In this lesson, we cover the intricate art of forming multiple habits at once — something you’re already experiencing, I’m sure.
- Forming & maintaining multiple habits — something that most of you are already facing and might have questions about
- Adding habits increases complexity in habit change — it can feel overwhelming or difficult, especially if you drop one or two of the earlier habits
- Bring awareness — take a look at how automatic the habits have become
- Do I do the habit everyday without needing to think about it too much, without a reminder, fairly easy to start the habit each day? Then it has become fairly automatic, and it’s on maintenance mode
- Does it take a lot of structure and accountability, do I need to psyche myself up? Then it’s not very automatic
- When it’s automatic, it’s fairly resilient; when it’s not very automatic, it’s still fairly fragile
- When I miss a day or three or a week … how easy is it to come back to it?
- Some habits move to automatic pretty quickly, others don’t
- One reason is if we add too many habits at once, it keeps them at the difficult end
- Rate each habit — are they in the stable/resilient end of the spectrum (10) or more fragile/unstable (1)?
- If you have several habits in the 1-3 range … wait until a couple of the habits become more automatic (like a 6) before adding a fourth habit
- Too many habits in the 1-3 range creates a house of cards that can come crumbling down
- Try to get habits in the 6+ range before adding too many more
- Keep habits small to help them move to the automatic stage
You can watch the video above, or here on Vimeo.