My top 5 tools from 20 years of building and destroying habits
The summer of 1998 was a turning point in my life. I decided to sort myself out.
I’ll share that story some other time. Here, I’d like to share the top habit building tools I have gathered since then. Looking back, I see that building good habits — and destroying bad ones—have been the foundations of:
- Self-mastery and clarity of mission
- Consequently, doing more of the good and less of the bad
- Consequently, more happiness and less unhappiness
The One Core and the Three Pillars of Habit Building
All these tools support the core of habit building: REPETITION.
The 9-to-5 job of professional athletes is not what we see on TV. It is the countless repetitions behind the scenes— drills, exercises, sparring.
Likewise, living a good life is not your list of accomplishments. It is the hidden repetition of habits you want to build, day-in and day-out.
These habit-building tools fall under three pillars:
- Choose your One Right Fight
- Create accountability
- Practice self-awareness
The following tools will explain these pillars. And they are immediately applicable.
1. A Notebook
Start by using a small notebook. Your phone is designed to distract you, by experts whose one job is to capture and monetize your attention.
If the notebook is small, it is easier to carry around.
Write down the top habits you need to work on — good ones to build and bad ones to stop. Select your one right fight:
- The habit that will make the others habits easier, or
- Has the biggest impact, or
- The easiest one to work on (momentum builder)
Just pick one, not more. Which one is not as important as picking one.
Make it specific and measurable.
Bad examples:
- wake up early
- be more thankful
- study more
Good examples:
- wake up at 6:15am (even better: sleep at 10:45pm)
- list down 3 things you are grateful for every morning
- do 2 hours of study every day
Change your one right fight when:
- It becomes second nature (win)
- It is not working. Accept the temporary loss and move on. Pick an easy one so you can build momentum. Go back to the challenging habit when the time is right.
Some habits take many repeated attempts to conquer. Some habits need to be rebuilt again and again. That’s just the way it is.
2. A Confidante
Have a regular, scheduled conversation with someone trustworthy, someone who wants the best for you, someone who has experience fixing themselves and helping other people.
If you can’t find someone qualified, try out the option below, a Mastermind group. The mere act of explaining your plan and answering questions is already helpful.
And the act of telling someone your goal makes you more likely to achieve it. This is the second pillar of habit building: accountability.
3. A Mastermind
This has proven effective for work-related habits.
I’m part of a small group that meets regularly (4 to 5 members seems best, meeting 1x to 4x a month). We are similar enough that we speak the same professional language, but we work in different companies.
We follow this simple agenda:
- Wins since the last mastermind
- Current top challenges
- Goals for the upcoming month
- Share something cool you discovered
This practice is called “Mastermind” in business circles. It is bigger than habit building, but it is an effective way to set yourself up to be accountable to working on specific habits.
My group meets once a month. It takes us around 2 hours to go through this agenda. I always look forward to this meeting.
This is a way of consciously using peer pressure to your advantage.
4. Morning Visualization
Before jumping into the fray, spend a few quiet moments to visualize your day.
Imagine your day as clearly as possible. Go through scene by scene. When you travel, when you arrive, when you‘re in the middle of your work, when you take a break, etc. Imagine especially your One Right Fight.
This is practicing your day before you take it on. I find that this helps in:
- Seeing opportunities: you will realize that you don’t need to do certain things, or discover some free time in which you could squeeze in some work, rest or fun.
- Acknowledging threats and planning for them: imagine the situations which could derail you. Then imagine your countermoves.
- Reduce emotional reactiveness: feel the emotions that come along with the threats to your day: the boredom, the irritation, the sudden surge of desire, the panic, the hurt ego. Then imagine doing the right thing.
You can’t predict what will actually happen and how you will feel. But you can choose how you react to your emotions. You can practice making this choice. This is self-awareness and self-mastery.
5. Evening Evaluation
Our brains are wired for game play. The most addictive games and apps exploit this feature of the human condition. You can also use this to your advantage.
You just need three things:
- A challenge
- A win
- An adventure
Schedule a few minutes near the end of your day to review what has come to pass. It is best to create your own guide questions, but you could start with the following:
- What was my biggest win today? Make a fist pump, even if it is only mental.
- What wrong move could I learn from today? (The challenge)
- What’s going to be my one right fight tomorrow? (The adventure)
