Build New Habits Faster By Connecting Them To Habits You Already Have
Habits are an essential part of creating a healthy lifestyle. In this article, I’ll share a “hack” to help you build habits faster and more easily by tying new habits to habits you already have.
How Do Habits Work?
You can read more about the science of habit-building in my full article about habits.
Here’s a quick overview:
Habits are activated by a cue in your environment. Creating new habits means connecting a behavior with that cue, then immediately experiencing a reward for doing the behavior.
Common habit cues are:
A certain time – maybe you turn on the coffee pot each morning at 6:45 am right after you get up.
An emotion – you check your phone when you’re bored or in need of a distraction.
A previous action – you walk in the front door and drop your keys on the table.
A location – when you go to the movie theater, you eat popcorn.
The cue, behavior, and reward create a loop. If that loop is repeated many, many times, it gets wired into your brain and becomes automatic.
At the beginning, when the behavior is really new, it can be tough to repeat your habit often and consistently enough. You really do need to repeat that behavior many, many times to form a lasting habit.
You may have heard that it takes 21 days to form a habit, but a very good study on habit-building found that, on average, it took 66 days to form a habit. For some people in that study it took up to 254 days.
That's a lot of repetition. I'm here to help make sure you get those reps in.
How To Make Habit-Building Quicker And Easier
You can build habits faster and more easily by leveraging your existing habits.
You already have habits in your daily routine. If you use one of those habits as your cue, you’ll essentially be piggybacking on the habit connections that are already in your brain. That can give you a head start on creating your new habit.
For example, let’s say I want to start foam rolling every day to help with my workout recovery. Instead of simply hoping that I’ll get it done at some point in my day, I’m going to tie it in with my morning routine.
When I walk into my kitchen first thing in the morning, I have a habit of immediately turning on the kettle to make a cup of tea.
I can tie that habit to my goal by deciding that I’m going to do 3 minutes of foam rolling after I turn on the kettle.
I was going to turn on the kettle anyway, so that becomes my cue to start foam rolling. Then, as a bonus, once the water is boiled, I get to have a delicious cup of tea. That can act as part of the reward in my habit loop, along with the sense of pride and accomplishment I’ll get from following through on my plans.
Once I do this consistently, every day, foam rolling will become a habit in itself. Then I can build on it.
How To Leverage Your Habits To Build New Ones
Make a list of your daily habits and come up with ways that you can tie your goal behavior to them.
When thinking of a good habit to use as your cue, there are a couple of things to look for. It should be something that happens very regularly, at least once a day or even several times each day.
It should also be something that makes it easy for you to incorporate your goal behavior.
In my foam rolling example, I need access to my foam roller and some clean floor space. If the existing habit I choose as a cue happens in a public place or in my car, that’s obviously not going to work.
Here's another example to help you get started:
If your goal is to… jog for 30 minutes every day.
Cues you could use:
Time: Go jogging at 5pm, immediately after work
Location: Change into jogging clothes when you walk into the bathroom
Previous Action: Set out jogging clothes for the next day after putting on your pajamas
Emotion: Jog when you feel stressed
Good luck!
If you need help building healthy habits, my personal training programs can help! I always include "habit homework" and strategies to help my clients create the healthy lifestyle habits that will help them achieve their goals. Contact me to learn more!