- Decide that you want to make something a habit.
- Decide if you’re going to do it every day, or every week, or every month, or some other arrangement. (This all depends on the thing. If it’s “wake up at 5 a.m. every day,” the schedule is rather obvious. If it’s “run a mile naked under the full moon,” you’re pretty well locked in to every 28 days, max.)
- Do the thing as often as you decided you’re going to do it, whether you feel like doing it or not.
- When you really don’t feel like doing it, keep doing it anyway.
- When you no longer think about whether you want to do it or not, but just do it, your habit is fully cooked.
- Now keep doing it.
The above rules apply, without exception, to every possible habit. The use of the word “possible” is not accidental. You cannot make a habit of something you’re not able to do. You cannot make a habit of having breakfast on the moon. You cannot make a habit of swimming a mile every day if you can’t currently swim the length of a pool.
If you want to make a habit of doing something you currently can’t do, your first task is to find something you can do that takes you a step closer to the thing you can’t. Breakfast on the moon? Find out what you have to do to qualify to become an astronaut. (And lobby Elon Musk to launch a moon mission.) Swim a mile? Make a habit of swimming as many pool lengths as you can every day until you get to a mile’s worth. And so on.
I’m making a habit of writing something here every day. I didn’t yesterday, as a result of breaking rule #3 above, although in fairness I hadn’t written the list at the time, so didn’t have it handy to reference. I’ll do better from now on, I promise. (See rule #4.)