Coaching practices for How to Use Defaults for Better Habits

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

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

• By the end of the day, worn out and decided-out, I default to the worst option every single time
• I keep falling into the easy bad option just because it’s what’s already set up and waiting
• I keep losing the willpower fight to do the new thing, and I’d rather just rig my surroundings so the better choice is the one that happens when I do nothing and the old habit is the one that takes effort.
• I genuinely want to do this small thing and it’s easy enough
• I keep meaning to start a good new habit

Practices that may help

1. Change the default option in your environment to the healthy choice
   Restructure defaults so the healthy behavior happens unless you actively opt out.
   Environment Design for Behavior Change
2. Change the default to change the outcome
   Set up systems so the right behavior happens automatically unless you actively opt out.
   Nudge Theory, Made Practical
3. Flip the default in the direction you want to move
   Restructure your environment so that the desired new behavior is the path of least resistance.
   Status Quo Bias — Why We Stick with the Default
4. Attach the habit to an anchor moment
   Use an existing routine as the prompt: “After I [anchor], I will [tiny behavior].”
   Tiny Habits, Made Practical
5. Engineer cues for habits you want
   Place obvious, consistent triggers in your environment to start a desired routine.
   The Power of Habit, Made Practical
6. 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
7. Habit stacking
   Anchor a new habit to one you already do: “After [current habit], I will [new habit].”
   Atomic Habits, Made Practical
8. Install target behaviors in the new context from day one
   Begin the desired habit in the new environment before the new context develops its own competing cues.
   The Habit Discontinuity Effect
9. Make cues for healthy behaviors obvious and visible
   Put the cue for the behavior you want in your direct field of view at the moment you need to act.
   Environment Design for Behavior Change
10. Make it attractive with temptation bundling
    Pair a behavior you should do with one you want to do.
    Atomic Habits, Made Practical

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