Designing Your Change: A Practical Guide to Habit Reversal Training
With a clear understanding of the habit loop and the power of identity, we can move from theory to practice. Habit reversal training is not a single technique but a collection of strategies designed to systematically deconstruct an old habit and build a new one in its place. It’s a process of conscious design, where you become the architect of your own behavior. Let’s explore the key components.
Step 1: Choose Your Minimum Viable Action
One of the biggest mistakes we make when trying to break habits is aiming too high, too soon. We declare we’ll go to the gym for an hour every day or meditate for 30 minutes. When we inevitably fail to meet this high bar on a busy day, we feel discouraged and give up entirely. The solution is the minimum viable action (MVA).
An MVA is the smallest, most laughably easy version of your desired new habit. It’s an action so simple that you can’t say no to it, even on your lowest-energy, least-motivated day.
- Instead of “read a chapter every night,” your MVA is “read one sentence.”
- Instead of “meditate for 20 minutes,” your MVA is “take one deep breath.”
- Instead of “journal three pages,” your MVA is “write down one word about your day.”
The point of the MVA is not to achieve a massive result in one day. The point is to show up. It reinforces your new identity and keeps the momentum going. Anyone can read one sentence. Anyone can take one breath. By starting with the MVA, you make the act of starting frictionless. Once you’ve started, it’s often easier to continue. And even if you don’t, you’ve still cast a vote for your new identity. You have succeeded for the day.
Step 2: Conduct a Friction Audit
Habits are often behaviors of convenience. We do what is easy. Friction is anything that makes an action more difficult to perform. We can use this concept to our advantage by strategically adding friction to our bad habits and removing it from our good ones.
To start your friction audit, take the bad habits you want to unlearn. For each one, ask: “How can I make this 20 seconds harder to do?”
- Bad Habit: Mindlessly scrolling on your phone. Add friction: Move the social media apps off your home screen into a folder on the last page. Log out of your accounts after each use, forcing you to re-enter your password. Keep your phone in another room.
- Bad Habit: Eating cookies from the pantry. Add friction: Move the cookies to a high shelf, out of sight. Put them in an opaque, sealed container. Don’t buy them in the first place.
Next, do the opposite for the new habits you want to build. Ask: “How can I make this 20 seconds easier to do?”
- Good Habit: Reading before bed. Remove friction: Place the book you want to read on your pillow each morning.
- Good Habit: Going for a morning walk. Remove friction: Lay out your workout clothes and shoes the night before.
- Good Habit: Drinking more water. Remove friction: Fill a large water bottle and place it on your desk at the start of the day.
This small shift in effort can dramatically alter your default behaviors over time. You are making your desired path the path of least resistance.
Step 3: Engineer Your Environment and Cues
Your environment is one of the most powerful, and often invisible, drivers of your behavior. The cues that trigger your habit loops are embedded in your surroundings. To truly succeed at habit reversal, you must become a conscious curator of your space.
The most effective way to eliminate a bad habit is to cut off the cue at the source. If you want to stop snacking while watching TV, stop eating in the living room entirely. The couch is no longer a cue to eat. If you want to stop checking your phone first thing in the morning, make the cue invisible. Buy a simple alarm clock and charge your phone in the kitchen overnight. When the cue doesn’t exist, the habit loop is never initiated.
Simultaneously, you can “stack” new habits onto existing ones. Habit stacking is a method of using an established habit as a cue for a new one. The formula is simple: “After [current habit], I will [new habit].”
- “After I pour my morning cup of coffee, I will sit and meditate for one minute.”
- “After I take off my work shoes, I will change into my gym clothes.”
- “After I brush my teeth at night, I will read one page of a book.”
You’re leveraging the automaticity of an old habit to build a new one. The existing habit becomes a reliable cue, making your new behavior much more likely to stick.
Step 4: Build in Accountability
We are social creatures, and the desire to be seen favorably by our peers is a powerful motivator. Building accountability into your habit-change process can provide the external support needed to stay on track, especially in the early stages.
This doesn’t have to be intense or judgmental. It can be as simple as telling a friend or partner about the habit you are trying to build or break. Send them a text message each day you succeed. This simple act of reporting raises the stakes and makes you more likely to follow through.
Another form of accountability is a habit tracker. This can be a simple calendar where you put an ‘X’ on each day you perform your MVA. The goal isn’t to create an unbroken chain, but to create a visual record of your effort. It provides positive reinforcement and can help you spot patterns in your behavior. Seeing your progress, however small, is a powerful reward in itself.
