Forming a habit effortlessly

When I do yoga I enjoy it. When I think about doing yoga it goes something like this:

• I have to find the yoga mat, put it out, put on the right clothes and then put it all away afterwards — I think I’ll watch this movie instead.

• I’ve spent all day concentrating, I need to relax, yoga seems like too much effort today — I think I’ll have a nap.

• I want to be good at yoga — I still can’t balance and it’s exhausting, I’ll do it when I have more energy.

It’s hard to get motivated when something feels a tiny bit too difficult to reach. Inspired by James Clear’s Atomic Habits I decided to experiment with making a habit out of doing yoga that would encourage me to do it despite how I felt on the day.

He breaks down forming habits into these sections:

Make it obvious — being aware of the habit I want to form, “I will do yoga every day at home.”

Make it attractive — associate yoga with a positive experience and get a dopamine hit from the anticipation of it, and then do it. “10 mins will give me a hit and I’ll finish wanting to do more.”

Make it easy — a new habit shouldn’t feel like a challenge, standardise before optimising! Getting myself to show up is the hard part, remove the pain points, “I will show up for 10 minutes and do standing yoga without a mat.”

Make it satisfying —  the more we like doing something, the more we’ll do it. For immediate satisfaction, I track sessions on my Apple watch. It also gives me the bigger picture of what I’m doing alongside some accountability, “I did it!”

Last year I did yoga for 150 sequential days. Each session was for at least 10 minutes, sometimes 45 which accumulated to over 40+ hours altogether. It was fun, achievable and easy to show up.

I stopped feeling bad about not doing it and started enjoying my new habit with less mental and emotional effort.

I also had a wonderful accountability partner. We would text an emoji each day when we had completed our session. It got ridiculous and added to the fun! 🎉🌈🦔🐍🐕

What new habit would you like to start in a more effortless way?