Can you believe we have ended the first quarter of the year? How are those resolutions coming? Do they look like they may need some adjusting? In this post I wanted to discuss the 4 Laws of Habit Building according to Atomic Habits’ Author James Clear, perhaps that’s exactly what you need to make those resolutions stick.
Law #1 Make it obvious. When we are first starting out a new habit it will naturally be easy to forget because it’s “new”. We hope that someday it will be second nature to perform but when we are first starting out it will be easy to slip and forget. So by making it obvious it can help us to remember that we want to do it. An example would be if you are trying to make it a habit to take your vitamins every morning: take them out of the cabinet and put it in an obvious and visible place so that you literally can’t miss seeing them in the morning. Another tip is adding the new habit to your daily affirmations: “I take my vitamins daily”. My personal favorite is anchoring the habit to an already existing one. I make myself a green juicer every morning, so I anchored my vitamins habit to drinking the green juice. As soon as the juice is made I grab the pill box that is sitting in an obvious and visible place and take them with my juice.
Law #2 Make it attractive. Find a way to make the new habit attractive. One way to do this is by pairing something you want to do with something you need to do. Using the same example of taking vitamins if you need you morning coffee, pair it with taking your vitamins. Using Law #1 you would put them near your coffee maker in an obvious and visible spot. Another way to make it attractive is to join a group or culture to support your new habit whether through and app or by creating your own group of vitamin takers you can encourage each other and keep each other accountable. Finally you can turn it into a ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before the difficult habit, in our vitamin example it might be putting on some delicious smelling lotion right before you take your vitamins. Every time.
Law #3 Make it easy. This seems self explanatory, but sometimes when we create a ritual we have too many steps included. If you have never taken vitamins before in your life don’t start with 13 different ones all in separate bottles. Either take a single multivitamin or join one of the home delivery systems that send your pre-packaged little envelopes with all your vitamins in them already. Controlling your environment can be quite helpful too. Make sure that your vitamins are not only in a visible place but that it won’t take 15 steps to get it from it’s place to your mouth. One suggestion presented by Mr Clear is to downscale your new habit so that it can be done in 2 minutes or less. That way the time investment will be small enough that even when you are in a hurry you are likely to get it done. To that end, automating a habit can make all the difference. Whether that is by having the vitamins pre-packed for you or using an app to remind you, there is a lot of help available out there for most common habits.
Law #4 Make it satisfying. Find a way to reward yourself immediately after completing your habit. Using a habit tracker can provide this for you because the very act of marking down when you did it (especially if it’s daily) will be satisfying as you try very hard to not break the chain of success. You often see this in dangerous workplaces that keep track of the number of days that it’s been since the last accident. Commit yourself to never miss your habit twice.
These laws can be applied in reverse to break bad habits too! I hope these tip are helpful as you continue on your journey to become the person you wish to be!