Humans are creatures of habit.
Whether we realize it or not, our unconscious tendencies dictate the quality of lives we live. Because that’s what habits are: activities that are practiced so often they become natural.
From the time we wake up, the meals we eat, the side of the bed we sleep, the people we see, and even our distinguished profanities hold some influence over our future. Of course, we all wish good habits came easy… But ice cream just happens to taste a lot better than salad.
Let’s face it – good habits suck. They are boring, repetitive, dull, and mundane. We all know they are healthy, but who in their right mind wants to wake up at 5 am to drink lemon water and workout?
Thankfully, there is a way to make good habits enjoyable and sustainable. 5 ways, actually.
This article discusses 5 different methods for building consistent habits, explained by some of the world’s leading experts and peak performance coaches.
1) Tiny Gains
The Tiny Gains method is a proven habit-building framework taught by author and entrepreneur James Clear. The idea is that slow and steady improvement will yield far superior results than any shortcut method.
About James Clear
- Author of Atomic Habits, which spent 15 consecutive months on the New York Times Bestseller list
- Creator of the 3-2-1 Email Newsletter with over 650,000 Subscribers
- Generates 10 million visits per year on his blog
- ESPN Academic All-American as a Baseball Pitcher
- Weightlifter
- Founded The Habits Academy, the training institute for organizations and individuals who are interested in building better habits
The Tiny Gains Method
The goal of the Tiny Gains approach is to improve by just 1% every day. This might seem like nothing, but over the course of the year you will have improved your skill level by 3700%.
The key is to start as small and easy as possible. Your goal should be so small you have absolutely no excuse not to do it.
For example: you want to start going to the gym. The Tiny Gains method recommends to only workout for 5 minutes on your first day, 10 minutes on your second day, 15 minutes on the third, and so forth.
After one week, you will feel comfortable just getting yourself in the gym.
After one month, you will begin to immediately notice changes to your physique.
After 3 months, you will achieve your lifestyle goal and going to the gym comes second nature.
The key is to be patient. This is a slow, gradual process. Take the time to integrate it into your lifestyle. If you go too fast, you will burn out. It’s about finding a balance between sustainability and effort.
2) 2-Day Rule
The 2-Day Rule is what propelled Matt D’Avella’s life from a college kid with 6-figure debt to one of YouTube’s highest rated content creators.
About Matt D’Avella
- YouTube Content Creator with 2.7 million subscribers
- Professional Filmmaker
- One of the pioneers of the Minimalism movement
- Eliminated over 100 K of debt in a few years
- Put on 20 pounds of muscle in 2 years
The 2-Day Rule Method
The 2-day rule is simple: you are not allowed to skip more than 1 consecutive day in a row without practicing your new habit.
Building new habits is uncomfortable, so it’s easy to quit when we don’t see any progress. We become bored, disinterested, and begin to wonder why we even thought we stood a chance. This is called resistance.
Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art, defines resistance as:
“Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction. To yield to resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are born to be.”
The 2-day rule is an effective remedy because it enforces consistency – the antidote to resistance.
For example: your goal is to lose 20 pounds.
Using the 2-day rule, you may plan to go to the gym on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with specified cheat meals on Wednesday and Saturday.
Under no circumstances can you skip the gym for more than 1 day in a row. Zero. Even if you workout for 5 minutes… it doesn’t matter.
The goal is to at least get yourself in the gym, even if you have to crawl. Because once you start, you will likely break through the resistance barrier. You might even have a killer workout.
The 2-day rule forces you to overcome your mental barriers. As you progress through your plan, you may begin to find it easier to live a healthy lifestyle than not. That’s why the rule is so effective – it’s a lifestyle shift.
3) The Power of Less
The Power of Less is a book written by Leo Babauta that demonstrates how to break down goals into manageable tasks, increase your efficiency, hone your focus, and ultimately create better habits.
In his book, he offers the Power of Less Challenge, detailed below.
About Leo Babauta
- Owner of Zen Habits, a massively popular blog with 2 million email subscribers and 760K monthly visitors
- Learned how to quit smoking
- Lost over 40 pounds
- Went from being a non-runner to completing several triathlons
- Became a vegetarian
- Tripled his income
- Wrote 2 best selling books; one novel and one non-fiction
- Eliminated all of his debt
The Power of Less Method
Similar to the Tiny Gains method, The Power of Less is about focusing on one small habit at a time. It is impossible to learn a new habit when bombarded by other stimuli.
To help, Leo created the 30-day Power of Less Challenge. It’s a simple, fun, and accountable way to build new habits. Here are the steps:
- Select one habit or goal for the month that you wish to achieve. Make sure it’s realistic and measurable.
- Write down your plan, which should include daily goals, the dates you’ll achieve them, and your trigger (what you do or consume before your goal that “triggers” it)
- Post your goal publicly, and tell as many people about it as possible. This will help hold you accountable.
- Report on your daily progress. This part is vital – if you do not report, you will lose track of your results and consequently lose motivation.
For example:
- Gain 5 pounds of lean muscle
- Daily Routine: Workout 5 days a week, increase calories to 3000 per day. Weekly goal: Increase by 1.25 pounds every Sunday. Trigger: Coffee
- Update Instagram story every week with progress pictures
- Create a table with progress pictures and daily weigh-ins.
To effectively complete this challenge, Leo suggests a couple of rules you should follow
- Do only one habit at a time
- Choose a relatively easy goal
- Choose a goal that you can measure
- Be consistent
- Report Daily
- Stay Positive
4) Create Incentives
The incentive technique is the most brutal of them all, using avoidance of pain as a motivator. It’s extremely effective – humans will always do more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure.
I used Tim Ferriss’ framework for this method. If you are not familiar with Tim, he has quite the resume:
About Tim Ferriss
- Former professional break dancer
- National Chinese Kickboxing Champion
- First American to hold the Guinness World Record in Tango
- Author of 5 #1 New York Times Bestsellers
- Host of The Tim Ferriss Show, which has over 500 Million downloads
- One of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and one of Fortune’s “40 under 40”
- Has amassed a $100M+ net worth
- Fluent in English, Spanish, Japanese, German, and Mandarin
The Incentive Method
Tim suggests that the best way to make a habit stick is to put yourself at risk for not achieving the goal.
He recommends using sites like coach.me, stickk.com, and dietbet.com, where you actually put money and reputation on the line for not completing your objective.
Conversely, you can have side bets with your friends where you bundle your money together and the winners split the pot. Or you can go to even more extremes and have a friend post an embarrassing picture of you on social media should you fail. Tim states:
“It’s not that we lack information, it’s that we lack sufficient incentives. You need a carrot or even better, and this is not depressing, this is useful, a meaningful stick if you don’t do what you have said is important for you to do.”
Tim Also uses the “Worst Case Scenario” approach that forces you to define your fears. Ask yourself:
- What is the worst possible outcome?
- 10 years down the line, what could happen to me if I do not practice this habit?
- How will it affect me emotionally, physically, financially, and psychologically?
- Am I putting my health, wealth, or sanity at risk by not practicing?
Far too often we break good habits because we become bored and disinterested. But if we just throw in a little risk, we can achieve wonders.
5) Dopamine Detox
I credit Alex Becker with this method, however it’s used in many different variations among peak performers and other entrepreneurs. It’s based on the idea that arousal and excitement can help rewire your brain to form new habits.
About Alex Becker
- Started an SEO company and scaled it to $4 million a year in a few years
- Wrote Best Selling book called The Ten Pillars of Wealth
- Started a supplement company called Spekter and sold it for over 7 figures
- Founded email marketing software called Market Hero
- Has helped 10 000+ entrepreneurs and business owners through his online courses and consulting business
- 500K+ Subscribers on YouTube
The Dopamine Detox Method
To make a new habit enjoyable, you must rewire your brain to trigger dopamine while completing the activity.
Dopamine is a neurochemical that activates during the pursuit of reward. It’s extremely pleasurable and addictive – for better or for worse.
It’s the relief of red wine after work, the thrill of riding a skyline rollercoaster, or cashing out big on the slot machines. These are characterized as high states of arousal.
Arousal
When you are aroused you feel more motivated, confident, stronger, and energized. That why some people are able to work 80 hour weeks without any sign of burning out, or wake up at 4 am without a single cup of coffee – they are physically stimulated by their goal or vision.
To make new habits more sustainable and enjoyable, you must attach an arousal to your goal. The best way to do this is to actually eliminate all other forms of arousal that are not associated with your new lifestyle change. This can be done through a dopamine detox.
Think of all the dopamine you waste on useless pleasures like social media, TV, video games, junk food, and alcohol. These mindless practices are stealing motivation from you that could be channelled to more meaningful activities.
By eliminating or reducing your energy spent on these mindless triggers, you can train your brain to recalibrate your dopamine triggers. The idea is to lower your standard of pleasure so much that you become excited by boring things, like new healthy habits.
For example: your goal is to read 1 book every week, even though you find reading incredibly boring. Following Becker’s dopamine method, you must look to your biggest energy vice and completely eliminate it. For most of us, this is social media or video games.
The first week is the hardest. You will find yourself bored and unstable as you are not getting your routine hits of dopamine from your energy vice.
But within two weeks, you will have completely eradicated the need to check any forms of social media or play any video games.
Within one month, you will find reading enjoyable and possibly addictive.
When you achieve your goal and reading becomes second nature, you may slowly reintegrate your energy vice into your life. This, of course, is under the condition that it is used 10% or less of the time than you used it before.
This is not about saving time (although that is a nice benefit). This is about saving your dopamine – your creative, motivational, and inspirational energy – for more meaningful work.