How to Craft and Draft Habits that Stick

Great goals are built on habits motivated by loss, short, atomic, visible, fun, and celebrated.

If there was a pill that made you 20X more effective at work, 20X happier, or 20X more money, would you take it? There is such a pill: habits. Most people think education paves a path to success; the truth is, habits matter more.

Very few know the art and science of making new habits stick. I know this because I see students struggle in my Generative AI Growth Mindset workshop. So, I decided to write down how I craft goals, build habits to achieve them, and explain the science behind how they work.

Step One: Craft goals according to science

Research published in the British Journal of Health Psychology¹ showed that loss-based implementation intentions are more than 2.5X more effective than education alone. What is a loss-based implementation intention? The details of the study show us what they are. And they’re the first step toward behavioral change.

Figure 1: In one study, loss-based implementations changed behavior in 91% of subjects. “Combining motivational and volitional interventions to promote exercise participation” (Milne, Orbel, and Sheeran)

Researchers gave half their subjects a motivational text about the importance of exercise. This was meant to simulate passive learning as a baseline comparison.

The others were given a survey with prompts that were designed to suggest the negative implications of inaction, like:

• If I were to develop heart disease, I would suffer a lot of pain (agree / disagree)

• The thought of developing heart disease makes me feel (frightened / not at all)

• If I were to engage in 20 minutes of exercise a week, I would lessen my chances of developing heart disease (agree / disagree)

Then, participants were asked to make this intention:

“I intend to partake in at least one 20-minute vigorous exercise session (e.g., swimming, dancing, running, or walking briskly) next week.”

91% of the subjects in the second group changed their behavior: they exercised. 35% of the subjects in the first group (about the same number as those in the control group who received no education) didn’t.

This shows the power of loss-based intentions. Social scientists call this the law of loss aversion: the fear of loss is more powerful than the promise of gain. “Don’t die of heart disease” is three times more powerful than “Be healthy”; the fear of disappointing a parent compels more than a trophy; the fear of going broke is a stronger motivational force than a fancy car.

So, as you set out to set goals this year, get vulnerable and dig deep. Reflect on why you want to lose weight; do you fear not meeting your grandkids? You want to be a better presenter at work; do you fear you won’t get promoted if you don’t? If you want to write a book, do you fear dying before sharing the story locked up inside you?

Use this template. The first two columns are the first steps to goals that stick. Write down your vision and what you’ll lose if you don’t attain it.

Figure 2: A great goal template based on research

Next, make your goals short, atomic, visible, fun, and celebrated:

1. SHORT. Goals that stick are short: six words or less and, at the start, take less than 20 minutes to achieve.

2. ATOMIC. James Clear’s best-selling book Atomic Habits espouses the law of breaking goals into their smallest atomic elements. For example, “lose 20 pounds” is too big. “Run 10 minutes today” is small. Goals that stick start small.

3. VISIBLE. Visual cues spark action. Put a water bottle on your desk to drink more water. Use an app like Streaks to alert you when it’s time to meditate. Put a sticky note on your bathroom mirror that reminds you to run today for ten minutes.

4. FUN. Good goals are playful. Listen to podcasts while you walk. Try a Fartlek (Swedish for “Running Play”) to make running fun. Put stickers on your water bottle to make it look cool.

5. CELEBRATED. After your 3rd run, have an ice cream.

Behavioral change comes from habits motivated by loss, short, atomic, visible, fun, and celebrated.

Try to write some now. Don’t overthink it — spend ten minutes.

Move to step two once you’ve written 3-5 draft goals.

Step Two: Draft one habit and do it today

Pick one habit. You might have written five, but don’t try five. Try one. Like a professional sports draft, you get one pick per round.

Then, today, give your new habit a go.

If you’ve reached a celebration milestone, celebrate.

Set up your visual cue for tomorrow.

Move to step three.

Step Three: Reflect, Rinse, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

Step three is to reflect, rinse, and repeat:

• Before you go to bed, take five minutes to reflect on what you did or didn’t accomplish. Write in your journal, cross your to-do item off the list, or if it’s time to celebrate, celebrate. If you failed today, it’s OK. Start again tomorrow.

• Clean up, or “rinse,” your habit. If ten pushups were too easy, make it eleven. If ten was too much, make it five.

• Repeat: reflect, rinse, and repeat every day.

It’s important to repeat, repeat, repeat because most people abandon goals when they don’t see immediate results. But it doesn’t work that way: you can’t cure cancer by taking chemotherapy once, and you can’t change behavior in one go.

You must repeat, repeat, repeat. Each step is like compounding interest in a bank account. Eventually, without you noticing, big changes happen.

Figure 3: The benefits of habits compound like interest in your bank account.

The other reason many give up is that change is hard to detect. Again, this is why smallness and repetition are so important. Eventually, habits sink in.

As you progress, stretch. When ten pushups feel easy, increase your target, but not too much. My rule of thumb, which I learned from marathon training, is to add 10% to your previous goal. If you ran ten miles this week, run eleven miles next week, not twenty.

Habits cut both ways: you lose them if you don’t use them. The red “writing” habit in the above reminds you to build skills you already have.

That’s the third and final step: reflect, rinse, repeat, repeat, fail, restart, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

The Generative AI growth mindset: a new habit to craft and draft

Exercise and healthy eating are common goals.

But there’s a new Skill Sheriff in town: generative AI. Using generative AI is one of the most important new skills you can learn. In my workshop, the Generative AI Growth Mindset, I explain that if you don’t use AI effectively, you fall behind at work, make less money, and have less fun than those who do.

That is, people who use AI will replace people who don’t. Salespeople who use AI will replace salespeople who don’t. Marketers who use AI will replace marketers who don’t. Electricians, teachers, engineers, and lawyers who use AI will replace electricians, teachers, engineers, and lawyers who don’t.

Hopefully, that ^^^ motivates you to try AI. If it did, join my two-hour, one-week workshop on Maven, The Generative AI Growth Mindset. I aim to have you loving generative AI in just a few hours.

Hope to see you there!

1. Combining motivational and volitional interventions to promote exercise participation: Protection motivation theory and implementation intentions. Sarah Milne (University of Bath, UK), Sheina Orbell (University of Essex, UK), and Paschal Sheeran (University of Shefield, UK).