Nir Eyal

I think there's three criteria.

The three criteria are, number one, have you met your mile marker?

Okay, this can be figurative or literal.

But let's say if it's, you know, trying on a new belief, trying on a liberating belief, and we can talk about how do you find your liberating beliefs and limiting beliefs, but once you have a new liberating belief to try on, or a new practice, let's say I'm gonna try and exercise for 30 days, or I'm gonna try posting on YouTube or TikTok, or I'm gonna try this new business venture, or try reading this book instead of watching TV, or whatever the case might be, this hard thing that I'm going to try,

You need to have a set number of days that you're going to try it.

It doesn't necessarily matter how many days.

There's a bunch of mythology of like, oh, a habit takes 44 days.

That's not true.

It's just setting a mile marker.

Why is that so important?

That when you say to yourself, I'm not going to quit until I do this for X number of days, you're inoculating yourself from quitting as soon as it gets hard.

So what you don't want is, oh, this is painful.

This isn't even worth it, let me stop.

You're gonna say, no, I'm gonna go for the next mile, and then I'm gonna reassess.

So whether it's a week, a month, a year, whatever it is, get to that mile marker before you quit, whatever it is that you said in advance.

The second criteria is, am I still learning?

So if you're failing, failure does not mean you should quit.

Failure does not mean you should quit.

If you are learning from failure, persist.

Let me give an example.