Review: Unlocking the Habit code

Grogan’s well laid out book and fluid writing style provides an accessible formula for developing morning rituals in the form of a collection of habits.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit."

Aristotle

His rationale for focussing on morning rituals seems sound to me - but beware night owls, he has little truck with you.  Essentially, Grogan asserts that building in regular morning habits conserves creative energy and gives you a psychological boost for the day. 

He has developed his own approach called Messi (yes, somewhat dedicated to the footballer) which you commit to practising habits for 21 days

• Meaningful - the habits you want to develop have real meaning to you. 
• Easier - you design your habits to be easy to do
• Social - you find someone to partner with and commit publicly to doing the programme
• Setback ready - figure out how you are going to manage setbacks in advance. 
• Incentivise - create strong positive and negative daily and completion of programme incentives. 

It’s a good compliment to Steve Scott’s book on the same topic of habit formation which has more specific ideas. 

I also appreciated his description of what is a super habit (yep, the prefixing of super to everything seems to be habit de jour in this space at the moment):

• Thankfulness
• Rest your mind i.e. something like meditation
• Affirmations. Essentially, identify limiting beliefs and create positive affirmations that say the opposite.
• New learning
• Sweat i.e. exercise
• Fuel i.e. good food. 
• Outdoors i.e. get out into nature if you can
• Remind yourself of what you want to be e.g. goals etc.  use a mood board, write down goals on paper in your wallet, sketch pictures of future, or simply imagine.
• Make a promise - 3 promises about what will make today great for you (and others). 

That spells out TRANSFORM - cute, if slightly laboured.  The case studies, even if real, fictional or a hybridisation of the two, were a smart way of seeing how this works in real life and to help overcome objections. 

“I see life like on long university education that I never had, every day I’m learning something new”

Richard Branson

I already have a daily set of rituals I do so by and large much of what is in this book wasn’t that new to me. But I have started drinking 500ml of water on waking which is definitely helping with mental performance early on. I might try the genius moment stuff too - although just the name is making me feel self-conscious. 

Verdict: Excellent self contained introduction to habit formation.