The following article seems like nice advice - try it and let me know if this works for you.

Grit is a big part of habit. I wish academics and people who talk about grit also talked about guilt. I will wrtie about it some other time. But here is some more AI slop on the topic of habit. I will remove this post soon.

The secret to lasting change isn’t motivation—it’s systems. While motivation fluctuates, good systems provide the structure needed to make progress regardless of how you feel on any given day. Understanding the science of habit formation gives us powerful tools to design our lives more intentionally.

The Habit Loop

Every habit follows a simple pattern: cue, routine, reward. This loop, first identified by researchers studying neural patterns, explains why habits are so powerful and so difficult to break. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. The routine is the behavior itself. The reward is the positive reinforcement that tells your brain this loop is worth remembering for the future.

What makes habits particularly interesting from a neurological perspective is that as they become more ingrained, they actually get encoded in a different part of the brain—the basal ganglia rather than the prefrontal cortex. This is why habits can feel almost automatic, requiring minimal conscious thought or willpower to execute.

Starting Small

The biggest mistake people make when trying to build new habits is starting too big. You want to run a marathon, so you commit to running an hour every day. You want to read more, so you pledge to read a book a week. These ambitious goals are admirable but often unsustainable.

Instead, focus on making your new habit so easy that it’s almost impossible to fail. Want to start meditating? Begin with two minutes. Want to exercise more? Start with a single pushup. These tiny habits might seem trivial, but they serve a crucial purpose: they establish the pattern.

Once the habit is established—once it’s part of your routine—you can gradually increase the intensity or duration. But that initial establishment is the hardest part, and making it easy dramatically increases your odds of success.

Environment Design

Your environment shapes your behavior more than you realize. If you want to eat healthier, the most effective strategy isn’t willpower—it’s removing junk food from your house. If you want to read more, leave a book on your pillow. If you want to exercise in the morning, sleep in your workout clothes.

These environmental cues make desired behaviors easier and undesired behaviors harder. They work with your brain’s natural tendency to take the path of least resistance rather than against it. James Clear calls this “environment design,” and it’s one of the most powerful tools for behavior change.

The inverse is equally important: if you want to break a bad habit, make it harder to do. Put your phone in another room when you need to focus. Delete social media apps from your home screen. Install website blockers during work hours. These friction points interrupt the automatic nature of bad habits, giving your conscious mind a chance to intervene.

Tracking Progress

What gets measured gets managed. There’s something powerful about simply tracking a habit, even without any other intervention. The act of tracking itself tends to improve performance—a phenomenon psychologists call “reactivity of measurement.”

The simplest tracking method is the “don’t break the chain” calendar, where you mark an X for each day you complete your habit. The visual representation of your streak creates a powerful motivation to keep going. Missing one day is disappointing; missing two days starts to feel like the habit is slipping away.

But tracking serves another crucial purpose: it provides data. After a month or two, patterns emerge. You notice that you exercise consistently except on Wednesdays, when you have an evening meeting. You realize you read less during weeks when you travel. These insights allow you to adjust your systems and address specific obstacles.

The Compound Effect

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about habits is their cumulative nature. Small improvements of just 1% per day compound into remarkable results over time. If you can get 1% better each day for a year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the end.

The same is true in reverse—small negative habits compound into serious problems. The occasional cigarette becomes a pack-a-day habit. Skipping the gym once a week turns into not exercising at all. Being slightly less productive each day adds up to years of unrealized potential.

This is why the focus should always be on systems over goals. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. Winners and losers often have the same goals—what differentiates them is their systems.