Habit Building System I Wish I Had Learned Sooner

What if you could stick to your habits in the long run by using a few simple principles? For most people, this sounds like a bit of a pipe dream, but it is actually quite simple. All you need to do is a little bit of creativity plus a habit-building system, which I'm about to share with you. One of the main reasons why people never stick to their habits is because they are using the wrong system for building habits. You know what I'm talking about, right? Those habits that didn't last even for a week, let alone for years. But if you're guilty of this, don't worry, because you're not alone and a lot of people are doing this. This video is not about atomic habits or tiny habits, rather it's about a habit-building system that's even better than atomic habits and tiny habits. And also using this system, you can evaluate your progress and you can calculate the corresponding score for each period of time. This system has more than four steps, so make sure to do each step one after another. First of all, you should think of up to three most important habits you want to build. For example, suppose that those habits are writing, reading, and exercising. Now you should choose different alternatives for each habit. But what do I mean by alternatives? For example, going for a walk, running, and doing core exercises can be some alternatives for exercising. Choosing different alternatives is for flexibility purposes. For example, suppose that you are a writer and you chose your habit as writing X number words each day. But what about those days when you have finished your book and now it's time to edit? So as you can see, in those days, your priority is not writing, rather it's editing. That is to say, the writing process involves a lot more than just writing. So you see, in order to be able to stick to your habits sometimes and for some habits, you need to define different alternatives. This would give you more opportunities to be consistent with your habits. After defining different alternatives, then for each alternative, you need to define four versions, the show-off version, the easy version, medium version, and the hard version. The purpose of the show-off version is to keep your habit alive because if your habit survives, then you can expand it later. And in our writing example, for example, 50, 500, and 1500 can be good choices for the easy, medium, and hard versions. So you should do the same process for each alternative. I mean, for each alternative, you should define four versions, which are the show-off version, the easy version, medium version, and the hard version. And now maybe you ask, how can we track our habits using this system? I'm going to talk about the best way to track your habits, but before that, I should note two important things. First of all, for some habits, you can have different alternatives, but for some other habits, you can have only one alternative, for example, like reading. Secondly, maybe for some alternatives, you don't have the easy version, the medium version, or the hard version. For example, going to a gym. To my opinion, it doesn't have any easy version because going to a gym by itself is at least medium. So now let's talk about how to track your progress and also how to calculate the performance score of each period of time. And these scores not only help you to compare your performance with other time periods, but also it makes the process more fun and like a game, which is called gamification. So for doing so, the first idea that may pop into your mind is using different colors for different versions. For example, blue for the show-off version, and for example, red for the hard version, and et cetera. But there is a big problem with doing so, because for example, suppose that in the morning you have done the show-off version and you have put, for example, a blue X on your calendar or on your habit tracker, but later in that day, you have done more of that habit, so you need to change the color, which it wouldn't be easy. So here's my suggestion. If you have shown up for that habit, put a red X on your habit tracker. Then if you have done the easy version, put one dot below the big X. For the medium version, put two dots. And finally, put three dots below the big X for the hard version. But let's talk about the game-changing part of this system, which helps you to make the process of building habits more fun. So here are the rules on how to calculate your scores. Rule number one. Each version has the following scores. Show-off one point, easy two points, medium three points, and hard four points. Rule number two. If you show up every day without missing any day in this 40-day period, you will get 40 points at the end of this success cycle period. This rule encourages you to at least show off and keep your habit alive. Stefan Geis calls this system the elastic habits. Although I have done a lot of customizations, not a lot, but I have done some customizations in order to make it better and present it in this video, but Stefan Geis explains more about it in his book, which is called Elastic Habits. But if you have enjoyed this video, I would really appreciate it if you tap the like button because it really helps the channel with the YouTube algorithm. Now I really suggest you to watch this video, which is on the screen now.