How to develop a Habit

Do you always have new year’s resolutions that by the end of the year never seem to get fulfilled? Do you find yourself asking what happened? Why you didn’t pick the guitar or why you didn’t start working out?

Well in this blog I’ll be explaining a few things that will help you form a habit. In other words deciding to do something and then actually fulfilling the task no matter how big it is and hopefully it becoming a habit for the rest of your life.

The Decision

The decision that you want to take is a part of you, it is a part of your essence. If you love dancing, you don’t need to wonder if you should enter a boxing ring. The decisions you make are a result of you. The way you think and feel.

So making the decision is actually the first step because you know what you want and you really want to do it. This is usually a decision that will affect your life long term.

Break it Down

The second step is to break it down in chunks. I started doing a machine learning course and some of the pre-requisites were knowing a little bit of python programming and some high school mathematics. I didn’t know anything about python programming but I took a course and started doing it. Even then I still had to break down the python course only doing a couple of classes a day.

The last thing you want to do is overload yourself with information you’re not ready for in one day. It becomes too much and what used to be exciting becomes tedious and annoying and that kills the habit even before it begins. So break down the structure of what you want to learn.

Time and Practice

It takes time to build a habit. You have to create time during the day to develop your habit. A consistent time of the day like 5 am is preferably a good time to build on a habit because there’s not that much activity that time of day for most people. Otherwise pick a time of the day and start practicing.

To be clear it’s not a must to practice long hours, some of you may not have that much time. Let me propose something, how about at least 5 MINUTES. I know what you’re thinking but it’s enough time for your brain to learn something. It doesn’t matter whether you are writing a song or playing an instrument, reading an article.

The idea is this daily 5 minute plan compounds over time and as your mind gets used to doing this routine, within 21 days you would have built a long term memory and within 63 days you would have formed a habit.

Conclusion

If you want to develop a habit. Make the choice to do it, break it down into chunks that are easy for your brain to digest then set a time everyday to actually practice, a minimum of 5 minutes.

Remember to do what you love.