Creating habits doesn’t need to be hard. It’s not a badge of honour. If it’s too hard, you’ll likely need to create other habits to help you create the first habit. Life is complicated and exhausting, habits can alleviate this, so making them too hard is counterproductive.

first things first.

Take 10 minutes and look at what’s going on, what’s working and what’s not. Be honest with yourself. Look for patterns. Can you use an existing routine, or do you need a new one?

The easiest habit I ever built was Pizza Fridays. Yes, I know that eating pizza is easy but consider how the habit was built. Friday comes around and you don’t need to think about what’s for dinner. It’s Pizza Friday and the clue is in the label. Pizza isn’t just easy to eat, it’s easy to get hold of. We lived walking distance from a supermarket and had a takeaway that sold the best pizza with imaginative toppings. It was called Fat Toni’s; we felt that Toni was a friend and spoke about him like he was.

So, there we are with a habit that was incredibly easy to create. It had its own name, some humour, was easy to do and was something we enjoyed. Luckily it was also easy to stop when we ditched the label and stopped referring to Toni like our best friend.

notice what happened.

Pizza Friday made dinner something we didn’t have to decide. Friday arrived, and the decision had already been made, days ago, by the label. It couldn’t have been easier. Or tastier.

Pizza Friday became a small part of what we were, at least for an hour on a Friday night. Naming something turns it into an element of identity rather than a task sitting on a list. That’s part of why it’s easy to stick to, and, as it turned out, part of why it was easy to let go of once we stopped using the label.

remove the decision.

A label doesn’t just remind you to do something. It removes the moment where you’d normally have to choose to do it. And it works just as well outside dinner.

Mondays have become the day I do my accounts. I refer to it as accounts day, that’s its label. Now I do my accounts every week, and it takes no time at all. I started this after putting it off for months and losing two days of my life to backdating everything I’d avoided. Monday isn’t a day I decide whether to do my accounts anymore. It’s accounts day. It just happens.

A good label isn’t complicated. It doesn’t need to be clever or on brand or explained to anyone else. It just needs to be specific enough that you know exactly what it means the moment you hear it, and it needs to reinforce or support the habit you are trying to build. Think about Meat Free Mondays or Veganuary. These are labels set up by brands or movements to encourage people to eat less meat or try a Vegan diet.

why this beats willpower.

Willpower is depleted over the day, so if your new habit is something you want to do in the evening, your willpower is unlikely to be of much use by the time you get there. Removing temptation and setting things up ahead of time helps, but a label goes further. It doesn’t just make the good option easier; it takes the choice out of the moment altogether. There’s nothing to resist because there isn’t a decision to be made. You made it in advance, when you named the thing.

This is also why a label works even when your routine is right and your environment is set up well. You can choose the right routine and get your surroundings working for you and still lose the habit at the moment when you have to decide. A label takes that decision out of the equation.

your label.

You don’t need a big habit or a serious one to try this. Pick something you keep putting off or keep negotiating with yourself about and give it a name. It needs to turn a decision you make every time into a decision you make once. It doesn’t have to be a day; it could be a time.

Think wine o’clock, gin time. There are plenty of examples if you go looking. Just be sure to choose something that aligns with what you are trying to do. Clearly if you want to have a healthier lifestyle, wine o’clock isn’t going to cut it.

label as a prompt.

A label is one of the easiest ways to build a habit. We’ve established that it makes the decision ahead of time and, in doing so, makes the habit easier to do. It also acts as a prompt to remind you what you want to do. Pizza Friday reminded me to buy or order pizza. Veganuary reminds you that you’ve decided not to eat meat. Your brain treats a repeated prompt as a fact which is why it becomes hard to argue with it

If you aren’t sure what to name, or where to start, book a free introductory call and we’ll work it out together.