Habit Hacks for the New Year: How to Crush Your Goals Beyond January

Ahh, the new year is upon us. As the flurry of holiday activities winds down, the new year brings a unique opportunity to pause and reflect on the past year while looking forward with hope for a fresh start. January 1st is a magical date when anything is possible, when the hurdles of the previous year seem to dissolve, and we eagerly and enthusiastically join in the tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions. Whether improving our physical and mental health, advancing our education or career, exploring unknown places, nurturing family bonds, or cutting down on digital consumption, we approach these ambitions with a clear vision. With fresh energy and renewed focus, we purchase our new planners, strategically set up our schedules for success, and start the new year strong–at least for a little while.

Turns out starting new habits, and quitting bad ones, is easier said than done. Depending on where you gather your research, some estimates report up to 80% of individuals do not maintain their New Year's resolutions beyond February, with only 8% successfully adhering to them throughout the entire year. This means a great number of us are missing out on the positive changes we want to incorporate into our lives. It’s not that the goals we set for ourselves are not important or unattainable, so how can we do better?

Research has shown that our habits are shaped by the systems in our life, and if we don’t adjust our systems to support our better habits, they’re doomed from the start.

While there is a lot of literature out there on this subject, my favorite book to re-read at the start of the new year is Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book offers practical tips that can help you make your new habits stick. Even though we can all work on making positive change any time during the year, I’ve found I do get an extra boost of motivation at the beginning of the calendar year. If you want to capitalize on the opportunity to start anew, consider these tips to set yourself up to succeed in 2024.

Understand the Four Laws of Behavior Change

The habits we form over time become automatic. Our current habits developed to make our human lives easier by allowing us to streamline everyday decisions in our routine, freeing up cognitive load and increasing our mental capacity to focus on whatever is most essential. The process of building a habit can be divided into 4 steps: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. Together, they form a neurological feedback loop, known as the habit loop, and allow you to form automatic habits.

Breaking our habits down can help us understand what a habit is, how it works, and how to improve it.

1. Cue: A bit of information that predicts a reward (noticing the reward)

2. Craving: The motivational force behind every habit; the reason we perform an action to change our internal state (wanting the reward)

3. Response: The actual habit you perform (obtaining the reward)

4. Reward: The end goal of every habit (gaining satisfaction and relief from craving)

Each step of this process is necessary in order for a habit to form and become automatic. Your habit loops influence nearly everything you do in a day. Understanding each step of the process can empower you to create a good habit and learn how to break a bad habit.

Environment > Motivation

Your environment shapes your behavior, and visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior. You can redesign your environment and make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment.

• If you want to study more, move your study book and materials from a room in your home you rarely visit to the coffee table in your main living space where you spend a lot of time. 

• If you want to workout in the morning, lay out your workout clothes and shoes the night before. 

• If you want to take your dog for a walk in the evening, put the leash and collar near the front door. 

• If you want to take a lunch break away from your computer during your work day, block out the time on your work calendar as a “to-do” for a visible cue and reminder to take your break away from your screen.

This seems simple, and it is. To make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment. Designing the spaces where you live and work to increase your exposure to positive cues and decrease your exposure to negative cues allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life.

The Influence of Your Social Network (Family, Friends, Co-Workers)

As humans, we have a strong desire to fit in and be accepted, and tend to imitate the habits of our social groups. We are more inclined to behaviors that earn us respect, approval, and praise within our social circles. 

What does this mean for forming better habits? According to Clear, one of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a community where the behavior you want to adopt is already the norm and where you already have something in common with the group. 

In 2024, one of my goals is to prepare for and pass the Certified Professional Services Marketer (CPSM) exam. Joining SMPS, where achieving the CPSM certification is common and aligns with my ambition to thrive in the AEC industry, is a pivotal step towards realizing this goal. Additionally, partnering with a coworker for joint study sessions will be instrumental in establishing the positive study habits needed to apply for and attain the CPSM certification in the fall.

The Best Way to Start a New Habit: Implementation Intentions and Habit Stacking

A plan you make beforehand about when and where to act is what researchers refer to as an implementation intention. Studies have shown that this is an effective strategy for forming a new habit because it combines two of the most common cues: time and place. 

The basic format for creating an implementation intention is: 
“When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”

Another way to create new habits for yourself could look like:
“I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”

By getting clear on when and where we will perform a new habit, we are more likely to stick to our goal. This reminds me of why we are asked to create SMART goals for professional development: the more specific we are, the more likely we are to reach a favorable outcome. Thinking back to my goal of passing the CPSM exam in the fall of 2024, simply setting a goal of “I want to pass the exam” (as I have done in prior years!) has left some of the basic details undefined and prevented me from making meaningful progress.

One of the best ways to build a new habit is to add your new habit to a current habit you already do each day. This is called habit stacking and is a special form of an implementation intention. Rather than pairing your new habit with time and location, you pair it with a current habit. This is effective because it leverages an obvious cue for your new habit.

The habit stacking formula is:
“After [current habit], I will [new habit].”

For example, to build good study habits to pass the CPSM exam, my habit stack might look like this: “After I eat breakfast, I will study for one hour at the kitchen table.” I eat breakfast every morning, and so this ensures I will study each day for one hour. If I tried to stack my new study habit with getting home from my work commute in the evening, I would only be studying 3 days a week, since I only travel to the office Tuesday-Thursday. If my goal was to study every day, that wouldn’t be an effective habit stack for me.

I recently heard the phrase “The magic you are looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.” If you want to bring positive change and crush your goals in 2024, I encourage you to try implementing these habit hacks into your life. Focus on making your good habits obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying, and you just might uncover some magic!

Katie Berry is a Senior Marketing Specialist at HNTB. Katie enjoys having fun while doing serious work to win some of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects in the Northwest. Outside of work, you can find her re-watching episodes of The Office, hiking in the beautiful outdoors, or throwing a ball for her Doberman named Phoenix.