How to Build Better Habits in Four Simple Steps

The 4 laws of behaviour change tweek each of the elements mentioned in the below cycle which will eventually help us make good habits and break the bad ones.

1. Cue: Make it obvious
2. Craving: Make it attractive
3. Response: Make it easy
4. Reward: Make it satisfying

Let’s discuss one by one each four steps to build good habits and destroy the bad ones.

1. Make it obvious

• This law mostly touches the cue of your habit, so broadly the cue of your good habit should be more obvious and visible and reduce exposure of the cues of your bad habits from the environment
• Design your environment in a way that you are close to the cues of good habits i.e. if you want to make book reading a habit then keep your book beside your pillow
• Generally the core reason why we procrastinate is because of resistance before action and for example if we plan our habit very precisely the probability of we doing it is very high for example “I will read the book ‘Hooked’ at 10:00 pm till 11:00pm on my sofa”, basically “I will [behavior] at [time] in [location]”
• Use habit stacking simply meaning stack up new habits on the top of pre-existing habit i.e After coding in the morning, I will study basically ” After [ current habit ], I will [ New Habit ] “, this will pump you up with sufficient dopamine to work on tough task
• For the breaking the bad ones simply reduce the exposure to the cues for example don’t keep your phone beside your bed rather put it in some place where you don’t go in the morning this will cut the habit in the 1st step if you don’t see your phone for the 1st couple of hours then you will definitely not use in the 1st half

2. Make it attractive

• This mostly touches the craving part of the habit broadly the more attractive the craving is the more probability of we doing it and the less attractive your craving is the less probability of we really doing it for example: our lecture pdfs suck and online Udemy courses are generally boring while the process of scrolling through Instagam is really tempting
• So making good habits attractive is the key, use temptation bundling. Pair something that you want to do with something you have to do for example “You will scroll Instagram once you have completed 1 section from your online coding course”
• Join a group where your desired behavior is the normal behavior
• Similarly for breaking bad habits make it unattractive, for exaple set you daily phone usage record as your whatsapp status this will motivate you to use your phone less

3. Make it easy

• The 3rd law governs in making the process or the response to a habit easier to practice
• Friction is a really powerful force between you and your habits
• So to make good habits a part of your life reduce the friction decrease the number of steps between you and your habit
• Invest in things that matter making the process easier and attractive like good online course over free youtube lectures etc.
• And applying the same in case of bad habits increase friction while working keep your phone in some other room or use an app like Digital Detox

4. Make it satisfying

• Once you complete your ritual just reward your self because the habit after which you are rewarded is repeated continuously but the one after you are punished is stopped automatically
• Use a habit tracker and don’t break the streak if you break it one day come back to track the other day
• Get an accountability partner ask someone to watch your behavior
• Make your bad habits public and painful post it in front of the world as you would do in case of a good one this forces you to stop doing them

Conclusion

From the book:-
Atomic Habits by James Clear