The easier you can make the routine, the easier it is for the habit to run. Break it down to the smallest possible elements. Rather than doing a 10-minute stretch, start with a quick 1-minute stretch of your upper body while forming the habit.

Once the habit creation process is complete, you can develop the routine further. Include more stretches, stretch for longer, or alter to your own liking. Go from a 1-minute stretch while forming to a 10-minute stretch once formed.

Routine – Stretching

Reward

The Rewards marks the end of the habit. You receive the reward after completing the Routine. It’s a way that the body and brain signals completion.

Usually, the Reward satisfies the Craving. This solidifies that the habit is worthwhile doing. Completing it will result in a ‘pleasurable’ or satisfying experience.

The more appealing you can make the Reward, the stronger the Craving. The stronger the Craving, the more likely you are to run the habit.

Reward – Feeling good, loose, and ready to start the day.

Habit Creation Help – Forming A Specific Habit

To form your specific habit, all you have to do is break down the habit into each of the four stages of the habit loop. See above for an example. Ensure your Cue is clear and easy to prompt, and your Reward is satisfying enough to make you want to do the habit again. If it’s an everyday habit you are trying to form, ensure your Cue will be available every day.

Habit Tracking

To ensure you stick at your habit for 66 days, there are a few things you can do. The best is getting a 66-day calendar and marking off each day that you complete the habit.

Use that to improve your chances of a habit sticking. As you progress through the 66 days, the habit will become easier and more automatic. This is good, but doesn’t mean you should stop tracking. Keep going until you reach the end.

The Two-Day Rule

I first learned about the Two-Day Rule through Matt D’Avella, which he uses to simplify habits. Later, I discovered James Clear suggests the same system.

The Two-Day Rule states that you can take a day off from the habit, but never two in a row.

By taking two days off, it can easily become three days off. Three becomes four, and before you know it, the habit will have fallen off.

Accountability

It’s much easier to form a habit when you know someone who is also trying to form that habit. Make use of a friend or family member and keep track of each other’s progress over the 66 days. You don’t want to let them down, and vice versa. The accountability of forming the habit with someone else is extremely useful.

If you don’t have a friend or family member to form the habit with, you can make use of a site such as Beeminder. These types of sites use your money as a form of accountability. If you don’t form the habit and check-in often, you will lose a little money.

Habits and Quarantine

As I write this post, many of us are in lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Quarantine is a tough time for us all, but it’s important to take a positive outlook on everything. What’s the upside here, then? We have a significant amount of free time available. We’re able to follow our own schedules. This is the perfect opportunity for habit creation.

The predictability and repetitiveness of quarantine life makes habit creation much easier. It’s effortless, now more than ever, to install the different parts of the habit loop. Our daily lives aren’t disrupted by work or social obligations. This means that now is the best time for positive habit creation.

You can structure your life and days in such a way that they surround the habit that you are trying to create. If you’re trying to form a stretching habit, you can ensure you have clothes out in the morning and ready to change into, which will prompt the habit. If you’re trying to form an exercise habit, leave your workout clothes in plain sight to prompt a Cue.

With the abundance of free time, it’s possible that you could form many habits at once. Usually, I’d recommend only forming one habit at a time. Give it all your focus and attention until the habit is formed, then move on.

Right now is the exception, but don’t try to form more than two habits. Having more than two habits forming at once can throw you off and make it difficult to carry out the habit loop. Plus, by only focusing on one or two at a time, you create a more solid foundation for the habit.

Example Positive Habits

You’re probably thinking, ‘great, thanks, I now know how to form habits. But what are some positive habits that I can form?’.
One step ahead of you – here’s a brief list of some positive habits to form:

• Meditation
• Journaling
• Learning
• Stretching
• Exercise
• Organisation
• Reading
• Limiting technology or social media usage
• Listening to podcasts or audiobooks

And that’s it for this post! Habits are awesome. If you’d like to learn more about habits, check out the two books I mentioned earlier.

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Thanks for reading.

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