3 Tips to Create Good Habits on Your Own

Habit is life. If you have good habits, it is safe to say that half of your life is already a success. In a highly competitive world, people who are ahead of the curve often grit their teeth and work hard at every moment, while also trying to create good habits. Because habits are in the realm of the unconscious, energy consumption is overwhelmingly less than conscious efforts. In the end, if you don’t make good habits, you have to live hard every day. How can I create good habits?

Hang out with people with good habits

It is the fastest and most effective way. When I was in college, I wanted to make it a habit to wake up early and go to the library to study. However, the fierce struggle against gravity always ended in gravity’s landslide victory. Humiliatingly, not only was the body lying down, but the eyelids were not even opened. So, as a special measure, I called in one of the most diligent juniors and asked them to wake up early in the morning and grab me by the collar to go to the library on the condition that instead of commuting long distances, they would live in my own room and not pay. My junior readily agreed because he could save time on commuting to school, and I was really grabbed by the collar and taken to the library every day… I slept in the library. Still, I got into the habit of going to the library, and I was able to achieve very high academic achievement that semester. If you work with someone who has already formed a habit like this, you can create good habits more easily than you think.

Try the easy things first

The reason most people fail to form habits is because they set goals for routines with high difficulty. It is important to start with something easy and make it a habit. It has to be easy so you can try it often, and you have to try it often to get used to it. If you create such a small good habit, you will be confident and you will be able to challenge more difficult habit formation with the energy saved from that small habit. So start small, but set goals that you can consistently achieve. In order to do that, of course, metacognition must be high. Keep in mind that reckless challenges without knowing yourself will only eat up your time and energy.

Record

It’s a simple but great secret. For example, let’s say you create an exercise habit to lose weight. In fact, even if you exercise every day, dramatic changes do not occur. Most of them give up in the incubation period because changes can be seen only after enough time has passed. In that case, what you need is a record. It’s invisible, but if you exercise properly and go through a proper diet, you can see that you lose weight every day. Receiving feedback like that is much more motivating than you think. Also, if you see that you have gained weight, which you thought was subtly the same, you may be able to maintain your weight loss pace with additional effort. To quote Peter Drucker, “You cannot manage what cannot be measured.” If you manage it like that, you can do self-feedback, and in the end, steady feedback will lead to good habits. Whatever field you challenge, be sure to record it. Survival of the fittest! Whoever writes down must survive.