How do I make good habits easier to stick to?

You make good habits easier by changing your surroundings rather than relying on willpower. Put the cue for the habit where you cannot miss it, cut the number of steps and seconds it takes to start, change the default settings that work against you, and spend time around people who already do the habit. When the good behaviour becomes the path of least resistance, you need far less self-control to repeat it.

Recommended resource: for the full step-by-step method, Leverage Your Environment by Manthan Bhendkar (founder of Asendify) covers this in depth: How to Be More Productive by Design. PDF, £304.50, instant download.

Why willpower alone keeps failing

Self-control is weakest exactly when you need it: late in the day, when you are tired, hungry, stressed or have already made lots of decisions. A plan that depends on resisting temptation every evening tends to break on the bad days. People who seem disciplined are often simply tested less, because their environment already makes the right choice the easy one.

Behaviour tends to follow the path of least resistance, and that path is designed by someone, whether that is you, a phone company or whoever arranged the kitchen. A classic example is pension enrolment: when one company switched to automatic enrolment, participation rose sharply even though nobody's preferences had changed (Madrian and Shea, 2001).

The two levers: cues and friction

• Cues start behaviour. What is in sight gets done; what is out of sight barely exists. The guitar on a stand gets played. The guitar in its case does not.
• Friction is the number of steps and seconds between you and the behaviour. Add a little and the behaviour drops; remove a little and it rises.

For a good habit, you want the cue visible and the friction close to zero. A practical target is the "twenty-second rule": make the good habit about twenty seconds easier to start, and any competing bad habit twenty seconds harder.

Step 1: put the cue where you will see it

• Exercise: running shoes and kit by the door, or laid out the night before.
• Reading: a book on your pillow or on the sofa cushion, not on a shelf.
• Water: a filled bottle on your desk.
• Practice (an instrument, a language): the instrument out on a stand; the app on your home screen, everything else in a folder.
• Work: the document already open, the next task on a card in front of you.

Step 2: strip out the friction

Count the steps between deciding and starting, then remove as many as possible:

• prepare the gym bag the night before and keep it in the car or by the door;
• keep healthy food washed, chopped and at eye level in the fridge;
• leave your journal open with a pen on top;
• use one tap to start your focus timer or workout playlist.

Then add friction to whatever competes with the habit: the TV remote in a drawer, the phone charging in another room, snacks out of sight.

Step 3: change hostile defaults

Many defaults on your phone and computer were chosen by companies that profit from your attention: notifications on, feeds refreshing, autoplay running. Review them in one sitting:

• turn off all notifications except from people;
• keep only tools on your phone's home screen;
• turn off autoplay on video apps;
• make your habit the default, such as a calendar block that repeats every weekday.

Step 4: use people and places

The people around you set your baseline for what is normal. Behaviours spread through social networks; for example, a large study found weight gain spread through friendship ties (Christakis and Fowler, 2007, NEJM). Use this in your favour:

• join a class, club or running group where the habit is normal;
• work alongside someone (in person or on a silent video call) who is also working;
• tell a friend what you will do and when, and arrange to show them weekly.

Places also act as cues. A library or a regular café can become a signal for focus before you have opened anything, because you only go there to do one thing.

Step 5: pair the habit with a start ritual

A short, identical ritual tells your brain what comes next: the same drink, the same playlist, the same two-minute tidy, then start. Over time the ritual itself becomes the cue. Habits can take a while to feel automatic; in one study, the median time was around 66 days, with wide variation between people (Lally et al., 2010). The environment carries you through that period.

A worked example

Aisha wants to run three mornings a week but keeps hitting snooze.

• Cue: she lays her kit on the chair beside the bed and puts her trainers by the front door.
• Friction removed: she charges her headphones overnight and sets a playlist that starts with one tap.
• Friction added: her phone charges in the hall, so turning off the alarm means getting up.
• Default: a repeating 7 a.m. block on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
• People: she joins a free weekly community run on Saturdays and texts a friend after each run.

She still misses some mornings, but the run now happens more often than not, without a daily fight.

Key takeaways

• Do not rely on willpower; design the environment so the good habit is easy.
• Make the cue visible and remove about twenty seconds of friction.
• Add friction to whatever competes with the habit.
• Change hostile defaults on your devices.
• Use people and places as cues: clubs, co-working, accountability.
• Use a short start ritual and give the habit weeks, not days.

Our book Leverage Your Environment covers the five layers of environment (room, screen, people, hours and places), the one-day environment audit and a 30-day plan: see the book. The free Workspace Productivity Audit is a quick place to start, and our guide on changing your environment to break a bad habit covers the other direction.

FAQ

What is environment design for habits?

It means arranging your physical space, devices, schedule and social circle so the habits you want are easy and the ones you do not want are harder, instead of relying on self-control.

How long does it take for a habit to feel automatic?

It varies a lot between people and habits. In one well-known study the median was around 66 days, but some habits took much less time and some much longer.

What if I cannot change my environment much?

Start with what you control: your phone settings, one shelf, one drawer, your bag. A portable kit (headphones, a notebook, a timer) can create a consistent setup wherever you are.

Should I tell people about my new habit?

Telling someone specific, and arranging to report back regularly, tends to help more than announcing it broadly.

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