The next step is to stick with the behavior long enough that it becomes automatic. I will put things back in their place once every day.”
Some examples of vague improvements turned into concrete habits: If it’s a habit of absence (quitting smoking, giving up junk food) it should include some concrete alternative to fill the vacuum. It should happen either every day or after a particular context or trigger (right after work, every time you speak to someone, when you wake up). You want to replace the vague sense of unease that maybe you should be better at something with a decision to improve something specific.Ī good habit should be something you do regularly. The first step is to clearly articulate what you’re trying to improve. Improving a habit has three main parts: formulating the desired behavior, conditioning the habit and maintaining it once it has formed.
If your main problem is not knowing how to do something well enough, that’s probably a skill. A good rule of thumb is that if your main problem is with doing something you already know how to do, but doing it consistently, that’s probably a habit. The first step is deciding whether what your trying to improve is mostly a habit or mostly a skill.
But it’s also a skill-vocabulary, fluency and subject familiarity all influence how quickly and deeply you can read. On the one hand, reading is a habit-you need to read more. Most things you’ll want to improve will have a mix of habits and skills. When you don’t know *how* to do something, or don’t know how to do it well enough, what you’re trying to improve is a skill. You may need a habit of practicing, but it’s not enough to just will yourself to speak French or Japanese-you need to learn how to do it first. When you find yourself wanting to do something more regularly or consistently, you’re trying to improve a habit. Most people know *how* to run, move or work out, they just don’t do it as much as they’d like. Although there is some skill in exercising well, that’s not the weak link for most people. Most of the things you want to get better at are largely habits, skills or some mixture of the two.Įxercising is a habit. But it can help simplify the process of thinking about improvement. In this article I want to outline a simple strategy to get better at anything.
However, I think a lot of people don’t improve simply because they don’t know how. It doesn’t happen too often that you can immediately get better at something with a trick or gimmick. Maybe you’d like to be more artistic, athletic or multilingual. How often do you catch yourself saying, “I wish I were better at _.” Maybe you want to be better at exercising regularly, your relationships or your work.