How To Stick To A Habit?

“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.” Cheryl Strayed

Usually on New Year's Eve people make big plans for the year and then proceed to miserably fail within a month. Failing to come through on New Year's resolutions has become the norm, but why is that? Well to simply put it, the plans tend to be overly ambitious. As humans we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a month.

There are a few tips to follow when setting a challenge and then later on trying to keep going that will make sure that you go through with it. Here they are:

1. Tracking – Making a habit of tracking a habit can be very beneficial because there is a streak. When you have ticked a box 21 times then not ticking it becomes uncomfortable
2. Homo ludens (latin for man the player) – Keep it interesting by switching things up every once in a while. Take a different route to the gym, try new recipes or do a different workout than usually.
3. Lowering standards – We often set the bar very high for ourselves to force us to perform. This is good, having ambition is important, but when it gets to the task it can make it feel more important than it is. This means we need to set a minimum that is accomplishable. When we do not feel like working out, just do a shorter workout. One less intense workout is better than no workout. Showing up matters most.
4. Accountability – Have a friend who you do the challenge with, or simply have a friend who you update your process to. Having an accountability partner can perform as a nice boost in motivation.

Let's explain with a concrete example. Earlier on this year I decided that I wanted to be able to do more pushups. I could do a solid 15 without a problem but I struggled to do any more than that. The challenge I set myself was that I want to do pushups every single day without fail. I hit up a friend of mine who agreed to do the challenge with me. This already checked the accountability partner box.

Next I made myself a Notion tracker where I could enter the number of pushups and the day number (tracking). The goal initially was – 15 pushups a day. Simple and effective, 15 was the number I could do already and doing 15 every day seemed like such a simple task, thus there was no mental block when doing the pushups. Gradually over time I increased the number of pushups.

All of that already checks 3 out of the 4 ideas mentioned before. For the homo ludens part I would say that varying the types of pushups was most interesting. Being able to do 15 normal pushups is not the same as being able to do 15 diamond pushups (pushups where the hands form the shape of a diamond). So that is what I did, I played around with different pushup styles.

After doing pushups every day for more than a 100 days now I have managed to double my pushup max, which I am very happy with! Try these tips out for yourself, they are a game-changer!

This Week's Suggestions:

🎥 Johnny Harris: How to Force Yourself to learn:

A great take on how to create extrinsic motivation for oneself when the beginner's envy to learn starts to fade. It's sort of like a follow up to this text, as a next step in the development of a skill.

Thanks for the read!