Seth Godin recently mentioned [1] making and breaking habits. As humans, habits are what keep us alive. Almost every behaviour you do is either a habit, or built on habits. From walking and talking to putting on your socks and combing your hair.

While it is possible to break habits, it’s much easier to just replace them with a new one. Offer a better option, and you get a better result. When you were much younger, you learned and built a crawling habit. After a while you learned the more effective transport habit of walking. Regardless of your age now, you can still go back to your crawling habit. As the old saying goes - it’s just like riding a bike.

Of course, knowing the right stop where to insert the new habit is the challenge. To find it, I usually start with the question - “What is the real or imagined positive value that you get from this habit?”

If you were marketing a new product, and wanting to build a new habit in your customers, that question needs a little modifying. You may want to use the [2] Creating Passionate Users mantra of helping them to “kick ass”.

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