Setting habit change up to succeed
Introduction
You will no doubt have experienced that habit change can be challenging and we often have mixed results - sometimes adopting a new habit is smooth sailing and other times it is seemingly impossible to make it happen.
There are some powerful forces at play that can stand in the way of habit change. The traditional advice to counter these forces focused heavily on a reliance on grit, willpower and determination. Whilst there is no doubt that these are useful strengths to add into the mix, behavioral change science has come a long way and expanded the scope of strategies we can deploy quite significantly. Each of these strategies are very potent and research indicates they can increase your chances of success by two to three-fold at least.
By now you will have adopted one of those strategies already - accountability partnering. Throughout the programme we will introduce you to some more strategies for you to experiment with. The key to success is to adopt the vital few - the ones that works best for you and have the biggest impact.
To get things on the road, below we outline some key tips and initial strategies, to help you put in a place an initial foundation for successful habit change.
Start with what has worked in past
Its is highly likely that you already know quite a bit about how to make your desired positive changes happen and how to stick to them.
This involves some reflection which is most effective when you create some time and space and when you write down all your thinking and awareness that comes to the surface. Reflect on a time or times in your life when you successfully generated habit change (no matter how insignificant this change now seems to be) and probe into questions like these (you can add your own):
what were the key conditions that enabled this change to be successful and sustainable?
what provided you with the motivation and energy to change in the first place?
what made “not making the changes” simply not an option?
what enabled you to overcome barriers?
what strengths did you tap into and leverage to stick to the habit change commitment?
what nudged you back on track when needed?
What new awareness and insights did you gain from this reflection exercise? How can you leverage these past successes in the context of the current habit changes you are planning?
Two-degree changes
Identify and focus on your "two-degree" changes. These are the relative small changes in your lifestyle, routines and habits that, when you project them out over a longer period of time, actually generate a very sizeable benefit.
For example, adding 15 minutes to your sleep every day is a small change for most people. Over the course of a week this adds nearly two hours of extra recovery. Over the course of a month its amounts to virtually a whole extra day of recovery a whopping extra 12 or so days of recovery when you project this out over a year.
Integrate new habits into existing routines
When you are halfway into a 20km hike and come across a landslide, you could go all the way back to the beginning and start an entire new route. Or you could re-route the small section of the trail that is blocked - most likely a faster and easier option.
An obvious choice you will say! But when it comes to habit change we often miss this obvious opportunity even though it is much easier to integrate a new habit into an existing routine than starting up a entirely new routine.
An example: Say you want to establish a habit of being more physically active every day. You could start up an entirely new routine that involves getting up at 6am instead of 7am to go for a morning walk before you leave for work or commit to taking lunch breaks every day and using that time to walk around the office area. A fairly tough routine to put in place. The alternative is to hop of the bus a few stops earlier or parking your car in a car park further away and walking the rest (twice every day of course). You already have an existing routine of traveling to work and this change feels much easier to implement and stick to for most people.
This concept was popularised by BJ Fogg at Stanford University who called it "tiny habit recipes" and James Clear in his book Atomic Habits refers to it as "habit stacking". James Clear has a really simple formula: "After ...., I will ....". For example: "After my evening cup of tea, I will dim the lights in the lounge" or "After watching my favourite TV programme, I will do 15 minutes of gentle yoga" or "After I have stacked the dishwasher, I go for a relaxing walk around the block".
Focus on starting the day with a new habit / good choice
Success breeds success. When you start the day with a healthy sleep hygiene choice and / or get your first new habit off the day of to a good start you are paving the way for the next choice to be a positive one as well. The flip-side is true too, if you forego the first new habit of the day (e.g. getting outside first thing in the morning) it becomes oh so easy to forego the next; and so on.
So focus on that very first new habit or that very first choice that's part of your sleep hygiene plan. Before you know it, you are on a roll and have stacked one positive choice / new habit on top of another. You will feel the positive and compounding effect of this by the time you hit the sack and it will boost your confidence ("I can actually adopt a really good sleep hygiene routine") which will set you up to start the following day in exactly the same way...
Further reading (optional)
Jump ahead and explore the other habit change strategies - Other articles in this series (see below)
How to start new habits that actually stick - Blog by James Clear (Author of Atomic Habits)
BJ Fogg Tiny Habits (https://www.tinyhabits.com/welcome)
