How Often You Start a Habit is More Important Than How Often You Stop

Many people like to make deals with themselves when they try to take on a new habit. If they want to start a workout habit they tell themselves they will workout four times that week to jump start the habit. Maybe they want to read more, so they make a deal with themselves to read ten pages a day.

However, these deals mostly backfire because starting a new habit is hard. Many times, those initial goals are not met, people feel defeated, and let the whole initiative go until they work up the courage to try again. This cycle can take days, weeks, months, or even years, which is time most of us don’t have to waste.

There are two pieces to manipulate here - how often we stick to the habit, and how long we wait in between our failures to do so.

Increasing how often we stick to the habit is the harder one. Failure in this scenario is pretty much guaranteed. Work will run long, we will get sick, things come up. These things are even more prevalent in the beginning stages of a new habit because we are still working out the optimal way to include it in our lives.

So if sticking to the habit is harder at first, then we should focus on how long we wait in between failing to stick to it. I happen to be especially good at this part. I stop my usual habits for vacation, sickness, and other commitments all the time, but I always pick them back up. For example, I have worked out nearly every day since I was 12 years old. The longest I ever went without working out was 6 weeks when I took time off after my final high school swim season. No matter how my schedule has changed, where I’m living, or how long I might take some time off - I can always get right back to it.

Being able to start and stop this habit at will is part of the reason it is so strong. Every time I’ve had to take a break, I don’t view it as a complete failure to maintain the habit, I simply view it as a break. There is usually a reason for the break, eventually, it will end, and I’ll start again. If you make a deal with yourself to work out four times in a week but you only do two workouts before something else comes up that week, that is still two workouts more than you would’ve done, and not completing four does not preclude you from starting again as soon as you’re able.

Ideally, starting a new habit would mean 3-4 weeks of consistent daily practice. That’s the fastest way to make it a common practice But life doesn’t work that way. It’s rare that we can ensure that much uninterrupted time to solidify a new habit. So instead, focus on getting back to the habit as quickly as possible. Focus on starting the habit as many times as you can. Getting caught up on time frames or making deals by the week or month will only put limits on when you feel you can start. Maybe you can’t keep up the habit the whole time, but you’ll be practicing starting it. This is extremely valuable. As that practice gets better, the timeline in between starting will get shorter, and eventually, it will become ingrained in your life.

Working out might not be your desired habit to implement - maybe it’s learning a language, reading more, or stretching. Doesn’t matter what it might be, recognize now that you will fail to do it as often as you planned at first. Make peace with that. If you still want it, knowing you will fail, keep coming back to your reason to pursue it, and keep on starting - until you can’t stop.

I didn’t do any formal workouts while in Greece. But I worked out the very first day I got back!