Define the type of person you wish to be and let that desired identity guide the habits you choose to build, rather than focusing solely on outcomes. Ask yourself, ‘What would a healthy person do?’ to inform your daily choices.
Focus on building effective daily systems (habits) rather than just setting goals, as systems drive sustained results. Your daily habits will always win if there’s a gap between your desired outcome and your current routine.
Design your environment so cues for good habits are highly visible and accessible. The easier it is to see or notice a cue, the more likely you are to act on the desired behavior.
Make good habits appealing by associating them with positive experiences or social connections. For example, meet a friend for a run to increase motivation and accountability.
Reduce friction and simplify good habits to make them effortless to perform. The more convenient and frictionless a habit is, the more likely it is to be performed.
Ensure good habits provide immediate satisfaction or pleasure to reinforce their repetition. The ideal form is when the behavior itself reinforces your desired identity, making the act satisfying.
Eliminate or hide cues for bad habits from your environment to reduce their likelihood. Unsubscribe from emails or avoid following social media accounts that trigger undesirable behaviors.
Associate negative consequences or make bad habits seem unappealing. This involves changing the perception of the habit to reduce your motivation to perform it.
Add friction and extra steps to make bad habits harder to perform. Increase the effort required to engage in the undesirable behavior to reduce its frequency.
Create immediate negative consequences or costs for bad habits to make them unsatisfying. This could involve layering on a cost or an immediate punishment for the behavior.
Scale down any new habit you’re trying to build to something that takes two minutes or less to do. This helps you master the art of showing up and establish consistency before scaling up.
If you miss a habit, ensure you get back on track immediately and do not miss it a second time. It’s rarely the first mistake that ruins you, but rather the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows.
To make behavior change last, join groups or tribes where your desired behaviors are considered normal. The desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve, making adherence easier.
Proactively design your physical and digital environments to make good choices the path of least resistance. Place healthy food on the counter, hide the TV, and put audiobooks on your phone’s home screen.
Perform small, consistent actions that align with your desired identity to build evidence for that identity over time. Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
Increase perseverance and discipline by finding areas or skills you are highly interested in, as enjoyment fuels sustained effort. Be curious and willing to explore many things to discover these areas.
Clearly define your ultimate goal (Z), honestly assess your current state (A), and then determine the single next directionally correct step (B). Work backward from your desired outcome to plan your immediate actions.
Begin any intentional behavior change process by cultivating self-awareness to understand your current habits and their cues. Use a ‘habit scorecard’ to list all your daily habits in detail without judgment.
To figure out what triggers a habit, record the ‘who, what, when, where, why’ of each instance of the behavior for several days. This helps you understand the context prompting the action.
When using short-term rewards, ensure they align with and reinforce the desired long-term identity you are building. For example, reward a week of workouts with a bubble bath, not ice cream.
When trying to influence others’ behavior, consistently praise their positive actions and largely ignore their negative ones. This builds momentum and reinforces desired behaviors, though it requires patience.
Use tools like habit trackers or continuous glucose monitors to visualize your progress, as seeing improvement reinforces behavior change. What gets measured often gets managed.
Prioritize building new good habits, as they often naturally crowd out and displace old bad habits. This approach is often more effective than directly trying to break bad habits.
Develop the skill of rapid course correction by assessing your current situation, understanding your ultimate goal, and taking the next directionally correct step. Life is dynamic, and adjustments are always needed.
Utilize major, hard-to-reverse life changes (e.g., having a child, moving, getting a pet) to drive rapid and lasting behavior change. These shifts create new environments that can make old habits difficult.
Prioritize optimizing habits in your ‘home court’ (your personal living space) where you have the most control over the environment. Build a home court advantage for yourself to gain momentum.
Choose accountability partners whose opinion you value and for whom there’s a meaningful (social or financial) cost if you fail. Avoid overly complex relationships that might hinder strict accountability.
Avoid adopting a victim mindset when things go wrong; instead, accept the event and move forward without self-berating. Playing the victim never makes the situation better or easier.
If you make a mistake, limit its impact to the current ‘quarter’ of your day (e.g., morning, afternoon, evening) and get back on track in the next quarter. This prevents one slip-up from ruining the whole day.
Avoid simply ‘faking it till you make it’ without having evidence for your desired identity. Your brain dislikes the mismatch between what you say and what you actually do, making change harder.
Choose to act in ways that best serve you, regardless of the philosophical debate on free will. From a practical standpoint, it’s always beneficial to choose the best option available.
Direct your energy and attention towards factors that are within your control to influence outcomes. Randomness and luck are not under your control, so focus on actionable aspects.
Cultivate pride in the aspects of your identity you wish to strengthen, as this internal motivation will help behaviors stick naturally. You’ll fight harder to maintain what you take pride in.
A habit must be established before it can be improved; it has to become a standard in your life before you can optimize and scale it up. Focus on consistent performance first.
Prioritize the consistent act of showing up for your habits, even in a minimal way, to build the identity and momentum. The hardest part is often just getting started.
Identify the specific cues and contexts for each instance of a complex bad habit, as it may be a collection of many smaller habits. Address each specific instance individually to find solutions.
Practice mindfulness meditation to observe self-judgment without engaging in it. This fosters a more flexible and resilient approach to habit change, reducing self-berating cycles.
Have a very clear vision of your desired outcome (Z) but remain flexible about the specific path to achieve it. This allows you to adapt to new opportunities and challenges as they arise.