The most common mistake that causes new habits to fail

One thing works for me is to balance between objective and execution.
When starting a new routine, setting a goal inspires and motivates us to start. E.g., launching my first side hustle after 3 months, mastering new programing language in 1 month. I fail many time in the past chasing those kind of objectives. One research tells that those goals bring us feeling that "you still have 2 months to do", not a good sense of urgency to trigger the actions. It's true in my case.

To fix it, I put a somehow action plan similar to the way you categorized habit vs activity. I maintain the goal setting to always have a promised land to chase and review progress. But in the daily or weekly basis, I focus on the actions and make it a routine. Like spending 1 hour designing, 1 hour coding or reading or whatever it take to move the needle.

So, set a interesting goal to help you start, layout a day-to-day action plan to form the routine. One day those regular actions will become the new habit even if you won't meet the goal.

Optimize leading metrics instead of lagging ones.

Interesting things to help develop new beneficial habits

Ohh man I totally feel this. They say it takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. I think that's true for me but it can be challenging. For instance, I went to the gym for 3 months in a row and it's still difficult to will myself there.

Like they mentioned, Habits Garden is a free habit tracker with game-like features to help you meet your goals.

they say that motivation starts the project, but discipline finishes it, and it's true! no matter how motivated you are at the beginning, discipline is the key to achieving results. it's hard to be disciplined with some habits sometimes, but at the end of the day, it's totally worth it

Habits are good, but the end goal should be to create a system that works for you.

"Phase 1: Be a robot, no matter what" lol. That headline freaked me out a little bit. Maybe it's just my neurodiversity but being a robot is very difficult for me. What works a lot better for me is gamification. I see that "Habits Garden" is very much about incorporating play into habit building, and I think that's key.

Habits are great, but I'm all about routines. I guess you could look at as a series of habits. But for me that series is what helps me to do it unconsciously. Wake up. Make tea. Plan the day. Meditate. Exercise. Shower. Make a smoothie. Deep work. Check emails. Deep work. Lunch. Go for a walk or bike ride in nature. Etc.

I do each of those things at roughly the same time each day, but not because I'm on the clock. One thing naturally leads to the other at this point. And that's how I like it.

The trouble is that sometimes unexpected things happen, or I have company in town, etc. etc. and it blows up my routine. And I'm left juggling a mess of habits. So maybe routines are too fragile, and it's better to rely on habits? Hmm 🤔

Interesting tool to help cultivate new helpful habits!

Possessing the necessary experience to launch the product, for each activity, even if it is simple, has its own secrets and designs, in order to meet the needs of the consumer, and this is called the profession's secret. If you do not have the ability to define the features of the product that you are going to launch, it will be difficult to produce it with the required quality, due to the difficulty of training employees on an undefined product.

Habits are particularly important when your learning a new language, whether it be Spanish or JavaScript.

The only way to improve and to make concepts stick is to regularly practice the skill and to do so deliberately.

But the real progress happens when you decide to take a day off from your habits and you just give your mind time to marinate on what it’s learnt.

I’ve found that sometimes taking a break from a habit is the only way I can continue my habit, as performing the habit each and every day can wear down on me. I’m not saying you need to take breaks every other day, as that would break the cycle of learning. But everyone needs a day to recharge.

For me, a habit doesn't have to be daily — as long as I set that expectation up front. For example, I've created a habit of waking up at 5:30 every weekday to get a head start on the day. But I decided right in the beginning that I wouldn't do it on weekends or holidays. So I'm able to keep up the streak, even though I don't do it every day.

If you're running really really short, do it tomorrow, but don't skip it twice

This doesn't work for me. If I break a habit even once in the first 66 days, it's likely to dissolve. Waking up at 8 or 9 on the weekend is fine, because this particular habit only applies to weekdays. But if I fail to wake up early on a Monday, I won't be waking up early again until I manage to reset the habit.

What about the "trigger" part?

BJ Fogg wrote that this is the first step towards building the habit, deciding WHEN to start it in the first place. For example, he did 3 pushups each time he got out of the toilet into his living room (yeah, it sounds funny but it worked!)