How To Build Habits That Make You Succesful?

How To Build Habits

I have combined my knowledge from reading Atomic Habits with my personal experience to create the most practical guide to building habits.

“When nothing seems to help, I look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before.” – Jacob Riis.

Imagine you are that stonecutter. Your habits are the 100 blows that came before the stone split. They seem insignificant at the moment. With each blow, you wonder whether you are simply wasting your time.

Maybe you wasted the whole week, the month, the year hacking away at a stone that would never break. Maybe your hammer is faulty, or you are probably hitting it poorly. You feel disappointed.

But around the 50th blow, you start to see a difference: the tiniest crack, something others probably will not notice. You realize that with each blow that hits the stone without making a difference, the energy is being stored, not wasted.

Until at the 101st blow, the stone splits open. People only see the split stone. They applaud your 101st blow. Thinking it was a marvel, the single event that sparked your success, a once-in-a-lifetime event. But you know it was not the 101st blow that split the rock. It was the 100s that came before it, the power of 101 blows stacked atop each other.

“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”

Usually, we want to create habits to achieve a goal. For example, exercising every day to lose weight.

But that is not all.

Our life is like clockwork. We go to school or work and willingly or unwillingly perform the same tasks day after day. Some tasks are tiny, like making your bed or brushing your teeth. You do these unconsciously.

Some are mentally taxing. Say, doing homework or waking up early. Creating a habit of these tasks and fixing a time make the mentally taxing tasks seem like tiny ones. Doing something every day helps you do the action unconsciously. Instead of analyzing and creating a response, your brain already knows what to do. So, it utilizes that energy for something else.

Habits give you the freedom to relax and try new stuff.

So you need to learn how to build habits. And not just any habits. Habits that stick.

How To Build Habits That Stick

Step 1: The Right Mindset.

How To Build Habits: Three Levels Of Change

Identity Change: Changing your beliefs, perspective, and identity.
Process Change: Changing the system, the path you adopt to achieve your outcome.
Outcome Change: Changing the result, the goal, and the desired outcome.

Let me explain with an example. How to build habits like studying or working out?

How NOT to build a habit.

How do you usually try to build a habit?

You go from inside this circle to the outside.

First, you decide on a goal. You decide you want to get all As.

Second, you create a system. You make a study timetable.

Third, if you achieve your outcome, your identity changes. Others start calling you a topper, so you view yourself as one. You believe yourself to be a topper and take pride in it. Now, you want to keep up the reputation.

So you maintain the habit.

At least, this is what you imagine will happen. But let me guess what happens instead.

You decide the goal. You create a process and probably spend days perfecting the timetable, researching study methods, and buying the correct study guides. Unknowingly, you procrastinate actually STUDYING by PLANNING TO STUDY.

Maybe you follow the timetable for one day, two days, a maximum of a week. But you still do not get As. It is not as perfect as you imagined it to be. You are not able to focus during your study time. You could not complete the portions you planned.

You give up.

And you don’t reach inside the circle. Your identity doesn’t change.

How to build habits CORRECTLY

The more effective way is to do the reverse. Go from inside the cycle to outside.

First, decide who you want to be. The goal is not to score high marks. The goal is to become a topper.

The best form of motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. That is why we unknowingly fit into cliques. When you are known as a quiet person, you stick to it. When you are known as an athlete, you stick to it. Because it is part of your identity. It helps you fit in. Being quiet or doing good at sports become habits.

When you take pride in something you do, you start putting effort into maintaining it.

If you have healthy hair, you try to maintain it because you’re proud of it. If you have a good sense of humour, you try to be funny because you’re proud to be funny. And unknowingly it becomes a habit.

So first, change your beliefs. Fake it till you make it. If your goal is to score higher, think like someone hardworking enough to study daily. When you come home and see the phone sitting out, ask yourself: Would a topper pick up the phone or study instead? Would they set a timer to limit the time they use the phone? Would they do it after studying?

If you aim to wake up at 5am, act like someone with enough perseverance to wake up early. When you stay awake till 10, instead of thinking: Wow. I will wake up late if I do not sleep.

Think: Wow. I will get less than 7 hours of sleep if I don’t go to sleep right now.

See the difference?

In the second case, instead of assuming you will break your habit, you think of yourself as someone who will follow it no matter what.

Now, you are in the second layer of the circle.

Process Change.

Show up. What matters is not whether you do it perfectly. It is about whether you do it.
Make small increments every day.
Adapt the process best suited to you.

We will discuss more of that later.

Outcome Change.

Now, you will achieve your outcome. The outcome makes you satisfied, so you keep following the habit.

The Process of Building A Habit

All habits proceed through four stages in the same order: cue, craving, response, and reward. To learn how to build habits, you need to master these four stages.

Cue makes you notice the reward. It triggers your brain to initiate a behaviour.

Craving makes you want the reward. It motivated you to begin and complete the action.

The response makes you obtain the reward. It is the process you follow to achieve it.

The reward is your goal. It a) gives you satisfaction. b) Helps you repeat the goal. It signals to your brain, this makes me happy, this is good, keep doing it. c) Of course, it provides the inbuilt benefit you wanted in the first place.

Without the first three steps, the behaviour will not appear. Without all four steps, the behaviour will not be repeated.

Example: Switching on the light.

Cue: You enter a dark room.
Craving: You want to be able to see.
Response: You flip the light switch.
Reward: You satisfy your craving to see. Turning on the light switch becomes associated with being in the dark.

1st Law: Cue: Make It Obvious

Train your brain to pick up cues automatically and unconsciously.

Step 2: Notice.

Before answering how to build habits, let me ask you something.

What are the habits you perform on a daily basis?

You need to be aware of your habits before changing them.

Create a habit scorecard. Write down all the habits you do in a day. Put a plus near the good ones. A minus near the bad ones. And equal sign near the neutral ones.

For example, you can start like this:

Wake up =
Turn off the alarm =
Check my phone –
Make my bed +
Brush my teeth +

Observe your actions and thoughts without criticizing or praising yourself. Don’t praise yourself for the good habits, and don’t put yourself down for the bad ones. Just notice.

Step 3: Start A New Habit

Implementation Intention.

People who decide the time and location of their habit are more likely to go through with it.

Fill out this sentence:

I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].

Example: I will study maths for half an hour at 5pm in my study room.

If you don’t have a starting time, fix it on the first day of the week or month. You are most likely to go through with that because hopes are higher.

Habit Stacking.

French philosopher Denis Diderot lived in poverty until a day in 1765.

His daughter was about to get married, and he did not have money to afford it.

When Catherine The Great, the empress of Russia, heard of Diderot’s troubles, she offered to buy his personal library for 1000 euros (more than 150,000 dollars today).

Suddenly, Diderot had money to spare. He bought a beautiful scarlet robe for himself. But when the philosopher brought it home, Diderot realized that his home looked rather shabby in its presence. He replaced everything in his room to match the luxurious robe. One purchase led to another.

This effect is known as the Diderot Effect.

Now, you might ask me why that has anything to do with habits?

Atomic Habits sums it up perfectly. No behaviour happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next.

This is the principle behind the habit stacking method created by BJ Fogg.

How to build habits using the habit-stacking formula:

After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

Plan it using this sentence structure. Say it out loud or write it down somewhere.

Create a list of habits that you do each day.

Example:

Wake up.
Get out of bed.
Brush your teeth.
Shower.
Eat.
You take a ride to school.

And so on.

And a list of things that happen to you each day without fail.

Sun rises.
You get a text message.
The song that you are listening to ends.
The sunsets.

After, identify the best place in this list to layer your new habit.

Stack your desired habit on top of another related habit. Make it specific. Instead of saying, I will take 10 push-ups when I take a break for lunch. Decide, that when I close my laptop for lunch, I will do ten push-ups next to my desk.

Manipulate Your Environment.

Place visual cues that remind you of your habit in places you frequently visit. For instance, if you want to drink more water keep water bottles or glasses in different corners of your house/room.

“Stop thinking of your environment as filled with objects. Start thinking of it as filled with relationships.

For one person, her couch is where she reads each night. For someone else, the couch is where he watches television and eats a bowl of ice cream after work.

Insomniacs were asked to sit in another room until they felt sleepy. They only used their bed when they were tired. And over time, they started associating their bed with being sleepy. It became easier to sleep quicker in that room. Their brain learnt that sleeping (not browsing on their phones or staring at the clock) was the only habit in that room.

Trying to eat healthier? You likely shop autopilot at your regular supermarket. Try a new grocery store. You may find it easier to avoid unhealthy food when your brain does not automatically know where it is located.” – Atomic Habits

Train yourself to link a particular habit with its own space. Go to a new place to create a new routine there. Go to the park to exercise. Go to the cafe to study.
You can assign space inside your house. Study in one room. Exercise in another. Sleep in another.
Or if you do not have that much space, assign objects. Use a desk for studying. Another chair for scrolling on your phone.
Even with your phone or digital devices, make that distinction. Use a laptop, a tablet or even another phone to study. Another one to scroll on social media.
As much as possible, avoid mixing these spaces. Avoid mixing the context of one habit with another because you will start mixing the habits and end up following the easier one.

2nd Law: Craving: Make It Attractive

Supernormal Stimuli

This expert (not accurate word for word, modified by me) from Atomic Habits explains the concept quiet easily.

“In the 1940s, a Dutch scientist named Niko Tinbergern performed some experiments.

The grey-lag goose is a ground-nesting bird. Occasionally, as the mother moves around on the nest, one of the eggs will roll out and settle on the grass nearby. Whenever this happens, the goose will waddle over to the egg and use its be and neck to pull it back.

Tinbergen discovered that the goose would pull any nearby round object, such as a billiard ball or a lightbulb back into the next. The bigger the object, the greater their response. One goose even tried to roll a volleyball back and sit on top.

The goose followed an instinctive rule: When I see a round object nearby, I must roll it back into the nest. The bigger the round object, the harder I should try to get it.”

Scientists call these cues supernatural stimuli, a heightened version of reality (like an egg the size of a volleyball) that elicits a more powerful response than usual.

Humans also follow this pattern. The more attractive a goal, the harder we chase it.

Dopamine Fueled Feedback Loop.

Our dopamine (happy hormone) spikes not only when you experience enjoyment but also when you anticipate it.

Ronan Byrne, an electrical engineering student in Dublin, wanted to exercise more often.

He also liked watching Netflix.

So, he hacked his stationary bike, connected it to his laptop and TV, and wrote a program that allowed Netflix to run only if he was cycling at a certain speed. If he slowed down for too long, the show paused until he started cycling again. He was, in the words of one fan, “eliminating obesity one Netflix binge at a time.”

So the takeaway is to pair things you enjoy doing and look forward to with habits you want to create. It could be watching your favourite show while working out or eating your favourite snack while studying.

The habit stacking + temptation building formula

After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED].
After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].

People Around You Promote Your Habits

“We are likely to imitate: a)the close b) the many c) the powerful.” – Atomic Habits.

Behaviours are attractive when they help us fit in.

Join clubs or groups of people for whom your desired habit is the normal behaviour and with whom you already have something in common.

The 3rd Law: Response: Make It Easy

As I told you at the beginning, sometimes we spend too much time planning our habits than doing them. We unknowingly use planning as a method of procrastination and lie to ourselves.

We also obsess over details. Often, we get discouraged if we can’t do it perfectly. When we can’t complete everything we planned or solve a single problem, we stop studying altogether.

You try to do too much too soon.

Two-Minute Rule: When you start a new habit, it should take less than 2 minutes to do.

This is not just a hack to start new habits but also the ideal way to master difficult skills. – Atomic Habits.

Start each habit with a gateway activity. This activity should only take 2 minutes to do.

Tying your shoes before going running.
Opening your books before studying.

You can figure out these habits by mapping out your goals from very easy to very hard.

Example: Writing.

Very easy: Write one sentence.
Easy: Write one paragraph.
Moderate: Write 1000 words.
Hard: Write a five-thousand-word article.
Very hard: Write a book.

The goal is to make the first action mindless. You may not be able to run 10 minutes mindlessly. But the action of starting and tying your shoes as soon as you complete your previous task becomes automated.

“Make it easy to start and the rest will follow.”

On the first day, you must do the activity for only two minutes. Study or run only for two minutes and then stop.

Slowly build up on your progress. Turn two minutes into 10, 10 to 20 and then to 30. Don’t push your limits. Stop studying before it starts feeling like a hassle and return later. Stop when you’re doing good.
This also helps you enforce your Identity Change. You show up to the study room every day, and you are someone who never misses the study session, even if only for 2 minutes.
The goal is to show up. You form habits not according to how long you follow them or how well you do them, but how frequently you show up. Each time you repeat an action, you activate a neural circuit associated with that habit.

4th Law: Reward: Make It Satisfying

Attach instant rewards to your habits.
This can be done in the form of visual habit tracking. Habit trackers can be part of your journal, or even as simple as crossing out each day on your calendar. In Atomic Habits there is the story of a stockbroker who would keep two jars. One jar would be filled with paper clips. After each call, he would transfer one clip to the empty jar. This is another example of visual measurement or habit tracking. It tracks your progress. It motivates you to keep up the streak, and you feel instant satisfaction when you tick the box after practising the habit.
Record each measurement instantly after you do the habit.
Only track the most important habits.
Recover quickly when habits break down. Never miss twice. Show up even if it means imperfectly. A bad workout day is better than none at all. Even if you study only one paragraph, you still show up and follow the habit.

How To Build Habits: The Conclusion

Only take up habits that can benefit you and suit your skills.
Explore your methods. It may be finding a study technique/pattern or a proper workout (cardio, HIIT, weight training) if your goal is to become healthy. Find one that works and stick to it. Knowing how to build habits is useless if you’re not building the right habits. Work on the strategy that gives the best results 80-90% of the time. Explore during the remaining 10-20%.
The Goldilocks Rule: “A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity. Scientists have tried to quantify this feeling. They found that to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 per cent beyond your current ability.” – Atomic Habits. According to this rule, we are the most motivated when we work on tasks which are right at the edge of our capabilities. If you study portions you already know thoroughly, then it will seem boring and useless. If you study portions that are too long or difficult to grasp, then you might lose interest because you feel it is impossible. Find the right balance.
Fall in love with boredom. Boredom is inevitable even if you are following your passion. Successful people face it too.
Once a habit is fixed, don’t forget to reflect and review. Mastery can only be achieved with a combination of habits and deliberate practice. The downside to habits is that we stop paying attention to little errors. Remain conscious of your performance. Be imperfect once in a while. But don’t make imperfection a habit.

I have summarised the book as effectively as possible but if you still want to, read Atomic Habits. It’s worth it and pretty interesting for a self-help book, honestly.

Remember that atomic habits, stocked upon each other, make a big difference in the future, even if they seem insignificant in the present.

The stone will break, but only if you do not give up on the 100th blow.

And that’s how to build habits that make you succesful.

I also wanted to include ways to get rid of bad habits. But that would be too long. So, if this one gets a good response, I might write a blog on that.

I realized I sound very serious in this blog. I am not that boring, I promise.

Check out my other blogs and follow my social media for content where I act less like a grey-haired man in a suit.

I have genre-based book recommendations and more personal growth advice (mainly aimed at students) coming up next month, so stay tuned.