An Extra Hour Every Day

Make a list of bad habits that are stealing your time, sabotaging your goals, and blocking your success. After you do, work on them one at a time and systematically eliminate them from your life.

Quitting a bad habit leaves an empty space with the risk to go back again. A good way to eliminate a bad habit therefore is to replace it with a good habit.

When changing a habit you will go through the classic emotional curve of change: 

1) Enthusiasm

You might be in that phase just right now. You decided to change things in your life and you are full of excitement about what you all want to achieve. 

2) Rejection

After the first excitement has passed you start feeling the pain of changing the habit. At this stage you question your initial goals, if it is really worth going through this process, etc.

Here is the highest danger for giving up. This is the time where you need to allow yourself incentives and rewards each time you practice the positive habit instead of the negative one. 

3) Recovery

After a while you will start feeling the progress of change and also see concrete benefits. Each day you will feel better about the change. 

4) Satisfaction

In the last stage the negative habit is fully replaced by the positive habit and feel good because you made it and because you also experience the full benefit of having changed. If you want you can allow yourself a small celebration with a special reward - something you love to do but only can do from time to time.

If you are fully aware of this change process it will be much easier to cope with the frustration during phase two. It will also help you a lot to get through this valley if you determine your rewards and incentives for positive behavior in advance.
Knowing this process you also understand why you should only attack one bad habit after the other. If you go for multiple bad habits at one time the rejection phase becomes very strong and you are very likely to give up the entire project achievement nothing but frustration and even higher hurdles to start again another time.

Related articles:

• Change habits with forward chaining
• Focus on motivation not discipline
• Don’t feel guilty
• Determine never to be idle
• Get up early in the morning
• Practice a clean desk policy