Stop Procrastination and Start Succeeding with Good Habits

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.

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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

If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions

About The Right Questions

The Right Questions is for people who want greater clarity, purpose and success. There is a wealth of resources to boost your effectiveness in achieving goals, your leadership of yourself and others, and your decision-making.

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you find information on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.

Need help navigating your journey to success?

I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and assisting them in achieving their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!

The Secret of Perfect Timing

What is the best time to start towards our goal? How should we judge the right timing? When is the best time to act?

It is no surprise that the ‘when’ question in The Right Questions refers to time. Timing is critical, as time is the one truly limited resource, but selecting the right time to do something is not straightforward. Good timing makes the difference between success and failure but ideal timing is hard to achieve. It takes an equal measure of planning and wisdom to know when to implement strategies, to go for goals and ultimately achieve a mission.

Therefore we have to answer:

  • What are we going to invest our time in?
  • How much of our time should we invest?
  • When is the best time to do so?

Knowing when to move and how much time to invest in something is the secret of perfect timing.

“You may delay, but time will not.”

Benjamin Franklin

What should you spend your time doing?

Knowing what to spend your time on is a matter of prioritisation. You have to know what is the most important thing to do. To do that you have to understand why you even want to do something in the first place. If you are unsure then I recommend you read the following post on finding your values.

Once that you know why you are wanting to do something you can confirm what is the best thing to do. It may be that you already have a goal in mind.

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Application of time: the discipline of practice

We would all like quick success but our biggest dreams will take considerable time and a lot of hard work to achieve. One wise person once told me that people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in five or ten years. I have found this to be true.

Don’t underestimate the cumulative effect of applied time. Investors understand the power of compound interest when it comes to money. The same applies to the time we invest in something, including our personal development. If we continue to invest our time wisely and with focus then we can achieve great things.

Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success did a study that explored the lives of many of the world’s most successful people and looked at the patterns behind their achievements.  One large theme prevails: that it takes a concerted application of time to achieve anything truly great.  Gladwell estimates that it requires 10,000 hours of quality practice to become an expert at one given thing or become world-class in a particular field.  The key point here is not so much the 10,000 hours but the idea of effective or deliberate practice, something explained in detail by Robert Pool and Anders Ericsson in Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise.

Deliberate practice:

  • Develops skills using a proven training techniques
  • Stretches the comfort zone; being just on the verge of one’s ability
  • Is based on specific, well-defined goals (both overall and for each practice)
  • Is purposeful and specifically focuses on those specific goals
  • Is a learning cycle reflective of Kolb’s model, where the concrete experience of practice leads to reflective observation, new abstract conceptualisation (mental representations) of what is being learned, followed by modification and active experimentation to get further feedback, and so the cycle continues.

So we not only make good habits and routines, but we then, through deliberate practice, make sure that the time we put in has the maximum impact and effect.

The Quest

Understand your values, unlock your purpose, set your priorities, achieve success. Click here to sign up and get the 1st stage for free!

Counting the opportunity cost

If we are going to be that focused and invest our resources in one particular way we are going to have to count the cost.  For every outlay of time or money there is an opportunity cost; the cost of not investing our resources somewhere else.  In other words when we choose to do one thing, by default we choose to not do various other things.

You can become good at almost anything, but you cannot be good at everything.

We watch sports stars, standing on a podium receiving their gold medal at the moment of glory.  What we don’t see is the years of training, the sweat and tears spent hour after hour, day after day, invested in the dream of that moment, in the winning of the prize.  How many days and evenings out with friends were sacrificed?  What number of holidays were foregone?  Which alternative careers were declined?  You can be sure that the opportunity cost was high.

There is no easy or quick win but through the right application of time, we can create our own perfect timing.  The fulfilment of a vision is going to take time and hard work.  That is why we need a dream to compel us, a mission to focus upon, and a passion to spur us forward, no matter what the obstacles are that lie in the way.  If we have that level of compulsion we can make the investment of time that is needed to succeed.

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

Tim Notke

Choosing the right time

Our time is finite; once spent we cannot claim it back.  Therefore we need to be careful about how we spend it and when we spend it.  Application is needed over the course of time to achieve success, but also there is often also a key moment to play the high stakes if you want to win big.

“I am building a fire, and every day I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.” 

Mia Hamm, Olympic gold-medal soccer player

You can invest the same amount of money in the stock market for a given amount of time, but when you choose to invest, re-invest or spend that money will make a big difference to whether you gain or lose money.

A marathon may take hours to run, so for an athlete, choosing the correct moment in the race to dig deep and close down the front runner could make the difference to between winning and losing.

Picking the ideal time is vital in maximising our effect and fulfilling our potential.

Creating the conditions for perfect timing

What a casual observer might call serendipity or synchronicity, those involved in a successful venture would call the careful aligning of positive factors – however seemingly unrelated – to bring about a positive outcome. Successful people create conditions for perfect timing.

Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple, was a master of this. It would seem that he was fortunate to launch products just when people needed them.  The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad have all helped redefine the market for gadgets and made Apple a world leader in mobile technology.  But it was no chance.  Steve Jobs knew that you made your own luck, your own perfect timing. He produced a quality product but he also stirred people’s perceived need for his creations.  The genius of Steve Jobs was that he did not do what his customers wanted; he did what they were going to want.  Purchasers never quite knew what they needed until they had one, but upon owning an Apple product they were left unsure how they managed without one before.

Practice, patience and poise

It needs to be the right moment as even a good idea can fail because of bad timing. For example, there are good and bad times to change one’s career or launch a business.  Everything has its season.

Equally some visions are ahead of their time.  Leonardo de Vinci designed the revolving flying machine that preceded the invention of the helicopter by 400 years.  We just have to hope that our dreams do not take so long to come to fulfilment!

It takes discipline as well as wisdom to seize the moment.  Like a vigilant soldier, we need practicepatience and poise; practice to ensure we have all the preparation we need, patience to wait and poise in order to strike at the right moment.

How do you know when the time is right?

To have the best chance of creating the right conditions and picking the ideal time we have to be sure of where we are ultimately headed, of what we are doing and why. That is the reason that the ‘why, where and what’ questions of The Right Questions approach create the strategic framework within which we make our plans.

So what is the perfect timing for achieving your goal?

“Life is all about timing… the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable become available, the unattainable… attainable. Have the patience, wait it out. It’s all about timing.”

Stacey Charter

If you want the right answers you have to start with the right questions

About The Right Questions

The Right Questions is for people who want greater clarity, purpose and success. There is a wealth of resources to boost your effectiveness in achieving goals, your leadership of yourself and others, and your decision-making.

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you find information on this site to help you on the next leg of your quest. Even if that is just the inspiration to take one small step in the right direction, then that is a success. If you can take pleasure in learning and travelling as you go, then so much the better.

Need help navigating your journey to success?

I love to serve people, helping them unlock their potential, empowering them as leaders, and assisting them in achieving their goals. Please get in touch and let me know how I can support you!