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What's the Best Way to Make a Habit? Comparing Seven Different Approaches | Scott H Young
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.
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Key Ideas
The 2 ways you can approach your habits: Progressive and Consistent
- Progressive. You start off easy, make it a little bit harder each time, until you eventually do very difficult things, with a lot less effort.
- Consistent. Do the same...
When you set up a progressive habit, you’re on a path to improvement
Small, incremental adjustments in difficulty are almost certain to push your level up. The downside with progressive habits is that they are harder to sustain.
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Ways to improve your life
There are a few different ways you can go about setting a goal or creating a new habit.
- Target the minimum output. You focus on always doing at least a little bit so t...
When to Focus on the Minimum
Minimum targeting works well for establishing long-term habits.
A goal of, for instance, doing fifty push-ups every day might not be ideal for fitness, but doing something is better than doing nothing.
Another reason to focus on the minimum is that it assumes the difficulty is in starting. To start a process can often be the hardest. Then you want to set a lower threshold to make starting as easy as possible.
When to Target the Average
Focusing on the average makes sense when you're hoping to sustain something, even if it is not always a perfectly easy and consistent output.
It works when you are already putting in a bit of effort, but want to improve that effort over the long-term.
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Key Ideas
A habit of compounding growth
Reading is a habit of compounding growth. When reading, you'll learn more, and you'll generate ideas and motivation for making other changes.
Reading books means you're getting more concentra...
Put the book down
The real cause of reading too few books is that you don't enjoy it enough.
Don't feel compelled to finish a book that has become boring, predictable or unhelpful. Start a new one. You can have many books through various states of completion. Some won't be finished, and that's okay. Reading less is worse than having a few go unfinished.
Build an online library
An obstacle to your reading habit is not having enough interesting books waiting to be read.
Create a list of potentially good books. If you have a Kindle or eReader, get samples of any book you might want to read — Source your wishlist from suggestions from other writers and authors. When someone recommends a book on a blog or tweet, add it to your wishlist.