Ask HN: Are there any systematic and scientific ways to develop a habit?

2. Learn to say no. If someone wants you to do something else during this time slot, say no, and tell them why.

3. Never break the routine. Breaking it once makes it MUCH easier to break the next scheduled time. If you do break it, feel bad about it and get back on the horse IMMEDIATELY.

4. Use the power of accountability to reinforce the routine. If you can find someone who will hold you accountable, do it. Someone who does the routine with you, or a coach who will call you out if you make excuses.

5. One thing at a time. Don't build some huge routine of 15 tasks at once. Ease into it one task at a time.

6. Don't overload yourself. Leave time in your schedule for play. If it gets to be too much, decide CONSCIOUSLY which one you will drop permanently (and not right before the schedule to do it).

Edit: I'll also say this: Overcoming adversity builds discipline. A tough life that forces you to fight for what you want builds this naturally. An easy, carefree life doesn't make you tough. Seek out tough things to toughen yourself up.

2. Agree. Some discipline in sticking is very helpful in the beginning. Over time, people realize you aren't to be bothered at a certain time, or even that you don't spontaneously change your plans if you have certain specific activities planned that hour ( for me, it's biking).

3. Strongly Disagree. Being uncomfortable with a break in routine leads to guilt, sense of failure, and premature abandonment of your goal. It's really important to curtail falling off, but comfort with occasional breaks is really important.

4. This only works if you have a long term coach/partner. Friends are usually unlikely to be as determined as you to do this particular thing. And if you start together with a friend and they fall off, it legitimizes the failure a little and tempts you to fall off too. I'd say being accountable to yourself (marking lines on a whiteboard) might be more effective.

5. Strongly agree. ONLY one thing at a time.

6. Agree

How you handle failure tells a LOT about your character. Either you're a pussy who sits in a corner feeling sorry for yourself, or you take your lumps, then get up and go again.

Feeling warm and fuzzy all the time doesn't give you grit.

When shit goes REALLY bad, your ability to deal with the nastiness of reality is put to the test. I fought for a month and a half with a broken rib, because I refused to give in. I've climbed out of some very nasty holes and endured the most humiliating circumstances holding my head high, because I will not concede defeat. If I have to die, I'll kill my enemies first. If I fail, that's MY fault, not other people, not circumstance. I have sole responsibility over myself, EVEN if I'm not the one who got me into the mess originally. It's MY responsibility to get out, and no one else's, because let's face it: no one else gives anywhere near as much of a shit about you as you do.

1. Ensure sufficient sleep (varies for each individual)

2. Identify and manage sources of stress

3. Practice mindfulness meditation

Doing the above ensures that your willpower is stronger and you are able to stick with new habits.

What is really important is that you never forget the hard work it was to build the routine to never let it go. It is hard for everybody to build again a routine after a break like when you broke your foot (like me right now) and need to go back to running every second day (I know it will be painful both physically and psychologically for me).

Point 5. is really important. One habit at a time, it takes a lot of willpower to build one action/activity into a routine, do not overload. Also, there are some habits which are easier to start building at given point in your life or of the year (running in winter may not be fun for you). So use the right time of the year, the right break in your life to start something and fight to not lose the ones you achieved.

Last time I check out research concerning producitivty, it's an unresearched black hole.

That's not factoring in the reproducability crisis.

This is far better IMO than googling somebody else's list. It is personalized to you and is more fun that way, too.

Actually, I guess it's mostly the first 3:

> 1. Build a routine. Set a specific, repeating time when you will do the thing in your calendar. Keep that slot clear, ALWAYS. Never let something interrupt this task.

> 2. Learn to say no. If someone wants you to do something else during this time slot, say no, and tell them why.

> 3. Never break the routine. Breaking it once makes it MUCH easier to break the next scheduled time. If you do break it, feel bad about it and get back on the horse IMMEDIATELY.

It's this "do it now or feel guilty" stuff that keeps most people procrastinating or avoiding doing the task. I remember initially I would have it set in my mind that I needed to go to the gym at 10 a.m. the next day. If I woke up a bit late or was wasting time on reddit and 10 a.m. looked unrealistic, I started feeling really guilty. "Oh no, if I don't go now, I'll never go!" It put a lot of stupid, unnecessary pressure on the situation. And it didn't really have the desired effect -- I'd usually not go, since I had already blown it by missing my 10 a.m. deadline, after all!

Now, I might wake up and plan on going at 10, but I know that I 1) absolutely do plan on going and 2) can go at 11, or 12, or 1, or 2, etc. There's no need to make the task worse by associating a lot of negative pressure and guilt with it.

> One thing at a time. [...] Leave time in your schedule for play.

Totally. Especially if it's an area where the amount of information out there can be overwhelming (a la fitness / weightlifting). I started out going with a few exercises I enjoyed in mind and simply did them until I felt tired. I didn't worry about making a program, writing down my workouts, obsessing about nutrition, or obsessing about how many days or which days I did what.

Over time, things started getting easier and I began incorporating more of this stuff as I started feeling comfortable. But the initial phase where I made the habit something I actually enjoyed was crucial. Even now, when I occasionally find myself feeling like I've slipped too much back into treating it like a job, I take a day to not keep track of anything and try some new exercises that I think might feel good.

Edit: Also super useful:

> If you can find someone who will hold you accountable, do it. Someone who does the routine with you, or a coach who will call you out if you make excuses.

For me it was my roommate. I'd go with him the first couple of months. After a while I felt comfortable enough to go by myself and do my own thing, but that initial time where I would use the slight social pressure of him going and asking me if I wanted to go to keep myself in check.

The key is to entrain a new habit with an old one---exercise when you get up, or on your way home from work, or at some other point in the day where you're reliably doing the same thing every day.

Couldn't agree more with this.

I've tried many times to build habits into my routine, only to abandon them and feel bad about it because I couldn't maintain them for a few days.

No more. Now I have them in my list, I keep them consciously present, but I won't punish myself if I don't get them done one day. Allow some leeway. If you really want it, build it paciently into your routine and if it doesn't feel right, try another way.

One example: I've been trying to stick to a healthy diet to lose some weight. I don't enjoy cooking, and much less enjoy preparing or eating salads. Tried lots of apps, lots of ways of grocery shopping, and hated it all the way. Now I switched to calorie counting and drinking lots of water. Walking away from the desk to fill a bottle 3 or 4 times a day feels like I'm moving forward without any hassle, and I just try to eat slowly when I sit down for lunch or dinner. Water diminishes my appetite and cravings for eating out of just feeling anxiety. And if I feel like chomping down on a pizza with beer, it's ok, no big deal.

Just take it easy. Hakuna matata.

Systematic, definitely. Scientific? Not really sure, but I find it extremely effective. If I could boil it down to "what works" for me, it'd be:

- Pick a task or thing that you want to accomplish. Let's say running (mine is running/lifting).

- Pick a "cue," or something that signals when you perform said task. The more apparent the cue the better. Mine is waking up. Working out is the first thing I do.

- Follow this routine religiously for about 21 days. That's the magic number according to people who are into this kind of thing, and I agree. At this point you kind of forget what your old habit was when you woke up, and you naturally go to perform your new task.

And lastly, there will be some days when you don't want to perform the task. Do it anyway. A streak of not performing that task is really just the (re)formation of a bad habit.

Worth noting that the 21 day recommendation is "average", the actual "stick time" has a huge variation between a few days spent on "brush my teeth as soon as I wake up" habit to (likely) months that it would take to pick up the "run 5 miles before breakfast" habit.

It talks through studies where people have broken bad habits through creating new ones.

However, I always congratulated myself (outloud, by name) when giving myself the treat, and pretty soon, the congratulating myself was conditioned as a reward for the activity, letting me drop (most of) the usage of actual treats.

Just treat yourself like a particularly stubborn and clever dog/cat/animal you're trying to train -- if marketing has taught us anything, it's that cheap psychology tricks work.

- I stopped trying to develop all the habits at once and sticked to a single habit. Preferably the easiest one.

- I discovered I get used to doing something by repeating it a lot. For e.g. at the beginning, I was targeting doing yoga once a week because I was thinking that the more often I target, the more difficult it would be and I would fail. It did not work out because doing something once a week did not turn into a habit. Instead, I switched to doing 3 minutes of yoga, but every single day. And I did not target increasing it at all. After a period, I was automatically increasing it without noticing it.

- I cannot develop habits when my life is busy and unstable. For e.g. if I am not coming home at the same hour everyday, and targeting to read at the same time but missing it because I was not at home at that hour, it did not turn in to a habit. When I could do it at the same time everyday for a period, then it started to stick.

- I started giving a habit at least 3 months to develop. I reserve the next three months for a single habit, if I can do it, say 60 times in 90 days, I tend to stick to it after that period and am now able to add a new one, because the feeling of "I am now trying to develop a habit" disappears for the old one.

- Also I discovered that once I make something a habit, I can decrease the frequency and still able to stick with it. E.g. I developed a habit of running 3-4 times a week, now I want to do it once a week and I can easily stick to it.

There's an important psychological reason behind this. When we usually try to build a habit(or 'change a behavior'), we're going against our default nature. If that weren't the case, you'd already have acquired that habit.

Now going against your nature takes willpower. And research has established [1] that we have a limited amount (budget) of willpower everyday. Expend the budget on one thing, and you have no more of it for another. In experiments, people are more easily tempted by an unhealthy snack after a hard day, because they've already used up their willpower for the day. Bottomline: willpower based behavior change is very hard to sustain.

Also, we usually interpret our failings to keep up with our behavior change effort as guilt and failure, rather than the budget of willpower drying up, which is what it actually is. That starts a negative connotation with the very thing that was supposed to bring a positive change to our lives.

I don't want to sound promotional, but we're seeing incredible change in people's walking behavior by turning it into a fun engaging game/app [2]. It just seems to work where an 'endless willpower' driven approach fails.

The interesting insight into this process is that the healthy habit needs to be a side effect of this game. It cannot be the main focus of the game. In other words, there must be a strong gaming core loop that's just fun and sticky by itself, and which is what people think of when they think of the game. The core loop is basically going to be fed by (among other things) elements of your healthy habit.

[1] http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/willpower-facts

[2] http://battlesteps.com

"Challenged" (not debunked) would more precisely describe what the linked article says. I'm not saying the claims were set in stone, but even intuitively, it seems to make sense that people might be tempted to 'throw in the towel' after a hard day.

As for me, I've found I'm usually actively seeking out a guilty pleasure after a hard day. A cookie (or a beer) looks pretty appealing at that point.

You have to start so small that is seems stupid, but as it's all about positive reinforcement, you better start small (five minute tasks like clean your desk) and succeed, than a little bigger and fail. You may think that you could do 30 minutes and do more, but the goal here is to do this each and every day. If you do more one day, that's great. But this is the minimum. You have to set yourself to do this every day for five minutes.

You repeat this for 50 days, and the idea is that by then you have created a habit. Then you can start a new goal.

It sounds stupid, but it's not. It's really easy to let this go for one day, and think tomorrow I'll do 15 minutes to compensate. Or maybe you had a good day yesterday, and you worked 30 minutes on your goal. This is not a good idea. It's a trigger to let go, and stop the routine. Soon you're doing this 5 minute task only every other day, and then suddenly you stop alltogether.

And of course I take a stupid example here. You may choose another task that takes more time, and maybe you don't set a time limit, but something like walk the dog three times a day, or read one chapter of a book each day.

https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1x99m6/im_a...

https://www.reddit.com/r/theXeffect/

You shouldn't need to develop a habit like reading or exercise. If you don't truly want to do these things then you'll stick to your systematic habit for a few days and it'll fizzle out, then it's back to the drawing board.

I've been walking/jogging a few miles a day for the last 5 years or so. Now it's part of my life because I straight up enjoy it. I also quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey after smoking a pack a day for a long time.

Both were honestly really easy to do because deep down I wanted to do them. I woke up one day and the room was spinning which is something I never encountered before. It scared the shit out of me, so I immediately changed my life style.

You should be asking yourself why you want to read and exercise more. Is it because of a long term goal? Good, write that goal down and stick to doing things that point you towards it. That's all there is to it.

If you find that too difficult, then your goal is not really something you care about, so think harder. Keep repeating that until you find what you really want.

From personal experience, agreed that you shouldn’t have to make yourself, and instead realizing that you want it.

Disagreed with ‘think harder’, though. When mind is foggy, thinking harder doesn’t seem to help; and when mind is clear, things tend to be obvious without thinking.

When you woke up to a spinning room, you probably didn’t have to think too hard about goals or whether you’d want to experience that again. It was a moment of clarity. However, when everything is going mostly well and there are no incoming existential warnings—just normal ups and downs of life—such moments can be elusive to some of us.

I’d say regularly practicing different ways of inducing bouts of mindfulness (how? I wish I knew) might be the only habit worth development per se.

It was more like sitting down and having a conversation with myself that went something like this:

"You're not in that bad shape, but something is messed up. Cigarettes are terrible and while you're not overweight, you're inactive and that needs to change or you're going to die".

Then I basically evaluated my life up until that point and made sweeping changes based on a bunch of goals that I wrote out.

The really funny thing is, death wasn't enough to keep me motivated with walking. Not because I hated it that much, but it was really easy to get trolled by my own brain with thoughts such as "you just walked 4 miles in 4 days after sitting at a computer desk for years... you're fine man".

Now I have long term goals and walking meshes well with my life style. I've grown to like it because of what it allows me to do, not because of the mechanical motion of walking.

I love running. Yet, I struggle massively when I try getting back to it after a break. I love math. But it can be really painful to learn (most) of the math stuff the first time. I have to make a genuine effort and enforce discipline and trick/game my mindset to pick the initial momentum.

When people start a routine, they usually do have a desire of where they want to be. But that's not enough to create momentum. On the other hand, once you get some momentum, that itself creates further motivation and additional momentum from the sense of accomplishment.

I don't walk only because of enjoyment. I want to do serious long term travel, and I know being able to walk long periods of time is going to be part of that life style.

If I REALLY want to spend years traveling the world (which I do), then I need to do things that help move the meter towards that goal. It should be exciting to do these things every day because it's one step closer to where you want to be. It's measurable progress and at the end of the day, that's a big win.

There are techniques for training yourself to think differently about tasks though; Tony Robbins talks a lot about how to train yourself to have the positive associations that you choose, instead of the ones that your environment and upbringing bestowed on you[1]. Some of that reads a bit cultish but I think there's some good stuff in there.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Unlimited-Power-Science-Personal-Achi...

I didn't make this project. But it's great. I've picked up quite a few habits using it.

Ultimately, we as humans, are always trying to either obtain more pleasure or avoid some level of pain. This is true for every task and decision we make in life.

If we take the task of going to the gym for instance, some people associate going to the gym with "pain". I.e. I don't want to run because I"m tired. Whereas others associate going to the gym with "I want to feel good and have more energy".

The trick is being able to combine the power of habit (cue) with pain and pleasure.

All of this can be read in Awaken the Giant Within by T. Robbins. Oldie but a goodie classic on this stuff.

A lot of people want to believe that humans are somehow "above" operant conditioning, but there's a lot of evidence that we aren't.

Language nitpick: the word you want is systematic [2].

[1] http://open.lib.umn.edu/intropsyc/chapter/7-2-changing-behav...

[2] http://www.public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/systemic.html

* focusing on consistency: if you do any tiny amount of the thing (even if it's just one pushup), that totally counts. once you have the habit, you can build intensity as you please.

* specific deadlines: (e.g. run Tues/Fri by 1pm), since then I don't have a series of "I'm in the middle of something, I'll do it in a bit"'s that are kind of unpleasant and attention-consuming.

* It's kind of stupid, but I wrote a little app where I can press a button after I've done a habit -- if I don't press the button before the deadline, it sends a text to my brother. I don't wanna bug him, so for me, this helps make the deadline more "real". If I'm super busy or really don't feel like it, it's totally fine if I just do a tiny bit of the habit and then press the button-- but that rarely happens.

It's kinda nice to have all this running on autopilot; it's been working well for about a year, and it doesn't take any sort of willpower at this point. I find it especially useful for keeping my routine after something that would normally disrupt it, like travel.

First of all as such the examples you have given aren't quite habits. A habit is generally defined in the research as a sort of automatic response to contextual cues. So running just "every day" can never be habitual, however running as a specific part of your morning routine can become habitual.

Secondly the cue is the essential part in making the habitual behaviour override your conscious intentions. It is however both necessary and sufficient, so you don't necessarily need to worry too much about rewards or accountability to make things stick. Just developing the association between cue and behaviour is enough.

And that is basically all we know for certain so far. At least as far as I can learn skimming the first related literature review that popped up (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17437199.2013.87...) and some of the associated papers.

If you are not the kind of person who can through willpower alone get yourself to set up the cue and do the action it may benefit you to get help from someone who is better at that kind of thing until the habit is automatic.

I've been down the road of changing habits multiple times and I think the most important habit you can adopt is actually to continuously watch your progress, adjust your routines if necessary and, more generally, give you time to think about where you're moving with your life on a grand scheme of things.

Whenever I tried to get into a new habit, I found that the hardest thing was actually to come up with and take counter-measures if the routine wasn't sticking as expected. I would often try a new routine and if it failed to stick, I would automatically fall back into my old (bad) routine.

So my advice is this: Set aside time to reflect upon your routines (and your life in general). Make this your very first habit to get into. Personally, I've found that doing it once a week is by far not enough for me (and it's also a difficult habit to maintain), so I decided to do it once a day and, since I rarely find the time at night, I decided to get up a bit earlier in the morning and go for a 30min walk. This has the added benefit that you get a bit of exercise and lots of fresh air. I also use that time to decide on my most important task for the day that I will work on right after the walk.

A useful discovery for me was that emotion is a greater driving force that rationality. Rather than making a list of all the reasons that exercise will be good for you, spend time visualising exactly how wonderful you will feel (in as much detail as possible) when you are fit, and spend time visualising how bad you will feel if you don't get fit.

It might not work for you, but if it does it can be very powerful.

[0] that's the playlist where I heard about it, I'm not sure if it's the right video, though. Sorry just don't have the time to dig through it. I greatly suggest everyone watching the whole playlist. The subject matter explores a lot of concepts tangential to procrastination from a philosophical angle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reZA81S0zfI&list=PL3F6BC200B...

This is more or less how smoking functions, modulo some neurochemical details - the idea is to effectively addict yourself to the new behaviour.

For the those with a flabby self-discipline muscle, start small. You won't feel like short circuiting to the reward as much if you make the goal about building a small habit and extending your self-control.

A bit of a PSA... For anyone who relates to this very strongly, some people with extreme difficulty in forming positive habits have executive function disorders such as ADHD. This is a primary symptom and is often viewed as lack of willpower or laziness vs. a treatable condition. Forming habits under treatment is much more effective.

You need a cue/craving -> response -> reward cycle

The reward should be slightly unpredictable to make the habit really addicting.

So best way to build (or deprogram) a habit: keep a log of how you feel before you do (or don't do) something you want to change. Become aware of your "cue" or craving. Begin to introduce a different response that comes with a reward.

For instance, if you don't feel great after leaving the gym you'll never make it an unconscious habit.

One example is running. I just told myself that I needed to run for one hour every weekday at 6am. Extremely difficult as I normally sleep in until 7, but I just told myself I have no choice. So I started getting out of bed at 6 and running until 7. After a couple weeks it got easier, after a month I did it without much thought. After about two months, I feel weird if I don't do it and miss it.

I am also interested in whether there's more to building a habit than this.

If you do that, your brain will benefit from its (life-long!) property of plasticity and will create new neural connections (with each repetition) which favor the action you're about to execute:

First, you're about to create a new path (like through a thick a forest), which is a bit harder, but then you use that path again and again, and the path will become a street and then a highway (which is increasingly easier to use). In the end, you can execute your action without any effort because your neurological pathways are now really solid and the electrical signals travel much easier.

I think, the word is used inflationary, but maybe I just don't understand because I lack disciplin. I suppose disciplina (“instruction”) implies some form of encouragement.

Make room for good habits by stopping bad ones.

I wouldn't take outliers as examples unless you are also such an outlier. At which point any advice based on averages is moot.

Also, do you have any evidence that there are "no shortcuts or hacks for motivation"? I'd be quite surprised if that were true, because motivational speakers seem to be get people motivated in a very short space of time, so I would expect there to be some shortcuts.

Is there any evidence to the contrary that motivation speakers have any long term impact. Burden of proof is on that side.

It's not.

Just take things one day at a time and make sure you have your habits scheduled in the times where you are least liable to get interrupted. I prefer early mornings.

Then just do what you've committed to do. There is no magic trick.

I had a nasty case of dehydration from a combination of beer and Mexican food that resulted in the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life. It really got me to reevaluate my perspective on alcohol. I stopped drinking immediately and haven't looked back.

Running/exercising... there are many apps such as Runkeeper and such that allow you to set weekly goals. Running might better in the morning.

Another one is to get a wall calendar in a visible place at home and mark the days where you have been active in whatever habit. If you see no marks it means you have dropped your habit. You can also use a calendar app and set reminders... but those are easy to ignore.

For example: You want to run, but you are too lazy. Ask a friend to run with you at a certain time. Now you can't lazily back out, unless you want to call your friend again and mess with their schedule, as they were expecting to run with you.

As you become better at something, like running, it starts to become more fun and satisfying. You gain momentum. That allows you to adhere to your schedule much more easily, to the point where you miss it when you don't/can't do it.

1. Do the same thing at the same time over and over again, intentionally. 2. Watch yourself keep on doing it unintentionally.

Ok "same time" is the more complex part. Your trying to wire your brain to do something deterministically in response to some stimulum. It can be external, or internal (feedback).