How To Create a Habit

How to create a habit. Make it the default.

I exercise nearly every day. I eat within The Three Rules to Lose Weight virtually 100% of the time. I do push-ups every morning. How do I do that? Some say I am disciplined. I suppose that’s true, but I started the habits by making them the default, just like brushing my teeth. By default, I eat within the Rules. If someone gives me food against the Rules, say Godiva truffles, my default is to get rid of it and not eat it. Same thing with push-ups. If I’m lazy one morning, it doesn’t matter. I need a good reason to break with my default and skip push-ups. 

By nature, I’m a homebody. Even before Covid, when my wonderful wife wanted to do something with our wonderful son or with friends, I found a way to see them at our house or get out of it entirely. It would take convincing for me to go out. When I did go, I was almost always happy that I had gone, but the next time, I still chose to stay in.

My son said something that changed my way of thinking. He said that you should default to yes for the things you want to do. If you want to go out with friends more, say “yes” when they ask. Don’t think about it. That is what I do now. When my wife says someone invited us out, I say yes unless I have a good reason not to, and I rarely do. I go out much more now.  

Sometimes, something important comes up. An injury or illness will get me out of my default of exercising every day. I had to break the Three Rules for a double-prep colonoscopy because I couldn’t survive the two-day clear liquid diet unless I drank sugar-sweetened Powerade and ate green jello. 

Defaulting to something you want to do adds an extra step if you’re tempted to avoid it. This has been proven to work with organ donation and 401ks. Countries that have a system where everyone is an organ donor unless they opt out have a much higher rate of organ donation than countries where no one is an organ donor unless they opt in. In the United States, the default is that you are not an organ donor. If the United States wanted to make it a habit to be an organ donor, the government could make the default be that we are all organ donors.

The SECURE 2.0 Act in the United States will make it the default that employees enroll in a 401k. If you don’t want to contribute to your retirement plan, you will have to opt out. Undoubtedly, people will save more for retirement.

This is true with creating your own habits. If you want to work out every day, make it the default. Don’t agree to anything that interferes with working out unless there is a very good reason. When my wonderful wife and I plan a trip, we make sure we’ll be able to exercise every day. Some days, something will come up, but then we will have to opt out of exercising. If we went on a trip without a plan, without the default to exercise, we would only exercise when we had nothing else to do. 

We are visiting our good friends in Peoria in April and plan to have dinner with them every evening. Patrick knows I follow The Three Rules to Lose Weight. (He has lost a lot of weight on the same plan.) The default is that I won’t go to any restaurant where I can’t eat on the Rules. A few days ago, he sent me a list of some restaurants to consider. You can be sure they all look great, and there are several choices for me. But if there weren’t, I would tell him to look for another restaurant.

Choose what you want to make a habit and make that the default. Opting out should rarely happen, and only with good reason. In a short time, it will be a habit you don’t have to think about. I exercise daily, eat within the Three Rules, avoid alcohol, and spend time with friends and family. They are habits now. But, if you ask me which on this list was the most difficult, I will refuse to say.