We have seen that having well defined habits can make your chances of success in reaching your goals. But it is often really tricky to integrate these new habits into our lives, especially after a few days and the initial enthusiasm has waned.
The is when we must go a little deeper into the habit loop to hack our brains. The habit loop or habit cycle traditionally has three elements: the trigger or cue; the habit (or routine you are trying to embed) and the reward. I think that we can add a vital fourth stage into this loop – the exact moment you make your decision. Understanding the nuances of this loop can help us to crush our goals with successful habits and systems.
The Habit Loop
Also known as the habit cycle, this is an easy concept to understand using this diagram.
It begins with a cue that often triggers an unconscious choice. This choice leads to you taking a habitual action which, in turn, leads to a reward.
Let’s have a look at the four stages in more detail.
1. Triggers
The first element we need to consider is the cue. This triggers the craving that we want a certain thing or to perform a certain action. It is quite useful to understand this through negative habits you may have.
As a smoker, you may find that going out with friends, especially if they are also smokers) triggers you desire to smoke. This cue of socialising works because your brain associates relaxing with friends with the action of smoking. You may find that if you go ‘out-out’ on a Saturday, the craving begins a few minutes after you sit down with an alcoholic drink. If you were at home, or at a 5-a-side match one evening, you would probably not experience the same level of cravings as you do in the pub. The environment you are in triggers your response for needing a puff on that rolled up nicotine patch!
The same is true of unhealthy snacking. When I sit down in front of a good film or binge watch the latest popular series, I find myself automatically reaching for a family pack of crisps! To be fair, food companies spend gazillions of pounds on advertisements, making that link between fast food and T.V. explicit, even if we then take it in slightly subconsciously. Think about a fast-food advert – how often is there a smiling, relaxed family sitting in front of the telly-box? All. The. Time!
So, if we understand the cause of our cravings usually start with a trigger – a time, an activity or a social situation – we can hack this to help us design habits to give us the best chance of success.
Habit Stacking.
B.J. Fogg, in his book Tiny Habits, said that we are more likely to follow through with a habit if we stack a new habit on something we automatically do every day.
Choose something you do every day, about the same time as you want to integrate your new habit. In the morning, it might be the alarm going off, your shower, cleaning your teeth, making your morning cup of tea or coffee – whatever you do every day. Then make a rule to stack your new habit after the cue that already exists.
Some example:
- after you clean your teeth, you will meditate for 10 minutes.
- after your alarm goes off, you will put your running gear on
- as you wait for the kettle to boil, you will do 20 press-ups
- during your shower, you will list 5 new things you are grateful for
You might also choose lunchtime activities:
- after you finish your lunch, you will ring 5 business prospects
- after returning with your meal-deal, you will always use the stairs, rather than getting the lift
- as you shut the lid of your laptop, you will go for a 20 minute walk, no matter the weather
You can apply this to evening activities as well:
- on your commute home, you will listen to a podcast or audiobook on business/productivity/health etc.
- as you finish the washing up, you will plan tomorrow’s day in detail, focusing on your top 3 items that will move you towards reaching your goals.
- As you head to bed, you will put your phone on charge in a different room and read the book that is currently on your bedside table.
You will notice in all these examples, that the cue needs to happen first. It never works so well if you set a goal to happen before an existing activity. Eg. “I will always go for a run before I eat.” You need to cue to happen first so your brain gets triggered.
Habit stacking doesn’t need to happen in isolation – you may stack 3 or more habits on top of each other.
Eg. After I step out of the shower, I will clean my teeth, then moisturise and finally make my bed.
To dig a little deeper into habit stacking, take a look at this TED Talk by BJ Fogg: Forget big change, start with a tiny habit.
Like Pavlov’s dogs, you find that after continually carrying out a new habit through habit-stacking, the process starts to become instinctive and finally automatic.
How quickly this happens usually depends on how attractive the habit is to you. Some people find that it takes only a few days if they enjoy a habit such as 30 minutes of self care with a hot bubble bath. Others find that it takes between 30 days and 3 months for the habit to become instinctive – especially if you know it’s good for you but may seem hard work, like going for a jog or eating more healthily.
2. Decision Point – Find an interrupt cue
Very often, we get in from a long, tough day at work, slip off our shoes with an audible sigh of relief, get changed in to more comfortable clothes and… it’s at this point that we make a decision.
Now perhaps this decision is instinctive because you have done it a million times before. Perhaps you don’t notice that you’ve made the decision to switch the T.V. on and slump in front of it for ‘a few minutes’. Other times you may hear yourself saying “Blimey governor! (Why you’ve suddenly turned into a 19th Century Cockney, I’m not quite sure!) That was a tough day. I deserve to sit for a few minutes to unwind before I make dinner.” This is not spoken aloud, it may just be a fleeting thought, but because it is what you have done every day for the last 6 months, it’s automatic! You’re not really consciously thinking it!
Our job it to interrupt this habitual pattern of thought and one way to do this is by making this cue overtly obvious. This allows us to then stop and make a conscious choice about our response, rather than relying on our automatic behaviours.
Therefore, we need to somehow find a cue that will allow us to interrupt this old habit and remind us to make a different choice. How do we do this?
- Set an alarm on your phone.
- Decide on one action you do each time and make this the cue to stack your new habit choice upon (eg. Taking off your shoes after work.)
- Put a physical reminder up – pin up your habit tracker or a post-it note just where you take your shoes off to remind you to make a conscious choice. It doesn’t have to stay there forever, just until you get used to making that choice habitually.
- Put a physical reminder of your new habit where you do your interrupt habit. (Eg. Put your running shoes right next to where you take off your work shoes and make it as easy as possible to take action.
3. Response
Once we have interrupted our habitual action with a conscious choice about how to act, we then need to make it as easy as possible to choose the new habit over the old one.
Tailor your environment to help you make the right choice. If you want to write a book, find a way of keeping everything you need out so that you can get started straight away. Having to spend ten minutes getting all your book-writing research, plans, notes etc. out will put you off starting.
It’s the same for getting exercise. If you have to root through your drawers to find your Lycra shorts, wash through your wick-able top and dig out your shoes form the garage, you’re less likely to make that good decision than if everything is clean, neatly folded and raring to go – like you!
There are loads of ideas to design your environment to match your purpose:
- If you want to go to the gym on the way to/from work, put your gym kit in your car the night before.
- If you want to eat healthily, make it almost impossible to reach for a chocolate bar and have apples, raisins or muesli bars to hand.
- If you want to clean the bathroom, keep all the cleaning materials in the bathroom – or at least get them out the night before to remind you.
- If you want to read rather than play on your phone before bed, put a reading book on your bedside table and charge your phone in another room.
- If you want to reduce the number of take-aways you have, delete the app from your phone, or at least sign out. Then have the ingredients ready to go so it is much easier to cook than remember that fiendishly difficult password for your fast-food account.
- If you want to stop mindlessly scrolling through social media, download an app or use your phones built-in functions to limit you to 15 minutes throughout the day.
People who are productive have usually made the conscious decision to design their life to lead them towards the good habits they want and away from any bad habits. Manipulating your environment to help you make the right choices consciously, rather than the wrong ones unconsciously, is the best way to reach your goals.
4. Rewards
Finally, you need to see a benefit in taking the right sort of action.
The problem with bad habits is that they usually satisfy a short-term benefit, over a long-term one. We’re hungry so we reach for a packet of crisps because they quickly and easily satisfy that carb hit, not taking into account your long-term goal of having a gorgeous, flab-free beach-ready body in 2 months.
We want to be making long-term decisions over short-term ones.
One way to do this: give yourself a reward every time you complete a good habit. The trick: to have a treat that will incentivise you to carry out the action, but that is also in-line with your long-term goal.
So obviously, having a doughnut after a run defeats the purpose if your long-term goal is to lose weight or to work towards a fitter lifestyle. Therefore, choose something that will motivate you, but also works with your goals. A relaxing scented bubble bath to soothe the aching joints; a skinny, light-caramel Frappuccino with oat milk; a half-hour mooch around your local bookshop or a catch-up with an old friend.
Whatever you poison, make it very much non-poisonous to your new identity but make it worth the effort!
Conclusion
By employing this 4-step habit loop in your life, you will find that your environment and your daily choices help you integrate those new habits that will help you make constant progress towards crushing your goals a breeze!
To understand where habits fit into the goal setting process, you can check out our articles here:
Crush your goals with action planning
10 reasons to use a habit tracker
How to use an action planner with examples
10 crucial reasons to set clear life goals
If you have any other ideas, feel free to put a comment below. And as always, in true NFS style, write down at least one thing that you take form the information to immediately implement into your life.