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Building and Breaking Habits

The document provides tips for building positive habits by making them obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. It also provides tips for breaking negative habits by making them invisible, unattractive, difficult and unsatisfying.

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Christel Hinneman
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61 views

Building and Breaking Habits

The document provides tips for building positive habits by making them obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. It also provides tips for breaking negative habits by making them invisible, unattractive, difficult and unsatisfying.

Uploaded by

Christel Hinneman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Building habits

To build positive habits, consider the following steps in designing them:


Make it obvious – make the “cue” for your habit something you can’t miss
• Use an implementation intention – I will [behaviour] at [time] in [location].
e.g. I will populate my journal at 8am each day at my desk.
• Use habit stacking – After [current habit], I will [new habit].
e.g. After arriving to work in the morning, I will check my tasks and events in my journal.
• Design your environment to make the cue of that habit visible.

Make it attractive – make completing the habit more enjoyable


• Use temptation bundling by pairing an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
• Join a culture where doing the habit regularly is the normal behavior.
e.g. a journaling group like the JashiiCorrin Community.
• Create a “motivation ritual” by doing something you enjoy immediately before your habit.

Make it easy – eliminate barriers to completing your habit


• Design your environment to make doing your habit easy.
e.g. setting up your desk or workspace so that all your materials are readily available.
• Reduce friction by decreasing the number of steps between you and your habit.
e.g. leave your journal open.
• Prepare your environment to make future habit-doing easier.
e.g. leave your desk tidy.
• Use the two-minute rule; downscale your habit to make a version that takes 2 minutes or less
e.g. opening the notebook you use for journaling, or getting out your pens, etc.

Make it satisfying – make completing the habit satisfying


• Use reinforcement by giving yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit.
• Use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit streak and “don’t break the chain.”
• Never miss twice. When you forget to do your habit, make sure you get back on track immediately.

Breaking habits
To break your negative habits, consider the following steps:

Make it invisible
• Reduce exposure by removing the cues of your bad habits from your environment
e.g. put your phone in another room

Make in unattractive
• Reframe your mindset to highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.

Make it difficult
• Increase friction by increasing the number of steps between you and your bad habits.
• Use a commitment device to restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you.

Make it unsatisfying
• Get an accountability partner who can help monitor your behaviour.
• Create a habit contract to make the costs of your bad habits public and painful.

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