[bellebethcooper]

I've been focusing on building new habits for the past couple of years and have written about it a lot. Here are some of the things that have made the biggest difference for me:

- Start small. Focus on making the behaviour automatic (the definition of a habit) in its smallest form. It's easier to increase the time and effort spent once doing the behaviour is automatic. - Schedule the habit. My habits almost always fail if I don't figure out in advance when and where I'll do them. - Stack your habits. Using an existing habit (it can be something you didn't build on purpose like brushing your teeth, putting on your pyjamas, putting on your shoes before leaving the house, etc.) as a trigger to remind you to do another habit. This makes it easier to remember and build into a routine you already have. - Make it easy to do the habit and hard not to. If you need equipment, get it ready before you'll need it. Set up your environment to encourage you to do the habit. Keep things out of sight if they encourage you not to do the habit. Context makes a big difference in the early stages. - Build one habit at a time. Only when a habit is truly habitual (you do it without thinking) start focusing on a new one. I've failed at building habits every time I've tried to do more than one new habit at a time.

I've written a lot about habits. I'll link to some articles below that might be helpful. Many of them expand on the suggestions I mentioned above.

I also wrote a four-week email course and a book to help people build habits—specifically habits that will help you be more productive by saving you time and helping you work more efficiently. But the course can be applied to any kind of habits. You can find the course and book here: http://habits.bellebethcooper.com/

http://blog.bellebethcooper.com/pushups.html http://blog.bellebethcooper.com/french-habit.html https://open.buffer.com/building-habits/ https://exist.io/blog/simple-habit-process/ https://exist.io/blog/keeping-up-habits/