In the article 'To Change a Habit, Get Extreme. Progressively', Nir Eyal gives a good method of how to break with bad, old habits and build new, good habits.

The method can be used by large organizations as well as on an individual level.

Building a new habit

An easy way to build a new habit is by coding this new habit together with an existing habit. Eyal gives the example that if you want to start taking a vitamin pill every day, you can put them next to your toothbrush as part of your regular routine. By taking a vitamin pill as an extension of the mandatory brushing every day, it contributes to repetition - which works. Repetition works until the behavior eventually becomes automatic and is performed without much thought.

To break a bad habit

There is a lot of literature suggesting that if you want to break an old habit, you should replace it with a new one. Charles Duhigg, who wrote The Power of Habit, gives an example of one of his past bad habits, which was eating cookies. By taking a step back and considering the basis of the habits, he found that it was not the habit itself that gave him satisfaction, but rather what surrounded the habit—in his case, it was the social aspect.

However, Nir Eyal has a completely third method on how to break unwanted habits. He proposes what he calls "progressive extremism", which works well in situations where it is not possible to replace one habit with another. For most people, it is difficult to break all the bad habits at once. He therefore recommends that you start small and proceed strategically by eliminating one bad habit at a time. The most important thing here is that you start by excluding the habits that you can easily let go of. Each step should feel almost effortless, but involve something you can be proud to remove from your life forever. After a while, you can go through the list of things that are no longer a bad habit and reassess whether there are current habits that could benefit from being added to the list of bad habits.

Progressive extremism is a slow process that can take years - but on the other hand it is effective, as over a longer period you let go of controlling habits and make letting go a success.

Would you like to know more about habits, behavior space design, or are you just curious about what behavioral architecture is? 

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