You Can Build 5 Habits This Year, Who Do You Want To Be?

Today's blog post is based on a blog post from The ONE Thing:

Averaging out the results of various studies on the topic, it’s a safe bet to say it takes 66 Days to build a new habit. With your year out in front of you, that leaves you with enough time to change five things about yourself, conservatively.

Apparently, the old adage about taking 21 days to build a habit is misleading...it more commonly takes around 66 days, although it can vary from about 18 to 245!

So who do you want to be when 2020 rolls around?

Five changes per year certainly doesn’t sound like a lot—and of course, there are some exceptions to the rule. However, whether we view building five habits as substantial or minimal largely depends on how we view habits to begin with. Just like everything else, no habits are equal in weight or importance.

Sure, if you decided to stop biting your finger nails, checking Facebook in public, cracking your knuckles, entering a new lane without using a turn signal, and watching TV in bed then you could probably expect the future version of you to look like the current you.

The reason is because none of those habits work toward an end goal. They’re all isolated victories that don’t have anything to do with one another. They may be positive individual changes, but as a collective group, they lack the ability to push the needle forward.

The post then goes on to talk about the difference between model-free habit building:

The model-free approach represents our natural disposition toward building habits. We build them because they lead to foreseeable, short-term rewards. In other words, we stick to eating low-hanging fruit. We would categorize any of the new habits we mentioned above, like curbing the nail biting or soda drinking, as a model-free approach to habit building.

and model-based habit building:

Model-based approaches, on the other hand, teach us to think with the end in mind, pushing off short-term rewards to move in the direction of long-term satisfaction. This way, our minds stay focused on the ultimate outcome as opposed to the immediate reward. Thinking of our actions and habits in this larger context makes achieving more desirable outcomes possible because, like any good story, it recognizes that our actions bear weight and can snowball into something bigger.

The post then talks about working backwards from your one thing (I talked about the one thing here):

Here at The One Thing, we just call it Goal Setting to the Now.

Working backward from an end-goal, try to paint a complete picture of the path you need to take to achieve our desired results. Each outcome on that path represents a habit we need to build that will allow progress to take place. When looking at the goals you’ve set for the year, you should be able to place a “therefore” between each step and see how each action you take leads to the next.

Once you start the exercise, you’ll likely see how building only 5 habits can snowball into monumental change. In fact, you might find it difficult to chart out more than 5 habits at a time.

 You're going to need to create an environment that supports your new habits:

If the people around us aren’t “in the know” about what we’re trying to accomplish, it can lead to tempting situations that cause us to backslide. More than that, as we discussed last month, our physical environments are built to accompany our existing habits. In order to succeed, we need to change our environment to be complimentary to the habits we’re trying to build.

 Also, check out the 66 Day Challenge:

The purpose of the 66 Day Challenge is to give you a target for making substantial changes in your life. Reaching the 66^th day doesn’t mean you’ve crossed the finish line. Once you build one habit and move on to the next, you may find yourself slipping or struggling with a previous habit. When that happens, there’s a good chance that the supporting habit you’ve “built” wasn’t built that well—perhaps not at all.

There's a link to print out the 66 Day Challenge calendar at the bottom of the page.

The article contains a lot more good information, so be sure to check it out!

Interesting days

Today - Frozen Yogurt Day and Lame Duck Day

Tomorrow-  Ballet Day, Send a Card to a Friend Day and Wave All Your Fingers At Your Neighbors Day

Next Wednesday - Radio Day, Get A Different Name Day, Employee Legal Awareness Day, Madly In Love With Me Day and Tortellini Day

March 6 - Dentist’s Day, Frozen Food Day, White Chocolate Cheesecake Day, Procrastination Week, Pet Sitters Week, World Orphan Week, Consumer Protection Week, Dental Assistants Recognition Week, Schools Social Work Week, Read an E-Book Week, Return Borrowed Books Week, School Breakfast Week, Women in Construction Week, No More Week, Universal Human Beings Week, Write a Letter Appreciation Week, Will Eisner Week, Cheerleading Week, Endometriosis Awareness Week and Jewish Book Week