How to form unbreakable habits

Willpower is a subject that has been studied many a time throughout history. And it’s something that we all understand, on a deep level.
Every school student who has to force themselves to wake up and get ready on time, every uni student struggling with their reports and essays, every regular person working a job and having to force themselves to write another email or read another policy.
We all know how it feels to struggle through the thoughts in the back of our mind pestering us to stop. We’ve all gone through the stress of ignoring distractions in an attempt, albeit small and feeble one, to get some work done.
And so, when it comes to forming good habits for the future, we need to understand that trying to force willpower to establish these habits isn’t the way to go.
Instead, there’s a different way. And it all starts with understanding how habits work. And how we can use that information to form our own, unbreakable habits. 

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Willpower and how it works

First of all, willpower is currently understood to be a finite source of conscious decision-making ability. For example, we exert will when we choose to eat something for breakfast, like Coco Pops.
However, when it comes to following our usual go-to breakfast, it doesn’t require as much willpower, if any, to make that choice. It’s a natural behaviour we don’t even question.
Willpower means we have a limited capacity for making choices throughout a day. If you’ve had a stressful day at school where you’ve made a ton of choices (what to study, doing a set amount of work, and things like that), then after you come home it’s harder to make even more choices, especially good ones like doing your homework or reading a book.
It’s as if your total number of decisions you can make has depleted throughout the day, and you revert back to your natural behaviours in that situation. Which could be anything, like playing games, Netflix, or binging YouTube.
It’s common in the tech world that Steve Jobs used to wear the exact same clothes every day. The reason why he did this was to minimise the number of decisions he needed to make in a day. He can utilise that decision making power for the bigger decisions that need to be made in the company, rather than worrying about what he needs to wear on a day-to-day basis.
When it comes to building habits, then, we cannot rely on willpower alone. As making the conscious decision to do a certain action, day after day after day, isn’t something sustainable in the long term. Especially on those days where we just don’t feel like it.
If waking up early is one of the habits you want to build, constantly waking up to a blaring alarm at 5am after only six hours of sleep isn’t something you can do every day.
We need a smarter approach to habit building. One that takes away the stress of making the decisions to do the habits we want. One that makes it easy for us to fall into the behaviours required to achieve our goals. 

Here’s the method

Habits, it’s necessary for us to first understand, are formed of three separate components. And if anyone reading has done some research on habits, these are usually the first three things said about them.
The first component is the trigger. 

The trigger

The trigger is some kind of stimulus that causes you to immediately switch on the autopilot mode of behaviour and complete the habit.
For example, some people have the habit of waking up and having a coffee first thing in the morning. The trigger to have that coffee might be walking into the kitchen and seeing the coffee machine.
Some people have the trigger of seeing their go-to Starbucks first thing in the morning, and then they buy the coffee on autopilot like it’s a natural behaviour they’ve had since childhood.
An easier to understand example would be an extreme form of compulsive behaviour, like an addiction. When a smoker feels the urge to smoke, that’s the trigger for him to grab the cigarettes and light one up. It doesn’t even occur to him what he’s doing, because the habit is so well ingrained in his brain.
My mother, for the longest time before she began working, had a habit of reading the Qur’an straight after the first prayer in the morning. That prayer might have been a trigger for her.
Triggers are the things that switch on the habit, for lack of a better phrase to explain it.
The first task for now—mental task that is—is to identify a habit in your life and see if you can find the trigger that causes it.
The good thing about triggers is that they can be manipulated to give the outcome we want. If you can identify the different triggers in your life, you can seriously change your behaviours within a step or two.
For example, I have a massive problem with my phone. I go on it late at night (it’s not that bad, but sleeping at like 12 is still uncomfortably late for me) before I sleep.
I think we can all agree that this is a bad habit. Trying to change this, on my own, is a difficult thing. However, I know that charging my phone next to my bed, and keeping my phone on me at all times, is likely a trigger for this behaviour.
So, if I want to remove the bad habit from my life, I’ll just remove the trigger. Charge the phone outside my room, and make sure after a certain time, say 10pm, I won’t use my phone anymore.
If, as soon as you get home, you hop on the PS4, that might be a habit you want to remove from your life. If the controller is the trigger for you, then removing the controller from the room and leaving it somewhere difficult to get can help curb the habit.
The other good thing about triggers is that you can instil them to form the habits you want.
Let’s say you want the habit of reading more, as many of us do. You can place a book on your pillow every day. So, before you sleep, you have to encounter that trigger and it reminds you to read. After a few weeks of doing this, that behaviour will form an integral part of your daily life.
If you want to read the Qur’an more, having a daily reminder on your phone, or attaching a regular behaviour you already have (any one of the five prayers) as the trigger for the habit, is a good way to get into the routine of reciting more.
That’s a technique called habit stacking, and perhaps a topic for another time. All you have to be sure about for now is that triggers are the gateway to the existing habits in your life.
And if you can use triggers in the ways mentioned above, you can go a long way in terms of understanding the current behaviours in your life and knowing how to get if of/instil them.
Onto the second part of habits.

The Routine

The second component is the routine. This, for an easy way to put it, is the habit itself.
For example, if you want the habit to read, then the routine would be sitting down (or standing up, if that’s your thing) and reading.
Sometimes, the routine is a little more specific. Whenever I sit down to write a new article for TLP, I don’t have the routine of just writing something. Usually, I specify it to around five hundred words at a time in a sitting.
When I write fiction, it’s a little more, and I do multiple sittings a day (I enjoy it, so why not).
So, when you’re trying to build your own habits, I wouldn’t recommend having a vague notion of the routine. Understanding that the routine should be something tangible and specific is a key way to ensuring the habit sticks.
If you want to build the habit of studying when you get home, just saying you want to study is too vague.
So, here’s a few ways to make it more specific:

• Set a time frame: saying you want to study for an hour is a good way to make the routine a little more concrete in your mind
• What is it? Specifying that you want to study Maths or History, and coupling that with a time frame, helps organise the routine so you aren’t flailing for something to do once you’ve sat down to complete the routine
• Scheduling: setting an amount of time to do the routine, and then specifying that within the day in a calendar or written schedule, is a powerful way to really embed that routine in your life.

There’s another thing that I recommend people always do at the end of the routine to really get the most out of it.
Instead of just carrying out the habit, which can feel mindless at times, I like reflection. Reflection allows us to evaluate our behaviours and ponder over how we can improve, or what to change.
At the end of the routine of whatever habit you’re trying to build, think about the routine you just completed for about thirty seconds. Ponder over what purpose that habit served your life.
If your routine was reading a book, think about what you read and how you can use it in your life. If your routine was exercising, envision your ideal body and make the mental link between the hard work you just did and the improved health.
Adding this little reflection to the end of whatever routine you have helps strengthen your mental bond with that habit. And it also serves as a little pat on the back for doing something you know will benefit you.
Which leads to the last section when it comes to habit building. 

The reward

The reward is a key part of the habit building process which often gets side-lined. Typically, people get so excited by the prospect of building a habit that they set the trigger and routine in place and just start.
Now, this gung-ho approach is certainly one that can work, and smashing the habit into your life in such a way is something I have used in the past. But it’s something short term.
For example, I’d roll with it if I needed to instil a study routine for a few weeks before an exam. I don’t really have the time to set good rewards in place for that habit. The habit just had to get done, even at the cost of not planning for the long term.
However, with all other routines that aren’t for the short term, I recommend setting good rewards. But most people skip this part, and it’s really detrimental for the process. 

Why do people skip it?

A reason I suspect people don’t set rewards is due to guilt. Imagine you want to improve your life by exercising. So, perhaps training for thirty minutes a day every morning is a habit you want to build.
Now, a reward you could set for this is playing a few games of candy crush on your phone immediately afterwards. It’s a perfectly acceptable reward, by the way, as weird as it sounds.
However, lots of people would think it’s a stupid reward. Why would you proliferate a daily habit of gaming just to exercise? Aren’t you just coupling a bad habit with a good one?
That’s not the case however. For some reason, with every habit I’ve successfully instilled in my life, a ‘low’ reward like gaming or eating a donut or a YouTube video just falls away after the habit properly installs into your mental system.
After two months of doing the exercise habit I outlined above, the candy crush reward just isn’t needed anymore. You’ll be so programmed mentally to exercise, that you’ll do it without the candy crush.
The reward is actually something that facilitates the habit at the beginning. It’s a means to an end, despite looking like an end in itself.
So, don’t feel guilty about setting rewards for yourself, despite how silly or counterproductive they seem. 

Now, how do you make sure you set good rewards?

The general rule is that anything goes as far as the reward is concerned. There are just two things to keep in mind when you’re setting them.
Firstly, make sure the reward is proportional to the habit you’re trying to keep. Spending twenty minutes playing candy crush is a good reward for a morning fifteen-minute workout. However, allowing yourself to waste away an entire morning as a reward for a small workout isn’t fair.
Similarly, allowing yourself to play PS4 for three hours as a reward for a ten-minute reading habit is way too much. Set rewards that are proportional, since you don’t want the reward to spiral out of control and become a bad habit.
Secondly, try not to let the reward impede the habit you’re trying to build. For example, giving yourself a donut as a reward for an exercise routine defeats the purpose of the exercise.
The entire point of exercise is to keep yourself healthy, so having a donut will just reduce the effectiveness of the base habit.
A donut is, however, an acceptable reward for reading a book or writing a few hundred words (hehe).
So, make sure the rewards are proportional, and don’t contradict the very habit you’re trying to build. Those are the two basic principles about habits. 

Tying it all together: the 30-day challenge
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Now that you know the three components of a habit, I want you to commit to a challenge.
Studies show that habits take around twenty-one days to form. Some say higher, around thirty days. And other studies even suggest somewhere in the realm of just over two months. It’s different for different people, naturally.
For me, though, a month is usually a good length of time for a habit to set in.
So, here’s the challenge for you. For the next month, set a habit you want for yourself. Here’s a few: exercise, reading, a new hobby you want to do, keeping a daily journal, waking up earlier.
Set a specific trigger for the habit, and write this trigger down so you remember it. Make it obvious, so obvious that missing it is harder than noticing it.
Then, set a regular time for the routine. Keep it small, since you don’t want to ignore the routine by making it too hard. Ten to twenty minutes is usually the sweet spot, since it’s such a low amount of time that no one (other than maybe Elon Musk) can claim they don’t have it. Also, set a specific time in the day for the routine, and place a reminder on your phone to help you remember that time.
As for a reward, set a proportional reward that also motivates you to go ahead with the routine. And make sure this reward doesn’t defeat the purpose of the original habit.
And there you go. With any habit you want to instil in your life, whether it’s waking up early or writing a thousand words a day, these are the steps to do it. I’ve even included them below in a template to help make it even easier.
Set a good trigger, routine, and reward, and the path to creating the behaviours you want is only a few habits away.

Habit Template

Write down the habit:
Trigger

• What is it?
• How will you make it obvious?
• Set a reminder on your phone, just in case.

Routine

• How long does the routine last for?
• Can you specify exactly what you’ll be doing during the routine? For example, specific subjects for revision, or specific exercises for a workout.
• What time during the day are you performing the routine? Want to put it on a calendar, and setup an alarm on your phone?

Reward

• Is the reward really something you enjoy? Seriously, don’t feel guilty about it.
• Is it proportional? Remember, 3 hours of PlayStation for ten minutes of revision doesn’t work out.
• Is it counterproductive to the habit? For the love of God, do NOT eat fried chicken everyday as a reward for a daily workout habit.

​About the Author
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​Sabir Miah is currently lazing about on a gap year, waiting to start a degree in Economics in September. Outside of staring at walls for hours, he sometimes likes to write, and share those thoughts with others just in case they think as crazily as he does.