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Excellent list. I would like to add a couple of things that have worked for me:

1. Ensure sufficient sleep (varies for each individual)

2. Identify and manage sources of stress

3. Practice mindfulness meditation

Doing the above ensures that your willpower is stronger and you are able to stick with new habits.

Ironically, mindfulness meditation is exactly the habit that I'm struggling to build. :)

Perhaps you should start with something less subtle? Like "transcendental meditation", that will have the effect of "making it" and motivate you to dig further?

If this is really important to you, I'd suggest starting first thing in the morning to make meditation easier. Aside from the basic difficulty of turning any task into a habit, meditation itself will be more difficult should you start say, mid day. When the mind is already wide awake, the inner chatter can be overwhelming, whereas in the morning it's much more peaceful. Making a task more difficult will compound the difficulty of forming a habit of that task. Hope that helps!

can you start with just 10 minutes every morning? try to use a timer that has a subtle sound, not too jarring. I made for myself a few silent mp3s of 2, 5, 10 and 20 minutes in length (easy enough in Audacity), put those in a playlist with a subtle sound (a bell, some ambient track, mantra singing or whatever you like), just on my phone it's not a hi-fi thing that's important here. so if I feel like doing more than 10 minutes I can easily queue the 2 or the 5 in front of it, you get the idea.

what also helped me was joining a meditation group for a weekly session, if you like, check wkup.org see if there's one near you, they're good people :)

like most things, the amount of benefit (clarity, focus etc) you get stepping up from about once a week to 2 or 3 times, is pretty huge. maybe that helps with motivating?

last thing, I like to tell myself, the time you spend is basically free. as in you easily get it back in ways of rest, focus, ease for the rest of the day.

Here's one that I think is the most important key. Pick a very small sub-piece of the habit you want to build, and EASY sub-piece. If you want to work out, then this might mean getting your workout clothes on. This is the minimum thing you do every day. If, after getting your workout clothes on, you decide you don't want to work out, then don't. You still get 100% credit for doing the task that day.

Even if you go two weeks and never get to the gym, you have at least built a habit of getting started with working out! You're much better off than if you had done nothing. Every day, at least you get started. And getting started is usually the hardest part. If you get started, most of the time you'll actually do the thing you had in mind!

It's critical to make the minimum requirement easy and then DO IT EVERY DAY. If it's hard and painful, you'll simply quit the whole thing after a while.

I will add one thing, it takes between 1 to 2 months to have the routine be really part of your daily life, but it takes 1 week to lose it!

What is really important is that you never forget the hard work it was to build the routine to never let it go. It is hard for everybody to build again a routine after a break like when you broke your foot (like me right now) and need to go back to running every second day (I know it will be painful both physically and psychologically for me).

Point 5. is really important. One habit at a time, it takes a lot of willpower to build one action/activity into a routine, do not overload. Also, there are some habits which are easier to start building at given point in your life or of the year (running in winter may not be fun for you). So use the right time of the year, the right break in your life to start something and fight to not lose the ones you achieved.

1. Agree. Setting a time-slot aside means that you don't have to make that decision everyday. Not having to make a decision is very helpful in forming a habit.

2. Agree. Some discipline in sticking is very helpful in the beginning. Over time, people realize you aren't to be bothered at a certain time, or even that you don't spontaneously change your plans if you have certain specific activities planned that hour ( for me, it's biking).

3. Strongly Disagree. Being uncomfortable with a break in routine leads to guilt, sense of failure, and premature abandonment of your goal. It's really important to curtail falling off, but comfort with occasional breaks is really important.

4. This only works if you have a long term coach/partner. Friends are usually unlikely to be as determined as you to do this particular thing. And if you start together with a friend and they fall off, it legitimizes the failure a little and tempts you to fall off too. I'd say being accountable to yourself (marking lines on a whiteboard) might be more effective.

5. Strongly agree. ONLY one thing at a time.

6. Agree

This and other responses all have excellent advice. I'll just add a couple things that have worked for me.

- With exercise it's important to not overdo it. Start small, work up at a reasonable slow pace. You don't have to run 10 miles on day 1. Getting injured or sore or even just too tired makes it so much more likely you'll start skipping.

- Make doing the activity any given day more important that how much of it you do. It's okay to run a half mile instead of three, just make sure to run a little.

- When I was trying to lose weight & make a habit out of counting calories and stopping at my limit, I realized something that made it a thousand times easier. This might seem really stupid obvious, but it's about mental frame of mind. I realized that whatever hunger I thought I felt, I had been eating more than I needed. I was getting too much. If my calorie limit left me a little hungry, then that's how I was supposed to feel. When I focused on overcoming the hunger, it was a losing battle, it just made me think about the hunger and how I felt like I wanted to eat more. When I shifted to thinking about how I'd been eating too much, it was easy to adjust.

This helped me discover that building habits and goals are a very mental process that you can make easier by modifying your thinking. Figure out how to make your goals motivating, as opposed to brute-forcing your way over hurdles. When I learned to think the right way about certain things, they became so much easier. The harder you push against something you don't really want to do, the more energy it takes. If you can flip it into something you do want to do, it's effortless. Try reflecting on ways to make it mentally easier to make activities automatic, rather than thinking about how to battle and win new habits. Turn the goals mentally into givens- the things you're just going to do, and make the alternative the thing that's more difficult than not doing it.

Yep start small... not quite a year ago I started with just a Saturday class. About three months later I added another, and a month later, one more. Attend consistently except for the week I am on call. During call week I workout at home to YouTube videos and follow the similar HIIT/cardio-weight mix classes that I do in the gym on the SAME schedule. Strong results (belly smaller but seems to have reached steady state), fat loss else where, but not much weight loss. Resting pulse down by 6 beats/min.

Getting injured... nothing breaks routine and depresses you like this one. I got one earlier on doing jumping jacks - it was the achilles. Fortunately it preceded my call week and I recovered in a quick 3 weeks - which was surprising. So I missed at most 1 week. Never did jumping jacks again and always use the alternatives... in fact I take all the starter options I am given.

To add to your second point. I have more 'bad days' than good... shouldn't this stuff get easier? Some days I cannot finish some routines; just don't have the energy. But I always feel good leaving the gym. Getting to the gym is more than 80% of the battle - there are usually competent people at gym to take you the last 20%. Don't compare yourself with others - concern yourself with your factors.

I did not set out to change my eating habits. However seeing decent gains, I started asking myself if I need that extra item I crave. I often give in to the ask, but it is not without questioning myself. I am not the best when it comes to dietary self control, so, for now, this is my approach. Hopefully down the road I will question myself more, and eventually, give in less.

I doubt this is scientifically verified, but this is probably the best thing we can do in the absence of research.

Last time I check out research concerning producitivty, it's an unresearched black hole.

That's not factoring in the reproducability crisis.

What I like in the absence of research is doing one's own measurements and then building what you learn into your own framework. Over time you can then make the framework more elegant and find the best leverage points.

This is far better IMO than googling somebody else's list. It is personalized to you and is more fun that way, too.

I agree this method is more powerful in the long run.

It is difficult though. It requires serious patience, and very disciplined self-awareness and self-skepticism. It is incredibly easy to craft a false narrative for our experiences.

Keeping in mind that different approaches work for different people, I do think supplementing with ideas from others, especially those who possess similar self-awareness and skepticism, can be helpful.

I've become to believe strongly that relentless skepticism and questioning is one of the most powerful forces in humanity. So I try hard to apply it to myself -- while also giving myself a break now and then :)

Of course, the sciences are the clearest example of this. But I think it also applies to areas where rigorous measurements are hard to come by.

On 4: there are applications that you can get that will impose a painful measure on you should you stray from routine. Things like donating to the political party opposite yours should you fail.

As someone who got into a regular exercise habit a year ago that has progressively gotten more intense, I disagree with a few of your points.

Actually, I guess it's mostly the first 3:

> 1. Build a routine. Set a specific, repeating time when you will do the thing in your calendar. Keep that slot clear, ALWAYS. Never let something interrupt this task.

> 2. Learn to say no. If someone wants you to do something else during this time slot, say no, and tell them why.

> 3. Never break the routine. Breaking it once makes it MUCH easier to break the next scheduled time. If you do break it, feel bad about it and get back on the horse IMMEDIATELY.

It's this "do it now or feel guilty" stuff that keeps most people procrastinating or avoiding doing the task. I remember initially I would have it set in my mind that I needed to go to the gym at 10 a.m. the next day. If I woke up a bit late or was wasting time on reddit and 10 a.m. looked unrealistic, I started feeling really guilty. "Oh no, if I don't go now, I'll never go!" It put a lot of stupid, unnecessary pressure on the situation. And it didn't really have the desired effect -- I'd usually not go, since I had already blown it by missing my 10 a.m. deadline, after all!

Now, I might wake up and plan on going at 10, but I know that I 1) absolutely do plan on going and 2) can go at 11, or 12, or 1, or 2, etc. There's no need to make the task worse by associating a lot of negative pressure and guilt with it.

> One thing at a time. [...] Leave time in your schedule for play.

Totally. Especially if it's an area where the amount of information out there can be overwhelming (a la fitness / weightlifting). I started out going with a few exercises I enjoyed in mind and simply did them until I felt tired. I didn't worry about making a program, writing down my workouts, obsessing about nutrition, or obsessing about how many days or which days I did what.

Over time, things started getting easier and I began incorporating more of this stuff as I started feeling comfortable. But the initial phase where I made the habit something I actually enjoyed was crucial. Even now, when I occasionally find myself feeling like I've slipped too much back into treating it like a job, I take a day to not keep track of anything and try some new exercises that I think might feel good.

Edit: Also super useful:

> If you can find someone who will hold you accountable, do it. Someone who does the routine with you, or a coach who will call you out if you make excuses.

For me it was my roommate. I'd go with him the first couple of months. After a while I felt comfortable enough to go by myself and do my own thing, but that initial time where I would use the slight social pressure of him going and asking me if I wanted to go to keep myself in check.

> It's this "do it now or feel guilty" stuff that keeps most people procrastinating or avoiding doing the task

Couldn't agree more with this.

I've tried many times to build habits into my routine, only to abandon them and feel bad about it because I couldn't maintain them for a few days.

No more. Now I have them in my list, I keep them consciously present, but I won't punish myself if I don't get them done one day. Allow some leeway. If you really want it, build it paciently into your routine and if it doesn't feel right, try another way.

One example: I've been trying to stick to a healthy diet to lose some weight. I don't enjoy cooking, and much less enjoy preparing or eating salads. Tried lots of apps, lots of ways of grocery shopping, and hated it all the way. Now I switched to calorie counting and drinking lots of water. Walking away from the desk to fill a bottle 3 or 4 times a day feels like I'm moving forward without any hassle, and I just try to eat slowly when I sit down for lunch or dinner. Water diminishes my appetite and cravings for eating out of just feeling anxiety. And if I feel like chomping down on a pizza with beer, it's ok, no big deal.

Just take it easy. Hakuna matata.

> Now I switched to calorie counting and drinking lots of water.

Nice! Calorie counting was huge for me. I started using an app for tracking it, and suddenly the weight just started coming off. The quantification and gamification aspect was hugely addicting for me. For the first time I actually felt in control over my body.

I finally built up the will to exercise by forcing myself to do only something every day. Even if it was walk out the door the walk back in, as long as it was something.

Yes, habit is about cues. Time is one cue, but it can be a weak one if your ordinary routine varies. If you set your exercise time as 6pm, but your activity at 5:30 is not routine, then the time cue may not be enough to trigger the habit. You'll lose track of time and suddenly realize it's 6:15, at which point (like this comments says), you'll feel like you failed and you'll rationalize not doing it at all.

The key is to entrain a new habit with an old one---exercise when you get up, or on your way home from work, or at some other point in the day where you're reliably doing the same thing every day.