It’s also difficult because it is always tempting to put off the ‘weaning’ till after the weekend, or even tomorrow… but then tomorrow never comes. Weaning Off – This is where you focus on a gradual decline in the behavior. If you were a smoker, this would mean stopping immediately. This requires tremendous willpower to break a bad habit but sometimes does work if people are committed enough. Going Cold Turkey – The first technique is ‘going cold turkey’. The point is to try experimenting on yourself till you find one or a combination that works for you. Try one of them, try a combination, try all of them. The following are techniques that people use to break habits. I want to focus on how we break bad habits because I think that this is what people struggle with and an area where I can offer the most value. It will form useful context for the following. These books will give you a deeper understanding of how and why we make habits. Specifically, ‘Making Habits, Breaking Habits’ by Jeremy Dean and ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg – both are on Blinkist if you want the key messages. There are a number of great books on Habits. This creates freedom for us to think and to manage more than one task at once. Habits make it easy for us to do things on autopilot without thinking. Where do you sit on the line below and more importantly which direction are you moving in?

What proportion of good habits do you have versus bad habits? Put simply, if you have lots of positive habits and few negative ones, you’ll probably be happier and more successful than if it was the other way round. I believe that success – however you choose to define it – can be measured by the ratio of positive habits versus negative habits.

It has taken me about two weeks to get to the answer which will be the subject of this article. I like these sorts of questions because they force me to think about what is important and what isn’t. If you had to teach your daughter one thing, what would it be? I was caught out the other day by a really difficult question.

Techniques for breaking habits