How Consistency Builds Habits

The Power of Consistency in Habit Building

A habit is something you do consistently. Implementing new habits into your routines can be a challenge. On average it takes 66 days to form a habit, but the time can range from as little as 18 days to 254 days. In the practice of habit-building, consistency is key. That vital role of consistency means that every day you must fight to complete the action and win a battle against your mind many times for the habit to stick.

Outline Actionable Steps

Sometimes the vagueness of your new habit is the reason you fail. For example, if you tell yourself you want to run more often but never really say out loud or write down when you are going to run, this will rarely become a new habit for you and more often than not, you will fail.

A way to solve this issue is to write down the action you want to do, when you want to do it, and where you will do it. This exercise makes it so there is no doubt when you should be doing your habit.

Using Your Environment to Your Advantage: Habit Stacking and Visual Cues

Another useful way to do a habit more often is called habit stacking. In this technique you pick an existing habit, for example, brushing your teeth, and you insert your new habit, for example, free write journaling, after your existing habit. This strategy makes it so that every time you do an existing habit you are reminded of your new habit and you go and do it.

Furthermore, try to add reminders of the habit you're trying to implement in your environment. Going back to my running example you can add a poster of someone running on the wall of your room so you are constantly reminded of your habit.

Making Habits Attractive with External Motivation

When first starting a habit, it is often that you don’t feel like doing it. In those moments you need to make your habit more attractive.

One way to make a habit more attractive is to increase the amount of dopamine available so you feel more motivated to do the activity. An easy thing that increases dopamine is music. For example, if you need to walk your dog but you feel unmotivated, try to put on headphones and you suddenly will feel like doing it. In this practice, you should be careful to not spike your dopamine every time you want to do the habit. Additionally, you can vary how much dopaminergic the music is to make sure it spikes the minimum required amount to get you moving.

Another way to make a habit more attractive is to join a community where the habit is normal. For example, if you want to start reading more, join a book club and you will have more motivation to read. Having a community of like-minded individuals with the same goals will serve as encouragement whenever you don’t want to do your habit.

Lastly, try adding a ritual before the habit. We are creatures of habit so when we recognize an activity we fall into muscle memory. Take advantage of this by doing the same things in the same order right before your new habit. For example, if you need to write a paper but you can’t seem to be able to sit down, try to make your bed and fold some clothes every time before you write. After a couple of times repeating this ritual, your body will start preparing to write when you make your bed. But, make sure you only do the things within the ritual when they are part of the ritual, otherwise the connection won’t be strong enough to have an effect.

Start Easy

Rome was not built in a day. You need to make doing your habit as easy as possible for the maximum rate of success. This means reducing the amount of steps and friction. For example, if you want to get more into working out, start with low-intensity workouts only a couple of days a week and slowly build up the intensity and frequency of your workouts.

Another way to make a habit easier is to set up your environment beforehand so that when you go to do your habit you can do it right away. For example, if you want to cook dinner more often, leave your kitchen already set up with all your ingredients and tools in order and the recipe ready.

Maintain Consistency With a Habit Tracker

As explained above, the power of a habit comes in its consistency. One way to improve consistency is to develop a habit tracker. A habit tracker is a place where every night you check off a box if you did or didn’t do your habit.

This practice adds a level of accountability where you recognize that you missed your habit.It also takes advantage of human nature and our desire for patterns. If you have a few days of success under your belt, you won’t want to ruin your streak so you will do your habit.

Put this tracker in a visible place so you are constantly reminded of your streak and of your past successes. If the occasion happens that you do miss a day, make sure to not miss it the next day. Don’t have the mentality that if the streak is already zero then not doing it another day doesn’t matter. Doing habits is about doing them daily and missing one day is fine, missing two has serious consequences. Keep the importance of not missing a second day in mind for extra motivation on the day after missing your habit.

Citations:

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

How Long Does it Actually Take to Form a New Habit? (Backed by Science)

Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort | Huberman Lab Podcast