Habits

"The unsexy and unappealing truth is, behavior change is hard, because we are creatures of habit."

–Christine Whelan 

In a Washington Post article, Sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison gave some suggestions on how to build good habits, which can be tricky since human behavior is difficult to change. 

Something I found interesting in this article right away, was that Whelan stated that the first step in building a good habit is to consider what you wont be able to do once the habit is in place. For Example, In Whelan's case, she said she wanted to reach out to more friends this year, which means she will have to do less paid work in order to make time, as well as get less sleep. I think this is an aspect of habit making that people tend to forget about, because new behaviors will take up more time from the day, and you may have to cut back in certain areas of your life in order to make time for the new behavior. 

Another thing that Whelan pointed out is that people make laundry-lists of things in their life that they want to change (i.e. going to the gym more, meditating, making a budget, eating more kale, taking vitamins, creating more boundaries around work time, etc.) but changing all these behaviors at once will set you up for failure. Whelan suggests taking these behavior changes one at a time, focusing on the one habit you want to change first, and then once that habit is in place, working your way down the list. 

In this article, Whelan also presents the acronym "SMART" for creating goals for habit/behavior changes:

Specific

Measurable

Reward (for sticking to it)

Trackable progress

These are all ways to make sure that your habit changes are successful, and Whelan says that another way to ensure this is by making sure you have a community, because you are more likely to succeed in behavior changes if you do not have to go at it alone. Contrary to popular belief regarding how long it takes to make a habit (21 days), Christine Whelan says that in reality its more like 90 days, because breaking the habit change down into smaller steps and stretching it out will make it easier to automate the behavior.