Choosing small habits is a great way to start working toward a new behavior, but they can feel boring after a while. Try flexible habits.

I love reading about habits, probably because I find it so challenging to keep habits. This has always been a point of frustration for me. How can I want to work toward a goal yet struggle to do the consistent work that will get me there?
I got insight into my struggle against myself from author Gretchen Rubin who looked at how people meet expectations – both those they set for themselves as well as what others expect of them – and called it The Four Tendencies.
It turned out that I was a Rebel, the tendency that came with the tagline, “You can’t make me, and neither can I.” Basically, my personality fought against adhering to any and all expectations.
This didn’t mean I accomplished nothing; but, like a gray squirrel burying nuts for the winter, I had a lot of goals, but they didn’t really help me unless I dug them up and used them (like that squirrel digging up those nuts and eating them so they could survive, the reason they gathered all those acorns.)
When I read Stephen Guise’s book, Elastic Habits, I saw that he’d created a way to add variety to habits, basically taking the routine out of routines.
Start with a Goal
Goals are all about the result. I want to weigh XXX and have more energy. I want to be organized. I want to work with intention instead of distraction. I want to read more young adult novels and crochet fun projects.
Go ahead, list the results you want (for the upcoming quarter, year, five years). You can download this worksheet for the guided process.
Of course, the goals I listed are a bit vague and I need to clarify what I want. When I say I want to read more novels, I really want to read one a week. When I say I want to be organized, I realize that for me that means planning a regular time each day to sweep through the house and put things away (I’m a bit of a piler).
So, check out that list of the results you want and add specifics. What do you really want the results of your actions to look like?
Next, to make sure that I’m working with intention (a personal goal as well as an action step in this process), I want to ask why I want the what I’m interested in. Understanding my why doesn’t just provide clarity, it shines a light on my motivation as well.
If you’re not particularly motivated to work toward a goal, chances are that you won’t stick with the actions that will lead to that goal.
I want to lose weight, so I feel more energetic. I’m tired of feeling tired after eating a heavy meal. I dislike waking to puffy eyes because I ate too much salt. I want to read a young adult novel a week because these books boost my mood in a way adult fiction does not.
Why do you want what you want? Does your why align with the type of person you want to become?
Move onto the Habits
When you know what you want to do and why you want to do it, you are working with intention, purpose. The next thing to consider is how you’ll do what you want.
How = habits, at least some of the time (if your goal is to repaint your bedroom, you’re working on a task, not a habit). If I want to be more energetic, I need to figure out what I’m going to eat. That comes with a bunch of habits, like meal planning and preparation.
If I stay focused on what I’m going to eat, I’m going to get stuck. Once I figure out the what and my why I need to move ahead to the how. Too often, I plan family dinners for the week without planning what I’m going to eat for breakfast or lunch. I then end up eating things like peanut butter and crackers or leftovers because they’re there. Not very intentional.
How will you do what you want to do? Are you looking at a task? (Do it and you’re done.) Or, do you need to develop a habit, a behavior that will become a part of your life?
Create Variety for a Better Chance of Success with Your Habits
As I mentioned, I love reading about habits because I struggle with doing beneficial behaviors on a consistent basis. I’m always hoping for a tip or insight that will make it easier for me to stick to what I want to do.
That’s what brought me to one of Stephen Guise’s books, Elastic Habits: How to Create Smarter Habits that Adapt to Your Day. I bought his book because I liked his earlier book, Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results, which focused on how small, seeming insignificant actions can lead you to achieving your goals.
He works with the idea that it’s the habit of the habit that’s more important than the habit itself. (You can reread that sentence. Really, it does make sense.)
In Elastic Habits, Guise suggests adding flexibility to by focusing more on the outcome you’re working toward than on one specific action. When you consider the outcome, you realize that there is more than one way to work toward your goal.
Your habits can become more flexible, more elastic, in a couple of ways, (1) by adding variety and (2) by changing the intensity of the action.
Add Variety to Your Small Habits
Giving yourself variety means that you can take boredom out of the equation. You aren’t stuck decluttering paper every day until you’re done clearing through the contents of your file cabinet and the piles on your desk.
Instead, you choose three or so tasks that all achieve your greater outcome – organizing your home.
For example, with decluttering as your goal, you could have a variety of mini habits – declutter 5 pieces of paper or remove one item of clothing from your closet or take one book from your bookshelves and put it in a box for donation.
Each of these actions requires a small investment of time and energy. On any day, you can choose which task you feel like doing.
But you may be protesting that such a small action isn’t going to lead to your desired outcome for a very long time. While a small action is the daily goal, it can also function as a starting point. And that’s where Guise’s Elastic Habits get interesting.
Increase the Intensity of Those Small Habits
Along with adding variety with different tasks, Guise also suggests that you vary the intensity of the action. While lateral variety encourages you to choose from different tasks, vertical variety increases how much you do of a task.
Instead of spending one minute tidying a room in your home, you could do five minutes, or even 10 minutes.
If you’ve rolled your eyes at the idea of small habits, after all, what difference will decluttering one pair of socks make when you can’t close any of the drawers of your dresser, here’s your opportunity to add more challenge.
However, working with elastic habits isn’t the same as simply telling yourself that you need to do more every day. Instead, elastic habits acknowledge that some days are busier than others. When you have a bare minimum small habit to fall back on, you are still being consistent and persistent as opposed to giving yourself the excuse that you are too busy today to bother with your habit.
This is why Guise suggests varying the intensity of a habit from roll-your-eyes simple to one that makes you feel like you got a lot done that day (and then something in between).
If the simple, mini habit is to declutter one item a day; the medium intensity habit could be to declutter five items a day; up the intensity to challenging and you’ll aim at decluttering a dozen items a day.
With three vertical levels of intensity, if you’re busy and tired, you can still stick to the habit that will lead to your goal by accomplishing the simplest level. On the other hand, if you find yourself with the time and energy, you can aim for the challenging level of this habit.
The Elastic Habits System
By adding three vertical levels of intensity as well as three lateral options, you are giving yourself nine ways to do your habit each day.
Yes, that may sound a bit intimidating, but remember, you’re only choosing one of those options each day. It can take a couple of minutes to create your 3x3 grid of options for one habit; but, once it’s done, it’s set up.
Write out your grid and post it someplace handy as opposed to trying to keep these options in your head.
Guise’s book goes into more detail (he also created a system for tracking and assigning points to each of your flexible habits). If you want to gamify this habit for yourself or a family member, you can come up with your own system or check out Elastic Habits.
There’s No Single Way to Accomplish a Habit
Now, I’ve been talking about decluttering your home as a habit, but really, decluttering is a tool that will help to make it easier to stay organized (where habits really matter). However, it can take a while to declutter and doing a little bit of clutter clearing every day can supplement longer sessions of decluttering or even function as your sole method for getting rid of distracting stuff.
If one of the areas you want to declutter is your bookshelves, and you’ve given yourself a small habit of removing one unwanted book from your shelves each day, at some point you’ll finish this task.
Then you can assign yourself a small new habit, perhaps removing one piece of clutter from your junk drawer each day until you finish this task. (And, of course, adding intensity by removing five or even 15 items from the junk drawer in a day.)
Elastic Habits shows you that you can give yourself a variety of tasks to choose from and increase the intensity of each action for the days when you feel like doing a bit more.
By switching out completed tasks for other tasks (that are still working toward the same outcome), you can continue to bring order to your home.
And you can also use this same technique to work toward other goals you have for yourself, from reading or writing more to exercise or meditation. What goals can you work toward with elastic habits?
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