The psychology of stopping procrastination through creating effective habits

How do you overcome procrastination and achieve your goal? What are the steps to building new habits? How long does it take for a habit to stick and become effective?

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” – Aristotle

The power of habits: the compound effect

It’s all good and well having a lofty goal but we all know how hard it is to achieve. Often a goal can feel so big that we can procrastinate, unsure about how or when to start. One way to get over this is to break things down into manageable steps, as we did in the previous section under ‘How?’

But our goal is not just a one-off action.  We won’t get there in one step; we need to take multiple strides. We are trying to create numerous actions that compound each other, reinforcing improvement and building momentum over time.

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”

– James Clear

This is why we are now looking at the ‘When?’ question and linking it to the ‘How?’ with the concept of habits. Starting towards a goal means changing our behaviour. Changing behaviour means developing new habits. Therefore, we will look at creating the new habits we need to succeed.

Don’t worry if you have been struggling to do this to date.  If you have not managed to keep your goals thus far then you are in good company.  The Business Insider publication polled over 1000 people and found that 80% failed to keep their New Year’s resolutions after just one month.

The challenge is that big life goals can take months, even years, to achieve. That means we need to create effective habits that stick for the long term. But these can take weeks to embed. So, what can we do?

Well, the key is knowing how behaviour develops. With this knowledge we can craft new habits, to give us the best chance of success.

The Habit Loop and Atomic Habits

Fortunately for us, a lot of clever people have studied the neuroscience and psychology of habits. One such person is Charles Duhigg, author of  The Power of Habit (2013).

The core of Duhigg’s research was identifying the cyclic nature of behaviour development, what he called The Habit Loop. The Habit Loop breaks down behaviour into three steps. There is a

1. Cue (the stimulus),
2. A Routine (our action or behaviour)
3. and a Reward(the payoff).

Writer and performance coach James Clear continued to build on this concept. Drawing upon his experience in competitive sports, and recovering from a brain injury, Clear refined the habit loop, adding a fourth step and stating what we need to do at each stage to help make an effective habit. His version then becomes:

1. Cue (make it obvious)
2. Craving (make it attractive)
3. Response (make it easy)
4. Reward (make it satisfying)

You may notice that the habit loop is a form of decision-making cycle. The thing is that as the behaviour becomes deeply embedded it becomes a habit – an intuitive or automatic response – rather than a conscious choice.

An example of experimenting with the 4 stages of habit building

For example, I tend to get a little hungry mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  I often want a snack.  When the blood sugar is low it is very easy to grab something unhealthy to eat at this point – a sweet biscuit, chocolate bar or cake. But I know this is not good for me, therefore I have tried other replacement snacks.  I have experimented with various options, and some things just don’t hit the spot, but I have found success with dates.  The date packs a sugary punch. So using the habit loop the process becomes:

1. Cue. I start to obviously feel peckish.
2. Craving. I feel like something sweet and the idea of something sugary is attractive.
3. Response. I keep the dates in the fruit bowl, on the surface of the kitchen, so I don’t need to go into a cupboard (where less healthy options are stored out of sight). This makes the dates the quickest and easiest sugary snack to grab.
4. Reward. The dates deliver an immediate sugar hit. I will often combine them with Brazil nuts so that after a few minutes both my cravings for sugar and my overall hunger subsides.

It does not always work but I have nudged that behaviour in the right direction.  I have seen a tangible drop in my body fat index as a result. It is still hard to resist biscuits laid out at a meeting, or someone else’s house, but even my resistance to these temptations has improved. I also continue to experiment with other healthy snacks, increasing my options and chances of success.

So, as you can see from this example, the trick is to analyse the habit loop and play with each stage. Treat it as a fun experiment and find rewards that work for you with the habit you want to modify.

How long will it take for the new habit to stick?

There is a lot of misleading advice about how long it takes to form a habit. For instance, the 21/90 rule is the idea that working on a new routine for 21 days means it becomes a habit. Then if you stick with it for 90 days it becomes part of your lifestyle.

The problem is it isn’t a rule. It is a rule of thumb at best. The most useful thing about the 21/90 rule is that it mentally prepares you to work for the long term. The need for long term commitment is backed up with evidence.

One such study, conducted by Phillippa Lally over 12-weeks, found that on average, it took about two months (or 66 days to be more exact) for a new activity to become a habit.  This is longer than the 21 days popularised by Maxwell Maltz (1960) or the 30 days advocated by Marc Reklau (2014).

The fact is that some habits are harder to form than others and often it can take a longer period of experimentation to trigger the lifestyle switch. They are trying to rewire the brain so that it automatically follows a new routine. Unlike computers, our brains need time to build the new synaptic links, you can’t just input new code. Therefore, expect to take time, and you will know when you have a new habit because you will stop thinking about it!

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The Watch Tool: Avoid procrastination by turning goals into systems

Habits are cyclical, as demonstrated by the habit loop. We also have a routine of behaviours, we do certain things at certain times. That is why in The Right Questions framework of tools we can think about habits relating to a watch. The hands of the watch follow the loop and indicate when we take certain actions.

So, we use the watch tool to avoid procrastination by turning our goals into systems and building habits. You can start now by following these 5 steps.

5 Steps to creating your new habit

1.        Identify the goal you want to achieve.

Hopefully you have already done this but revisit the ‘What’ and ‘How’ sections if you need help with this.

2.        Think about the habit that will help you succeed in that goal

What behaviour do you need to start or change to progress towards success?

3.        Break down the habit using the habit loop, listing what happens through the 4 steps

Analyse the process and brainstorm multiple answers for each stage. Habits are very rarely linear with single cues and rewards so think about various options but focus on the most likely successful routine.

Use habit stacking, that is linking one habit to another, to make the new routine more sticky. For instance, I frequently make hot drinks during the working day which means I often go into the kitchen. Knowing this I have now placed a pull-up bar and weights in the kitchen. This means I can do a few exercises while I wait for the kettle to boil or coffee to brew. We all have daily routines, so think about yours and use existing routines to trigger new behaviours.

4.        Write out your personal commitment to the new habit

Commit to the new habit by writing it down. Use the following wording:

• I will (insert behaviour)
• At (insert time)
• At (location)

Prepare the environment to give you the best chance of success. For example, if you want to go to the gym in the morning, lay out your sports clothing the night before. Make it obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.

5.        Do the first iteration of the habit

Now try the new routine. If you want to succeed, then the concept of chunking down applies here too. Start small and make your first iteration of a habit less than 2 minutes to complete.

In other words, if you want to learn a new language, don’t make your first lesson a gruelling hour of study. Just do a couple of minutes of vocab. Learn one or two new words. This is easy and gives you a measurable sense of achievement and progress.

Or, if you want to run a marathon, don’t try and clock a 10 miler on the first day. Instead, why not have a fun few minutes of jogging up and down, loosening up the joints?

Once you have achieved the first small step you can gradually build the challenge, be that in length, intensity or difficulty.

So in conclusion remember this: if you want to build a new habit, start small, experiment and keep trying new things until it sticks.

“Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage.”
― Charles Duhigg

New Year is one of the most popular time to set goals.  The challenge is, to achieve a goal you usually have to change habits, and that is often the hardest bit.

Let me guess the sort of things you want to achieve,  could it be one of the following:

1. Exercise more
2. Eat healthier
3. Save money
4. Lose weight
5. Reduce stress
6. Stick to a budget
7. Get more sleep
8. Spend more time with family
9. Learn a new skill
10. Travel more

Actually I am no clairvoyant, these 10 items are from a survey conducted by YouGov in 2018, and the list is very similar to studies on goals set by people in many other years.

The question is, if we are setting the same goals every year, is that because we are not achieving them? If so, why is that?

Even if you did not set yourself a strict New Year resolution in one of these areas it is likely that one or more of these goals would be something you would like to do at some point this year or next.  Just because you did not set yourself an aim at the beginning of January does not mean you cannot do it now.

Maybe you have not set a specific objective because you are worried you may not achieve it.  Failure can be very disheartening. If we understand why change is difficult than you can be less hard on yourself.  Goals need to be realistic among other things (see SMART goals).

Goals and habits

It’s all good and well having a lofty goal but we all know how hard it is to achieve – particularly when it means changing a habit. This means the goal is not just a one-off action; what we are trying to do is create multiple actions that compound and reinforce improvement over time.

Don’t worry if you are struggling to do this.  If you have not managed to keep your goals thus far, you are in good company.  Business Insider polled over 1000 people and found that 80% of people were failing to keep their New Year’s resolutions by February (2019).

This is a shame as resolutions are generally about creating new (and hopefully better) habits.  Arguably, 9 out of 10 of the list above are primarily about modifying behaviours. And habits generally take longer than a month to be embedded.

Phillippa Lally conducted a 12 week study on changing behaviour and found that on average it took more like two months (or 66 days to be more exact) for a new activity to become a habit.  This is longer than the 21 days popularised by Maxwell Maltz (1960) or the 30 days advocated by Marc Reklau (2014).

How do you effectively create a new habit?

Well first, given the evidence above, you need to give yourself an appropriate amount of time to embed your new behaviour.  A couple of months being a good benchmark.

The next thing is identifying the habit loop that exists and how to modify it.  Charles Duhigg, in his book The Power of Habit (2013), shows that we need to identify the cue (the stimulus), the routine (our action or behaviour) and the reward (the payoff).  Once we understand the cues to behaviours we can experiment with rewards to instil new routines.

This behaviour loop is actually a decision-making cycle. The thing is that as the behaviour becomes deeply embedded it becomes a habit – an intuitive or automatic response – rather than a conscious choice.

For example, I tend to get a little hungry mid-morning and mid-afternoon.  I often want a snack.  When the blood sugar is low it is very easy to grab something unhealthy to eat at this point – a sweet biscuit, chocolate bar or similar would be my thing. But I know this is not good for me, therefore I have tried other replacement snacks.  I have experimented with various options, and some things just don’t hit the spot, but I have found that I have a real thing for hummus.  I know hummus is nothing like a chocolate digestive but it turns out that if there is some hummus around, especially with a carrot or some sweet pepper, then there is a good chance I can avoid a sugary snack.  It does not always work but I have nudged that behaviour in the right direction.  I still find it hard to resist biscuits laid out at a meeting or someone else’s house but no one is perfect!

The trick is finding the reward mechanism that works for you with the habit you want to modify.

Exercising more and learning more

Last year I had set out to run an ultra-marathon in the summer so I knew I needed to do more exercise. I also wanted to read more, as I love learning. The trouble was these goals were effectively competing with one another.  With the demands of work and being a parent, time was limited.  I was also finding that my time to read was generally just before bed and then I was too tired to properly absorb new material.

It was at that point that one of my coaching clients introduced me to audio books via the Audible service (a subsidiary of Amazon).  I already listened to a good number of podcasts so I knew it was achievable to listen and learn while doing light exercise or routine tasks.  With this knowledge in hand I signed up for a free trial to give it a go.

The free trial is for 30 days (after that you pay £7.99/month but can cancel anytime) and by the end of the trial period I knew it was for me.  I had already managed to get through two good books that it would have otherwise taken me at least a month to read each one.  The added bonus was that most of the time I had been listening I had also either been doing exercise or commuting.

It actually helped me to amend some other habits too.  I was enjoying listening so much that I started giving myself more time between meetings in London so I could walk, rather than use public transport, and get some more exercise, listening and thinking time in.  You could argue that I saved money and reduced stress as well, so inadvertently I was tending to some other popular resolutions!

Achieving the goal with better behaviours

Suffice to say by the end of the year I had completed my 100km ultra marathon (the CCC race in Alps) and listened to over 12 great non-fiction books (some I listen to twice in that time) that have all helped me in my work and life this year.  It has worked so well that I have signed up for a new race this year and continued my Audible subscription.

So yes, this has become something of a shameless plug for Audible but I really can recommend it, especially if your goals are similar to mine.  You can click on the link here for a free trial and see for yourself:

Audiobook Life Hack

By the way, one little life hack I have also earned this year is to listen to my podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5X speed.  This means that you can still hear everything clearly but you can get through a lot more material in the time you have available.  Give it a try!

In my next post I will share some of the great books I have listened to over the past year. Hopefully you will enjoy them too!

If you would like access to some bonus content and get updates then please do sign up for my email list.

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References:

Ballard, J (2018) YouGov, https://today.yougov.com/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2018/12/13/new-years-resolutions-2019-exercise-healthy-eating

Bruek, H (2019) Business Insider,  https://www.businessinsider.com/how-long-to-keep-a-new-years-resolution-2018-12?r=US&IR=T

Duhigg, C (2013) The Power of Habit, London: Random House

Lally, P (2009) How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world, European Journal of Social Psychology, Volume 40, Issue 6

Maltz, M (1960; updated 2015) Psycho-Cybernetics, New York: Penguin Random House

Reklau, M (2014) 30 Days, Barcelona: Marc Reklau