Welcome to Day 5 of the Club 12 Habit-Building Challenge!
Here’s what we’ve covered so far:
Day 1: Pick your most important habit—then shrink it down
Day 2: Use habit stacking to trigger yourself to action
Day 3: Make starting your habit frictionless
Day 4: Anchor your habit with a reward you crave
Here’s what we’re looking at today, in our final day of this series…
How to perform your habit consistently
When we set out to make significant changes of any kind in our lives, the one thing we can always be sure of is this:
We’re going to run into obstacles along the way.
You’re going to get sick. You’re going to have to travel.
You’re going to have a terrible day at work, and you’ll mess up and miss taking action on the habit you want to build.
And you know what?
That’s completely fine…
As long as you handle it properly—which most people don’t.
Most folks get thrown off when they mess up…
They miss one day, which often turns into two days, which often spirals into missing a full week.
And before they know it, they’ve given up on their habit altogether.
But people who approach building habits strategically anticipate potential challenges and prepare themselves in advance—by putting a safety net in place…
In a famous study about habit formation in the European Journal of Social Psychology,1 researchers discovered that when participants were working on developing habits, missing one day of doing their desired behavior did NOT materially affect the habit-formation process - this is a good thing, because it tells us that occasional slip-ups are part of the process.
But it’s also kind of obvious.
Here’s the not-so-obvious part: While the study proved one miss is statistically insignificant, behavioral experts also note that it’s the psychological fallout of messing up that can kill the habit…
In other words: If you’re a perfectionist and you end up missing a day, it can make you feel like you failed at building habits completely. And that feeling of failure often leads to missing more days.
Putting that caveat aside - for most people, missing a single day is a statistical blip. But missing two days in a row is the beginning of a brand new neural pathway—a new habit of NOT doing the thing you set out to do.
Bottom line:
Perfection isn’t required to build a habit; consistency over the long term is.
The danger isn’t the first mistake; it’s the downward spiral that can follow it.
So, how do you keep yourself from missing more than a day of taking action? And how do you stop yourself from spiraling - and giving up on your habit completely?
You anticipate and mitigate against potential obstacles that might get in your way as you work on building your new habit.
One of the most powerful ways to do that is to put contingency plans in place so you can stay as consistent as possible. If you miss one day, forgive yourself, but be sure to have a backup plan so you never miss twice.
For example, I’m big on exercise; I do something active every day. And I don’t like to miss even a single day. Out of the 365 days we had last year, 360 of them were training days for me. Which means I missed five days of training in 2025—each on separate, isolated days, but never back to back.
My contingency plan for consistently keeping up with my workout habit is simple:
If something happens that keeps me from doing a full workout, I do a partial workout. If I’m crunched for time one morning, and I’m unable to do a full 60-minute workout, I cut my training session in half.
If I can’t do five sets of deadlifts, I do three. If I’m unable to do three, I do two. Instead of running five miles, I run three. The key is to stay as consistent as possible, even if that means half-assing it sometimes.
Consistency is key… Even if you don’t feel like it. Even if you don’t “have the time”. Doing something is always better than doing nothing at all.
So give yourself permission to be imperfect, AND have a backup plan in place so you never miss twice.
Here are a few more examples of using contingency plans to keep up with your habit:
“If I miss my morning workout, then I’ll do 20 pushups before bed.”
“If I miss my reading habit, then I’ll read one page during my lunch break.”
“If I’m unable to journal three pages, then I’ll journal one sentence about one thing I’m grateful for.”
“If I can’t cook a healthy meal from scratch, I’ll pick up a grilled chicken sandwich and a salad from Chic-fil-A.”
“If I’m unable to meditate for 20 minutes today, I’ll take three slow breaths during my lunch break.”
Again: You’ll dramatically increase your ability to make a habit take hold if you have a contingency plan—or a “Plan B”—in place for whenever things go wrong.
Actionable insights
Your final challenge is to create your own contingency plan to keep yourself consistent with your own habit.
Use the following formula to write yours down right now:
If I’m unable to do [THE HABIT I WANT], then I will [DO THIS INSTEAD].
How to expand your tiny habit
Over the last five days, you:
identified the one most important habit you want to build, and then you turned that large habit into a tiny habit to make it manageable (Day 1)
created a habit stack to help you do your habit (Day 2)
set up a frictionless environment to make execution less effortful (Day 3)
selected an immediate reward to give yourself after doing your habit (Day 4)
created a contingency plan to keep yourself consistent on your worst days (Day 5)
Now, I’ve got one last thing to share with you as we wrap up this challenge…
On Day 1, I asked you to select your single most important habit—but then I asked you to turn it into a tiny habit.
So, if your most important habit is to lift weights for 45 minutes a day, and your tiny habit is to train for just 15 minutes a day…
How do you scale UP to your desired habit of training for 45 minutes a day?
