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What's the Best Way to Make a Habit? Comparing Seven Different Approaches | Scott H Young
The 30-Day Trial
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:
- Can handle more significant/difficult behavior changes you might be unlikely to start with a perpetual commitment.
- Fosters an experimental mindset, rather than assuming you already know what’s best.
Cons:
- 30 days probably isn’t enough to actually make something a habit.
- Without a long-term plan, many 30-day trials will revert back to the original behavior.
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Building habits
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.
Conditioning a habit
- 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.
- Operant conditioning: you not only associate a trigger with a behavior, but you reward that pairing, to accelerate the habit-forming process.
Don’t Break the Chain
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:
- Maintains habits over a longer timeframe than a 30-day trial.
- Better for things you already do (or are easy to do).
- The longer your chain, the more serious your commitment.
Cons:
- Accidental slip-ups or situations where your habit becomes impossible can collapse your motivation.
- Many habits don’t work on an easy daily or weekly interval.
Never Miss Twice
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:
- Easier to keep up for longer stretches with harder habits.
- Easier to handle on an irregular schedule.
Cons:
- You’ll be much more likely to take days off unnecessarily if you know it’s only two-in-a-row that count.
- If you sometimes do X, and sometimes don’t, it will take longer to make the association automatic.
Pretraining
It means practicing the habit a bunch of times in an artificial situation so that it occurs more automatically in real life.
Pros:
- For when you think you won’t be able to consciously control your reaction in the real situation without practice.
- When the behavior you want to perform requires skill or knowledge you might not possess without practice.
Cons:
- The practice may not fully transfer to the real situation.
- Practicing multiple times in the same session is known to have a weaker impact on long-term changes to your behavior.
Project-Driven Habits
Ignore the process of creating habits altogether and simply focus on a project that will force them to occur.
Pros:
- You can often change multiple habits at the same time with less overhead.
- Help you be flexible about adopting and dropping habits based on what works.
Cons:
- Once the project is done, the habits may go with them.
- A project can often eat up or push out other good habits.
Tattletale Tactics
This strategy works by deputizing others to enforce your habit for you.
Pros:
- No formal rules or mechanisms are required, just the social pressure from the outside.
- If you find yourself constantly breaking your own commitments, this may be the only tool you can use to effectively control your behavior.
Cons:
- Most people won’t care about your behavior as much as you should.
- Doesn’t work if others aren’t watching you while you perform the habit.
Identity-Driven Habit Changes
Avoid thinking about changing a habit, but instead think about changing your self-conception.
Pros:
- “I’m a healthy person now,” for example can trigger eating better, exercising more and quitting smoking and drinking all at once.
- If successful, these can make not following the habit unthinkable.
Cons:
- If you’re trying to change your identity but you still really like the old you, the change won’t last.
- Hard to plan for and pull off.
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