Hey, What’s up guy. It’s Vihan here. Ok, It can be challenging to work new habits into
your lifestyle. According to one study, it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days of repetitive
behavior before a new habit takes hold. It sounds like a lot of work. But all habits
aren’t developed one by one. It turns out that some habits compound and make the adoption
of other good habits a lot easier. So wouldn’t it make sense to just focus on those habits?
Well, let’s talk a little more about keystone habits.
The idea of keystone habits was first introduced in Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit.
Unlike normal habits, keystone habits create positive effects that spill over into other
areas. They start a chain reaction which shifts other patterns. Essentially, it creates a
domino effect that changes various aspects of your life. When you focus on building keystone
habits, you hit two birds (or even more) with one stone. And so, focusing on these habits
is a highly productive use of your time.
Now, you don’t have to choose from a limited set of actions to build a keystone habit.
As it turns out, it’s not the exact act that causes the chain reaction, but rather
the intent behind the act. Duhigg explains: “The power of a keystone habit draws from
its ability to change your self image. Basically, anything can become a keystone habit if it
has this power to make you see yourself in a different way.”
The range of habits is limitless. Acts which are seemingly unconnected can breed unexpected
benefits. So take the following for example You start to develop an exercise routine.
Over time you increase your energy level to function better throughout the day. Your quality
of sleep improves because you’ve expended energy and are resting and recovering properly.
Not to mention that your diet and nutrition get better since you’re eating healthier
meals at home and even saving more money by not eating out as much.
Notice the domino effect?
On the other hand, whenever I fall off-track with my exercise routine, I tend to also slack
more with my work, nutrition, and finances cause I have less energy, and lower willpower.
Some other great keystone habits I’ve tried to develop include:
Meditating. I’ve found that it improves memory and awareness and reduces my stress
levels especially since my mind is always racing throughout the day.
Another one is Journaling, which could also help you improve your writing, channel your
thoughts onto a piece of paper and boost your creativity.
I’ve discovered that the trick is that this keystone habit has to be small enough to avoid
overwhelming you so that it can have a ripple effect for other behaviors to follow. There
was a famous speech given by Admiral William McRaven where he talked about the importance
of something seemingly trivial like Making your Bed. If you make your bed every morning.
You will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense
of pride and will encourage you to do another task, and another and another. It sounds ridiculous,
but for some this simple act could be a small win that gives one discipline and brings a
sense of control that trickles down to the rest of your day.
The hack to making any habit stick long-term—keystone or not—is ensuring that you do it regularly.
The more often you do the habit, the more you'll get used to it, and eventually you'll
do it without thinking, which is the definition of a habit. The idea of starting small is
common among successful habit builders. Social scientist BJ Fogg calls this "Minimal Viable
Effort," and suggests that this is one of the best ways to approach building new habits.
For example, taking a walk outside or doing pushups for a few minutes is a better start
than trying to run several miles every day of the week. Once you've built consistency
in doing that tiny behavior every day, it's a lot easier to scale up how much you're doing.
Creating consistency is the hardest part, so start there.
And listen, it’s perfectly fine to feel uninspired on some days and not want to indulge
in your habit. When this happens, think about ways that you can make your keystone habit
a little easier to do like swapping an hour long workout for 30 minutes. This is something
that Malcolm Gladwell calls the "tipping point." The point at which you overcome resistance
and engage in this new behavior.
Now, not all keystone habits are positive. Think of the negative impacts that could occur
in your life if you started drinking a six pack of beer every night. Your physical health,
mental health, relationships, and career would all probably suffer as a result of this.
This means that it’s important to recognize how one action that you do on a regular basis
can influence the larger picture of your life–and because of this, we want to make sure that
everyday our actions are leading us to becoming the best version of ourselves rather than
hurting us in the long run. If you recognize and adopt good keystone habits, you will notice
that your life can improve dramatically because of that one small change. If you liked this
video, I make a lot of them. Subscribe to the channel for more from me every week or
visit Vihan Chelliah.com to stay in touch and get a copy of my free productivity cheatsheet.
That’s it. Thanks for watching.