Habit Building: Laying The Foundations

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There are a lot of intelligent posts written about building new habits and breaking old, bad ones. However a lot of them seem to focus on the later stages of the process where things start to become natural, rather than those difficult early days where you seem to have more failures than successes. At this stage a lot of people become so disheartened when they give in to the temptation of a cigarette after the third day or unnecessarily spend money when they promised they would become more frugal, that they stop trying altogether. This early stage really is distinct from normal habit building techniques and requires a different approach. You need to focus on laying down the foundations of your new habit first, and that’s what this guide will help you to do.

Start small
Start out at a small level and focus purely on that for a few weeks, rather than taking on a big goal that you will have difficulty coming to terms with. Imagine it as though you are steadily climbing a ladder, taking a break on each rung, rather than taking a big leap straight to the fourth or fifth rung. If you want to get into the habit of eating healthy, focus first on eating healthy snacks rather than on changing your entire diet. If you want to get into the habit of going to the gym, focus on just going once a week to start with.

By starting out small you take away the pressures that you might otherwise feel. It’s better to merely stumble over the hurdles at this early stage by having small goals, rather than fall flat on your face because you picked a difficult target to reach that required all your concentration and willpower. Back to that ladder example, each rung can be an ever difficult goal. When it comes to my habit of eating healthy, the first rung would obviously be having healthy snacks, then it could involve making my breakfasts healthy, then my lunches and finally – at the top of the ladder – my dinners. If I ever slip one evening and have a big, greasy burger for dinner that’s fine, I’m only going down one rung of the ladder. I still ate healthy with all my other meals that day.

Don’t micromanage
There seems to be a misconception that having lists and systems in place helps to support you in your habit building, keeping your mind focused on your efforts. However, in the early days that’s part of the problem. I’ve found that I have built up habits more effectively when I wasn’t always reminded of my up-and-down progress. By micromanaging at this stage it creates two problems:

• It puts your efforts on a pedestal. The more focus you put on the habit the more pressure you are putting on yourself. With every successful day you have, that pressure builds. That’s fine if you thrive on it and you are consistently building up your habit with each passing day. However, when you slip up (and you almost certainly will at some point), that pedestal will come crashing down on top of you.
• It amplifies failure. At the early stages of habit building you are quite likely to trip up and fail to hit your goals on a regular basis. That’s part of the process at this stage, you are still gaining from it through knowledge and experience. So, why put so much attention on these failures by having tables full of crosses from when you failed to not smoke or not go for a run in the park? This is why it’s often a bad idea to focus on more than one habit at a time. I failed to hit my targets for a few days with a particular habit and it had a knock-on effect with all the other habits I was working on that had otherwise been progressing well. While I am certainly not saying you should brush these failures under a carpet, don’t put any more emphasis on them than you need to. You want to be able to take lessons from the situation without it discouraging you.

Focus on individual days
Part of the process of not micromanaging your habit building involves focusing on individual days rather than tracking yourself weekly or monthly. That way every little failure is not amplified and you can move onto the next day with a fresh start. Imagine having a stumble midway through the month. What does that mean to you for the rest of the month in terms of motivation?

One idea is to get some sticky notes and put one up somewhere noticeable. Write down the habit you are working on and the day. If/when you hit your target put a tick or cross, then the next day start fresh by binning it and repeating the process. That way your efforts are purely on one day at a time and not with trying to hit a whole week or month’s worth of targets. Every success is amplified, while any failure doesn’t end up in total discouragement. “Ok, I missed my target yesterday but that’s in the past now. I’m going to really go for it today”.

Fix what is holding you back first
Knowledge is power. Understanding why you are in the habit of doing something, or why you are having so much trouble breaking a bad habit provides the sort of personalized information no book or guide can give you. One person I know wanted to get into the habit of going to the gym. However something was holding him back. When he was at the gym he enjoyed it, but it was getting the motivation to go in the first place. When I talked to him about it, it turned out he did not enjoy the same, repetitive walk along a busy road everyday, especially when he was going back home after an hard workout. So I suggested where possible he go with friends, listen to his iPod while he walked or – shocking I know – drive to the gym. Work out what is holding you back or making your efforts unnecessarily difficult, otherwise you will often find yourself trying to work your way through a brick wall.