How to Build Healthy Habits That Actually Stick

Understanding healthy habits

A habit is a behavior that becomes automatic through repetition. Neuroscience tells us that repeated actions carve neural pathways that make those actions easier over time; what starts as a choice that takes a lot of effort eventually requires little conscious thought at all.¹

This is why habits are so powerful, whether they're good or bad habits. A routine that supports your energy, focus, and well-being reinforces itself. But so does one that undermines it. The goal of learning how to develop good habits isn't to be perfect, but to raise your baseline—tilting your daily defaults toward continuous improvement and the version of yourself you're trying to become.

Steps to build good habits

There are some basic tenets to building good habits that are backed by behavioral science.

• Begin with behaviors that are smaller than you think they need to be. The secret to lasting habits? Start smaller than you think you need to. Taking care of easier, smaller details makes starting easier, and starting is often the most difficult part.²
• Tie new habits to habits you already have. This is sometimes referred to as habit stacking. Tack on a new habit to one you're already consistent with. For example, if you're having trouble committing to exercise every day, put on your workout clothes right after brushing your teeth to lower the barrier to getting started.
• Make it easy for yourself to do the right thing. Research suggests your environment impacts your behavior more than your motivation.³ Keep a large bottle of water on your desk if you want to drink more. Keep healthy snacks visible and close at hand if you want to eat healthier. Anything you can do to lower the friction between wanting to do something and doing it can help you succeed.
• Reward yourself for your wins. Your brain's reward system reinforces behaviors you want to repeat. Acknowledging the win, even briefly, helps cement the behavior.

Tips for developing healthy routines

Understanding healthy habits and actually establishing good habits are two different things. Here's what works:

• Protect your mornings. The way you start your morning often dictates the rest of your day. Morning routines work because they're a chain of small behaviors that reinforce one another, not one willpower-driven act. They're habits within a habit. When one behavior triggers the next, the cluster becomes automatic.
• Prioritize recovery. Missing a day doesn't define your progress—how you restart does. How you respond the day after you miss matters more than the miss itself.
• Frame habits around your identity. Habits that connect to how you see yourself often feel more sustainable than outcome-focused ones.⁴
• Track, but don't obsess. An old-school habit tracker can be as simple as a notebook or an app that pings you when it's time to enter your info. A visual representation of your streak creates accountability and momentum.

Common challenges and solutions

Consistency matters more than perfection. Even people who understand how to form good habits run into predictable obstacles. Knowing them in advance makes them easier to manage.

• All-or-nothing thinking: When your routine isn't 100% perfect, it's easy to feel like you've failed and want to quit altogether. The solution? Progress over perfection. A 10-minute walk still builds the habit and still supports your health.
• Expect motivation to wane, because it could. It's not a flaw in your character, it's just biology. If you want to build habits that don't rely on motivation, build systems. Habits are behaviors. Systems remind you to perform those behaviors whether you feel like it or not. Think routines, environments, and reminders.
• Real life happens. Travel, stress, and illness will throw off your routine—that's inevitable. The strongest habit-builders don't try to shield themselves from disruption—they have a plan to return to their foundation quickly. Know your minimum viable habit for busy days and keep it in your back pocket.

Maintaining your healthy habits

Learning how to build a healthy habit comes down to a simple formula: They're easy enough to perform daily, they provide some type of perceived reward, and they don't require you to change your entire routine to adopt them. That's why it's so important to get your base-level habits dialed in.

Once you know you're covered on sleep, movement, and nutrition, you'll have an easier time stacking habits on top of that foundation. Your body has more fuel to burn, your day has more built-in rewards, and you won't feel like you're running on empty. That matters—fatigue makes every new behavior feel harder than it is.

AG1 Next Gen was formulated with that foundation in mind. One scoop daily includes 75+ vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced ingredients, including beetroot, acerola cherry, papaya, pineapple, and matcha to help support your nutritional foundation so the other habits can build upon it.

If you're going to do one thing for your health today, make it AG1 Next Gen.

References:

1. Lally P, van Jaarsveld CHM, Potts HWW, Wardle J. How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world. Eur J Soc Psychol. 2010;40(6):998-1009.
2. Fogg BJ. Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2019.
3. Wood W, Neal DT. A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychol Rev. 2007;114(4):843-863.
4. Clear J. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery; 2018.