What determines whether or not you lose the habits you’ve trained yourself into? The deciding factor is how you handle breaking a habit streak. Those breaks are inevitable. Sometimes we are too exhausted to maintain our chosen routine; sometimes, we are distracted by an emergency. That’s life.
If I break a habit one day, I put on my to-do list a task for the next day: “Execute habit X perfectly, with maximum attention to detail.”
Why does it work?
Firstly, it means I will continue the streak. So, my unconscious growth from the habit’s automaticity will resume.
Secondly, it means that breaking the streak leads to more effort, so I try to stay on track as much as possible. I am lazy enough to hate even setting a task, not to mention the double effort for the habit execution tomorrow.
Laziness is indeed the engine of progress.
