Habits and Goals

 
 

Summary

  • Habits are a huge part of changing our behaviours. Making a 1% change does matter and adds up.

  • You can complete a habit review by writing down everything you do in a day (weekend vs weekday) in a non-judgemental way.

  • Look at the tips below on how to make your positive habits easier to do

    • Try to add-up on the positive habits to crowd out the habits you aren’t as happy with rather than focusing on removing negative habits

  • Modify your environment to support your goals

    • If you like cookies, but them in a high cupboard that is a little more work to reach, and place fruit, nuts, or other snacks you want to increase easy to reach

  • If you identify a behaviour you want to change, use the tips below to make the habit harder

  • Habits and building systems are powerful ways to change, If you are someone who want to set goals, use the SMART structure. If you don’t like setting goals, just focus on systems and habits

Details

Atomic Habits by James Clear

This is a great book with some wonderful tips. Below are 3 lessons shared by James on his website:

Lesson 1: Small habits make a big difference

Even a 1% improvement is something you should be proud of. It is a vote towards the state and goals you want to achieve.

Lesson 2: Forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. 

Think less about a specific goal and more about the system and processes you need in place to continuously improve. Using a sports example, Michael Jordan was not focused on the goal of winning a game, he was focused on the processes needed for him to be the best.

Lesson 3: Build identity-based habits

Identify-based habits are a way to see or visualize the type of person you want to be, and then from there think about the actions and activities you would do to enforce the behaviours of that type of person. Using the example above, if you play basketball every day you may start to identify yourself as a basketball player. From there you can start to think about what a basketball player (like Michael Jordan) would do to continuously improve. Those processes can help you achieve identify-based habits.

Changing Habits

How to create a good habit: 

  • The 1st law (Cue): Make it obvious. 

  • The 2nd law (Craving): Make it attractive. 

  • The 3rd law (Response): Make it easy. 

  • The 4th law (Reward): Make it satisfying.

How to break a bad habit:

  • Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible. 

  • Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive. 

  • Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult. 

  • Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying.



SMART Goals

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Specific

What will you achieve? What will you do?

Measurable

What data will you use to decide whether you've met the goal?

Achievable

Are you sure you can do this? Do you have the right skills and resources?

Relevant

Does the goal align with those of your team or organization? How will the result matter?

Time-bound

What is the deadline for accomplishing the goal?