Unfortunately, despite being fully vaccinated, I caught COVID 19 recently. And whilst the acute symptoms lasted only a week I’ve been left feeling very tired – as often happens after a nasty virus. Much as I’d love to return immediately to my usual level of activity, I realise that it’s important to take time to recover properly.

Whilst I am generally manage to attend to the bigger tasks to keep myself healthy, like fitting in a long run once a week, I’m not always so good at the smaller things that are just as important. But taking care of your health involves doing lots of little things on a regular basis – sticking to ‘good’ habits and avoiding ‘bad’ ones. Some of the habits I’m trying to stick to currently to recover from the virus include:

• Getting early nights – going to bed by 10pm
• Eating well – including drinking ‘recovery shakes
• Doing 15 mins stretching and conditioning daily
• Practising 15 mins daily reflection – what went well/ less well and what I want to do differently. 

Creating new habits is a topic that crops up often in coaching conversations and I recommend James Clear’s Atomic Habits as a useful resource. As this brilliant book outlines, there are two main reasons why habits are helpful: 

1. Firstly, goals or one-off achievements are often the main focus of our work in organisations or via coaching. But habits help us to focus on the building-blocks of discipline that underpin success – the daily tasks or behaviours which are just as important to creating success.
2. Secondly, the more of our daily tasks become habitual then the more ‘headspace’ that leaves for other things. Through repetition if we can reinforce our positive behaviours so they become automatic, we can focus instead other activities that require more effort and attention. 

Clear suggests there are 4 main ways we can help ourselves get into a good habit:

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it (more) attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying

It’s a great book, and I’d encourage you to read the whole thing – but as a taster for coachees I created a ‘crib sheet’ which includes some of the top tips that help us stick to the good habits. And I’ve used some of these techniques to help me stay on track over the next few weeks with these habits.

Getting early nights – going to bed by 10pm

First up, make it obvious. It’s important to be specific and simple – 10pm is more useful than ‘early’. There’s no ambiguity if there’s a specific time. Reminders are another way to make it obvious – personally I find a reminder on my phone 30 mins before I need to do something useful.

Eating well – including drinking ‘recovery’ shakes with my breakfast 

These are not tasty! I’ve made it easier by setting up the equipment to make them (a blender and the ingredients) in the kitchen. It’s obvious because I’ve left that stuff next to the kettle – the first thing I do each day is make a pint of tea so I am reminded then to make the shake. And I’ve made it more attractive by buying some frozen fruit I can add to the mix to disguise the taste.

Doing 15 mins stretching daily

This is something I find very hard to stick to, as here’s no obvious reward to doing these activities. Do them and they help avoid you getting injured, but if you skip them there’s no immediate bad consequence. 

One of my favourite tips from this book is about making it obvious via habit ‘stacking’ – scheduling a new habit to be directly before/ after something you always do to help you remember to do it. So I do these 15 minutes of exercise after breakfast each morning, in the same room, at the same time, and I have the equipment I need (a yoga mat and resistance band) ready on hand – making it easy. It’s basically all about taking any thought or effort out of it – so nothing gets in the way. 

Practising 15 mins daily reflection – what went well/ less well and what I want to do differently. 

Again, I know I should do this but I often struggle to do this regularly. I’ve found being unwell and needing to slow down tough mentally. Making time for reflection will help make sure I’m not overdoing it and also help my motivation, especially if I use these coaching-style reflection questions.

Making it obvious by sticking to a regular time slot helps, so I’ve identified 30 mins each evening when it’s normally quiet. And I’ve set myself a reminder on my smart phone to make it even more obvious. Plus whereas before I was taking notes on my laptop I’m now using a note-taking app to jot down my thoughts to make it easy. So far I’m managing about 50% of the time – which is a start!

And  – finally – as an overall reminder of these healthy habits as well as having a ‘to do’ list each week, I now have a simple checklist of the daily/ weekly regular tasks (or habits) which is next to my desk and which I tick off. There’s a simple satisfaction to ticking things off and feeling like you’ve accomplished a small step. And the list also serves as a visual cue or reminder to do these things, once again, making it obvious. 

As Clear concludes, creating habitscan be hard because a lot of these behaviours are not satisfying in the short-term. When cause-effect are disconnected we are less inclined towards changing our behaviour. With ‘good behaviours’ the effort or inconvenience is short-term, whereas and the payback days or weeks, or even years, later.

But at least we can give ourselves a helping hand by using these 4 simple tips from behavioural psychology to make these habits more likely to take root.