How to choose a habit (and which one to start first)

To choose a habit, start with the change you want, not with a habit. List every small action that could move you towards it, then pick the one that would make a real difference, that you actually want to do, and that you could manage even on a busy day. Make it small, give it a cue, and start with that one alone.

Most people who struggle to build habits aren’t short of willpower. They pick the wrong habit: something impressive, something they feel they should do, or five things at once. The choice deserves more care than it usually gets, because the habit you pick decides how hard the next two months will feel.

Start with the change you want

“Get healthy” isn’t a habit. Neither is “be less stressed” or “have more energy”. In his book Tiny Habits (2019), behaviour scientist BJ Fogg calls these aspirations: outcomes you want. You can’t do an aspiration. You can only do the behaviours that lead there.

So begin with one sentence: I want… Make it honest and a little specific. “I want to sleep better on weeknights” gives you more to work with than “I want to be healthier”. If several come to mind, choose the one that matters most right now. The others will still be there in two months.

Write a swarm of small options

Next, list as many behaviours as you can that might move you towards that change. Fogg calls this a swarm of behaviours: write a long list, sensible and odd ideas alike, before you judge any of them. Twenty is not too many.

The point is to stop the first idea from winning by default. The first idea is usually the biggest one (“go to the gym five times a week”), and the biggest idea is rarely the best first habit. If you get stuck, there are 60 habit tracker ideas sorted by area of life.

Score each option: impact, want to, can do

Now sort the swarm. Fogg’s method, which he calls Focus Mapping, puts two questions to each behaviour:

1. Impact: would this actually help with the change I want?
2. Feasibility: can I get myself to do it? That covers two things: whether you want to do it, and whether you can do it without a struggle.

The behaviours that score high on both are what he calls golden behaviours. Those are your candidates. A habit with huge impact that you’ll never do is worth nothing. One you’d happily do that changes nothing is a pleasant waste of your attention.

You don’t need index cards. A quick rating from 1 to 3 on each question is enough, as in the worked example below. The scores are your own guesses, and that’s fine: you know your days better than any list does.

Choose what you want to do, not what you think you should

This is the question most people skip, and the research suggests it matters a lot.

Self-determination theory, developed by psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, separates doing something because you value it or enjoy it from doing it because you feel pushed, by other people or by your own guilt. Their overview of the theory (2000) links the first kind, autonomous motivation, with more persistence and better wellbeing.

Findings on goals and habits point the same way:

• Across three longitudinal studies, Sheldon and Elliot (1999) found that people pursuing goals that fit their own interests and values put more sustained effort into them and were more likely to reach them.
• In a survey of 192 young adults, Gardner and Lally (2013) found that past physical activity was more strongly linked to an activity habit among people who were more autonomously motivated. It’s a snapshot, not an experiment, but it hints that why you do something affects how habitual it becomes.
• In five studies, Woolley and Fishbach (2017) found that immediate rewards, like enjoying the activity, predicted persistence with goals such as New Year’s resolutions, while delayed rewards, like better health, did not.

In practice: if you dread running, running is a poor first habit, however good it looks on paper. A walk you enjoy will beat a run you avoid. Ask of every candidate: “Would I look forward to this, or at least not mind it?”

Is there one keystone habit that changes everything?

The idea of a keystone habit, one habit that sets off changes across the rest of your life, was popularised by Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit (2012). Exercise is the usual example.

The evidence is thinner than the idea’s fame. One often-cited study, by Oaten and Cheng (2006), followed 24 sedentary university students through a two-month exercise programme. During it, they reported less stress, less smoking, alcohol and caffeine, healthier eating, and better study habits and household routines. But the group was small, most of those changes were self-reported, and the theory being tested, that self-control works like a muscle, has struggled since: a preregistered replication across 23 labs found the related “ego depletion” effect to be small, and possibly zero.

So don’t hunt for a magic habit. If the one you choose spills over into other parts of your life, enjoy the bonus. Choose it because it helps the change you actually want.

A worked example: “I want more energy in the afternoons”

Say your sentence is I want more energy in the afternoons. A quick swarm might include: go to bed 30 minutes earlier, walk for ten minutes after lunch, drink a glass of water with lunch, stop coffee after 2 pm, run three times a week, eat a lighter lunch, get some daylight in the morning, stretch at my desk.

Here’s how one person might score a few of them, from 1 (low) to 3 (high):

Running wins on impact and loses on everything else. The walk after lunch is the golden behaviour here: it’s a fair bet for the afternoon slump, this person likes being outside, and it fits a break they already take. The earlier bedtime can come next, once the walk runs on its own.

The finished habit: After I finish lunch, I’ll walk around the block for ten minutes. On a hard day, I’ll walk to the end of the street and back.

Make it small, specific and tied to a cue

Once you’ve chosen, shape the habit so it’s easy to start:

• Specific: name the action and the amount. “Walk for ten minutes”, not “move more”.
• Small: choose a size you could manage on your worst day, and decide a minimum version in advance.
• Cued: attach it to something that already happens every day. There’s a full guide to habit stacking and choosing a cue.

The free habit plan builder turns your choice into a one-line plan, with a cue and a minimum, in about a minute.

How many habits should you start with?

One. A new habit needs repeating in the same situation before it becomes automatic, and that takes longer than most people expect: in the best-known study, a median of 66 days, ranging from 18 to 254 (Lally et al., 2010). There’s more on that in how long it really takes to build a habit. Add a second habit when the first feels like part of your day rather than something you have to remember.

And if, a few weeks in, your habit feels like a chore you resent, treat that as information, not failure. Shrink it, or go back to your scored list and try the next golden behaviour.

The short version

• Start from the change you want, then list many small behaviours that could get you there.
• Score each on impact, on whether you want to do it, and on whether you can do it easily. Pick one that scores well on all three.
• Choose something you’d enjoy or value, not something you feel you should do: motivation that’s your own is linked to more persistence.
• Keystone habits are a nice idea with thin evidence. Pick for the change you want, not for hoped-for spillover.
• Start with one habit, make it small and specific, give it a cue, and add the next once it runs on its own.