Better than Before* summary

You know the feeling when you’re at a restaurant, and there are so many tasty options of the menu that you just can’t decide?  The simple truth is that for us humans, making decisions is hard.

That’s why when you’re trying to pick up a new habit like say, going to the gym, you have to take decision-making out of the equation. If you need to separately decide each and every day whether to hit the weights or not, you’ll probably end up skipping most of your workouts.  So don’t think – just do! Make the decision today to put your workouts for the next months in your calendar, and you’ll no longer need to make any other decisions. Just follow your calendar!

Ever tried to change a nasty habit, like nail biting? It's not easy. Changing our habits is notoriously difficult because our daily routines are so ingrained in us.

But when a major change occurs in our life, like moving house, getting a new job, or even finding new love, our routines suddenly change, or even disappear altogether. Such times are ideal for creating new and better habits!

Let’s face it – most of us are pretty lazy. So if we want to maintain our good habits, we need to make them as convenient and easy as we possibly can.

Say you want to start socializing more. If you have to go to the trouble of making arrangements and calling your friends every time you feel like socializing, you’ll often end up by yourself because you can’t be bothered. However, joining a group that has regular meet-ups, such as a book club, can make things far easier because it minimizes the effort needed.

Do you ever feel like your entire life revolves around resisting temptation? Well, you’re not entirely wrong. Research has found that we spend around a quarter of our waking life struggling to resist some kind of temptation. It is no surprise then that often our success in adopting good habits or ditching bad ones depends on our ability to resist temptation.

How can we do this effectively?

Why do we always view distraction as a negative thing? When it comes to refraining from bad habits, distractions can be a real blessing.

So the next time you feel the need to fight off unwelcome thoughts and cravings, try to distract yourself.

We’ve seen how rewards aren't always useful when we want to stick to our good habits. Luckily, there are other approaches we can use. One is called pairing.

Pairing is simply taking two activities, one that you enjoy doing and one that you want to do but find a bit more difficult, and making them dependent on one another. This makes it easier to keep up good habits.