The Power of Habits - How to Build / Start / Maintain New Ones

My life sucked until I figured this out. Maybe some of you don't know about it. This thread is about a life-changing tool: Habits.

What is a habit? Habits are like software for your mind. They're tasks that you do every single day. Simple, small changes, done consistently lead to amazing results.

Back in 2013 my life was awful. I was working 80 hours a week, massively in debt, morbidly obese (over 400 lbs), and I was obviously depressed. I felt like I was trapped. Like every day I was digging a hole deeper and deeper and I didn't know how to get out. Something had to change.

So I started with weight loss. I learned about the keto diet and found that it worked for me. But I had trouble staying on the diet.

Then I saw the following videos:



Two years of working with new habits through trial and error has lead to what I think as the optimal method of building / activating / maintaining habits.

First, you need to pick something in your life you want to change. Think of some action you can take, every day, that will improve that thing.

Second, the easy part, commit to doing it. Start now. If you have trouble with this, Just say out loud "I'm going to do X every single day". Done.

Building the Habit: 90% of success is showing up. This is how you show up.

Third, pick a time and place. So you know what you need to do. Look at your life. Is there a five minute block of time where you are in the same place every day? Say, midnight in your house? If you don't have the same time and place, then pick one or the other. Is there a time of day that you aren't using and won't be distracted? Say, 8 am / 9:15 PM? Or, is there a place that you go every day? At Work? At Home? Pick a time and place, or a time, or a place.

Fourth, TRIGGER WARNING. This is easy. What you need to do is create triggers for yourself. We all know what we should do, but life happens. We get busy. We forget shit. We're human. To build an effective habit you need to remind yourself every day that you're supposed to do something. The most powerful reminders occur just before you start doing something. AKA triggers. Did you pick a time and place? Set an alarm. Don't have an alarm? Write yourself a note. Think that's too much work? Make yourself OCD by remembering to do your new habit every time you look at your left hand or every time you see a clock, think about the habit. You get the idea. Again, the best triggers should go off a few minutes before you're supposed to do the habit.

Fifth, have your tools ready. This can be tricky depending on what your habit is. But all of this building shit is meant to give yourself the opportunity to act. You don't want to prime yourself to do something and then waste an hour of time gathering your tools. Whatever your habit is you need to make sure you have the tools, at the right time and place, to get started immediately.

Activate the habit.
Sixth, are steps three through five done? Start now. The next time your trigger goes off do the thing for five minutes. You have five fucking minutes, right? If not why are you reading this? You have five minutes. So do the thing every day for five minutes and then for as long as you desire to continue. After five minutes you can stop. But when the trigger goes off, you do the thing.

Maintain the habit.
Lastly, after you complete whatever it is you're doing you need to analyze how you performed. Did your trigger work? If not, make a new one. Where there problems with the time / place you decided on? Solve them or pick a new time / place. Were your tools ready for you? Restock them.

Can't remember to maintain the habit? Make a habit to maintain your first habit. IT'S HABIT INCEPTION.

Anyway, this was my guide to becoming a neurotic mess. Good luck.

List of effective habits to build:
1) Diet
2) Exercise
3) Time Management (Planning your day / week / month / year / etc)
4) Money Management
5) Cleaning around the House
6) Cooking a meal every day.
7) Developing a new skill.
8) Developing new habits.

TL;DR
1) Decide what you want to do every day.
2) Pick a Time and Place to do it.
3) Give yourself reminders to do it ever day.
4) Make sure you have everything you need to start ready and waiting for you before you get there.
5) When you're done, take a minute to analyze what you did and if you need to change something.

Yeah just throwing this out there. This process worked for me and made my life better. Figured I'd share it.

fifey_sl said:

Not to jump on the hate train but forming habitsonly works when the person is motivated to do it. You finally hit the bottom of your garlic sauce barrel and realized you were unhappy so you changed. It's like sending a junkie to rehab, it's not going to work unless the person themselves wants that change.

Click to expand...

That's how I re-invented the wheel for myself. But it really doesn't take much motivation beyond "It would be nice if this was different." Change doesn't require the energy of a nuclear warhead to start. The barrier for entry is really low.

Like I said, I felt trapped like I was digging myself into a hole every day. Stuck in a rut. This is one path out and it doesn't take much effort just a little planning and the proper tools.

Also, it's rather charming that the first three responses to this are "This shit is retarded, it will never work, it's pointless to talk about this because either everyone already knows it or the ones that don't know about it won't care."

This forum is the internet version of crabs in a bucket.



Oh, rerolled.