Building the Habit

**Momentum only works if the client has identified a daily practice. **

Some people call this Baby Steps or Tiny Habits. We call it a minimum daily practice.

Coach.me encourages clients in this direction by asking them to pick a specific goal when they hire their coach.

In most cases, you should be able to identify and jump right to a regular practice. If your client wants to run a marathon, then they need to build the habit of running. Often, your client will even suggest a first step--but be on the lookout for a suggestion that's too big. When this happens you can reframe the habit as something much smaller.

Below is an example response to a client who had the goal to finish their dissertation. They thought they were struggling with procrastination and "just can't focus on writing for 8 hours at a time."

This is what I'm hearing. You want to write every day in order to make faster progress on your dissertation. When you try to spend 8 hours writing, you feel like you mostly end up procrastinating. Is that right?

So, the way I work is to use a momentum based methodology that we call the Momentum Framework. The idea is to focus on consistency first so that we can build momentum. And then once their is consistency, we can work on quality and quantity. In your case that second phase would be how long do you write, how you feel about the quality of the writing, and (maybe) how many words did you write. But for now, let's just work on consistency.

For tomorrow, what do you think about really focusing on sitting down and getting right to work? Can you time yourself and tell me how long it takes between the time you sit down at your desk and the time you've finished writing your first sentence?

Notice the above response also makes active use of active listening techniques, using exact words and phrases from the client's last message.

Once you've identified a minimum daily practice, you'll need to make sure that practice is truly consistent. The most common strategies for building consistency are:

• Goal definition: try the anchoring and goal statement exercises in order to clarify the how and when of the habit.

• Habit building basics: habits work best when you scope them down to a minimum daily practice, anchor them to existing habits, and treat different contexts (work, home, travel) as separate habits.

• Environmental design: one time decisions that make the habit easier to achieve.

• Accountability and positive reinforcement: these strategies help reinforce and motivate your client until their habit is built.

If the client already has the habit, then it should take 1-2 days for you to verify that.

If the client is starting from scratch, then it will take 1-2 weeks for the habit to take hold. Note, they won't have a permanent habit at two weeks, rather, they'll have enough consistency to move on to the next phase.