Introduction 

• In another post I have detailed the theory, application and importance of successfully forming good habits and routines, you can find it here. As important though, is how to break bad habits and routines, which is the topic I want to cover now.
• While I think there is a set process everyone can follow to create a good habit, breaking bad habits is a lot more personal, and therefore I would suggest a trial and error approach, not just for different individuals, but also for different habits of the same person.
• When reading this and applying it to your own life I suggest you do so with an open mind, give a number of them a go and most importantly, don’t become down-heartened and give up just because the first approach you try doesn’t work.
• Breaking habits is a skill and it can be learned, but only through experience and through continued motivation.
• Don’t try to break too many bad habits at once, Naval Ravikant says he looks to break one bad habit and pick up one good habit roughly every 6 months. If you try to break too many habits at once you’re more likely to fail, and break none.
• With those important considerations covered I’ll now go through the 5 different methods I think there are for breaking a habit. First, I’ll define them and give an overview or example of how you can use them, then highlight some other tricks/techniques you can use for one or more of these methods in a supporting manor.

5 different ways to break a bad habit  

• I believe there are five main methods for breaking a bad habit; (1) Go cold turkey (2) Remove habit triggers (3) Small but methodical decreases (4) Social pressure (5) Financial risk. Let me explain each in turn.
  • Go cold turkey – A phrase made famous through association with giving up highly addictive drugs, which are after all an example of a bad habit. Going cold turkey involves giving up your bad habit completely and suddenly. It is often considered the most extreme method and does involve a large amount of pain, especially in the short term. Going cold turkey is a good method if you consider yourself a very strong willed person. This approach often requires a lot of support from others. I think it can work with some bad habits and routines, but I don’t think it should be the first method you try as the failure rate is high.
  • Remove habit triggers – A number of things we do in our lives, positive and negative, are the result of habits. For example, when I return home from work my first reaction is to turn on the TV and watch something for 30mins. This is a habit I picked up as a child, my Mum loved her soaps and because that’s what she did when she got back from work it’s what I started doing. While it’s not the worst habit, some form of escapism after work is something I definitely need, I don’t want to do it every day. Therefore I removed the habit trigger. How? The night before I hide the TV controller from view and in its place I put the book I’m currently reading. Therefore when I get back from work and go to pick up the TV remote I see the book instead and pick that up. This is often also referred to as ‘nudging’ effect, you are nudging yourself to do the ‘good’ thing and not the ‘bad’. This is an excellent method, but it can be hard to break a habit using it in isolation. I’d suggest linking it up with the financial risk or small but methodical decrease methods outlined below. (If you are interested in reading more on the nudge effect, I suggest reading my post on ‘Getting Up Each Morning’, here.)
  • Small but methodical decrease – The kinder and less extreme sibling of going cold turkey. Following this method also involves a lot of will power and can suit individuals who see themselves as very analytical. For example, if your bad habit is eating a chocolate bar on a daily basis, the ‘small but methodical decrease’ methodology would say that you should not give up completely but slowly reduce the amount you consume until it’s easy to cut it out completely. If you are eating a 45g bar daily now, then for the first 2 weeks try just eating 30g, then reduce down to 15g a day, then 15g every other day etc., until you’re not consuming any after a few months. On paper this sounds so easy, the reality is harder. Why? Because you need to sustain your motivation for a longer period of time. With the cold turkey approach you struggle for the first few days or weeks but the motivation you have gets you past that. With ‘small but methodical decreases’ you have to sustain the motivation for much longer and stick very rigidly to it.
  • Social pressure – All you need for this method is some friends who aren’t worried about calling you out on your habits, I’ve got plenty of these! The theory is that we are all social beings, as detailed extremely well by Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens, and that we are much more likely to successfully break a bad habit if the risk of not doing so is social ridicule or ex-communication. Setting these consequences up is easy. All you need to do is make a very public announcement to friends/colleagues/family saying you’ll give something up, that their support in helping you do this would be greatly appreciated and they can do whatever is required to keep you on track. The pressure of failing in the eyes of these people should be enough to help you kick the habit because nobody likes letting someone down, especially when you’ve made a very public promise/announcement.
  • Financial risk – The final fundamental method to help break a bad habit is financial risk. This one often works very well alongside the social pressure method. Two main ways to do this are: (1) put some of your own capital at risk, highlight that you’ll pay each of your closest friends £20 if you do not give up smoking by the end of the year, or (2) get your friends to bet on your ability to give up the habit and if you succeed you get a cut of the winnings. Whilst option 2 might sound the best to you, I offer some warning. Human beings are much better at doing something to save us losing money than to win it. Therefore while winning more money might sound better, not losing it is much better at helping you kick a bad habit.
• As I’ve highlighted previously, my personal view is that with some habits you might have to try all of the above individually or in combination to be able to stop or kick them. Some will highlight there are other ways, however from my perspective each of these would just be a sub category to one of the above.

Additional Tricks/Techniques 

• While the different methods for breaking bad habits are very different than those to help create good habits, the supporting techniques and tricks I employ to help me are actually very similar.
• I find the following applications, methods and tricks to be the most helpful:
  • Coach.me – You can use the app to track both bad and good habits. For example, if you’re trying to quit smoking, for every day you don’t smoke a cigarette you get a tick. Personally, I love making and ticking things off a to-do list, Coach.me is the best app I’ve seen to help me do that, and plus it’s absolutely FREE!
  • Get a friend involved – Nobody likes suffering along. If you have a friend with the same bad habit as you then get them involved. Twice the people means double the motivation, double the pressure and less of the overall effort.
  • Journaling – Buying a little notebook and writing up your thoughts/feelings/experiences about your progress giving up the bad habit is an excellent technique. This works along a similar line to social pressure, but having to admit to any failures in writing creates another incentive to stick to your goals.
  • Visual the end goal – In the hard times remember how good it’ll be when the habit is kicked. There are many different ways to view this, it could be the lovely holiday you’ll go on with the money you’ve saved from not buying 20 cigarettes a day. Or it could be the pride you’ll feel when you’ve coded your first website with the extra 30mins you have each day because you’ve given up watching 30mins of trashy TV each night. What you actually visualise isn’t the important bit, it’s remembering the end goal that is.
• The four tricks above are just the ones which have helped me over the years. There are many others, so try experimenting with different ones to find what works for you. The important thing about these tricks/techniques is that they can be used with any of the methods I’ve detailed earlier and might just be the extra boost that’s need to keep you on track.

Conclusion 

• Giving up bad habits is no easy task, if it was nobody would have any! Remember you are 1 of millions of people trying to give up a bad habit, the key to success is identifying your motivation and being patient. Not all of the five methods I’ve detailed above will work for you every time, or first time. But, if you persist, try again when you fail, focus on giving up just one bad habit at a time and continue to keep trying, you’ll get there and it’ll be such an incredible feeling when you do. Good luck!

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