Building new habits requires energy.
We have a limited amount of resources and energy that we can allocate throughout the day to work, study, exercise, family, friends, etc.
In order to give ourselves the best chance of success in building habits, we recommend working on 1 thing at a time.
Research has shown that when people try to change a single behaviour at a time, the likelihood that they’ll retain that habit for a year or more is better than 80 percent. When they try to tackle two behaviors at once, their chances of success are less than 35 percent. When they try for three behaviors or more, their success rate plummets to less than 5 percent.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Research has shown that when people try to change a single behavior at a time, the likelihood that they’ll retain that habit for a year or more is better than 80 percent. When they try to tackle two behaviours at once, their chances of success are less than 35 percent. When they try for three behaviours or more, their success rate plummets to less than 5 percent.
It can be hard to slow down and just pick 1 thing when we are motivated, we want to make the most of it and try lots of things at once.
Let’s try to focus on 1 thing at a time and give ourselves the best chance of success in building long term habits.
If you’re looking to change your nutrition, for example you ate 3 meals a day 7 days a week, that’s 21 meals. Now imagine trying to change all of those, seems pretty daunting.
Instead just say: I’m going to work on my breakfast this week OR work on increasing protein at 1 meal per day.
Working on 1 thing every week for 8 weeks and being successful is going to be more effective than trying 5 things at once and burning out in 5 weeks.