Tips for Building Habits
Check out the video version of this post on my YouTube!
So I've been listening to the audiobook on audible called "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg, and have learned some helpful tips that I'd like to share on how habits work and how to build new ones. I highly recommend it's a great read or listen, and I'll have it linked here if you’re interested.
Each habit whether you notice it or not is made up of 3 things. A cue, the actual action, and a reward. For example, if you have a habit let's say drinking coffee:
The cue could be waking up first thing in the morning or the feeling of tiredness
The action is making/buying the coffee, then drinking it
The reward is the taste or the feeling of caffeine rushing through your system giving you a burst of energy.
Knowing the structure of habits is important if you want to build good habits and stop bad ones. Let's say you want to build a new habit of exercising more:
The cue could be getting home from work or waking up first thing in the morning.
The action is working out.
And the reward is the satisfaction of getting a workout in for the day which is beneficial for your health.
This sounds a lot easier said than done but many people, however, struggle to stick with their workout regimens. The solution is to make it easier for the action to happen. In this situation, this can be done by laying out your workout clothes the night before if you workout first thing in the morning or getting changed right when you leave for work. I've personally been using this method to make sure I get my afternoon workout in after working from home all day. After work, I get changed right away and head to my backyard to do some cardio. This can be applied to other situations.
If you want to build a habit of playing the ukelele every day, keep it out in the open and easily accessible. Besides making the habit easier to perform, having a clear reward and purpose can help. Focus on the reward and remind yourself why you want to develop that good habit and your motivation will surely increase.
Let's move on to bad habits. Let's say you have a habit of biting your nails and you have struggled to stop. Again our first step is to list out the cue, the action, and the reward.
The cue could be feeling anxious.
The action is biting your nails.
The reward is the feeling of relief.
A solution to the problem is to be mindful of the cue of being anxious and changing the action that you do. Instead of biting your nails, you could squeeze a stress ball or fiddle with a pen or pencil. In this example, we changed the actual action but kept the cue and reward the same. Feeling anxious and relieved.
Now, what if you wanted to stop a bad habit? To do this, do the opposite if you wanted to build a new habit; make it harder for the action to happen. Let's say you have a habit of scrolling through social media in bed and staying up late at night. The cue is getting into bed. The action is going on your phone scrolling through social media. And the reward is the entertainment. To stop this bad habit, try putting your phone across the room on a table or something. This is something I personally have been doing recently.
Now that you know the basic structure of how they work, see if you can break down and analyze your own habits to start good ones, and break bad ones.