Habits are the building blocks of any personal development plan.

Small habits stack together and add up to big results.

The habits you choose to do, habits you choose not to do, and the frequency you choose to do them determine whether you will see change in your life for the better.

But habits are ineffective unless we do them–not just once, but over and over and over again.

One time actions work well to calm the guilt of not feeling like we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

But consistent actions are what actually create results and change.

It can be hard to be consistent with habits for various reasons, but here are a few ways–6 to be exact–that I’ve discovered make it easier for me to stick with my habits.

01  /  Make them matter.

Your habits should be deliberate stepping stones to your bigger dreams.

Every habit should be leading to a bigger goal that you have, otherwise you’re just wasting your time and energy.

Doing anything consistently is commendable, but if what you’re doing does not lead to a significant goal, the action is rendered useless.

When you can see the bigger picture and the reason “why” behind an action, you will be more inclined and enthused to do it.

When you are confident that what you do today will lead to what you want tomorrow, there is a point and purpose to every action, making it infinitely easier to execute.

02  /  Make them personal.

We’ve all seen the gurus online, who wake up at 5am, do the cold shower, meditate for an hour, and do all the other things they try to convince you that you need to do in order to be successful.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these things.

The problem comes in when you take on someone else’s habits because that person is popular, famous, or perceived to be successful in a conventional, material sense.

Don’t choose your habits based on what you think everybody else does, what some billionaire does, or what some buzzfeed article or tiktok trend says.

Success isn’t one size fits all, so the habits that lead to success are not either.

Your habits should be personal to you, not fashionable to others.

If you have no idea where to start when it comes to deciding what habits you should be incorporating into your regular life, look at the people whose lives, perspectives, and mindsets you want to emulate, and adopt their habits.

But only take inspiration from people you actually admire who are where you want to be.

Habits are a tool for you to improve your life in the ways that are most meaningful to you, not an accessory to show off to make you look good to others.

Your habits exist to serve you and the creation of your ideal future, not to serve your ego or the expectations of the people around you.

03  /  Make them easy.

There are two ways to make habit execution easier–

1 – add things that make execution easier

2 – take away things that make execution harder

We usually overwhelm ourselves with the former, while forgetting the simple power of the latter.

Reducing the amount of willpower needed to do something is infinitely easier than increasing the amount of willpower you currently have.

Removing the temptations and traps that get in the way of the habits you want to have is the ultimate cheat code.

Oreos in the house when you want to eat healthy–temptation.

65 inch 8K OLED TV in every room of the house when you want to reduce screen time–trap.

You can also reduce the amount of willpower needed to execute a habit by making its execution easier or otherwise more attractive to you.

This could entail…

• Making things more efficient – If you want to read more to learn more about a subject but are tight on time, start listening to audiobooks through Audible.

• Making things more beautiful – If you want to spend an extra hour working a day, decorate your office well, so you want to be there.

• Making things more comfortable – If you want to write an hour a day, get yourself a high quality, super comfortable office chair so you want to sit at your desk.

When it comes to forming new habits, we think we have to torture ourselves, but we can treat ourselves.

04  /  Make them swappable.

If you want to quit a bad habit, sometimes it’s hard to just quit cold turkey.

When you’re accustomed to doing something, it can be difficult to eliminate things altogether, at least initially.

In these instances, you may benefit from having something else in that “slot” to take the place of that action, and satisfy that same desire, or replace that urge.

This is something that sometimes happens naturally with people with substance abuse problems (for example, people who quit smoking may find themselves drinking more).

But you can use this phenomenon intentionally to your benefit to make healthy or positive substitutions.

You can substitute something good in place of something bad.

For example…

If you’re trying to cut back on sugary drinks, you could drink lemon water every time you get the urge to drink juice.

If you want to spend less time on social media, you can pick up a book every time you get the urge to open up an app and scroll.

05  /  Make them small.

The first time doing anything is the hardest, and every subsequent time after that, the beginning is the hardest.

To solve this problem, make it easy to get over the hurdle of starting.

How?

Take your desired habit, and shrink it small enough so that it is easy to repeat in the widest variety of circumstances.

Some days you’ll feel full of energy, some days you’ll be exhausted.

Some days you’ll have an empty calendar, and some days will be packed from sunup to sundown.

But what is your life like on most days? 

Be realistic about your other responsibilities, your present schedule, and your average available time and energy.

Some people’s lives allow them to work with sprints, and other people’s lives are more conducive to consistency.

If you want to write a book, you could either hunker down and give yourself a month to concentrate fully on that task, and write 12 pages a day, and have a 360 page book in a month.

Or you could integrate the habit into your current normal life, and write a page a day, and have a 365 page book done in a year’s time.

For most people, setting up their habits as small pieces done consistently is what works best.

You always have the option to do more (if time or energy allow), but commit to the minimum, not the most, to keep yourself motivated and on track.

It’s still possible to achieve big things in small pieces, so don’t feel like you have to commit to excessively large habits.

I think we all know how fast a year goes by.

Even if you lost just one pound a week, you could lose 52 pounds in a year’s time.

One blog post a week is still 52 in a year.

One random act of kindness a day is still positively affecting 365 lives in a year.

06  /  Make them measurable.

When we track things, we get the benefit of gamification, and of taking advantage of our sense of personal pride.

When you start a new habit, it will be difficult and you won’t want to do it.

But once you get going, and start being consistent, you develop a streak, and you won’t want to break the chain.

You’ll feel proud of yourself and shift your identity to a person who does that habit instead of a person who does not.

Make your habits in some way measurable, and track them.

This could be done with a simple spreadsheet or checklist that you can use as a habit tracker.

The more consistent you are with your habits, of course, the better results you will get, but also, the better you will feel about yourself.

Then the better you feel about yourself, the more consistent you will want to be, and the more consistent you are, the better results you will get.

The better results you get, the better you’ll feel about yourself, then the more consistent you’ll want to be.

See the cycle?

Consistency is the key that sparks that positive loop that makes it easier and easier to stay on track with your habits.

Hopefully, at least one of these tips will help you be more consistent.

You could do the most amazing habit, but it’s of no benefit if you only do it once.

In fact, if you only do it once, you haven’t even earned the right to call it a habit.

For more reading on habits, I love the book, Atomic Habits, by James Clear.

Happy habit-ing!