Use this five-step process to change your habits in 2024

As business owners and leaders, how we manage our own behaviour is central to our productivity and growth. That’s why I want to share with you some ways of modifying your habits, which might mean starting some behaviours and stopping others.

Now, while there’s no magic bullet for behaviour change, there are ways to approach it systematically to give you the best odds of success. Let’s run through five strategies and when to use them.

Swapping

To stop a behaviour, our best approach is to crowd it out with an alternative. Nature abhors a vacuum and so does behaviour change. If we don’t replace what we stop, it’s all the more likely we will revert to our old ways.

That’s why swapping is such an effective approach. The behaviour is the same, but what we consume is different. For example, I weaned myself off coffee. First I moved to chai. It had the same mouthfeel as the flat white I was used to, but not the same caffeine content.

But chai is sweet, so gradually I moved from it to green tea.

Importantly, the ritual of a hot drink remained, I just swapped what that hot drink was. I used this same strategy when stopping my mid-week wine-after-work habit. Instead of wine, I swapped it with flavoured soda water. Same ritual, different substance.

Streaks

Something magical happens once we have repeated a behaviour for a successive number of days. We build a streak. Jerry Seinfeld popularised this with his joke-everyday-streak.

Duolingo and other apps use this same psychology to make us want to continue, as do recovery programs like AA.

When I got Covid on New Year’s Day, I stopped drinking alcohol entirely so that I could give my system a break. After 14 days I found myself in mid-January, so I decided to swear off drinking till the end of the month. And when February rolled around, I decided I would continue to see how long I could go. It’s now a year later and I am still alcohol-free thanks to the streak!

Streaks are best with frequent, everyday behaviours, rather than occasional ones. For example, it’s easier to build a streak for 20 days in a row than a streak of the first Monday in a month.

Environment

The most impactful thing you can do when it comes to shaping behaviour is to change the environment. From keeping treats out of your line of sight in the pantry to placing gym gear next to the door so you remember to take it with you, structuring your environment takes a lot of the hard work out. Here’s a few examples of how I’ve used my environment to start or stop different behaviours.

Flossing (start)

I keep floss in my line of sight next to my toothbrush so I remember to use it. The habit is established now, so I could probably risk storing it in a drawer, but why risk it?

Meat (stop)

I didn’t intend to become vegetarian, but I started using a meal kit delivery service about 14 years ago and opted for the non-meat package. It was cheaper and I wasn’t really into meat anyway. Having the kits delivered made it easy to expand my repertoire and realise eating meat as my core protein was a habit, not an active choice. It opened my eyes to cooking without meat and while I no longer use the meal kits, they definitely helped me change my eating behaviour.

Ice bath (start)

To plunge into icy water every morning is not necessarily an easy thing. So, after I decided to take up ice baths, my challenge was to shape the environment to make it as easy as possible to do the difficult thing. Interestingly, it’s often not the difficult thing itself that stops us from progressing, it’s the path on the way to doing the difficult thing. It’s having to drive out of your way to get to the gym or compile paperwork in order to change banks.

If you want to do a difficult thing, make getting to the starting blocks as easy as possible for yourself. For me that meant having an ice bath in my backyard rather than needing to go to the beach or a gym, and paving the path so it was easy to walk to the bath even in the dark depths of a Melbourne winter.

I’ve likewise used my environment to improve my exercise habits. I now have a treadmill, boxing bag, skipping rope and weights in my carport so I can train regardless of weather and without having to drive anywhere.

Identity

People who label themselves as something are more likely to behave in a way that is consistent with that identity. Think noun (i.e., name, naming word) rather than verb (i.e., doing, action). Rather than running, call yourself a runner. Rather than voting, call yourself a voter. Rather than cold plunging, call yourself a cold plunger.

I used this technique when I wanted to moderate my ice cream habit. How? By becoming vegan. Extreme, I know! Vegans don’t consume dairy, so as a vegan I could no longer eat ice cream and maintain a consistent self-view. Of course, the battle continues now that vegan ice cream has become more common!

Emotion and information

Thinking yourself to a new behaviour is unlikely to work on its own. However, to support my move away from dairy I deliberately watched videos on the treatment of animals. Propaganda? Probably. Effective? Definitely. This gave me sufficient motivation in the beginning to change my behaviour.

If you want to stop a behaviour, it won’t hurt to expose yourself to reasons why that thing is bad. There is a wear-off factor to consider, though. The disgust or outrage you may feel will likely dissipate over time. That means, don’t ever rely on emotion to support long-term change. It’s a great kick-start but has a short shelf life so be sure to undertake the hardest aspect of the new behaviour when your motivation is highest.

Bri Williams is a behavioural science expert.