If Aristotle is correct that excellence is a result of habits, how do you create habits?
In The Power of Less, Leo suggests there are 5 keys to a new habit, which are encapsulated in his Power of Less Challenge (a thirty day challenge that he claims has proven very effective in forming habits for thousands of his Zen Habits blog readers):
1. Select one habit for the Challenge. Only one habit per month. You can choose any habit - whatever you think will have the biggest impact on your life.
2. Write down your plan. You will need to specifically state what your goal will be each day, when you’ll do it, what your “trigger” will be (the event that will immediately precede the habit that’s already a part of your routine - such as exercising right after you brush your teeth), and to whom you will report (see below).
3. Post your goal publicly. Tell as many people as possible that you are trying to form your new habit. He suggests an online forum, but you can e-mail it to coworkers and family and friends or otherwise get the word out to a large group.
4. Report on your progress daily. Each day, tell the same group of people whether or not you succeeded at your goal.
5. Celebrate your new habit! After thirty days, you will have a new habit. You will still need to make sure you do the habit each day, but it’ll be fairly well entrenched if you were consistent all month.
To test this, I will start a new habit.
Typically in the past, I would get up and do this or that - sometimes, it was productive, but more often I tended to do things that weren’t very important. Typically, I would check my e-mail first thing, and then spend the next hour or so reacting to whatever was in my in-box.
1. So, my first habit will be morning routine. As Aristotle also said, a task well started is a task significantly completed - the idea here is to start the day off well, which can give momentum to the rest of the day.
2. Each day, my goal is to follow my morning routine. The trigger will be waking up. The routine consists of:
- soft belly breathing in bed
- shower
- flaxseed oil
- tea and reading my current non-fiction book
- breakfast
- start business to-do
3. I have posted my goal publicly, here.
4. Every day, I will post on whether I succeeded at my goal that day.
Today was my first day, and it was a success.
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The problem with new habits is too make it happens more than 3 times!
I’ll keep trying
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