Forming a habit is natural, whether good or bad(mostly bad). Some things require conscious efforts, while a few tasks that we performed are subconscious in nature.

But, have you ever thought that your habits can have an impact over a long period? Smoking 5 Cigarettes a day can give you cancer after 25 years. At the same time, a 30-minute daily walk will help you have a healthy heart in your old age.

Habits don’t add up in a linear fashion but have a compounding effect.

A 1% improvement in a task for 365 days will make you 37 times better.
A 1% decline each day for a year can lead to near zero.

We always think of making drastic changes if we want to make improvements in a particular field. Score better marks in the SAT’s, study every day for 5 hours. Or work out for 3 hours to lose 40 pounds in six weeks. The idea is not to punish yourself. It will eventually lead to burnout and complete abandonment of the task.

A tiny change in a consistent way can lead to surprising results in the long run. But before we go into the nitty-gritty of it, let’s understand the logic behind habits.

How habits work

A habit can be broken down into 4 parts.

CUE
CRAVING
RESPONSE
REWARD

Take, for instance; say when you are unable to study(Cue), so you feel frustrated and want to be relieved (Craving). You pick up your phone to check your Instagram feed (Response). And, After watching a few videos, your craving to feel relieved is satisfied(Reward).

There is always a reward that makes us do a particular thing repeatedly, building into a habit. You have an argument with your boss, you go out and light a cigarette. It causes your brain to release dopamine, and voila, stress relieved (although temporary). Every habit formed will have this endless loop from cue to reward.

Ditch Goals

Having a goal is short-term thinking. Every sprinter who competes with Usain Bolt has the same goal, which is winning the race.

Winning the game is a temporary satisfaction. The closest example I could give is of one of my best friends. As an obese guy, he started running every day to lose weight. After getting decent results, he set a goal for running a half marathon. And he did. A heavy guy completing a 21 km marathon was an achievement beyond imagination. But once he achieved his goal of running a marathon, he was back to his bad habit of overeating. The result; he went from running three days a week to one day a week. And after being irregular for three months, he stopped running altogether.

Short-term happiness can make one feel complacent. So people tend to move back to old habits once they achieve their goals. The temporary high provided by goal completion can act as a hindrance to long-term progress.

Create an Identity

In the above story, the goal of running a marathon gave him temporary satisfaction. He was back to square one after six months of hard work. The idea is not to run a marathon but to become a marathon runner. Not to write a novel but to become a writer.

Stephen King writes six pages each day without fail. A system that has helped him write more than 80 books in the last 50 years.

There is a fad amongst people to participate in challenges- 45 days challenge to lose 10 pounds. We can sustain a drastic change only up to a certain limit. The goal to lose 10 pounds will lead to a change in your behaviour for a small amount of time. Maybe, you will get a temporary high after losing 10 pounds, and after that, back to your old habits. But creating an identity as someone who exercises regularly will be beneficial in the long term achievement — staying healthy. The focus should be on building sustainable habits than achieving brief bouts of successes.

So, the next time someone asks me if I am going to say that I am a writer rather than saying I am trying to write articles. Identity of being a writer embraced! And, identity can only be created by a habit, not by setting short term goals.

All said and done, but the question is how to go about it.

Coming to that, the author James Clear has defined the 4 Laws of creating good habits.

1st Law (Cue) — Make it obvious
2nd Law (Craving) — Make it attractive
3rd Law (Response) — Make it easy
4th Law (Reward) — Make it satisfying

If we invert the Four Laws, it can help you break bad habits

Make it invisible
Make it unattractive
Make it difficult
Make it unsatisfying

1st Law — Make it Obvious

Habit is nothing but the brain reacting to the cues we get from our environment. It becomes imperative for us to act on the cue, and it becomes a form of habit over a long time span.

Suppose you want to make a habit of drinking at least 4 litres of water. Your brain needs to get a cue, i.e. presence of a water bottle in your surrounding so that you act can upon it. For instance, if you are sitting in your bedroom, and have a water bottle placed on your table. Your brain will trigger a signal that you need to keep drinking water at regular intervals.

Deciding time and location is another way to trigger a cue. When I have to write an article, I decide the time and the place where I shall complete the task of writing. Automatically, there is a trigger at that particular time, let’s say 10 pm, I need to sit on the table and type 500 words. I have my laptop open, making it obvious for me to start writing.

Habit stacking is another way that can act as a trigger. You might have seen some people have a habit of taking a walk after lunch. For them, once they finish lunch, their brain triggers a cue of walking for 15 minutes. This is basically stacking a good habit of walking with the neutral habit of eating lunch.

Last year, I developed a habit of reading in the morning. So pouring my morning coffee gives me a cue to pick up my book kept on the reading table. Stacking is one of the most effective ways of building good habits as it creates a momentum of habits. One after another.

Environment plays a huge role in building good habits. A book on the table before sleeping will make me more likely to read it in the morning. Purely, because of its visibility when I wake up.

The exact opposite needs to be done for breaking a bad habit. A box of chocolates on the table will make you binge more. A Cellphone on the table will make it difficult to focus while studying. When you enter a bar, the whole situation acts as a cue to get drunk. If a suitable environment is a step towards building a good habit, making it unattractive will help you cut a bad habit.

Reducing exposure to the environment that triggers a cue to indulge in a bad habit will certainly reduce the chances of doing it.

2nd Law — Make it Attractive

Habits have a dopamine-driven feedback loop. Habits that are highly addictive are associated with a high level of dopamine release. Our desire to eat junk food, have sex or consume alcohol is highly satisfying. The dopamine hit not only occurs during intense pleasure-seeking activity but also with anticipation of that pursuit.

Any activity that involves anticipation of a reward will become highly attractive. You post a photo on Instagram, get more likes and hence posting a picture will become a gratifying act. Most social media applications are designed in such a way that using them becomes highly satisfying.

To do 25 pushups every day is a need, but checking your notifications is a want. Clubbing a high reward activity with a good habit will make it more attractive. For example, I shall write 500 words before I can check my Instagram feed. The anticipation of an extremely satisfying activity will make a habit more attractive.

We happen to imitate three groups — the close ones i.e. our family and friends, the many (this can vary depending on the context) and the powerful(whom we look up to). If you wish to become a bodybuilder, hanging out with the other bodybuilders will normalize your habits. Tracking protein intake and following regular workouts is a norm in that group. If you want to create an identity as a reader, joining a book club (the many) will be more beneficial. As a fiction writer, I tend to follow Quentin Tarantino (the powerful). A continuous influence of the close ones, the many and the powerful can make a massive difference in creating good habits.

Similarly, a bad habit ought to be made unattractive. You need to highlight the disadvantages attached to bad habits. For instance, drinking can be associated with a terrible hangover. The continuous reminder of a bad experience can help make a bad habit less attractive.

3rd Law — Make it easy

You don’t have to try too much too soon, but a little, too many times. If you want to write a book, do not get bogged down by the idea. Start by just showing up. When you show up, you might as well write a line. After writing a line, you can proceed to write a paragraph. Then, a chapter and without even realizing you will finish writing a book. Starting small and performing it regularly will lead to the formation of a habit.

Consider the role of technology in our life. It is addictive because it makes our life convenient. Talking to your parents who live in a different country in the 1950s was not that easier. Today, all you need is an internet connection and a cellphone. Booking a flight was never so easy. Today, it’s just a matter of few clicks. In a way, if you think, Travelling has become more lucrative than it was before because it is easier than ever.

It is behavioural for humans to repeat things that come easy. The more friction for a task, the lesser the chances of doing it. Surrounding yourself with the right environment will make the task easier. Sitting with a phone on the desk might increase the friction while writing an article. Whereas, opening your writing software 5 minutes before you start writing will make the task a little easier. Having your notes ready before you start will make the writing process much smoother.

I have used this technique unknowingly during workouts. Whenever I used to take my phone to the gym, it was always tempting to read every message or check Instagram or Facebook. My rest period between the sets kept on increasing, and the overall time spent in the gym went up. It used to deviate my focus from the workout. As soon as I started leaving the phone at home, my workout time became shorter as I could focus more on lifting weights. Apart from that, checking my phone after an hour became more rewarding (2nd law). Basically, I decreased the friction in my activity.

Similarly, to break a habit, increase friction. If you are battling alcohol addiction, having a bar at home is not going to help you. Avoid keeping bottles of alcohol at home, avoid going to bars, make it as difficult as possible.

4th Law — Make it Satisfying

Most times, our future actions get defined by past results. We tend to repeat activities that are rewarding and shun the things with bad experiences attached to them. The first three laws will help you perform the task this time, but the 4th Law will make you repeat it next time.

We always give more preference to instant gratification than delayed rewards. We want immediate appreciation. I want my first article to get a million views. If it doesn’t, then I will be demotivated and stop writing. If I will workout every day for a month, I want to look like Arnold. If I don’t, I will stop working out. We always yearn for instant results.

Tracking and reporting progress is a delightful experience. Tracking your habits at regular intervals is satisfying. It’s a policy of being honest to yourself. A simple practice of noting down your body fat percentage every week will give you a cue to repeat your next workout. When you know that you are on your path to losing body fat, it becomes more lucrative to keep continuing. Completing a task that you had assigned to yourself, in itself is satisfying.

Another way to delay a reward is to make it gainful. If I write 12 articles a month, I will treat myself to a meal at my favourite restaurant. If I write 200 articles in a year, I shall gift myself an Ipad. The delayed reward will make the pursuit more fulfiling.

Last year I attempted to write fiction. I was doubtful if I shall finish writing it. But, one of my pals was also writing a book. We made sure that we held each other accountable for the task. There would be a day where one of us would falter, but we kept pushing each other. Having an accountability partner made sure that I was on my track to write at least 800 words a day. Getting back on track was always easy.

You can do the same for breaking a bad habit. If you aim to lose fat, you can track the number of days you went without eating sugar or junk food. If you miss a day, confess it to a friend. Tell him to hold you accountable. Let’s say, the day you skip your workout, you will pay for his or her meal. The feeling of punishment will make that habit unattractive.

Final Thought

The biggest threat to failing at something is boredom. We get used to an activity, and the boredom takes over. The Goldilocks Rule states that we experience peak motivation when we reach the top of our ability. The only way is to make your next task a little more challenging than your previous task.

Pushing over the edge of your achieved ability will help you to stay motivated.
Boredom can become inevitable. But, to gain mastery over a trait, you need to repeat the process again and again. That’s where work ethic comes into the picture. As the author James Clear says, professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

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