Coaching practices for What to Do After Completing a Habit

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For What to Do After Completing a Habit, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

• A week of being sick (or away on a trip) knocked all my routines off the rails, and now I’m back but somehow can’t pick them up again
• Every time I commit to a new habit it’s all-or-nothing
• I keep doing this thing I swear I’ll stop, and I genuinely can’t say what sets it off or what I’m even getting out of it
• I just landed in the new place and I keep telling myself I’ll start the good routines once I’ve settled in and unpacked
• My motivation runs out by day three every time and the habit just quietly dies

Practices that may help

1. Conduct a habit audit after any major disruption
   After illness, travel, or any routine disruption, deliberately audit which habits are still active and reinstall those that lapsed.
   The Habit Discontinuity Effect
2. 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
3. Map the cue-routine-reward loop
   Break a habit into its three parts before you try to change anything.
   The Power of Habit, Made Practical
4. 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
5. Don't break the chain
   Mark each day you do the habit and aim never to break the unbroken run of marks.
   Habit Tracking
6. Points and reward systems
   Award yourself points for completing the habit, redeemable for real rewards.
   Gamification of Habits
7. Keep the cue and reward, swap the routine
   Duhigg’s “golden rule”: change a habit by inserting a new routine between the same cue and reward.
   The Power of Habit, Made Practical
8. Habit stacking
   Anchor a new habit to one you already do: “After [current habit], I will [new habit].”
   Atomic Habits, Made Practical
9. Build celebration cues into your environment
   Place reminders to celebrate at the point of behavior completion so you cannot forget to do it.
   Celebrating Small Wins
10. 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

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