HABIT: It is not what you think

How small things can shape into big thing

It's not seems like but tiny habits can change you what you are. Something you do daily and regularly change you as a person for better or worst. Being 1% better every day leads to 37.7 times better at the end of the year. 

Example smoking one cigarette every day doesn't seems like too much but regularly doing it can cause cancer. 

Also doing exercises everyday doesn't make you bodybuilder instantly but doing it everyday would. 

image courtesy: Atomic Habits by James clear

 Motivation vs environment

We often thinks we need motivation for doing something. But what we actually need is environment. Habits stick in a favorable environment. With motivation you can do something in the momentary basis. You can't do if you are not motivated. But if you set your environment correctly you will do it either with or without motivation. 

Example if you have to read a book but you don't have motivation to read it. Lock yourself in a room with nothing but the book. The environment will make you so board that you will have no other choice but to read it. Do this experiment and tell me what will happen. 

Don't have goals have systems

People think that they need system to achieve result, what they really need is system. There is a difference between having goals and having system. Goal is what you want to do and system is how you do it. System is better than goals let me prove it with 3 points. 

1. Both loser and winners have same goal of winning the game, it's the system what differences them. 

2. Having goal means either you achieve it or you don't. Having system means continue playing the game. 

3. After achieving the goal there is a high probability that you will fall back to you pervious situation. By having system you will not stop even after achieving your goals. That will lead you the path of excellence. 

Example if you goal is want to be a better writer your system should be writing daily. Even if you don't have any goal by writing daily you will become a good writer. 

Become that person whom you idealize.

Changing your identity rather than changing your process or outcome you will make your habits stick more. Changing your identity means changing your belief, your self-image. 

Example  most of the time we say I want to become a runner so we need to run more. It's good thing no doubt but it focus on outcome. But what we need to say, "As I am a runner, I have to run" it changes your identity into a runner. When you change your identity infront of others you want to live up to that identity. 

Where and when.

Most of the time we know what we want to do and yet we don't do it. To overcome this situation we need to specify where and when we want to that habit. If we can specify, the ambiguity will be gone and we will do that habit more often. 

Example I will do 10 pushups everyday on 730 pm at living room. This will make ambiguity gone. And you will stick to this more often than not. 

Habit stacking.

If we can stack one of the current habit with another habit (that we want to do) it will work miraculously. The action of one habit subconsciously lead you to to another habit and then another. 

Example I will brush my teeth after waking up. After brushing I will make my bed. After making bed i will drink water. After drinking water I will read for 30 mins. 

Rewarding yourself.

After completing a good habit give yourself a short reward. I could be after reading or writing for one hour you can have 5 mins of social media. But remember you have to be conscious about your what and how much reward you give. Giving much for doing very small will lead to procrastination. 

You can also apply temptation bundling. Here you can do the work what you want to do after you finishing the work you have to do. Like I can watch YouTube after finishing hour of exercise.

How to stop doing bad habits.

To stop doing bad habits you need to identify those habits. Then you need to create friction doing the habit. The sticking of a habit depends on the friction. More the friction less chance it has sticking. 

Example you need to stop your social media usage. Create more friction. Uninstall every time after using it. Sign in every time when you want to open it. This will stop you from using social media. 

Don't break the habit chain.

Don't break your habit chain once you start it. You will think i just a day, that surely doesn't do anything. But it will. Once you break a steak it will take sometime before you start the habit again. And starting again will be very difficult. Instead of skipping a day you can the minimum of your habit. 

Example instead of skipping writing a page for a day write 1 line. Walk slowly but never backwards. 

Be accountable for your habits.

One way to be constant with your habits is to be accountable for it.  Announce it everywhere so you will feel responsible for doing it. Once you do it your pride will never let you back from doing it. Also you can ask your friend as accountability partner.

Example you can ask your friend to track your habits if you don't do it for one day you will give certain amount of money to them. 

Track your habits visually. 

The reason why we love game because we can see our progress. We can see how much our life remains, how many obstacles we need to overcome, how much progress we made so far. The tracking makes it more fun to play it. Do it with your habits. Track them everyday. 

Example if you need to read a book, track yourself after reading a page. For the first day may you read only page. Make a dairy and write day 1 2 pages. Next day 3, 5, 5, 6, 4, 7  so on and so forth. This will help you yo read the book.

If you want to know more about building Habits and changing your life then I would recommend you to read Atomic Habits by James Clear. It is one of the best in the market for building new habits. You can get a copy from this link here.