Building Productive and Supportive Habits and Routines: Changing How You Do Things

Now that we understand the Importance of Habits, we need to discuss how you can build the habits and routines that will work best for you. In previous work, and if you have read the Power of Habit or Atomic Habits, you know the key elements of habits are cue, routine, reward. Cues can be a time of day, an activity, or a location. Routines are the steps you take once the cue has been triggered. And the reward is the outcome and feeling that comes from those steps. To use a basic example, you wake up (time of day cue), you brush your teeth (routine), and afterward your teeth feel clean, and you know you can move on (the reward). If you combine waking up and brushing your teeth with washing your face, going to the bathroom, taking a shower etc., that is your morning routine. A series of habits combined to give you structure for getting your day started. The question then becomes: how can I use this process to help in other areas of life or work, and ensure they work for me?

Work for you is the critical part of that. We are all aware of other habits that may be part of a routine that work against you, bad habits. The description above could easily substitute smoking a cigarette for brushing your teeth. People who formed that habit can tell you that breaking it is extremely difficult, especially when the reward is a chemical change for the body. Just the motions are hard enough to break, but when there are additional considerations for how the body responds to the reward, it can be even more challenging to change. So the formation of habits and routines that are positive are imperative to your success.

When establishing new habits, almost everyone will experience three phases.

• Easy

• Resistance

• Automatic (assuming you get past the second one)

Let’s say you want to build a habit of exercising each morning. You tell yourself why it is important, and you are ready to get going. Day one comes, and it’s easy to get out of bed, complete the first steps of your morning routine, and even to get to the gym that day. You’re fresh into the new goal and you are excited to start exercising. This is easy, you think, as you breeze through your first morning workout. You move on with your day and it feels good. By day three, you begin to feel the effects of that exercise. It was a little harder to get out of bed this morning, your muscles ache; in fact, you didn’t even realize you had some of those muscles to ache. Resistance is setting in. You already begin to question whether you really want to hit the gym today. You ask yourself, could I skip today? Even if you push on, each day for a period of time, that resistance will be there. Went to bed too late, busy schedule, extra meetings, just don’t feel like it today will all be reasons that pop into your head, creating a resistance to this new habit. Many, if not most, people will stop after this resistance builds and the habit breaks. Just ask the 92% of people who have dropped their New Year's resolutions by the end of January. All of them hit the resistance wall and stopped.

But for those who push through, it will become automatic. I was that person with exercise more than a decade ago. I knew I should do it. I would start, life would happen, and suddenly that treadmill hadn’t been used for weeks or more. Today, the day doesn’t feel right if I haven’t stretched and walked on the treadmill. Weekends might look a little different, and I know what days I am taking off, but that habit of exercising happens each day. It has become part of my morning (before leaving for work) routine.

Building Your Habits

The first and most important step you need to take is determining what habits you want to add, subtract, or adjust. What are you trying to accomplish? If it is to be more fit, or feel more energetic, then how are you going to accomplish that? What needs to change? Are there things you are already doing that may be beneficial already that you can add on to (see below)? Are there other activities that are working against you? If eating poorly is a component of your challenge, then what habits can you adjust for that? Duhigg uses an example in his Power of Habit book about having an afternoon cookie each day. The trigger was a time of day (or so it seemed): at that time, the person gets up, grabs a cookie and talks with colleagues. After exploring further, the real desire was the social interaction, not the cookie. But the cookie created a different type of reward for the body. Thus, a habit was formed.

Understanding that type of situation can help you identify what really needs to change. The busier I am, the less likely I am to eat some extra throughout the day. If I find I have a break of time, I am more likely to nibble on something. What I adjust is what is available to me. Instead of having cookies or sugary snacks, I have cheese slices, or nuts, or a low sugar protein bar, so if I reach for something it will stay in line with my health goals and objectives. Better yet is identifying that trigger, and looking for alternative ways to see that time window and build an entirely new action that goes with that trigger. It could be to review email, take a short walk etc. Establishing what you want to do first will ensure you are building the right habits for what you would like to accomplish.

Stacking Habits Together

One of the best, and easiest ways to add new habits is to connect them to one that already exists. This may be part of a routine you already have, or a way to string two habits together. The concept of habit stacking allows you to build on something already established, so the cue is built in. Some examples of this may be building a habit of placing your exercise clothes out each night and stacking that with seeing them in the morning becomes the cue to exercise. Or when you brush your teeth at night, start placing your exercise clothes out so that is completed for the morning. Both are forms of habit stacking to add in something new.

"Incorporate new habits into your life by tying them to existing routines. This stacking effect capitalizes on the momentum of established behaviors, making it easier to adopt and sustain positive changes." From James Clear, Atomic Habits

Much like the initial concept of cues, habit stacking connects the association of events together and makes it easier to add on to what already exists. The same science that makes the triggers work, applies here as well.

Creating Wins, Especially Small Ones

It’s the little things in life…right? The same applies to habits (and goals). You need to identify the little steps forward and reward and recognize that for yourself as you establish new habits or routines. If you are building a significant new habit, you may need to break it down into smaller steps. We’ll continue to use the exercise example here. A small win initially may be getting your equipment or clothes ready the night before. Make sure you celebrate that step, it becomes such an important trigger for the next morning. If you wake up and realize you still must get your clothes out, it creates a bit of resistance and may begin to wear you down. So, even though you still exercise, celebrate the smaller win first, as it will increase the chances that the critical step continues later.

Having these smaller milestones can ensure you remain encouraged and engaged. If you set out to exercise for sixty-minutes, that may be lofty if you haven’t done it before or do not have that time specifically built in. Suddenly, it feels daunting or even impossible to achieve. Starting out with exercising for ten or fifteen minutes may be the small win you need to build on for more time as you go. Suddenly, with the positive rewards of feeling better, having more energy, you want to add more time to your exercising. By the way, realizing the way you feel after you exercise is also a small win. Celebrate that!

Building the right habits is the cornerstone of being more productive and effective in what you do. We have more habits than we are aware of, since they happen automatically. You may need to enlist a friend, co-worker, or partner to help identify some of your habits that you want to address. Prepare yourself for the phases of habit formation. It will seem easy at first, but then you will face resistance to your new activities. Ready yourself to press through and overcome the obstacles that suddenly find their way in front of you. Then, you’ll make it to the automatic phase, where it is just what you do each day. Take advantage of options that exist to set you up for success. Be clear on what you want to do. Stack new habits together with existing ones, and celebrate the smallest wins along the way. Let those be the cheering squad along your marathon path of creating a new habit or establishing an updated routine.

In the final part of this series, we’ll look at how you sustain the habits and routines that you build. Habits are meant to help you for the long term, but that doesn’t mean you should be evaluating and updating along the way.

How can you use the ideas of habit stacking and celebrating small wins to help you build new habits for yourself?

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