After my post last week about the need to build good habits rather than set pointless targets I felt I needed to follow it up with some thoughts on how you can go about building those habits. So here goes….

We often spend time at the start of a new year setting out new goals or, better still, new habits that will improve our lives in the coming year. I talked recently about the need to build good habits but how do we go about this? How do we ensure we wont simply give up in two weeks time when things get tough, work starts to take over again or a crisis arrives that knocks us off course?

Before we continue, if you haven’t already subscribed……

I have long been a fan of the Feel Better Live More podcast by Rangan Chatterjee. It was his interview with Wim Hoff that led me to taking daily cold showers. Amazing! One for another post probably. The particular podcast below explores how we can build good habits and builds on Rangan’s excellent weekly newsletter which first brought this particular episode to my attention.

You can sign up to Rangan’s newsletter here and this particular podcast episode here:

So, building on Rangan’s suggestions here are my steps for giving yourself the best possible chance of building good habits this year:

1. Go easy on yourself

2. Turn it into a game

3. Connect new behaviours to existing habits

4. Know yourself

5. Turn up for someone else

6. It’s ok to give yourself a day off

Let’s explore those in a little more detail.

1. Go easy on yourself

You wouldn’t put on running shoes for the first time and expect to be able to run a marathon tomorrow. At least I hope you wouldn’t! Please don’t try that, it really wont work. If you don’t get injured you are most certainly going to give up very quickly and probably never run again.

The key is to start small. Start building the momentum that will lead you from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. the key is setting a small step that gets you moving in the right direction.

The example Rangan gives in his podcast is the example of flossing your teeth. You can quite easily say to yourself that you will just floss one tooth. That’s it. That’s all you are going to do. But, you will find that once you’ve done one tooth, you may as well do the next one and so on and so on. The momentum has started.

2. Turn it into a game

Better still, if you can gamify the building of habits then you can see even better results. writes this brilliant post on this subject. He quite rightly points out that video games always start on easy and this is for a very good reason. The video game producer is looking to hook you in and show that you can do it with difficulty building through the levels as you go. This supports my point 1 above but.....the other ingredient in all of these games is FUN!

By making something fun and turning it into a game you create a different feeling in your brain. It goes from being a chore to something that is challenging and rewarding.

Without the Strava App there is no way I would have built a running habit. No way at all. I love stats and tracking my progress. I love seeing progress on the myriad of charts and stats that Strava gives you. In the last few years I’ve gone from hardly running at all and being pretty unfit to running four times a week and consistently running 5k in under 23 mins.

3. Connect new behaviours to existing habits

Pairing habits with things you already do can be a real cheat. Dr Chatterjee talks about doing some press ups while waiting for the kettle to boil. Not sure about this to be honest. While I’m waiting for kettle to boil I’m emptying the dishwasher, not standing there idle. Anyway, you get the point.

The theory here is harnessing existing habits and building new habits off them. One habit triggers the next.

This can be a really powerful one as long as you stay aware of what you are doing. The problem with habits is that the more they become engrained, the more you don’t think while you are doing them and therefore the harder it is to think about a new habit at the same time.

It could work for you, but make sure you pick a habit that you aren’t completely on autopilot during it.

4. Know yourself

Our energy fluxes during the day. Some people find the mornings are their best time to do new things while they are fresh and energised. For me, annoyingly, I find the time between 1700 and 1900 the most energising time to write. This also coincides with having dinner and bathing the kids!

In contrast, on days when I’m in the office I need about an hour to decompress once I get home. During this time, it would be better to attempt a new yoga habit than full on workout or writing a newsletter post!

Know yourself and when your energy is at its optimum and you will give yourself the best chance of keeping a new habit going.

5. Turn up for someone else

There is a powerful human urge not to let others down. You can harness this to help you form a new habit and stick to it.

Take running for example. Plan to meet and run with a friend. When the alarm goes off and its cold and icy outside you will be driven by the urge not to let the other person down. You will show up, not because of you, but because of your friend. We are often quite happy to let ourselves down. We can always find a way to justify that to ourselves but justifying it to someone else is a different story.

Find an accountability partner and see how you start to keep to your new habits.

6. It’s ok to give yourself a day off

It’s so easy to drop a new habit for a day and then say to yourself you’re a failure. Taking one day off is not going to affect the habit forming process.

So, if you let one day slip, that’s fine. Just don’t drop two days in a row. What you are looking to do here is build habits that are going to last years. One day is not really going to make a massive difference. Just don’t make a HABIT of it!

If you want to learn more about habit building, Steven Bartlett from A Diary of a CEO has this brilliant episode with more ideas.

This week’s recommendations

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