Building Habits That Stick: 5 Evidence-Based Strategies
Why do 92% of people fail to stick to their health goals? New research reveals the key differences between habits that last and those that don’t. Here’s what actually works – and what doesn’t.
The Problem with Traditional Habit Formation
Most people approach habit formation backwards. They focus on motivation and willpower, two resources that are finite and unreliable. Motivation fluctuates with your mood, your sleep, your stress levels, and even the weather. Willpower? Same thing. It’s like a battery that drains throughout the day. And guilt only works until it backfires. That’s why most New Year’s resolutions die by February.
The people who succeed aren’t superhuman. They just play a different game – one based on systems and smart environmental design, not willpower. Instead of building habits around internal effort (like keeping yourself motivated), they use an external scaffolding – environmental cues, repetition, feedback loops, and friction management – to achieve a successful behavior change.
Important to know: People who stick to habits don’t have more discipline – they’ve simply reduced the number of decisions they need to make. They prepare their gym clothes the night before. They log meals automatically. They avoid buying the snacks they’d rather not eat.
Guilt doesn’t make this easier. In fact, studies show that when people feel bad about slipping up, they’re more likely to abandon the habit entirely (Baumeister, 2014). The better approach isn’t moral – it’s mechanical: shift the focus from effort to design.
So instead of asking, “How can I push through next time?”, ask: “How can I make the desired behavior easier, and the undesired one harder?” In this shift – from internal pressure to external structure – lies the entire game of habit formation.
Strategy 1: Start Ridiculously Small
The biggest mistake in habit building? Thinking big from day one. “I’ll run five times a week.” “I’ll cut out sugar entirely.” “I’ll meditate 30 minutes every morning.” Ambition is great – but early on, it backfires.
Your brain resists change that feels like effort. The basal ganglia, the part of the brain responsible for automatic behaviors, only automates actions that are easy, repeatable, and low-friction. If your habit requires a decision or negotiation every time, it won’t stick.
That’s why the first rule is: make it absurdly easy. One push-up. One page of reading. One minute of meditation. Not because that’s your end goal – but because it creates consistency without resistance. BJ Fogg, who runs the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford, calls this “anchoring success.” The smaller the action, the more likely you are to actually do it – even on bad days. And once you’re already doing one push-up, you’ll often do five. But the mental threshold stays low.
James Clear makes a similar point in Atomic Habits: “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.” It’s not about the push-up – it’s about casting a daily vote for the identity of someone who works out. One minute of meditation makes you a person who prioritizes mindfulness. One healthy snack makes you someone who eats intentionally. Small actions compound into self-perception – and that’s where habits become self-reinforcing.
So the goal isn’t to be ambitious. It’s to be automatic. Start small and stay consistent. Let identity follow behavior.
Strategy 2: Stack Your Habits
One of the easiest ways to add a new habit to your life is to piggyback it onto something you already do every day. This method – called habit stacking – uses the existing structure of your routines to give the new habit a fixed time and place.
Why does this work? Because your brain craves predictability. When you repeat the same action in the same context, your neural circuits begin to link them. Over time, the first action becomes a trigger for the second. This is how brushing your teeth might become the cue for flossing, or how opening your laptop cues you to check your email.
Instead of relying on motivation, you’re using cue-based repetition. The habit becomes automatic – not because you worked harder, but because you removed the ambiguity.
Here’s what effective habit stacks look like:
After I brush my teeth, I will do 30 seconds of mobility work.
After I make coffee, I will write down one thing I’m grateful for.
After I get home from work, I will immediately change into workout clothes.
After I close my laptop in the evening, I will prep tomorrow’s lunch.
The key is to anchor the new habit to something that already happens consistently and preferably at the same time each day. Weak anchors lead to weak habits. “After I wake up” is often better than “sometime in the morning.” Precision beats vagueness.
Also useful: write your habit stack down as a formula. BJ Fogg recommends this structure: “After I [current habit], I will [new habit].”
This works especially well when your new habit is small (as described in Strategy 1). The more frictionless the addition, the more likely it will stick.
Over time, habit stacking allows you to build compound routines – strings of behaviors that run on autopilot. Think of it as programming your daily life with a sequence of tiny actions that reflect who you want to become.
Strategy 3: Design Your Environment
If your habits keep breaking down, the problem isn’t your willpower – it’s your surroundings. The environment you live and work in quietly shapes your behavior all day long. Not through intention, but through exposure.
We like to think we make conscious decisions. In reality, much of our behavior is cue-driven. Visual triggers, smells, sounds, phone notifications, even the placement of objects in a room – these elements subtly guide what we do next. Want to read more? Keep books within arm’s reach, not buried in a drawer. Want to move more? Put your yoga mat in front of your desk, not in the closet.
Anna Lembke, in Dopamine Nation, explains why this matters. Our brains are wired to seek out dopamine – the neurotransmitter of reward and motivation. When we repeatedly see cues linked to instant gratification (like chips on the counter or Instagram on your home screen), our dopamine system lights up in anticipation. It’s not the reward itself – it’s the cue that drives craving. The more we surround ourselves with tempting stimuli, the harder it becomes to resist them, especially when tired, stressed, or distracted.
That’s why environment design is a form of behavioral leverage. A few simple changes can tilt the odds dramatically in your favor. Here’s how:
Make good habits easy and visible:
Keep a water bottle on your desk to make staying hydrated easy
Lay out your running gear the night before (or even sleep in it) to avoid stalling your morning run
Do meal-prep and store pre-chopped vegetables at eye level in the fridge to make healthy eating frictionless
Make bad habits harder or invisible:
Store junk food in opaque containers on high shelves (or better: don’t have any in your house).
Delete addictive apps or bury them in folders (I use a great tool for my laptop called SelfControl – it irreversibly blocks time-killer websites for the time you specify, e.g. a day or a week).
Remove the charger from your bedroom to reduce late-night screen time (or lock your phone in a box before 8pm and only take it out in the morning).
In behavioral terms, you’re reducing friction for the habits you want and increasing it for the ones you don’t. It’s not about being more disciplined – it’s about making the desired choice the default.
In short: if you change your surroundings, your behavior often follows – without you even noticing. That’s the power of smart design.
Strategy 4: Track Your Progress
If you want a habit to grow, shine a light on it. Tracking makes invisible progress visible – and that changes everything.
When you track a behavior, you create an external feedback loop. You’re not just hoping it’s working – you’re collecting data. That alone improves adherence. In behavioral science, this is known as self-monitoring, and studies show it’s one of the most effective interventions for behavior change, especially when combined with goal setting.
But it doesn’t need to be complicated. You can track with:
a simple calendar where you mark an ✕ for every day you show up
a paper or excel habit journal with weekly/daily boxes
a digital habit tracker that gives you visual feedback
Personally, I use an app called Streaks (iPhone only). It’s clean, focused, and free of unnecessary distractions. You just check off your habits daily – and seeing that streak grow becomes oddly satisfying. If you’re looking for more options (also for Android), here’s a solid overview: Best Habit Tracker Apps 2025
What makes tracking so powerful is that it transforms your habit into a game. You start to build momentum. You don’t want to “break the chain,” so you show up – even on tough days. It creates just enough accountability to keep you moving.
Equally important: tracking increases awareness. We often think we’re doing fine – eating well, sleeping enough, working out regularly. But our self-perception is notoriously biased. The act of writing it down, checking a box, or reviewing your streak forces honesty.
You don’t need to track forever. But early on, it can be a powerful accelerant – especially for habits that are easy to forget or skip.
If you only take one thing from this: track the habit, not the outcome.
Don’t track how much weight you lose or muscle build – track whether you exercised.
Don’t obsess over your resting heart rate – track whether you went to bed on time.
The process builds the result. Keep your focus there.
Strategy 5: Plan for Failure
Everyone slips eventually. You’ll get sick, travel, feel overwhelmed, or just have a bad day. That doesn’t make you undisciplined – it makes you human.
The difference between those who stick with their habits and those who give up isn’t that the first group never fails. It’s that they recover immediately and intentionally.
That’s why the most resilient habit builders have recovery plans. In behavioral science, these are called implementation intentions: If X happens, then I’ll do Y. It sounds simple, but it dramatically increases your odds of bouncing back.
Here are a few that have worked well for me and people I’ve coached:
If I miss my morning run, I reschedule it for the evening – even if it’s shorter or slower.
If I sleep poorly or too little, I’ll skip intense training and do mobility work or a light session instead.
If I snack too much in the afternoon, I’ll avoid high-calorie foods in the evening.
If I break a training streak, I’ll plan my next workout immediately – and then restart without beating myself up.
If I’m traveling or have no access to healthy food, I eat minimally until I find something I actually want to eat.
If my day derails, I still end it with one keystone action: prepping tomorrow’s to-do list, food, or gear.
The key is to pre-commit to these fallbacks when you’re thinking clearly – not in the moment of failure. And they should be small enough that you’ll actually follow through.
Another mindset that helps me: I frame streaks not as “never missing,” but as “always returning.” That takes the pressure off perfection and replaces it with momentum. So here’s the real rule: One missed day is fine. Two in a row is not. Or as James Clear puts it in Atomic Habits: “Missing once is a mistake. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”
Don’t wait for motivation to come back. Make your recovery plan part of the habit itself. Long-term change comes from getting back on track – immediately and every time.
Real Change Feels Boring – Until It Doesn’t
The five strategies I’ve shared here aren’t just theory. They’re the exact tools I wish I had understood earlier.
For a long time, I made the classic mistake: trying to change everything at once. I’d create elaborate plans and todo lists – running every morning, meditating before work, swimming in the afternoon, strength training in the evening. Of course, all that while quitting sugar, alcohol, meat and excess carbs from one day to the next. On paper, it looked like a full lifestyle upgrade. Inspiring, but definitely not sustainable. I’d go hard for a few days, miss one, then another, and abandon the whole thing.
What finally worked was narrowing my focus. I started with one habit at a time – running regularly – and made sure it stuck before layering in anything else. That approach felt frustratingly slow at first. It didn’t match the story I had in my head about the kind of person I wanted to become (the “athlete”, the “tough entrepreneur”, the “disciplined early-riser” etc.). It didn’t feel “heroic.” But it worked.
And here’s something I recommend to anyone trying to change their habits: Don’t just look forward. Every few months, take a moment to look back. Compare yourself not to who you want to be, but to who you were six months or a year ago. What does your day look like now? What do your routines feel like? What’s easier than it used to be? You don’t need the cliché before-and-after photos. Just a mental snapshot is enough.
For me, when I look back two years, I see a completely different rhythm. I feel more grounded, more energetic, and more capable – not because I pushed harder, but because I found a sustainable way to live. My habits give me more balance and more freedom. They’ve brought me closer to goals that once felt out of reach – not through big gestures, but through steady, often invisible progress.
That’s the real story behind change. It’s not flashy. It’s not overnight. But it’s real. And if you do it right, you won’t just see the difference – you’ll feel it.
Do you need support in building healthy habits that last?
At 20 Years, we help people create sustainable routines in exercise, sleep, nutrition, and more – without burnout, gimmicks, or all-or-nothing thinking. Our coaching directly applies the principles outlined above. If you’re ready to take the next step, we’re here to guide you.
👉 Join our program at www.20years.org
The Best Books on Habit Formation
If you want to dig deeper into the psychology, neuroscience, and strategy behind habit formation, here are a few outstanding reads:
James Clear – Atomic Habits: The go-to playbook for anyone serious about behavior change. Practical, actionable, and based on solid research.
Anna Lembke – Dopamine Nation: A fascinating dive into the neuroscience of pleasure, addiction, and the modern struggle for balance.
BJ Fogg – Tiny Habits: The academic foundation for the “start small” approach. A guide to creating habits that feel natural.
Charles Duhigg – The Power of Habit: Explains the cue-routine-reward loop and how habits form at individual, organizational, and societal levels.
Wendy Wood – Good Habits, Bad Habits: A deep dive into the science of habit from one of the leading researchers in the field.
Sources
Baumeister, R. F., et al. (2014). Ego Depletion and the Strength Model of Self-Control. Psychological Science.
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits. Avery.
Fogg, B. J. (2019). Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Lembke, A. (2021). Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. Dutton.
Duhigg, C. (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House.
Wood, W. (2019). Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.