How To Change A Habit
March 29th, 2008
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Scott Young was kind enough to give me a press copy of his ebook How To Change A Habit. Personally I don’t struggle with changing habits, but I was very interested in reading this ebook because I know that many people do. Some of the obvious habits that give people a hard time are quitting smoking and starting an exercise program. Scott says that people can change their habits far more easily when they adopt effective strategies for doing so.
You may remember that not long ago I reviewed Scott’s latest ebook Learn More, Study Less. He wrote How To Change A Habit last year, but obviously the principles still hold true. While I found Learn More, Study Less to be more original and more helpful to me personally, How To Change A Habit is good, and in fact better than I was expecting. How To Change A Habit is much cheaper at only $14.99, though it doesn’t have an affiliate program.
Scott uses 30-day trials as the foundation for changing habits, saying that simply following a trial is enough to solve 50-75% of the problems people face in changing their habits. The rest of his ebook is about refining that core process. By using certain strategies, Scott was able to change many habits that most people would have a very hard time with, such as becoming a vegetarian, waking up at 5:30 every morning, exercising every day, and giving up TV (though he later decided that a moderate amount of TV was the best option for him).
He gives us basic techniques to quickly begin changing habits, and then moves on to advanced techniques that are needed when the basic methods fail. While he acknowledges that some discipline is necessary, his focus is on developing a good strategy so that habits can be changed without extraordinary levels of discipline. His ideas are based on his own personal experiments, but also backed up by psychological research.
The ebook is visually pleasing, having a good number of illustrations and a nice layout optimized for on-screen reading. He takes a very detailed look at 30-day trials, and gives a lot of good information about advanced techniques.
I said at the beginning of this post that I don’t struggle with changing my habits. However, I’m currently going through a trial that’s proving to be a major exception to this (see my next post). Because it’s a trial of changing my thoughts, it’s much tougher than any other habit I’ve tried to change. If I slip up just once with my thoughts, I have to start all over, and that’s what keeps happening. So I was pleased to see that Scott has a section specifically about “Changing Habits of Thought,” which has given me some ideas.
If you’ve tried to change some habits but found it too difficult, I recommend How To Change A Habit. I’m adding it to the Resources page.
March 30th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Hi Hunter - great idea for a book. The 30 day trial sounds good - I read somewhere that once you’ve done something continuously for at least 30 days it becomes habit. I think it was on John Chow’s blog that I read that.
Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Can You Write a $500 Prize Winning Quote?
March 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Catherine, I’ve also heard that 21 days makes a habit, so there are different numbers floating around out there. The nice thing about 30 days is that it’s a month (give or take), so it’s easy to keep track of where you are just from the date.
March 31st, 2008 at 2:57 am
Hi Hunter,
I think I need to get out of the habit of blogging way into the night. Is there any help for me in the book?
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Celebrating One Year Of Blogging
March 31st, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Barbara, it’s interesting that you want to get out of the habit of blogging all night long, when many people are trying to establish the habit of blogging more consistently. It just goes to show that we all have our own unique situations, and we’re striving for different things.
As far as help in the book, yes, Scott mentions habits like this. This is what’s called a negative habit. By negative, he doesn’t mean bad, he means that you’re trying to stop doing something instead of trying to start doing something. He says some of his techniques are harder to apply with negative habits, but he suggests reading the section on replacement theory. He’s used replacement theory to stop watching TV, stop eating meat, cut down on internet use, etc.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am
So, what I need to do is replace blogging with sleep?
Although I do try to get most of my blogging in during the day and or early evening, working in a home office can actually be unstructured. Sometimes when I think I have an hour to blog, the phone rings and out the door I go to run an errand. Since that’s what pays the bills, blogging falls into whatever time slot is available. Priorities, you know?
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..NBOTW Took A Huge Leap Of Faith
April 1st, 2008 at 8:23 pm
The thing with replacement theory is that you can’t replace a habit with just any other habit. In many cases, you’ll find too much temptation to switch back to the first habit. Scott explains in the ebook how to identify habits that can be used successfully with replacement.
Ah yes, those dreaded bills. I understand–sometimes blogging has to make way for practical matters we have to tend to. Your readers will be more forgiving if you miss a post than your customers will be if you don’t deliver.