{"id":3223,"date":"2015-03-24T09:42:41","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T14:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kbicblog.com\/blog\/construction-recruiter\/?p=3223"},"modified":"2015-03-24T09:59:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T14:59:14","slug":"one-of-the-most-important-strategies-for-changing-your-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kbicblog.com\/construction-recruiter\/blog\/one-of-the-most-important-strategies-for-changing-your-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"One Of The Most Important Strategies For Changing Your Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In an excerpt from her new book, best-selling author Gretchen Rubin explains how to schedule habit change into your daily routine.<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Gretchen Rubin<\/a><\/div>\n
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The Strategy of Scheduling, of setting a specific, regular time for an activity to recur, is one of the most familiar and powerful strategies of habit formation. Scheduling makes us far more likely to convert an activity into a habit.<\/p>\n

Habits grow strongest and fastest when they’re repeated in predictable ways, and for most of \"3043658-inline-i-betterthanbefore\"<\/a>us putting an activity on the schedule tends to lock us into doing it.<\/p>\n

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To apply the Strategy of Scheduling, we must decide when, and how often, a habit should occur. Generally, advice about habit formation focuses on fixed habits\u2014that is, habits that always happen in the same way, without conscious thought. Every day I\u2019m up and brushing my teeth before I know it; I put on my seat belt; I meditate after I get dressed.<\/p>\n

However, I\u2019ve noticed that I have both fixed habits and unfixed habits. An unfixed habit requires more decision making and adjustment: I\u2019m in the habit of going to the gym on Mondays, and I write every day, but every Monday I must decide when to go to the gym, and I must decide when and where I\u2019ll do my daily writing. I try to make my good habits as fixed as possible, because the more consistently I perform an action, the more automatic it becomes, and the fewer decisions it requires; but given the complexities of life, many habits can\u2019t be made completely automatic.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d given up the idea that I can create a habit simply by scheduling an action a certain number of times. Although many people believe that habits form in twenty-one days, when researchers at University College London<\/a> examined how long people took to adopt a daily habit, such as drinking water or doing sit-ups, they found that, on average, a habit took sixty-six days to form. An average number isn\u2019t very useful, however, because\u2014as we all know from experience\u2014some people adopt habits more easily than others, and some habits form more quickly than others. Bad habits can be easy to create, though they make life harder, while good habits can be hard to create, though they make life easier.<\/p>\n