Coaching practices for Building Better Habits

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Building Better Habits, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My tiny habit is finally rock solid, so my instinct is to crank up the targets on a schedule
• My new habits only survive on the good days when I’m rested and motivated, then the first hard, exhausting day comes and they collapse
• I’m trying to fix ten things at once and drowning, but I’ve noticed that on the days I actually do one particular thing, everything else somehow falls into place easier
• The stuff I do every day without thinking
• Every time I commit to a new habit it’s all-or-nothing

Practices that may help

1. Let the habit grow on its own
   Once the tiny habit is automatic, let it expand naturally instead of forcing more.
   Tiny Habits, Made Practical
2. Shrink the behavior until it’s tiny
   Scale the habit down to something you can do even on your worst, busiest day.
   Tiny Habits, Made Practical
3. Find your keystone habit — the one that cascades into others
   Identify a single habit whose consistency seems to lift other behaviors along with it.
   The Habit Loop, Made Practical
4. Habit stacking
   Anchor a new habit to one you already do: “After [current habit], I will [new habit].”
   Atomic Habits, Made Practical
5. Apply PDSA to a behavior you want to build or break
   Treat habit formation as a series of small experiments rather than a commitment you either keep or blow.
   Plan–Do–Study–Act: Deming’s Loop for Personal Improvement
6. Build the capture habit before anything else
   Install one habit at a time — start with ubiquitous capture — before adding other ZTD practices.
   Zen To Done (ZTD), Made Practical
7. Atomic Habits, Made Practical
   James Clear’s system says behavior change is a system problem, not a willpower problem: make a desired habit obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying — and do the reverse for bad ones. The most load-bearing ideas (implementation intentions, friction reduction, identity-based change) are well supported in the research literature.
8. Make it attractive with temptation bundling
   Pair a behavior you should do with one you want to do.
   Atomic Habits, Made Practical
9. Focus on keystone habits
   Change one high-leverage habit that cascades into other positive changes.
   The Power of Habit, Made Practical
10. Let daily completions build your identity — read them as evidence
    Each completion is a vote for the identity you’re building — read it that way, not as a small done-thing.
    Mini Habits, Made Practical

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.