Imagine you read a book or attended a seminar where the speaker said, one of the best things which helped him become more productive is by following a simple routine of listing top 3 highest value activities he wants to accomplish on a day and doing this previous night itself!
Now you are inspired by this and feel I can also do and with full of optimism, you decide on a fateful day to start this activity.
What generally happens after this? For most people, they give up this activity after a week to 10 days.
If they persist they can follow for 10-20 days and give up. But those who can do follow beyond 20 days will end up mostly making it a routine.
Again the number mentioned of 10~20 days is not absolute. Depending on the type of routine and also for different individuals, it varies.
Habit Curve – The cycle of forming new habit
To understand why some routines we don’t develop vs other we easily develop and also why some people can form a habit vs others, habit curve gives some clues.
As we can see, developing a habit can be broken into 4 phases.
Phase1: It is all about the optimism and enthusiasm
Day 1 most of us have the optimism to start a new routine. During this day, optimism level is high and we generally ignore the challenges we will be encountered with forming a new routine.
Phase2: Habit Gravity kicks in
As the week progresses, the optimism starts dying and what is generally called Habit Gravity Kicks in! Most of the people will find the new routine not so interesting in this phase but still continue
Phase3: Active Resistence
This is the phase where 90% of the people give up their hope on a new routine. With a lack of enthusiasm and optimism also died, the will to pursue the new routine is extremely low.
If you stay strong here, then you are almost sure to develop the new routine.
phase 4: New habit formed
You now have a programmed your brain that will guarantee your success in the new routine. From here on slowly the sub-conscious mind starts taking over, though depending on habits it can take to up to 60-90 days to make the habit completely sub-conscious mind to take over.
