The magic of “Never miss twice”

I’m always surprised by how many of my clients have never heard of the “Never miss twice” or “Don’t break the chain” rule so I thought I would share it here with my readers.

The source of "Never miss twice"

The rule can be attributed to several sources but the first time I came across it was from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits and his reference to a habit that comedian Jerry Seinfeld developed to become a better comedian.

Jerry’s theory is that to become a better comic, you need to write better jokes.  And to write better jokes, you had to write every day.  His suggestion, to make this daily writing habit a reality is to put a big calendar on your wall.  Every day that you write a joke, you put a big X on the calendar.  After a few days, you have a chain of X's.  Your goal is to not break that chain.

Now, inevitably life happens, and you will break that chain, and this is where the magic comes of ‘never miss twice’.  If you miss a single day, well that’s just an outlier, some odd thing in the universe that interrupted your daily habit.  Maybe your car broke down, your dog was sick, or you got the flu.  The trick is to see this as a simple outlier and get right back to it the next day and not to let this one day become two or three days.  Missing once is an outlier, missing twice is a pattern that can lead to a habit.

"Never miss twice" and your health

So how does this apply to your health?  Well, I’m a big fan of habit tracking for this very reason. 
Whether you’re trying to drink more water, eat more vegetables, get to bed before a certain time or incorporate activity into your day, these are all things that you can track.  These are all habits that can form a chain, and these are all things that just won’t happen some days because life will get in the way.  When these exceptional days occur, it’s important to pause and see how you can make it happened the next day so that you never miss twice.

Why choose "Never miss twice"?

There are several reasons but here are a few:

1) Avoids black and white thinking

So often when we mess up, we feel we have failed.  Our perfectionistic tendencies can take over and before we know it, we’ve ditched any plans we had to improve our health habits.
With never miss twice, we accept that sometimes we will make a mistake.  It reminds us that it’s part of the process and not remotely unexpected.  It also reminds us that the best thing we can now do is to figure out how to get back on track, so we don’t miss a second time.

2) Focus on the process, not the results

The human body is a complicated thing.  Whether we’re looking to improve our fitness, change our body composition, or get more sleep, sometimes the results don’t come as quickly as we would like and sometimes, they don’t come when we expect them. 
By focusing on the consistency of the behaviours that lead us to results as opposed to the results themselves, we can focus on celebrating our success in following the process as opposed to achieving the results that may just not have shown up yet.  

3) Builds self-efficacy - belief in our abilities

Self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to execute certain behaviours to reach a goal.  When we see the chain of consistent behaviour growing and when we practice getting right back at it when we do miss a day, we start to believe in ourselves.  This belief in our abilities has been shown to improve our motivation which begins a positive upward spiral.  We take a small action and do it repeatedly which makes us believe that we can maintain this behaviour long-term which motivates us to do the behaviour more.  This is the reason I start coaching clients with small achievable behaviours that will move into this upward spiral.
If you need help building up the habits required to achieve the health goals you have in mind, consider health coaching.  You can sign up for a free consultation here.