Strategies for making your habits stick: The 2 day rule.

New year, clean slate, a chance to be a better version of 2022 self. It’s so easy to get motivated to start a habit with the onset of a new trip around the sun, but so hard to keep that motivation when life happens.

This month we’re going to share some research-backed strategies that might help make 2023 the year you actually stick with that habit.

Kicking off the line up is one of my favorites: The 2-day rule.

I love this strategy mostly because it factors in the human side of things, some days crap just hits the fan and you don’t get to focus on you. Most of us have the best intentions, but we also think that if we don’t do this habit perfectly that we’ve failed. Wrong

The 2 days rule, created by the filmmaker Matt D’Avella, is simple: Do not allow yourself to skip a new habit for two days in a row.

The simplicity of this rule allows for the days when crap just hits the fan and despite our best intentions, we have to put out fires and cannot focus on ourselves. But the next day you’re back on it and missing one day has no significant impact on the formation of that new habit.

The objective is repetition not perfection and the 2 day rule makes a very simple yet significant case for that.