Building Momentum
Hello!
Are you trying to get started on the course? Or have you been struggling to get started and pick up momentum with the course? Well this is intended to help you jumpstart the process. Watch the video below to get started.
Summary of Steps
Your goal is to make doing something related to the course part of your daily routine. Below are the steps to make this become a habit.
Course trigger/prompt
Identify an existing part of your daily (morning) routine that can be a trigger for working on the course. It should be something that you already do on a daily basis (e.g., eating breakfast, drinking a cup of coffee, going to the gym, etc.).
Simple behavior goal: 2 minutes on the course
Whether that's watching 2 minutes of a course video, spending 2 minutes on a course exercise, spending 2 minutes planning how you want to apply course strategies that day, etc.
Victory dance
After you put the 2 minutes into the course, celebrate that in a small way that feels good to you! It might be saying something to yourself, doing a fist pump, etc. By savoring this moment, your brain associates doing the course with feeling good, making the habit more likely to stick.
Decide what to do next – more course work or something else.
If you're in the mood to continue working on the course after the 2 minutes, great - go for it! If you're not in the mood to continue, that's completely fine! Move onto your next activity for the day. One of the hardest parts of doing something is the effort it takes to just start a behavior. By aiming for a simple goal of 2 minutes, you're making it much easier to get working on the course. You'll then see that once you've been doing it for a couple minutes, you'll feel like you want to continue further. But remember, if you don't want to spend more than 2 minutes on a given day, that's completely fine!
Practice the Habit
When first trying to form this habit, practice it a few times. You can imagine yourself going through each of the steps, including the victory dance. Even better would be to physically practice it by going through the motions of the course trigger, opening the course webpage (you don’t need to spend the whole 2 minutes on it when rehearsing…), and then doing the victory dance. Try running through the habit in this way a few times until it feels easy.
Background Rationale
In the course itself, I’ll talk more about the rationale for taking this approach to forming new behaviors. It’s based on my Glide Model of Intentional Productivity as well as the book, Tiny Habits (by BJ Fogg).
