Two Powerful Tips for Consistent Habit Keeping

Whether we know it or not, our habits drive a lot of what we do every day. In fact, studies have shown that 40% of what we do every single day is done out of habit. And since our habits also get us closer to our goals and to who we want to become, it’s important to make our habits as strong and fool-proof as possible.

Here are two powerful tips to help us do just that: Keep our habits consistently.

Make unwanted habits harder to keep.
Make wanted habits easier to keep.

Make unwanted habits harder to keep.

Often, the time we could spend on creating and nurturing our habits is spent on other, way less important things. Here are a few things you can do to free up some time and make some of those less desirable habits harder to keep:

• Unsubscribe from emails, especially emails where you’re tempted to spend money you don’t need to spend. Weeding through and reading emails you don’t need can also be a huge time waster.
• Use the time-limiting function on your social media apps. It can be so easy to get stuck in that scrolling rabbit hole and not realize it until 10, 20, 30, 40, and more minutes have gone by.
• Move social media, gaming, or other time-sucking  apps from your home screen to your last screen. Better yet, bury them in a folder on that last screen. You’ll be way less likely to tap on them and lose precious minutes.
• Mute or unfollow accounts on social media that don’t serve you or are time wasters.
• Make your favorite and less healthy foods harder to find. Bury them in your pantry, fridge, and freezer, or don’t even buy them in the first place. Treat them as a treat and only buy a serving or two at a time.

Make wanted habits easier to keep.

• Lay out your workout clothes the night before.
• Plan your meals.
• Use the auto refill option for reoccurring prescriptions.
• Add repeat reminders in your calendar so you won’t forget to do something and you won’t have to continually be adding the same entries.

Learn more about how my Calendar saves my bacon over and over again here.

• Use the auto fill option for repeat prescriptions.
• Use a meal delivery service or store pick up.
• Subscribe and save on Amazon for frequently-purchased items. You’ll save money and will always have what you need.
• Have your savings automatically deducted from your paycheck.
• Put healthy foods front and center.
• Plan your workouts.
• Schedule time to work on your most important habits and goals in your calendar.

And here’s a final idea: Go over and above to make habits easier to keep. I have a habit of writing in my journal every night. Even though I’ve been doing this for over 2 years, I know I can still get distracted and forget to do it. Like on day #887 when we were in the depths of our recent move and I just forgot. So, my journal sits on my nightstand, and I don’t put anything on top of it. Every night when I pull down the covers, I put my journal on my pillow. That’s actually called habit stacking, and I’ll do a post about that soon since it’s another pretty amazing tool you can use to be successful with your habits.

Since I’ve been studying habits and how to create sustainable habits a lot lately, I’ll be sharing more habit tips in future posts (including one on habit stacking)! In the meantime, if you have any questions about habits, leave ’em in a comment below. I’d love to help!