The first step is crucial — keep it tiny. Do not be ambitious yet. That leads to failure. Consistency is what you're shooting for here so make the hurdle as low as possible.
What's the easiest way to make good habits stick? Surround yourself with supportive friends:
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In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness… Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people's transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier… When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. [The Power of Habit]
Keep in mind it takes an average of 66 days to establish a new good habit.
…a new study by the University of College London Psychologist Phillipa Lally and her colleagues helps confirm. On average, her subjects, who were trying to learn new habits such as eating fruit daily or going jogging, took a depressing 66 days before reporting that the behavior had become unchangingly automatic. [Help! How to be slightly happier and get a bit more done]
How do you break bad habits?
The secret to breaking bad habits is to replace them with another habit.
The proportion of patients who didn't receive the recommended care dropped from 70 percent to four percent; the occurrence of pneumonias fell by a quarter; and 21 fewer patients died than in the previous year. The researchers found that simply having the doctors and nurses in the I.C.U. make their own checklists for what they thought should be done each day improved the consistency of care to the point that, within a few weeks, the average length of patient stay in intensive care dropped by half.
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