How to create a habit using the acronym S.E.E.P

There are probably a million habits you would like to have that you have not set up yet. Be it the usual ones like eating healthy, exercising, or meditating, or more unusual ones, like remembering to look for disconfirming evidence, labeling emotions, or doing spaced repetition for things you'd like to memorize. 

Here I’ll explain an acronym that condenses down a lot of the best steps you can take to make sure you actually establish the new habit you want. S.E.E.P stands for Systems, Easy, Enjoyment, and Passive. A way to remember the acronym itself is to remember that you want habits to seep into your day-to-day life. 

Systems
What system are you going to use to set up this habit? Put that into motion right now. Don’t wait until you’re back home from work and assume you’ll remember. The systems I use and recommend are:

• Phone alarms. I set a timer or a phone alarm to remind me to set up the habit after work or at a better time. 
• Habitica. This is a great way to set up habits in general. It gamifies habit forming and you can use social pressure of others in your party by doing quests to keep on track. 
• Habitica backlog. A problem with Habitica is that there are so many habits you can acquire and if you list them all, it would be cumbersome to use. The solution to this is to have a document or section in Workflowy for storing your backlog of potential habits. Make sure to set up a repeating reminder to use this backlog, otherwise it will join the ever growing pile of documents written but never used. You can put it as weekly “daily” on Habitica, or set a weekly reminder on Google calendar for example. 
• Gmail. Send yourself an email to remember to do something. The benefit of email is that you always check it. It’s a rock solid place to put things and won’t disappear or not get enacted.
• Google Calendar reminders. If you want to do something at a much later date, Google calendar is a great place to store it. Make sure that the event sends you an email reminder, since you always check that. You can also set it to repeat multiple times until you find a time that is actually good to start implementing the habit. 
• Something on your hands. Everybody knows about tying a string around your finger to remember to do something. However, who just has string lying around? Also, having strings on your fingers can certainly raise some eyebrows. I recommend instead moving any rings, watches, bracelets, or hair elastics you might have on your hands or wrists onto the hand they usually aren’t on. Make sure to use the classic mnemonic devices of imagining something surprising and using all of your senses to remember why you moved the object to the other hand in the first place.
• Asana or task management system. Put the habit and the next steps into your task management system. 
• Slack reminders. There are quick commands you can use to send a reminder to yourself at a later time through Slack. You can even set it to recur on specific days and times. 

Enjoyable

Make it something you enjoy. You are far more likely to implement a habit if you like doing it. Usually people think of the default and try that, even if they hate it. The most common example is exercise. When people think they want to be more active, what are the two things everybody always thinks of first? Going to the gym or taking up jogging. Why those things? Most humans hate the gym and find jogging boring. Some people appear to enjoy it, but for the rest of us, there are options that are so much more enjoyable. 

Ways to get exercise that are enjoyable

Dancing

• At home
• Lessons
• Parties
• Video games (Wii)

Team sports

• Soccer
• Basketball
• Hockey
• Tennis

Solo sports

• Hiking
• Biking (on trails or to work) 
• Skiing or snowboarding

This is just a small list and can be applied to practically anything. Say you want to meditate more. How do you make that more enjoyable? You can do the meditations that more reliably make you happy, like loving-kindness or mindful eating. You can pick a meditation object that is beautiful, like a sunset or view of the mountains. 

You get the picture. Try to figure out ways to make the habit something so enjoyable that you’ll want to keep coming back instead of having to force yourself to. 

Easy

If you want to make something a habit, it helps to make it easy. Some general principles for making it easy:

• Short. Doesn’t take a lot of time.
• Can do when tired. If you can do it when you’re tired, mad, sad, or otherwise less than your optimal self (which, let’s face it, will happen) you will be more likely to keep up the new pattern. 

Take for example exercise again. How do you make it easy? Dancing is kinda hard. You have to go to a different building, find dancing opportunities, pay for them, etc. Instead, you could dance at your house. Just roll out of bed, put on some wireless headphones, and dance. 

Let's look at sports as another example. Sports can be hard. You have to have enough people close by and willing to play a regular game with you, and then you have to organize everything. Easier is to join a local community center, find some teams that are fun, and if other friends come, great. Alternatively you can find a sport that you like that is solo or only requires one partner, such as hiking or tennis. 

Passive
I write about passiveness and how it applies to happiness here. At this point in the acronym you try a different tact to establishing habits - you set up the behavior or outcome to happen with little to no maintenance effort after an initial upfront investment. For example, I live in a house that is within biking distance of everywhere. It takes ~5-15 minutes to get anywhere. It’s just a bit too far to walk anywhere, and too short to be worth bussing. The easiest option for me is to bike. The choice of the house initially took a bunch of work, but now, without any continuing effort on my part, I bike about 20 minutes a day without even thinking about it. 

One of the best ways to make something passive is to:

Put positive temptations in your environment

Physical environment:
Put things in your physical environment that tempt you to do good things. For example, put the books you want to read right next to your desk and your couch, wherever you sit the most during the day, both at home and work. These can be self-improvement books, books that develop a skill, classics you've always wanted to read, etc. Another great place to put positive temptations are on shelves that are in eyesight of where you do the desired behavior. For instance, if you store your books in your bedroom but do most of your reading in the living room, they’ll go unread. 

Digital environment
Fill your digital environment, such as your computer and phone, with positive temptations. For example, populate your bookmark bar in your browser with things you want to do more of. Maybe an online course for a hobby you want to pursue or more life satisfaction-inducing alternatives to social media. Set your desktop wallpaper to rotate through things that might tempt you to do the behavior you want. For example, pictures of books you’d like to read, lectures you’d like to listen to, or healthy meals you love the taste of. 

Remove negative temptations from your environment

Physical environment
Remove negative temptations from your physical environment, such as your house or office. See if you can completely get rid of a temptation from your environment, and if you cannot or don’t want to for whatever reason, hide it. For example, don’t have junk food in your house. If you live with people who do not want to do that, put the junk food at the back of a high shelf behind some healthy alternatives, like dried fruit or salted nuts. 

Digital environment
Remove negative temptations from your digital environment, such as your phone and computer. For example, unbookmark things if you don’t want to do them as much. Use programs to automatically stop you. For example, there’s this Chrome extension that replaces your Facebook feed with a quote about procrastination or productivity. Or this one that you can customize with time limits and completely block sites for periods of time, say during work hours. You can even get more heavy duty ones that can block certain apps, which is particularly useful if you’re trying to cut back on something like gaming. 

List of examples you might find useful

Weight and health

What you eat

• Don’t store junk food in the house. You can eat all of it that you want, but you have to walk out to go buy it. 
• Put a fruit bowl or a veggie platter close to your favorite couch or chair. 
• Have a healthy snack always available in your purse or backpack (e.g. nuts, dried fruit, etc.). Make sure it’s something you enjoy eating, and remember that nuts are surprisingly good for you. 
• Have a pillbox with all of the supplements you would like to take, so you don’t have to open a bunch of bottles. Include a jellybean in each day to encourage you to take the pills. 

Exercise

• Live in a place where biking is the most convenient mode of transport. 
• Do sports at your local community center. 
• Make it your morning routine to dance with wireless headphones for 3-5 songs. It’s a great way to wake up with physical activity that is both easy (you don’t even have to get out of your pajamas, let alone go for a run in bad weather) and enjoyable (if you like dancing that is). 

Life satisfaction

• Put good books around the house within easy reach of your couch and bed.
• Put the hobby you want to do really close to your couch, such as a musical instrument or drawing implements.
• Set your desktop wallpaper to rotate through motivational things. Refresh it every once in awhile with a new theme or a fresh set of photos. 
• Make your object of meditation something enjoyable. You can meditate on anything that’s relatively repetitive or still, like a beautiful view, slowly eating a small square of chocolate, or the sound of birds.