Building good habit and breaking bad ones, both are equally important. Atomic habits is a book written by James Clear helps us to change habits. James Clear has written about 4 techniques to change any behavior and suggested practical ways to implement on them. The first technique is “make it obvious” to build good habit and “make it invisible” to break bad ones. Every habit starts with a trigger that triggers our brain to start the routine. For example, when we cross the kitchen we want to eat something. Here the location of kitchen is our trigger. Time and location are easy and most common trigger to build a habit. Decide when and where you want to perform your habit.
Story:- A research was conducted in Great Britain in 2001 for two weeks on 248 people to build better exercise habit. People were divided into three groups. Group 1 was asked to track how often they exercised. Group 2 was motivational group and was asked to track their exercise and asked to read benefits of exercise. Group 3 was asked to track their exercise and got same level of motivation as Group 2. However, this group also asked to formulate a plan for when and where they would exercise. Each member was given a sentence to fill, “I will exercise for 20 minutes on (day), at (time), in (place)”.
Only 35 to 38 percent of people exercised once a week of Group 1 and Group 2, but 91 percent of people exercised once a week of Group 3. The sentence was given to Group 3 was called implementation intention by researchers.
Moral:- The best way to start a new habit is to decide what, where and when the action is performed. Just fill the given sentence.
“I will (behavior) at (time) in (location)”
Habit stacking
To remember the habit, stack your new habit with your existing habit or current habit. Or fill the sentence mentioned here.
“After (current habit), I will (new habit).”
For examples,
- Drinking more water. After waking up in morning, I will drink a glass of water.
- Exercise. After having a meal, I will go for a short walk.
- Reading. After answering emails, I will read.
Environment matters more
It is almost impossible to ignore cookies when they are right in front of you. On the other hand, when we don’t see cookies we might not even remember them. This is because environment plays an important role in what we do. We can easily design our environment according to us by adding more trigger of habit we want to build and by removing trigger of habit we need to break. Increase the number of your trigger. For example, do you want to build reading habit? Keep your book on your table not in cupboard. Another thing you can do is divide your room or environment according to your habit. Choose a new place to start a new habit.
Self-control:-
Want to know the secret of self-control? The secret isavoid tempting situation. Disciplined people do not have extra capacity of self-control, they just avoid situation where they need to show self-control. If you are an alcoholic and sitting with other alcoholic people, you might decide not to drink more than a glass but in reality you will drink more than a glass. The reason is you have limited self-control.
Hence, it is better to avoid situation where you need to use self-control with zero tempting situation.
Breaking a bad habit
When it comes to break a bad habit, use reverse technique. Make your triggers invisible and difficult to reach. Try to find the point of location or point of time that make you remember the bad habit and avoid the location or you can be busy at the time. Check your environment and remove things that bring you closer to your bad habit.