Superhuman by Habit: A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a Time

by Tynan

When you first miss a habit, the next occurrence of it should become a top priority. You must execute on that habit at any level possible. Do it perfectly if you can, but do it terribly if that's all you can handle. Just make sure that you do it.

Remember that the power of a habit isn't actually in the individual execution, but in the consistency. It is far far worse to skip doing something than to just do a horrible job of it.

You'll get the greatest compliance by maximizing frequency and minimizing intensity. Daily habits are hard to overlook or miss, and low intensity habits are easy to complete. This combination greatly increases your chances of sticking with a habit.

Work out three days a week, doing three exercises each day. Monday is deadlifts, pullups, and rows. Wednesday is bench press, incline bench press, and curls. Friday is squat or leg press, straight-leg deadlift, and cable crunches. Deadlifts of both varieties are two sets of 4-6 reps, pullups are three sets of 4-6, everything else is three sets of 8-12. After a couple warmup sets of 50% and 75% of your maximum weight, do your maximum. Then drop the weight by ten percent and do the same number of reps as before, plus one. If you have a third set, drop by another ten percent and increase by one more rep. For pullups, if you can do at least 4 with just your body weight, you add weight to the first one. If you hit the maximum in the range the previous week, you increase the weight by five or ten pounds and reset to the bottom of the range. So if you bench pressed 100 at twelve reps last week, do 110 at eight this week.