Join the December Challenge, and a Zen Habits Facebook group!

This is a couple days late, so I apologize … but I’ve started the December Challenge forum in the Zen Habits forums. I encourage anyone looking to form a new habit in December to go there, join the ZH forums, and post your personal December Challenge!

How it works: The Zen Habits monthly challenges are a way to motivate yourself to form a new habit. I’ve personally found it a very effective way to form a new habit: challenge yourself to stick to a new habit every day for 30 days, and be accountable to a group of people in a forum. I’ve done it to quit smoking, start running, eat healthier, wake up earlier, form productive habits and more.

There is no required habit for the monthly challenges — you decide what your challenge will be, and announce it in the “post your challenge here” thread on the forum. Then, report back as often as you can (daily reporting is highly, highly recommended) and see if you can stick to that habit.

Five Things You Need to Know About Effective Habit Change

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Ian Newby-Clark, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada who studies habit change.

As a psychology professor who has studied habit change for several years, I have some advice about effective habit change. My advice is general. It applies to any habit that you would like to change. My advice is based on my research and that of my colleagues.

Join the Zen Habits October Challenge!

It’s a day late, but I’ve started the October Challenge on the Zen Habits forums. The purpose of these monthly challenges is to form a new habit in 30 days by doing them daily and reporting to the group of fellow challengers.

If you report daily, it actually works. I can attest to it, as can past challengers.

Go there to sign up!

The only rules:

1. Choose only 1 habit. You might want to do more than 1, but it’s pretty difficult.
2. Make it easy — you want to be able to accomplish it. Don’t make it too challenging.
3. Report daily, or as often as you can. Accountability is what makes this work.

That said, I’m going to try to participate this month. I didn’t do it the last couple of months, but I have a new challenge for myself:

Stick to my meal plan each day (I’ve created a 2000-calorie meal plan) except a couple cheat meals a week … and continue my daily habit of exercise.

What’s your challenge! Sign up everyone!

6 Rules for Dealing With Habits vs. Tasks

Photo by paulworthington

Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits.

If you’ve been working on a simplified to-do list, you may have your tasks whittled down to the essential. But what about the daily and weekly things you need to do every day: exercise, cleaning, errands, making a to-do list … as those are things you need to do, do they go on your to-do list?

How do you deal with habits on your to-do list?

4 Simple Steps to Start the Exercise Habit

Photo by mikebaird

Every Friday is Health Tip Day at Zen Habits.

I have to admit that I have my ups and downs with the exercise habit.

So I know that it’s not the easiest habit for most people, and most people’s experiences consist of starting and stopping and starting again. Which is fine — don’t beat yourself up about it. The important thing is starting again.

I’ve written before about how to build the exercise habit (and even have a guest post on it), but today I thought I’d revisit the topic for those who still have trouble.

Engineer Life: Set Up Habit Changes So It’s Hard to Fail

Photo by chicadecasa

In his excellent ebook about changing habits, blogging friend Scott Young described the process of forming habits as walking home through fresh snow. The first person to go through the snow has to forge a path through the snow, and it’s difficult … but others will follow in that path and it gets easier and easier.

Forming a habit is a matter of forging that initial path until it’s harder not to take the path. Who wants to forge a new path through the snow?

But let’s take that concept a little further: what if you engineered it so that even the initial person forging through the snow would rather take that path than another, because it would be harder not to take the path.

Simple Systems: Clean Your House as You Go (with an added burst)

Photo by Shaylor

Every Wednesday is Simplicity Day on Zen Habits.

Who among us has the time or energy for housework?

Sure, we often make the time, if we don’t like living in a pig sty. But too often our homes fall into disorder, just because we are too tired or too busy to do a bunch of cleaning in our spare time.

Instead, make housework simple. Simplify your housework with two easy cleaning systems: