Enlightened thinkers throughout history tell us of the power of habit.

Aristotle’s thoughts were summarized to perfection by Will Durant who said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.”

International motivational speaker, Brian Tracy, tells us that “Successful people are simply those with success habits.”

The right habit then can accelerate us along the tracks to success, while the wrong habit can derail or sidetrack us into harmful addiction or unthinking laziness.  I wish I’d learned to harness them much earlier in life and they will be going on THE list of things I’ll teach to my own kid.

Today I’ll describe how I learned to create a new habit in less than a week. Although it took almost six whole months of trial and error – mostly error, before I figured it out. And it all started with trying to create one simple new habit.

One piddling, measly, wafer-thin, new habit. 

To drink a glass of water every morning.

I’d decided that I really needed to drink more water during the day, and the best time to start was first thing in the morning.

What could be simpler?

While I’d never been one to chug gallons of water throughout the day, I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal to start drinking a glass or two more, and maybe I’d learn something interesting about habit formation in the process.

Was I in for a big surprise!

Ask someone how long it takes to form a new habit and you’ll typically hear answers ranging from 21 up to around 60 days. The latest research from the University College London, suggests that it takes an average of 66 days to form a new habit.

Note:    It’s not clear where the 21 days theory originated, although some folks suggest it was from the work of Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist, who wrote the book “Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life” – an fascinating read if you want to see the early versions of many popular self-improvement memes.

21 days? 30 days ? 66 days?  What the heck, I’ll give them all a shot.

First, I started with 21 days.  Every night before going to bed, I would leave a post-it note in the kitchen, reminding me to “Drink glass of water”.  And, every morning, I would see that post-it note and get myself a nice glass of water – no exceptions, no skipped days.

Nice job Dave!

After 21 days, I stopped leaving the reminders and as soon as I did, the water drinking gradually stopped too.

OK Dave, I told myself. 21 days was no good. 30 days should do the trick!

So, every day for 30 days I would leave those same post-it notes, and every day for 30 days I saw those notes, and got myself a nice tall glass of water.

Piece of cake!

But, as soon as I stopped leaving the reminders, I gradually stopped drinking that nice glass of water again.

Really??

OK, no problem. Time to bring in the big guns.

On my third attempt, I decided to go for a minimum of 66 days, and rather than post-it notes, I used an iphone app called “Good Habits”.  A nice, easy to use App, with an attractive clean looking interface, Good Habits encourages you to stick to your chosen behavior using reminders and a daily counter, tracking your unbroken “streaks” of behavior. If you break a streak, the counter for your habit resets back to zero – and surprisingly, I ended up caring quite deeply about keeping that streak going.

So deeply that I kept that streak going and drinking the corresponding glass of water for 74 days. That’s a week more that the average 66 days suggested by UCL. Over 2 months of drinking a tall refreshing glass of water -every -single -morning.

Surely the habit was burned into my cranium by now!

Feeling like some kind of unstoppable Habit Ninja, I smugly removed the “Drink Water” habit from my Good Habits app, and replaced it with another behavior I was keen to encourage.

And…  Gradually…  I stopped drinking water in the morning – again…

WTF!

How am I supposed to become a power-house of ruthlessly honed success habits, if I can’t even get myself to drink a stupid glass of water in the morning?

It was back to the drawing board for me.

A few light bulbs went off as I read the excellent “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg, a requisite read to understanding the neurological underpinnings of habits. And then, I stumbled upon a video on youtube about the concept of ‘Tiny Habits’ by BJ Fogg. That was when the final pieces fell into place.

You see, in my incomplete understanding of habit formation, I’d been going about things entirely the wrong way. I hadn’t been creating the habit of drinking a glass of water at all. I’d created the habit of reading reminders, be they post-it notes or the Good Habit app. I got really, really good at following my reminders, but, once the reminders went away, the habit went away too.

Bear with me here, because understanding the following concepts is key. It helped me learn how to install new habits in a matter of days.

Duhigg explains that habits are routine behaviors that allow our brains to conserve energy. Once a habit is triggered, the brain can go into ‘automatic mode’ while we’re performing our routine. This means we don’t have to constantly think about basic activities such as walking or eating, so we can devote mental energy to inventing the wheel, television and producing Reality TV shows.

But conserving mental cycles is risky. Imagine if our brain goes into low power mode at the wrong time and we don’t notice the hungry lion crouching in the grass, or the speeding car as we’re about to step into the street. So our brains devote a lot of effort at the beginning of a habit searching for a recognizable trigger, which Duhigg calls a “Cue”, and making sure we select the “Avoid speeding car” habit, rather than the “Amble across the street” habit, when appropriate.

The Cue is the first part of a three step ‘habit loop’ process:

1. Cue: a trigger that tells the brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use
2. Routine: The physical, mental or emotional activity to perform
3. Reward: The physical, mental or emotional payoff which signals to the brain whether this particular behavior is worth remembering

Back to my morning glass of water and the post-it notes.  I had been using the post-it note as a cue, but that wasn’t sustainable, and as soon as I stopped leaving the post-it notes, I stopped triggering the behavior to drink a glass of water.

So what would be a better cue?

That’s where BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits” came in.

The beauty of his approach is that it removes will-power from the equation and integrates your new habit into your existing behaviors. Here’s how “Tiny Habits” work:

The Cue/Trigger

Choose an existing behavior that happens at the same time and same frequency you want for your new habit, and create a statement that looks like this:

“After I <existing behavior>, I will <new behavior>”

The existing behavior will now be your cue or trigger for the new habit.

The routine/behavior

Break down your desired new behavior into its simplest form and use that as the starting point for your new habit. For example, if you want to floss your teeth more regularly, make your habit to floss one tooth. If you want to run every morning, make your habit to put on your running shoes and walk out of the front door.

By making your new habit so simple, you’re removing the need for maintaining high levels of motivation or will-power and hence dramatically increasing the probability that you’ll stick with it.

The reward

Make sure to give yourself a reward immediately on completing your new behavior. Don’t wait until later when you’re going to have that extra scoop of ice-cream, or sleep in an extra hour at the weekend. The reward can be something as simple as raising your arms in the air and yelling “Yeah baby” or just giving yourself a big smile.

Upon learning this I immediately knew what my new Cue was going to be:

“After I turn on the kettle for my morning cup of tea, I will drink a nice cool glass of water”

The routine was already pretty simple. I didn’t need a massive amount of will-power to physically drink one glass of water. It was just automating it that had been proving tricky.

And the reward? I simply give a sigh “Aahhh” and a smile after finishing the glass. Like I’ve just taken that first swig of cold beer after a long sweaty ride in the mountains.

Within three days of trying my new Cue, I’d find myself coming downstairs in the morning, turning on the kettle, and then automatically grabbing a glass and drinking that water. I haven’t had to think about it ever since and often I don’t even have my morning cup of tea any more, haha.  After a while I changed the cue to the following so I wasn’t dependent on using the kettle – seemed a shame to waste the energy.

“After I brush my teeth in the morning, I will drink a nice cool glass of water”

BJ Fogg likens his Tiny Habit method to planting seeds. ‘If you plant a tiny seed in the right spot, it will grow without any coaxing.’

I’m a believer and now I know where to plant the seeds, I can focus on looking for the right seeds. Those habits that will most help me achieve my goals and live an inspired purposeful life.

I challenge all you self-improvement junkies out there to give this a try. You’ll be a butt-kicking Habit Ninja before you know it!

Let me know how you get on in the comment section, and if you’re loving the idea, why not buy the Habit Ninja T-Shirt!

Resources

1. Good Habits app for iPhone and Android
2. Habit Ninja t-shirt from the UpGiver Store
3. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business book by Charles Duhigg:  A requisite read to understanding the neurological underpinnings of habits.
4. Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life book by Maxwell Maltz
5. Tiny Habits video by BJ Fogg from Stanford University