Make good habits easy to start and bad habits hard to start

We blame willpower when change doesn’t stick, but willpower tires quickly. If the guitar lives in the closet, 20 seconds away, the couch wins most nights. If the streaming app opens with a thumb, your study plan faces a boss fight it can’t win. The brain is lazy in a useful way—it follows the path of least resistance. So make the right path shorter.

Set the stage the night before. Sleep in clean workout clothes if you’re a morning exerciser. Put your book on your pillow so you have to pick it up. Pin your practice link to your desktop so the first click starts the right thing. One client kept his remote in a drawer in the bedroom and his sneakers by the front door. “I ended up walking,” he laughed.

Add tiny hurdles to temptations. Log out of sites that pull you in. Move snacks off the counter. Disable auto‑logins and delete shortcuts so opening distractions takes effort. Then decide once with simple rules—email at set times, dessert on weekends, two pages before any screens. Reduce choice fatigue and friction does the rest.

Habit science is clear. Repetition wires shortcuts in the brain. But repetition only happens when the start is easy. Ego depletion shows that self‑control drains with use, so design beats willpower in the long run. Lower the activation energy for good habits by 20 seconds, raise it for bad ones by 20 seconds, and you’ll change your life without a pep talk.

Tonight, set the stage so tomorrow’s good habit is the shortest path—lay out your clothes, place the book on your pillow, or pin the practice link to your desktop. Then add one small barrier to your top temptation, like logging out of a distracting site or moving the remote to another room. Decide one simple rule that reduces choice fatigue, such as checking email at set times, and track a single streak for 21 days with a visible checkmark. Let design, not willpower, carry the load. Set it up before bed and see how easy starting becomes. Give it a try tonight.