Summary
Developing habits has been a popular subject of personal development in the last few years. The challenges in forming consistent habits and how to overcome them are researched in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits:
- make it obvious
- make it attractive
- make it easy
- make it satisfying
Guise’s book Elastic Habits talks about making habits elastic. When habits are elastic, they become easy and satisfying automatically.
An example would be to imagine you want to have an active lifestyle - instead of forcing yourself to do the impossible of going to the gym every single day, you set three levels of actions for the same required habit to achieve the goal:
- mini - 30 skipping jumps
- plus - going to the gym and cycling for 30 minutes
- epic - a full workout in the gym
No matter how busy we are, everyone can spare 2 minutes for 30 skipping jumps. It’s not hard. What is important is that it gives you the reward of feeling that you have made progress towards your goal. The elasticity of the habit makes it easier to stick to, and more importantly, it eases the barrier for you to show up to your habit.
Showing up every day reminds us of our goals and instils the identity that promotes behaviour from the inside within.
Reference
- Guise, S. (2019). Elastic habits : how to create smarter habits that adapt to your day. United States: Selective Entertainment Llc.