How to maintain habits without failing

Why some people maintain their discipline and others drop out

Mar 10, 2025

🏷️ Categories: Behavior, Habits, Deliberate practice.

Everyone has experienced it at least once.

You've tried to change a habit you don't like, you start with your motivation sky high, you tell yourself that this time it's going to happen. One day, two days, a week... and everything goes well, but suddenly, you fail one day. Maybe because of tiredness, maybe because you couldn't or maybe because something unexpected happened. The point is that you fail that day and this is where the real problem of all habits arises.

Maintaining the habit.

Psychological research shows that failing on a single day does not alter long-term performance (Lally et al., 2009).

Eating a hamburger one day does not ruin a healthy eating habit.
Skipping one day of exercise does not cause you to lose all your progress.

The problem is not in the first mistake, it is in repeating the mistake.

Failing several days, especially if they are back-to-back, breaks the habit and performance declines (Armitage, 2005). Repeating more than one failure does weigh you down, and the gap between those who rarely fail and those who fail from time to time grows and grows to gigantic differences in results. Consistency makes a difference.

Let's talk about how not to break habits and how to get back to them quickly.

Avoid the second failure

You have already seen that the problem is not in failing one day.

It's what you do the next day that will really determine your progress...

If after that burger you follow it up with pizza the next day, and then for dessert you have an ice cream, you're at the beginning of the drift. And so, because of the marginal cost trap, we fall back into the same old bad habits.

One mistake is just an exception.

Two mistakes are the beginning of a turnaround.

I have experienced this as a writer. If one day I don't write, the next day I'm still the same. But when I once stopped for 3 days, the return was very slow, it took me a week to get back to my normal rhythm. Don't beat yourself up or beat yourself up if this happens to you. The mentality is not ‘I can never fail’, it's ‘If I fail today, I won't fail tomorrow’.

Don't aim for perfection, it's impossible. Aim to be extremely consistent.

Just create mechanisms so that on the second day you get back on track.

1. Make it small

Don't try to make up for the day you missed with double the effort, you'll burn yourself out.

Instead of focusing on the results, focus on getting back into the habit. If it's not possible to do it as usual, do a scaled down version so you don't fall off the wagon.

If you missed the gym and can't make it to the second day, exercise where you can, even if it's less time than usual. Do a shortened version of your routine.
If you can't follow your diet 100%, at least choose the healthiest option you can, don't give in to temptation several days in a row.
If you can't write on your regular computer, write on a notebook or phone.

Keep up the habit as long as you can until you get back to normal.

I'm telling you first hand. Whenever I go out in nature, I always carry a notebook. I have written while camping in the forest, in the desert, on mountain tops and even in caves. Going out in nature is not the enemy of writing.

I never give up the habit because I know what happens to me if I stop for more than a day.

2. Have a routine

Many people start their sporting activities on 1 January with a burning motivation. It is impressive to see their energy. By February they are halfway through. Why? Because motivation is not reliable, it comes and goes.

Discipline and a good environment are reliable. Here are ways to maintain routines:

Thanks to you, who read me, I write without fail. There are people on the other side who expect me to write and that greatly increases the chances that I will keep up the habit. This is the pre-commitment technique. Let expectations encourage you.
Another technique is to set a schedule. If you establish that you will read every night at 9 o'clock and set aside time so that nothing demands you at that time, it will be very difficult to skip it when the clock strikes 9. This is a temporary trigger and greatly reduces consecutive habit failure.

3. Change the environment

Human beings act according to their environment. Habits become instinctive because the environment gives signals about what to do and what not to do. So, if you want to avoid failing in your habit again, change your environment.

Imagine that you want to read more but you are always running out of time, you can do 2 things:

Facilitate the good habit: Join a book club, read books together with your friends and always carry the book you are reading with you.
Hinder the bad habit: Uninstall apps, and restrict usage with Forest or Freedom.

If you reduce the friction to do the right thing and increase the friction to do the wrong thing, your success will be inevitable.

Everyone misses a habit one day. The difference is made the next day. There will be those who begin to drift back into their bad habits and there will be those who return on the second day to their good habit and maintain their steady progress.

Aspire to be one of those who return on the second day.

They are the most dangerous people in the world.

Still curious? Here are related letters:

✍️ Your turn: For which new habit do you plan to apply these concepts?
💭 Quote of the day: ‘Step by step, day by day, your choices will shape your actions until they become habits where practice makes them permanent’. Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect.

Bye, take care! 👋

References 📚

Carden, L., & Wood, W. (2018). Habit formation and change. Current Opinion In Behavioral Sciences, 20, 117-122. URL
Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2009). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal Of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009. URL
Armitage, C. J. (2005). Can the Theory of Planned Behavior Predict the Maintenance of Physical Activity? Health Psychology, 24(3), 235-245. URL