#1

To help create a habit, create a ‘streak tracker’ to engage your inner stubbornness and competitiveness. A streak is a series of consecutive unbroken ticks (for each day you complete an action) on a calendar or piece of paper.

#2

Set a low minimum achievable action to give your streak tracker a tick. Make your minimum action really achievable each and everyday. Something like walking your stairs 3 times in a row. You must be able to do your exercise at any time of the day regardless of weather, time of day etc. This means that there’s literally no excuse to break your streak even if it’s the last thing you do before bed.

Maintaining your streak will enhance your self esteem and your positive feelings about moving forward and making progress. You’ll feel great about honoring your commitment with yourself.

#3

Build your habit into an existing routine or routines as far as possible. That way it’s easier as you are piggy backing off an existing habit. If you make a cup of tea or coffee in the morning then do your stairs whilst the kettle is boiling or the coffee is percolating.

#4

Start tiny: Whilst something this small seems hardly worthwhile or unlikely to yield an impact, or would take too long to make a big difference, the opposite is actually true.

When it comes to change and impact, small consistent action trumps grand gestures! That’s why there’s great wisdom in “an Apple a day” but we readily discount this simple truth. Compare how much easier it is to agree with “a chocolate bar a day over many years will make you overweight”.

Experience shows that when you commit to just a very small achievable activity, then within days you’ll be doing more than your minimum, maybe not everyday but more often than not.

#5

Getting started has the greatest friction and we can dramatically decrease the starting resistance by having an action that’s so perceptibly easy that there’s virtually no resistance to doing it.

#6

Play the long game: whilst rapid results are motivating, most often they require grand or monumental efforts to create them, and these grand efforts are unsustainable over the long term and hence the habit and results don’t endure.

Start small and increase incrementally, focusing on small wins consistently that will amount to big impacts over 3 months, 12 months and 3 years.

We over estimate how much we can achieve in a year but underestimate how much we can achieve in 10 years with small consistent efforts. Use this truth to your advantage and adapt your time frames accordingly.

Success is the ongoing pursuit of a worthwhile goal. Don’t let arbitrary deadlines or failure to meet them deter you from continuing towards your goal.

#7

Plot milestones not deadlines. Being a certain amount by Xmas is too binary. It’s a fail or succeed outcome. And why does by Xmas really matter if your long term objective is enhanced health month on month and increasing mobility month on month.

#8

Reframe your goals so that you can’t fail. Because so long as you continue to persist towards an outcome, any ‘failure’ becomes a temporary setback rather than an outright failure.

#9

Don’t overwhelm yourself by doing too much across too many areas at the start. Build another habit off the success and confidence of an already established one.

Success breeds further success.

You will naturally make other better choices as you succeed with the first small habit. Each successive choice and habit will become easier. A little more exercise will make you thirstier and you’ll drink more water. More water and exercise will help you sleep better. Better sleep will improve your impulse control and prevent you having as many low nutritional binges.

Like a snowball rolling down a hill It’s another compounding effect, so let momentum work for you in this natural effect.

There’s deep truth in the statement that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but rather one stone at a time!

You can achieve great things by building one habit upon another.

In summary:

– Start small

– Have an achievable minimum action for every day

– Create a streak and see how long you can grow it

– Piggyback off other habits

– Play the long game

– Eliminate resistance

– Reframe your goals so that you can’t fail

– Plot milestones not deadlines

– Let momentum be your friend