If you've made it this far, congratulations are in order! It means you've successfully built a new habit and need help with the next steps.
We're huge fans of celebrating new habit formation. This system is designed to help increase your chances as much as possible, but at the end of the day, you are the one putting in the work and making it happen. So congrats!
Once you become proficient in a habit, it's time for reflection. We are all about being purposeful and intentional with out time and energy, and we hate wasting it. So now that you've built this habit, you need to reflect and make a few decisions:
- Do I feel completely proficient in this habit?
- Do I want to keep this habit?
- Do I want to start building a new habit?
This blog walks you through the importance of these decisions and how to make them.
Do I feel completely proficient in this habit?
If you're using the SquadUp app and have officially become proficient in your habit, that is a huge accomplishment! The Proficiency score is designed to be difficult and intensive, so if you got through it, you should be proud. There is a very good chance that this new habit is solidified in your neural pathways.
That being said, depending on the difficulty of the habit, it may not be. At this point, think objectively about whether or not this is truly a habit you now do on auto-pilot. If you were to miss this habit on any given day, would it feel strange? Are you automatically thinking about and preparing for this habit on a daily basis? Has the mental energy required to do this habit reduced significantly since the outset?
If the answers to these questions are Yes, then you're likely proficient. However, more difficult habits may take longer to form, so you may want to consider going through another round of proficiency. Remember that building a habit is about forming new neural pathways in the brain. It's about getting to a point where you can do these things on autopilot. It's more than just gutting it out for 24 days. It's better to do too much than not enough, and have all the work you put in wasted. Think deeply about this before moving on.
Do I want to keep this habit?
Okay, so we reflected on our proficiency and feel like this habit is locked in. Now we need to look back at our goals. We don't build habits for the sake of building habits. We do it because we believe they will help get us closer to our goals. So reflect on that:
- Are you closer to your goals than when you started?
- Can you now see a clearer path toward your goals that this habit helped to form?
- Moving forward, if you continue with this habit, will you also continue to get closer to your goals?
- Are the goals you set out to achieve still something you want?
- Was this the best habit for these goals?
Think objectively about these questions. In a perfect world this habit got you much closer to your goals, or maybe even helped you achieve them. If that's the case, let's celebrate again!
If this habit got you closer to your goals, but you think a new habit could get you closer, then let's shift gears and focus on that new habit. Now that this habit is formed, it's up to you whether or not you want to keep it.
When I say "keep" your habit, I don't mean you can only have this one habit. On the contrary, if you're proficient in this habit, you should be able to build a new habit and this one still runs in the background on autopilot. That's the entire point of proficiency. So when reflecting on this it's not a question of whether or not this is the best habit for you right now, but a question of whether or not this still serves you at all.
The main question you need to answer is this:
Now that I've formed this habit and can see how it contributes toward my goals, do I want to keep it?
Chances are, if you used the Keystone Habit tool or took your time choosing the right habit at the outset, the answer will be Yes. However it's always important to give yourself time and space to make sure you want to keep a habit. Otherwise you end up with a ton of habits that don't actually build toward your goals. And on the contrary, if you put them through this filter and you still want to do them, you can feel confident that they're good ones to have.
Do I want to start building a new habit?
Here's the fun part. Do I want to do this all over again with a new habit? Well, let's go back to the beginning to get our answers. What are your goals? Are there other habits you can do to get you closer to them? Feel free to run through the Keystone Habit tool again if you need help. Chances are, there's a new habit out there that'll take you to the next level. This new habit could be an expansion or iteration on your existing ones, or could be something new altogether.
If it's an expansion or iteration on an existing one, it would look something like this:
- If I'm now proficient at reading 5 pages, let's expand to 10
- If I'm now proficient at going to bed at 10pm, let's iterate to wake up at 6am.
- If I'm now proficient at doing push ups at home, let's expand to working out at the gym.
For building really strong and effective habits, this is what we'd recommend. This is where you can really grow a deep and effective habit that is an integral part of your identity.,
However, it needs to check the boxes above. It needs to be aligned with your goals. Find that and build on it, and you unlock a door to unlimited potential.