2 main ways you can condition a habit:<ul><li>Classical conditioning: a paired association with a trigger and a behavior. Going to the gym after you wake up each morning is this kind of habit.</li><li>Operant conditioning: you not only associate a trigger with a behavior, but you reward that pairing, to accelerate the habit-forming process.</li></ul>

Conditioning a habit

The basic process for building all habits is basically the same: you repeatedly condition the behavior you want, over time, until it becomes automatic.
But no habit starts out automatic; there’s a deliberate period, where you must consciously apply yourself to make a certain behavior your default.

Building habits

Keep track of how many days in a row you’ve successfully followed your habit. As your chain gets longer and longer, you become increasingly committed to the habit.Pros:<ul><li>Maintains habits over a longer timeframe than a 30-day trial.</li><li>Better for things you already do (or are easy to do).</li><li>The longer your chain, the more serious your commitment. </li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>Accidental slip-ups or situations where your habit becomes impossible can collapse your motivation.</li><li>Many habits don’t work on an easy daily or weekly interval.</li></ul>

Don’t Break the Chain

Avoid thinking about changing a habit, but instead think about changing your self-conception.Pros:<ul><li> “I’m a healthy person now,” for example can trigger eating better, exercising more and quitting smoking and drinking all at once.</li><li>If successful, these can make not following the habit unthinkable. </li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>If you’re trying to change your identity but you still really like the old you, the change won’t last.</li><li>Hard to plan for and pull off. </li></ul>

Identity-Driven Habit Changes

This strategy works by deputizing others to enforce your habit for you.Pros:<ul><li>No formal rules or mechanisms are required, just the social pressure from the outside.</li><li>If you find yourself constantly breaking your own commitments, this may be the only tool you can use to effectively control your behavior.</li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>Most people won’t care about your behavior as much as you should.</li><li>Doesn’t work if others aren’t watching you while you perform the habit.</li></ul>

Tattletale Tactics

The goal is to do it every day (if possible) but if you miss a day, you must do the habit the following day.Pros:<ul><li>Easier to keep up for longer stretches with harder habits.</li><li>Easier to handle on an irregular schedule.</li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>You’ll be much more likely to take days off unnecessarily if you know it’s only two-in-a-row that count.</li><li>If you sometimes do X, and sometimes don’t, it will take longer to make the association automatic. </li></ul>

Never Miss Twice

It means practicing the habit a bunch of times in an artificial situation so that it occurs more automatically in real life.Pros:<ul><li>For when you think you won’t be able to consciously control your reaction in the real situation without practice.</li><li>When the behavior you want to perform requires skill or knowledge you might not possess without practice.</li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>The practice may not fully transfer to the real situation.</li><li>Practicing multiple times in the same session is known to have a weaker impact on long-term changes to your behavior.</li></ul>

Pretraining

Ignore the process of creating habits altogether and simply focus on a project that will force them to occur.Pros:<ul><li>You can often change multiple habits at the same time with less overhead. </li><li>Help you be flexible about adopting and dropping habits based on what works.</li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>Once the project is done, the habits may go with them.</li><li>A project can often eat up or push out other good habits.</li></ul>

Project-Driven Habits

You commit to some change for 30 days, then tou can go back to your old ways. But having spent thirty days applying a new behavior is often enough to convince you to stick with it.Pros:<ul><li>Can handle more significant/difficult behavior changes you might be unlikely to start with a perpetual commitment.</li><li>Fosters an experimental mindset, rather than assuming you already know what’s best.</li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>30 days probably isn’t enough to actually make something a habit.</li><li>Without a long-term plan, many 30-day trials will revert back to the original behavior.</li></ul>

The 30-Day Trial

The basic process for building all habits is basically the same: you repeatedly condition the behavior you want, over time, until it becomes automatic. There's two main ways you can condition a habit. One is through classical conditioning. This is simply a paired association with a trigger and a behavior.

Building habits

Similar ideas to Building habits

Habits are mental shortcuts

The Mechanics Of Habit Formation

When habits are useful