40 Days to Greatness - Forming and Sticking to New Habits

How to form new habits and stick to existing ones. A guide and the tool.

Habits are the building blocks of success. Starting a new good habit is easy, sticking to it is not. Starting a new bad habit is easy, dropping it is not. What if we could reverse it? Or at least minimalize friction for good habits and maximize for bad ones? What can change in the next 40 days of your life?

Knowing what to do

First thing first—you need to know the destination of your journey. What do you want to improve? Health? Wealth? Relationships? Of course you do, every person does. But what are those built of? What are the single bricks that make the whole?

Habits are like small wind blows that set your ship on the right track. When enough of those blows compound, your ship will require much less rowing to move.

Who do you want to be?

• The person I want to become does ……… as the first thing in the morning.

• The person I want to become avoids ………. the first thing in the morning.

• The person I want to become never ………. .

• The person I want to become always ………. .

Awareness and diagnose

Have you ever logged calories? If yes, I bet it was surprising how much (or little) you eat each day. If you play video games, would you be even close to guessing how many hours you have spent on a specific game without the hour counter?

“I think” is misleading way too often. “I know” is what leads to growth, even if this knowledge is painful. Lying to yourself to avoid hurting the ego is convenient, but harmful. Are you not sure of your skills? Not self-confident enough? That task or gig seems above you? Keep this one thing in mind, and you will learn more in a year than in a decade: Declare yourself first and then figure out how to do it. Growth comes from the inconvenience and initial uncertainty.

Don’t sabotage yourself

Instead of telling, I will just show you:

Take a moment and write down some examples here.

• What in my environment encourages which habits?

• Which habits stem from my environment?

• What’s the one low-effort thing I can do right now to slightly improve my environment to be more aligned with my goals?

Don’t make things more difficult than they are

Brushing your teeth is a habit. It’s a habit you don’t need encouragement to perform, you just do it. Why is it easy and other habits that need a similar amount of time and effort aren’t? Because they are new. It's a habit that has been with you since childhood, and your “mentors” in this case were your parents.

Habits are not always good

It’s way easier to form bad habits than good ones. Have you ever heard someone saying “I need to log my smoking breaks, so they become easier”? Bad habits come effortlessly because they provide immediate rewards and temporary comfort. Good habits require effort and discipline.

Forming good habits is one thing, breaking free from the bad ones is another. But they share similarities though. Bad habits are like weeds in a garden—they grow without any care overshadowing the flowers (the good habits) that require consistent nurturing.

Breaking a bad habit means more than just stopping the behavior—it’s about changing the identity. You don’t want to think of yourself as a person who never works out, even if that’s the case. You don’t want to think about yourself as a person who drinks 4 days a week, even if you do.

What You Need is an Identity Change

So:

1. Identify the triggers: A cue, a routine, and a reward. For example—feeling stressed (cue) leads to smoking (routine), which provides a sense of relief (reward). Recognizing the trigger is the first step toward change.

2. Interrupt the cycle with intention: Replace the routine with something healthier. If stress leads to smoking, try replacing the habit with breathing exercises (Ye, I know it’s wayyy easier said than done.)

3. Maximize friction: Make the bad habit harder to perform. If you are trying to stop eating junk food: uninstall door-dash apps, make a shopping list every time you go get groceries, eat a nourishing meal before going out. The more effort required to indulge in the habit, the less likely you are to do it.

4. Track and reflect: Logging bad habits may seem counterintuitive, but it works. You keep track of your progress in the same way you do with good habits, but the less often you log, the better + it will make you feel extra guilty every time you do it.

Why 40 days?

Where’s the line between a new challenging thing and a thing that you just do? How many iterations do you need to establish a habit? As with most things in life, there’s no definitive answer. The actual answer is: it depends. But! I found a balance point in this. For me, it’s a golden point. For you, it may be silver, but even silver shines bright enough.

What you need for good habits?

1. Willpower to start.

2. Tracking system.

3. Less willpower to keep going.

Make things easier for yourself

How to make bad habits harder to perform? Maximize friction and log them. How to make good habits easier to perform? Minimalize the friction and log them.

That’s why I introduce you to:

What’s the point?

Very simple: stop failing to achieve your goals. Good habits are like individual paving stones on the road to success, it's easier to lay them if you can see the road from a bird's eye view!

Most creative people struggle with staying consistent

The reason why is because we are not forced to do those things, we want to do them. But accountability doesn’t come from thin air. Without it, we slip with projects until all of a sudden, looking back, there’s no progress to be seen.

I struggled with the same thing, that’s why I created a ridiculously simple system to help myself stay consistent and push, force the work out. The reason I recommend See Yourself Growing Tracker is because it’s the most effective tool I have found to stay consistent with habits. And the direct benefit of sticking to good habits is creating a good life, not only in a creative work space. Good habits = good life.

Features:

• Visualize Your Progress: Clear visual representation of the effort you have put in. Allows you to witness the small daily disciplines that lead to significant changes. See yourself growing!

• Lasts for a loooong time: 120 days to check on each of the 40 pages (the first two are the title page and instructions). That's 4800 days. That's more than 13 years!

• Track Multiple Habits: Fitness, mindfulness, reading, or any other habit you want to nurture. This tracker supports developing multiple (up to 4/page) habits simultaneously. It's a comprehensive solution for holistic self-improvement.

• Set Clear Goals: Well-structured pages. A very clear, visually impactful, and neat place to log your habits.

• Witness Your Transformation: Progress is like climbing absurdly long stairs, you don't see the difference at every step, but looking back. The page design allows you to see how you grow and make yourself more and more consistent.

• Minimalistic Matte Cover. And minimalistic interior. Everything that is needed and nothing more.

See yourself growing and witness your life going in the right direction!

I designed this tracker to help you form good habits and break bad ones. It is based on a ridiculously simple but effective formula that I myself have used for years.

This is basically a checklist for your dream life!

Available for free in digital for my premium subscribers under the paywall below! I redesigned it a few times and I have to say that I'm really proud of the end result.