How to Build a New Habit – 6 Lessons from the Trenches

Could you imagine what life would be like if you automatically did the things that led to success and if doing those things was easier than not doing them? That’s what should happen when you build a solid set of habits, and that is the path I have laid out for myself.

At the beginning of this year, I outlined my plan to build a set of habits for myself, rather than achieving goals. Each habit would be worked on for eight weeks to get it properly “installed,” and then I would move on to the next habit.

For a detailed look at the plan, you can read the post here:

Resolution #1: No More Resolutions!

Eight weeks have gone by, which means habit number 1 is done! I wanted to share my experience of building habit #1 with you in case:

1. You were following the same habit plan I outlined in the original post. Or…
2. You want to try it for yourself now

The first habit was to eliminate morning procrastination by having three specific tasks I completed before I went into my usual, “procrastination routine.” The three tasks were:

1. Write 1,000 words of fiction
2. Write 2,000 words of non-fiction
3. Complete three marketing activities, not matter how small or big each one was.

I was pretty confident that building this habit would have a huge impact on my productivity, business results, and personal satisfaction.

I’m proud to say that I followed the plan very closely, and have made a lot of progress. More importantly, for you, is that I learned quite a few things that may help you as you work to build your own habits:

1) Habits are Tough Things to Build

 

Colloquial wisdom says that it takes 21 days to build a habit. Colloquial wisdom is kind of wrong…

The 21 day benchmark was from the work of Maxwell Martz about 50 years ago, and wasn’t really about building a new habit. I came across another article that references a study that seems a little more current and on point:

How Long to Form a Habit?

Not surprisingly, the study concludes that the length of a time it takes to build a habit is related to the difficulty of the activity. The examples in the study ranged from 18 to 254 days.

Yup, some of the habit took over eight months to install.

For me, after eight weeks, I feel I am much farther along towards making my morning work routine habitual, but it’s not quite there yet.

A habit, if you define it as I do, has two critical qualities:

1. It’s harder to not do than to do
2. It happens automatically, without thinking.

Number one is easier to attain than number two. I feel I am at a point where if I don’t do my morning work routine I feel edgy. However, what remains to be seen is if that’s because it’s becoming a habit or because I made a public commitment to do it. I assume it is some combination of the two, but as I continue on, I believe it will be more and more habit based.

The second quality is the real goal: where you just do the activity without thinking. I still need to think about what I need to do, and then make a very conscious decision to start my morning writing. So it’s not a habit in that sense. Yet.

What You Can Do With This: If you undertake a habit building plan of your own, don’t expect instant results. And don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t still feel automatic after 21 days, 60 days, or more. It takes time, and the more complicated the habit, the longer it will take.

2) The Process is Worth It

What if you try this plan and don’t build a habit? Was it all a waste of time? Not at all…

After two months, I may not have a full-on habit, but I will say that my morning productivity has been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay higher than it was before. I have written tremendous amount, and a I got a lot done.

As I look at the remaining five habits I plan on building, I can honestly say that if I spend eight weeks on them and they don’t become new habits, the effort will still have been worth it. Progress will have been made. Habit or no, the time spent will not be a waste.

What You Can Do With This: As you consider your habit building plan, try to set up your activities so that even if you don’t build a habit, you will still have made good use of your time. This will make it easier to stay on track and to move on to the next habit even if the first one doesn’t stick.

3) The Gradual Progression Method is Brilliant

A huge component of the program I am following is that you start out extremely small, and then increase a little but each week. You don’t jump in on day one of week one and try to do your full habit.

In my case, week one involved writing 125 words of fiction, 250 words of non-fiction, and doing one simple marketing activity each day. Each week I increased those numbers a little bit. By week 8 I hit my “1,000 fiction, 2,000 non-fiction, and 3 marketing activities” goal.

This worked incredibly well. The first two weeks seemed excruciatingly slow at times. I would finish my entire morning habit plan in about 30 minutes. However, by gradually increasing my commitment, I never felt overwhelmed.

Sure, by the time I got to week eight I felt like I had a lot of writing to do, but since it was only a small increase over the week before, it wasn’t a problem.

I am pretty confident that if I started out on day one and said, “ok, you’re going to write 3,000 words and take three marketing activities every day,” I would have given up by day four…

What You Can Do With This: If you want to undertake a large change in your life, and the “Massive Action/Cold Turkey” approaches have failed for you, I highly recommend that you give the gradual progression method a try.

4) The Gradual Progression Method Also Has Its Limitations

There is a limitation to the gradual progression plan: Since you increase a little each week over eight weeks, you only spend one week fully implementing your habit. For me, I only spent one week writing the full amount I had laid out for myself.

Clearly, one week isn’t enough time to install a new habit.

So, while I spent eight weeks building the habit of “morning productivity,” I only spent one week building the full habit of writing 3,000 words and doing three marketing activities.

For the remaining five habits, my plan is to continue the gradual progression, but to reach my final goal by the end of week five or six. That will give me two to three weeks of not increasing at all, but rather simply practicing at my end goal.

What You Can Do With This: Play around with your progression and find what works best for you. Find the balance in your gradual progression where your weekly increase is enough for you to reach your end goal with a couple of weeks to spare, but small enough that it doesn’t seem overwhelming.

5) Ding Happens

I am happy to say that in eight weeks, there were only five days that I missed implementing my habit plan. Two of those were planned in advance (I wasn’t working because a friend was visiting or I was travelling for a vacation day). Two were because I got caught out of town due to snow and didn’t have my work stuff with me. Only one day was missed simply because I fell into an old bad habit of procrastination.

Still, those three unplanned days, two for snow and one just because I’m me, made me feel down and guilty. The back-to-back snow days were a Wednesday and Thursday. It was incredibly tempting to me to just bag the plan for that Friday and “pick up again on Monday.”

Bad idea.

The key to habit building is to do it as consistently as possible. Setbacks will of course occur (Ding Happens!), but what’s important is how well you deal with those setbacks.

If you feel guilty, get mad at life for throwing you off, and then decide to quite (temporarily or permanently), then you are simply letting life push you around.

A better approach is to accept the fact that Ding Happens, things don’t always go as planned, and you’re not perfect. Then, forgive yourself for the missed day and get right back to it the next day.

An occasional misstep on the path to habit building isn’t a problem. The problem occurs when one misstep leads to two, which leads to three, which leads to a pattern that ends in giving up.

What You Can Do With This: Resolve now to not beat yourself up when you misstep. If you’re human, you will. Remind yourself to simply accept it, learn from it, and keep following your plan.

6) Reevaluation is Important

I will say this: Now that I have spent some time doing a tremendous amount of writing, I am not sure that the habit I set out for myself is optimal.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the output, and I still believe in the benefits of writing a tremendous amount every day.

The only problem is that writing that many new words takes time, and there are other things to do all day. Which means that while I am writing a lot, I have little time left over to edit, format, and post articles. I am currently sitting on 15-20 drafts that are anywhere from 60-9% complete!

Now that I’ve fulfilled my eight week commitment, I am going to reevaluate. Perhaps I will lower the total word count but add in an editing component. Or perhaps I will stick to the plan four days a week and devote one day to nothing but finishing up articles.

What You Can Do With This: The theoretical plan you lay out before you start may prove to be sub-optimal once you actually start implementing it. For the sake of self-discipline, stick out the first eight weeks as you originally planned (unless you are 100% sure that it makes no sense to continue). Once that time is past, however, take a look at whether the new habit is fully serving you or whether you need to change it.

In Conclusion

Everyone is different. I’m hoping I can decrease your learning curve by sharing some of the lessons I have learned so far. However, the only way you will figure this out it to try it for yourself, and figure out what works best for you.

I strongly encourage you to try to build one new habit over the next eight weeks. It is an incredibly powerful way to create a foundation that will lead to long term gains with less struggle and stress. And who doesn’t want that…?

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