The Habit Hacking Formula: Transform Your Routines and Build Habits That Last Forever

You are reading an excerpt from The Challenge, a newsletter where I discuss self-improvement, goal-setting, habits, time management, and health tips and tricks.

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Building habits is a simple thing. Our species has done it for millions of years. And our ability to automate activities gave us the power to evolve in many fields. But we have always done it out of intuition.

If you try to build a habit deliberately, you must know how it works. Otherwise, you will fail.

When I started with personal growth, I failed many times because I had to figure out what I was doing. And every time I failed, I learned something new.

So, let’s start with a definition – what’s a habit? Have you ever wondered?

It’s easy to find a simple answer. A habit is a repetitive action we do every day. But that’s not enough to understand how to build one.

First, you must understand the difference between Goal Habits and Purpose Habits.

• Goal Habits are tasks that imply success or failure every time you finish them. And every repetition is independent.
• Purpose Habits are tasks you must repeat to achieve a long-term goal that defines your life.

You can find many answers online to this question. Everybody tries to sell you the fastest way to build healthy habits. But unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

According to science, you will build a habit between 18 and 254 days. And this wide range depends on many things:

• your predisposition for the habit
• the type of habit (goal or purpose-based)
• and the formula you use to build it.

You can’t control the first two factors of the formula. But you can become better at building automatic, repetitive tasks.

It took me years to discover how my body works and how to build lasting habits. But talking with some of you, I found out we are similar. And many of you experienced the same things.

Therefore, I wrote this habit-building formula to help everyone in this community who wants to improve.

I split the formula into six steps:

1. Map your habits.
2. Bind them to new activities.
3. Build a mental roadmap.
4. Fit your tasks into your schedule.
5. Use rewarding systems carefully.
6. And build a 21-day habit challenge.

First, you must map your habits to understand your good and bad tendencies. And you can use these as entry points for other habits you want to build.

For example, if you have a strong, simple habit like brushing your teeth, you can link it to a new habit like reading. And every time your brain triggers the first habit, it will also carry on the second.

But that will only work if your first habit is strong enough. So, how can you measure habit strength?

You can use this simple formula to give each habit a score between 0 and 100.

Strength = Context Independence x Motivation Threshold

• Context Independence (0-10) defines how much the environment influences your habit. The less it does, the higher you will score.
• Motivation Threshold (0-10) is the mental strength you need to engage with the habit. The higher the motivation you need, the lower the score.

You can rank your habits strength as:

• Strong with a score above 70.
• Medium with a score between 50 and 70.
• And weak scores below 50.

Once you have a map, it’s time to use it to find the treasure, right?

In this case, the treasure is your ability to build new habits. So, how can you find it?

It’s simple. Just bind your strong and medium habits to new things you want to try.

You can use this simple pattern:

"After/Before [habit you already have], I will [habit you want to build]."

But there are a few things you might consider.

• Don’t bind medium-strength habits with new things that don’t excite you. They won’t have enough power to carry them.
• Also, you can bind new healthy activities to bad habits. So, every time you do something bad, you compensate for it. And hopefully, in the long run, you get rid of the unhealthy part.

Most habits we want to build fail before even starting. And that’s because we never have time to introduce those new activities into our routines.

But a simple visualization exercise could do the trick!

You will likely start a new habit if you visualize the exact steps it will take to achieve it at least once. And there are plenty of studies that show that. Huberman talked a lot about it on his podcast (which I also used as a starting point for this article.) Here you can find the full episode: The Science of Making & Breaking Habits .

You won’t have any benefits in terms of consistency if you schedule a habit. However, we are busy people. We are full of commitments. So, a strict schedule can help us track everything we wish to do.

• As you wake up, dive into physical exercise and external activities. Use it for exhausting activities with high returns.
• Then, your serotonin levels will rise. So, you want to slow down with relaxing activities like yoga, meditation, or other self-reflection habits.
• And finally, you have to go to sleep. So keep this time for activities that help you transition into sleep.

Have you ever noticed that part of the happiness we get for completing a task comes from thinking we are about to finish it?

Studies show that the expectation of a reward can already release dopamine in our brains. And those feelings grow even bigger when we succeed. But there’s also a downside.

If you anticipate your success and then fail, the failure will also hit stronger. So, you must be careful when using a reward system because it can become a nightmare if you are not disciplined .

Now that you know everything about habits, it’s time to create some. So, I will give you a technique I learned from Huberman that helped me build new habits consistently. I call it the 21-Day Habit Challenge.

• First, list six new habits you want to try over the next 21 days. I expect you to build only four of five of them.
• Every day, you will try to achieve all your habits.
• Chunk the 21 days in slots of two days.
• After 21 days, only keep those habits that became part of you and brought good changes in your life.
• Repeat those habits for 21 more days until you reach automation.

Here are some books you can buy through my Amazon referral links to support The Challenge.

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Get Things Done by David Allen
• The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

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