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11) Habit Graduation: Moving from Two Minutes to Mastery

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  https://medium.com/swlh/7-great-habits-followed-by-successful-people-b52014d82331 Whenever I tell people about my approach to habits and behavior change, one of the first questions I receive is: Am I supposed to stick with a small habit forever? It makes sense to start with something tiny, but how do I know when to scale up? These are important questions for anyone committed to continuous improvement, and I’d like to close the course by offering a few useful ways to think about answering them. When you start out building a new habit, it’s exciting in the beginning because it’s new. When things are new, it’s novel and interesting. Over time, however, habits become routine. They become learned and the outcomes become expected. Once you know what to expect, habits tend to be less interesting. Sometimes they even become boring. This can be one of the first signals that it’s time to graduate your habit to the next level. You scale up when what was previously challengin...
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10) The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Habits

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  https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/rabindra-jayanti-2021-here-are-some-of-the-most-famous-works-of-rabindranath-tagore-6861901.html   In this article, we’re discussing one of the most powerful drivers of habits and behavior change: the social environment. The way that social environment influences our habits is through the tribes we belong to and the groups we are a part of. We are all part of multiple tribes. The tribes we belong to shape our behavior. This is true in large and small ways. Large tribes like nations, religions, and businesses can influence our behavior. And small tribes like what neighborhood you live in, what school you go to, or what organization you volunteer with can also influence your behavior. The key factor in any of these tribes is that we have a sense of belonging. When you want to belong to a tribe, you want to repeat the habits of that tribe. We naturally soak up the habits of those around us. If you move to a new neighborhood ...
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Location: India
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9) Visualize Your Progress and Stay the Course with a Habit Tracker

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  https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/close-to-greatness The most effective form of motivation is progress. When we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become motivated to continue down that path. When it comes to building better habits, a crucial step is to visualize the progress you’re making, and to be able to see yourself move forward. Perhaps the most straightforward way to visualize your progress is with a “ habit tracker .” A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit. The most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine. For example, if you meditate on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, each of those dates gets an X. As time rolls by, the calendar becomes a record of your habit streak. Once you have created your habit tracker, the mantra to keep in mind is “never break the chain.” That is, once you start tracking your habits, you don’t want to break the chain of crossing off each ...
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8) How to Create a Reward that Makes Habits Satisfying

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  https://theconversation.com/stephen-hawking-martin-rees-looks-back-on-colleagues-spectacular-success-against-all-odds-93379 The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful—even if it’s in a small way. The feeling of success is a signal that tells your brain that the habit paid off and that it was worth the effort. This is why the reward is a key aspect of habit formation. It is the feeling that comes with a reward – pleasure, satisfaction, enjoyment – that closes the feedback loop and teaches your brain which behaviors to remember for next time. In this article, we’re going to discuss some strategies for closing the feedback loop on your habits in a positive and enjoyable way. In other words, we’re going to discuss how to create an effective reward that makes your habits satisfying. One of my favorite examples comes from a group of city engineers in Stockholm, Sweden. These engineers laid a series of sensors across a set of stairs in the subway a...
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Location: India
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7) Two Strategies to Combat Fading Motivation

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  https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/national-mathematics-day-2020-remembering-s-ramanujan-and-his-contributions-to-maths   Now, I think by now you know the desired identity you’re trying to build and you have an implementation intention for inserting this small habit into your daily routine. You may have also made a few environment design changes that help nudge things along. The expectation is that you have performed your habit at least 5-10 times by this point. It’s possible that what I have covered so far is all you need to build a new habit. And, if so, that’s fine. The whole point of these articles is to get you results. If it’s working, then it’s working. There’s no need to make it more complex than it needs to be. However, you may have noticed that you started strong and were feeling motivated but have since fallen off course and struggled to complete your habit more than once or twice. This decline in motivation is something that everyone experience...
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Location: India
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6) Prime Your Environment to Make Future Habits Easy

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  https://www.energy.gov/articles/top-11-things-you-didnt-know-about-nikola-tesla Sometimes I come across questions like if it’s better to focus on one habit at a time or to build multiple habits. My answer is nearly always to focus on one habit. Not only is this simpler, but it also addresses an often overlooked aspect of habit formation: when you’re building one habit, you’re often building multiple habits. Take the habit of eating healthier. There are actually a variety of habits involved in this process. You have to build the habit of going to the grocery store and shopping for new items, the habit of meal planning and deciding what to eat each week, the habit of chopping and prepping food each night, the habit of cleaning up after the meal, and so on. Eating a healthy meal is actually the easiest part. It’s often the preparation that causes you to quit. This is true for many habits – not just eating healthy. One way to increase the odds that your habits will be ...
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Location: India
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5) How to Make Good Habits Automatic

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Subhash Chandra Bose, Source: https://www.oneindia.com/india/74th-independence-day-a-tribute-to-netaji-subhash-chandra-bose-3129516.html   In the last article, we discussed environment design as a method for making cues more obvious, but you can also optimize your environment to make the actions themselves easier to perform. I refer to this process as “ reducing friction ”. The less friction associated with a habit, the more likely it is to occur. In other words, as convenience increases, so do the odds that you follow through on your habit. When deciding where to practice a new habit, it is best to choose a place that is already along the path of your daily routine. Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life. For example, you are more likely to go to the gym if it is on your way to work because stopping doesn’t add much friction to your lifestyle. By comparison, if the gym is off the path of your normal commute—even by just a few blocks—now ...
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Location: India
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4) How to Design Your Environment for Success

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Alan Turing, Source: https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/alan-turing-how-the-worlds-most-famous-codebreaker-unlocked-the-secrets-of-natures-beauty-6907841.html   At this stage, you know the desired identity you’re trying to build. You have a two-minute version of your habit that reinforces that identity, and you’ve designed a clear and specific implementation intention for inserting this small habit into your daily routine. Now it’s time for us to discuss a few strategies to optimize this process and make it even easier to stick with your new habit day in and day out. One of the simplest ways to do this is to make the cues that trigger and prompt your habits as obvious and as visible as possible. Every habit is initiated by a cue, and we are more likely to notice the cues that stand out. Creating obvious visual cues can draw your attention toward your desired habit. Unfortunately, the environments where we live and work often make it easy to not do certain acti...
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Location: India
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3) How to Fit New Habits in Your Life

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Richard Feynman, Source: https://www.cantorsparadise.com/richard-feynman-on-the-differences-between-the-future-and-past-9bb1a550519c Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action. In the last article, we talked about designing a two-minute version of your habit. In this article, we’re going to discuss the ideal time and location to insert that habit into your life. In other words, we’re going to find a clear and specific space for your new habit to live. If you can find the right time and the right place for your new habit, everything falls into place. Here's how to do it: One effective way to insert a new habit into your life is with an “ implementation intention.” An implementation intention is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. That is, how you intend to implement your habit. Scientists have found that if you make an implementation intention, you are more ...
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Location: India
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