4.5 Easy Tactics to Build your Key Habit for an Awesome 2022

Was your 2021 everything you hoped and planned it would be?

It’s the end of the year. Holiday shopping and party planning. We’re all eager to take our foot off the gas and enjoy a relaxing night watching Elf with the kids.

But it’s also the best time for motivated people to reflect on the-year-that-was in the hopes that next year will be better.

But you know better doesn’t happen by accident. And although hope may be a useful emotion, it’s a crap strategy. Our lives and families deserve more than to pin their future only on hope. “Better” requires reflection, adjustment, planning and commitment.

These ingredients of successful goal planning are all critical, but for me, commitment is the hardest one. It’s easier to reflect upon and plan for a better year than it is to actually execute on that vision Every. Single. Day.

Putting that effort on auto-pilot is the best way to ensure long-term success. The trick is to develop a key habit that aligns with your goal. Then make damn sure nothing stands in the way of installing that critical habit.

The 4.5 essential tactics for fool-proof habit installation are:

1) One: Focus on one and only one habit at a time. Add a second ONLY when the first is baked. The hardest part of this isn’t picking your key habit, but saying no to the other three candidates. You may want to jump-start your year and do two or even four at once. But if a camera is trying to focus on two things at once, it is focusing on neither. You will eventually succeed with all four, but only if you focus on each consecutively, not concurrently.

2) Clear: What is the goal your habit is supporting? Take a moment to get crystal clear on the end result and why. Compare “Be Healthier” to “Lose 30 pounds by March 1 so I can play basketball with my kids.” The clarity of your future vision and timeline is a powerful motivator.

3) Small: You’ve heard about breaking goals down into chunks and this is its cousin from out of town. Are you really going to run 4-5 miles a day when you haven’t run in 6 months? (or more?) Start with the absolute smallest amount you know you can and will do every day. For me it was 5 minutes of running. Yep. Only 5. When in doubt, round down. Most days I did much more anyway, but committing to only 5 ensured I could do it every single day, which brings us to the holy grail of…

4) Consistent: With a small commitment, it is far easier to string together many consecutive days of success, which gives your brain a high-five, and fast-tracks the installation of any good habit. Track your progress in a journal, on a sticky note, or on any of the 50 apps out there. An accumulation of small habits executed consistently over time is both more sustainable and predictive of success than a giant pile of effort dumped out on the floor one day. It makes sense when you say it that way, but we often forget that in life’s real moments.

4.5) Tell Someone: Accountability is a power-up in this video game. Specifically, the shame of NOT doing what you told someone you would do. Your wife, your kids, your buddy. Whatever it is you told yourSELF you plan to do, tell them as well. Combined with the first 4 tactics, failing in front of them can get your butt out of bed enough times to ensure your new habit becomes your new normal.

Once your first habit is on auto pilot, then and only then move onto number two. Add each new habit one at a time and your newly stacked habits will snowball into a fantastic year of accomplishments that you can review with pride next December.