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Think about the last time you failed when trying to form a new habit. Did you blame failure on willpower? Do you think you need more willpower to be successful?

If so, you’ve got it partly wrong.

Yes, willpower is important. Clearly we need willpower to follow the courses of action we set for ourselves. Yet, willpower alone is not sufficient to get us to form those habits. According to psychologist Roy Baumeister, willpower is like a muscle and it can be depleted from doing tasks that require the control of impulses.

This is why habits can’t be formed from brute force alone. You’ll fail if your method relies solely on your willpower. You’re human, and sooner or later, you’ll have a day where you’re feeling tired and lacking in energy.

The same goes for motivation — it also is important, but definitely not enough on it’s own.

You need to have a reason for your habit change, but more importantly, you need to keep that reason in mind. Not just the cue, and reward, but the big-picture goal that you can receive from having changed your habit. However, motivation will not get you out of bed at 5 in the morning so that you can meditate, neither will willpower. What will help you is a mindset and systems. You need to have developed a proper framework to deal with these situations.

You’re a creature of habit. Embrace your inner animal and automate your life.

At Pavlok we’ve broken down behavior change into a set of specific terms to help you be successful.

The Pavlok system starts with a HABIT, a new behavior that you want to develop in order to lead you to a better life.You can commit to do a variety of things, such as go to the gym, wake up on time, journal each day, or study a new language.

All these have a few things in common. First, they start with a CUE, a certain time of day or event that kicks it off. Second, they each require that you follow a ROUTINE, an action that you perform. So the Pavlok system defines a HABIT as a CUE + ROUTINE. This is the basic framework that makes it all work.

Pavlok has different methods to verify if you’ve performed your Routine. There’s a simple honor system of course, where you can just say if you did it or not. But you can also ask a friend to be a referee to verify that you’ve performed your routine, or you can use the app to check into your gym to verify.

Now we can get more sophisticated. To increase the success rate of sticking to a Habit, we can add Rewards and Punishments. For example, if you don’t write in your journal by 6pm each day, you’ll be shocked. Or if you want to use positive rewards, you can get points or even win money.

By putting all these together, a Cue that triggers a Routine that you verify, reinforced by Punishments and Rewards, Pavlok helps you on your way to building the habits for a better life.