PDF Summary:Elastic Habits, by Stephen Guise

Most habits start and end the same way: You set a goal to run three miles every morning. Then you twist your ankle, your kid gets sick, or you’re up until 2 a.m. finishing a project. You skip a day, then another—then the habit’s dead. In Elastic Habits, Stephen Guise argues that the problem with traditional habit-building strategies is that they’re too rigid to survive real life. He presents a system where every habit includes multiple activities and effort levels, so you’ll always have a way to succeed, even on your worst days.

We’ll walk through Guise’s process for building these elastic habits, explore variations for complex goals, and supplement his advice with research from psychologists and other productivity experts.

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(Shortform note: While Guise encourages having activity options for flexibility, be careful not to create too many versions. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz argues that having many choices can make you less satisfied with the one you pick. The more alternatives you have, the more you’ll second-guess your decision and wonder if you should have picked a different version. For example, suppose you create five versions of an exercise habit—such as stretching, walking, jogging, lifting, and doing a full workout. If you choose to walk, you might feel unsatisfied with your decision and question whether jogging or a full workout would have been more worthwhile.)

To create choices, first list activities that are central to your habit. For art, this might include painting, drawing, and sculpting. For healthy eating, this might be planning your weekly meals, meal prepping, and cooking nutritious foods. Then, include supporting activities that still move your habit forward even if they’re not your main focus. For art, this could be browsing artwork for inspiration or organizing your supplies. For healthy eating, it could be reading about nutrition or finding new whole-food recipes.

Finally, think about options for different situations. If you usually create art at home, add activities you can do on the go, like sketching in a notebook or taking reference photos. If you usually cook healthy meals at home, include options like choosing nutritious dishes at restaurants or packing healthy snacks for travel.

Tips for Coming Up With Activity Options

If you’re struggling to come up with ideas for your habit activities, Josh Kaufman provides some research tips that may help. In The First 20 Hours, Kaufman recommends gathering at least three resources (books, articles, or videos) and scanning them for commonly recommended approaches, techniques, and materials. This can give you a clearer picture of what the core activities of your habit look like in practice. He also suggests consulting experts, who can point you toward the most effective techniques and steer you away from the wrong ones.

As you brainstorm activity options, however, make sure your list is weighted toward activities that let you perform your habit in meaningful ways. In Atomic Habits, Clear draws a distinction between action and motion: Action means doing the habit itself—picking up the paintbrush, cooking the meal, or going for the run. Motion is researching, planning, organizing, and preparing for the habit. He acknowledges that planning and research can be useful when they help you figure out your first steps, but you should avoid letting motion become the default activity, such as researching recipes instead of cooking, or browsing for inspiration instead of making art.

Step 3: Create Different Effort Levels

Next, Guise suggests you create different effort levels for each habit activity. This gives you options based on how you feel each day. Having multiple levels is motivating in two ways: First, easy goals feel more achievable when you see them next to harder options. Second, completing harder goals feels more rewarding because you know you chose the challenging path when you could have done less.

Guise recommends creating three levels:

• The Easy Option: The bare minimum—a relatively low-effort version you can do when you’re busy or unmotivated. It should only take a few minutes to complete. This level keeps your streak alive, and completing it on a rough day counts as a win.
• The Standard Option: The moderate version—something that requires more effort and time. It should take 10 to 20 minutes, and you should feel good about what you got done—the kind of effort you’d be happy to repeat consistently.
• The Challenging Option: The high-effort version—something you do when you want to push yourself. This option should take 30 to 60 minutes, and it should make you feel proud of what you’ve accomplished.

(Shortform note: For new habits, you may want to focus on the easy option until the habit sticks. James Clear explains that you need to standardize the behavior before you can build on it, and he suggests you plan a hard stop after two minutes if you’re just starting. Once you consistently show up, even in a small way, it becomes easier to do more over time.)

To decide which option to choose each day, Guise suggests you rate your energy, available time, and motivation on a scale of 1 to 10. If the three scores add up to 20 or above, go for the challenging option. If the total is between 14 and 19, try the standard option, and if it’s below 14, stick with the easy option. You should also adjust the effort options over time: If you rarely complete the standard or challenging options, you might need to make them easier. Conversely, if you regularly complete the challenging option, raise the difficulty to keep improving.

(Shortform note: To make this self-assessment easier, consider using a mood- or habit-tracking app like Daylio or Finch. These apps let you log your energy and mood or record your activities in a few minutes each day, and they offer statistics and charts so you can spot patterns over time. You can also better understand how much free time you have by tracking how you spend your time. In 168 Hours, Laura Vanderkam suggests recording what you do every hour for a full week. Then, sort those hours into categories like sleep, work, or social media, and add up the totals. Once you see where your time actually goes, you can get an idea of which effort option tends to fit each day.)

Effort Levels and the Right Amount of Challenge

The three effort levels not only motivate you through comparison, as Guise suggests, but they also help you stay engaged by matching the right amount of challenge to your energy level. In Atomic Habits, Clear calls this the Goldilocks Rule: You’re most motivated when a task sits right at the edge of your current ability (roughly 4% harder than what you can comfortably do). A task that’s too easy is boring, and a task that’s too hard feels hopeless.

Essentially, effort levels let you adjust to this: On a low-energy day, the easy option takes real effort relative to how drained you feel, so it keeps you engaged. On a high-energy day, the easy option would feel mindless—choosing the standard or challenging option gives you the push you need to stay interested. Clear also supports Guise’s advice to raise difficulty over time. As you grow, even the challenging option may start to feel routine. When it does, increasing the difficulty at each level keeps the habit fresh and prevents you from losing interest.

Step 4: Decide on Your Scheduling Method

After you’ve created your effort options, decide when you’ll do your habits each day. Guise offers four scheduling methods, from most to least flexible:

1. Do it anytime that day: Complete your habits any time before the day ends. This gives you the whole day to fit the habits in, which lets you adapt to whatever your day brings.

2. Decide in the morning: Each morning, decide when you’ll complete your habits. This lets you plan around your schedule and energy level while staying flexible.

3. Do it in a time window: Pick a general time frame for each habit, like after dinner but before bed. This works well if your daily routine stays fairly consistent.

4. Follow a fixed schedule: Do your habits at the same time every day or link them to an existing habit (like after your morning coffee).

Guise suggests you start with the most flexible option. If that doesn’t work after a week or two, try the next option down the list until you find what fits your life.

You can approach your daily habits in whatever way works best for you. Some people complete the easy option early in the day to ensure they maintain their streak, then do more if they have time and energy later. Others fit their habits in whenever opportunities appear throughout the day. The most important rule is to do your habit every day, even if you only complete the easy option. Missing one day won’t hurt your progress, but try not to miss two days in a row. If you find yourself skipping often, make your easy option even smaller.

(Shortform note: If you’re not sure which scheduling approach to try first, consider completing the easy option at the start of your day. In Make Your Bed, Admiral William H. McRaven argues that finishing one small task first thing in the morning, like making your bed, gives you a sense of pride and purpose that motivates you to tackle bigger challenges. This helped him during difficult times, such as when he was recovering from a parachuting injury and made his hospital bed each morning to signal that he was ready to move forward. In the same way, knocking out your easy option early can both protect your streak and set a productive tone for your day.)

Consider Your Tendency to Procrastinate

Though Guise suggests starting with the most flexible scheduling method, flexibility may not work for you if you tend to procrastinate. In Procrastination, Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen explain that some people are wired to procrastinate more than others. If any of these four factors apply to you, you may want to start with a fixed schedule or time window instead:

1. Biology: Some people have a genetic predisposition to procrastination, or they have conditions that cause their brains to exaggerate threats, making tasks feel scarier and harder than they really are. People with anxiety disorders, for example, often avoid tasks because their heightened fear makes them seek the relief of avoidance. Similarly, people with ADHD are easily distracted, making it hard to start and finish tasks, and people with depression often lack the energy to get started at all.

2. Self-esteem: People with inflated self-esteem often set impossibly high goals and then avoid working on them because failure would threaten their self-image. On the other end, people with very low self-esteem convince themselves that tasks are too difficult and that trying isn’t worth the effort. Both patterns push tasks into the future.

3. Your upbringing: Growing up in neglectful, high-pressure, or controlling families can also make you more likely to procrastinate. Neglect can make you think you’re incapable of success, while high-pressure environments cause you to fear imperfection. Controlling families can also lead you to procrastinate as a way to reclaim a sense of control over your life.

4. Cultural marginalization: People who belong to a non-dominant culture—such as immigrants and their children—often face extra demands like learning new cultural norms, working multiple jobs, and feeling pressure to represent their entire community. These burdens drain the mental energy you need to start tasks and make decisions.

Step 5: Monitor Your Progress

The last step to creating elastic habits is to track your progress using a visual display. Guise suggests creating a chart that lists each habit, the activity options, and the three effort options. Put it somewhere visible, like on your fridge or bathroom mirror, and mark your completion level each day.

Guise recommends using different marks for each effort level—like a check mark for easy, a smiley face for standard, and a star for challenging. This helps you feel good about any progress you make, no matter how small. It also motivates you to reach for higher effort options when you can, so you’ll see more stars on the chart.

Guise adds that you should update your chart as you go throughout the day. If you complete the easy tier in the morning, mark it down immediately. Then, if you do more later—like upgrading from five push-ups to a full workout—add another mark for the higher tier.

You can make tracking as simple or detailed as you like. Some people just use marks, while others assign points to each level and track their total score. Over time, your chart will show patterns, like which days you typically reach for challenging tiers or when you tend to stick with easy ones. These patterns can help you plan better and adjust your tiers as needed.

Why Habit Tracking Is Effective and How to Avoid Burning Out on It

According to James Clear, habit tracking has three main benefits: It reminds you to act, it motivates you by showing how far you’ve come, and it gives you a hit of satisfaction each time you mark off a completed task. He cites a study in which people who logged their food every day lost double the weight of those who skipped tracking. This is because when you measure your behavior, you can’t fool yourself about what you’re actually doing each day. However, Clear warns that you should only track three or four habits at most. Otherwise, the whole system will feel like a chore, and you won’t do it consistently.

When it comes to choosing a format, Guise’s suggestion to use different symbols for each tier is only one option. There are many creative approaches you can adopt, such as a classic grid-style tracker where you shade in cells each day, a circular tracker drawn with a compass, or a mini calendar layout where each day gets its own small box. You can also add color-coded systems or fun design elements to make your trackers more visually appealing, so the process feels less like record-keeping and more like a creative outlet.

Variations of Elastic Habits

Now that we’ve covered the general process for creating elastic habits, let’s look at different ways to structure them. In this section, we’ll explore three variations: stacked habits that layer multiple steps, complete-set routines that group behaviors into sequences, and mix-and-match habits that let you combine activities from a list.

Variation 1: Stacked Habits

Guise writes that some goals require you to do multiple steps. For these, you can use stacked habits which break a goal into separate actions, with each effort building on the previous one. The easy option requires one action, the standard option requires that action plus a second one, and the challenging option requires all three actions.

These habits work well when certain behaviors should always happen first, or when you want to guarantee that you accomplish one core action every day. For example, if your goal is to study for an exam, your easy tier might be reviewing your notes; your standard tier could add creating flashcards; and your challenging tier might include testing yourself with practice problems.

To create your stacked habit, identify a goal that requires multiple steps to complete. Then, list the necessary actions in order from easiest to hardest. Lastly, create your three levels: easy (one action), standard (two actions), and challenging (three actions). Guise recommends you make your challenging option easier than you normally would, since you’re doing three separate behaviors instead of just one longer activity.

Strengthen Each Step With Immediate Rewards

Starting with the easy tier builds momentum that often carries you into the harder steps. But when a stacked habit is still new, or when you’re having a string of low-energy days, that momentum may not be enough on its own. Adding immediate rewards can give you an extra push toward the standard and challenging tiers. One way to fix this is to reward yourself for completing the standard or challenging tier.

In Good Habits, Bad Habits, Wendy Wood explains that rewards release dopamine—a brain chemical that encourages you to repeat a behavior—but for them to work, they must come within seconds or minutes of finishing a step. Your brain can’t connect a distant payoff (like passing an exam) to the specific action that helped you get there. So if you finish all three tiers of your stacked habit (say, reviewing your notes, making flashcards, and testing yourself with practice problems), reward yourself right away with something enjoyable, like a snack or a few minutes of a show. This trains your brain to link the extra effort of the standard and challenging tiers with feeling good.

You can make these rewards even more powerful by varying them. Wood explains that when rewards vary in size or type, you’ll anticipate them more because you can’t predict what you’ll get. For your stacked habit, this might mean that one day you enjoy a piece of chocolate after hitting the challenging tier, on another day you browse social media for five minutes, and on yet another day you treat yourself to a longer break.

Wood also suggests you make the behavior itself feel enjoyable on its own. For example, you might listen to music you love while reviewing your notes or use colorful materials when making flashcards. Building small pleasures into each layer gives your brain stronger reasons to push past the easy tier and keep going.

Variation 2: Complete-Set Routines

With complete-set routines, you group several different behaviors into a sequence that you complete as a full set. Unlike stacked habits, where you can stop after one or two steps, you must finish the entire routine at whichever level you choose. These routines work well for morning or evening habits where multiple activities naturally flow together.

For example, a creative work session might include warming up, creating, and reviewing your work. Your easy routine might be a five-minute sketching warm-up, working on your project for 10 minutes, and taking a photo of your progress. Your moderate routine might include 15 minutes of practice exercises, working on your project for 30 minutes, and noting what to do next. Your challenging routine might be 30 minutes of skill-building exercises, working on your project for an hour, and critiquing your work while planning improvements.

Because these routines demand more time and energy, Guise suggests counting one routine as equivalent to two regular habits when calculating your limit of three total habits.

(Shortform note: Other experts point out that, unlike habits, routines may never feel automatic. A true habit requires little to no thought, and you feel weird skipping it—like brushing your teeth in the morning. A routine, on the other hand, requires deliberate effort every single time, and skipping it feels easy because you get instant relief from that effort. Therefore, trying to turn multi-step creative sessions or exercise routines into habits sets you up for frustration because these tasks will always demand conscious energy. So, to stay consistent with complete-set routines, consider scheduling dedicated time, expect discomfort, and pre-commit to following through.)

Variation 3: Mix-and-Match Habits

Guise writes that another variation of elastic habits is to create mix-and-match options—a list of activities where how many you complete determines your effort level for the day. Complete any one activity from the list, and you hit the easy level. Completing any two counts as the standard level, and doing any three counts as the challenging level. He suggests you use this habit variation when you have many activities that serve the same purpose, and you want the freedom to choose based on your mood or circumstances.

For example, if your goal is daily stress relief, you might create a list that includes journaling, taking a walk outside, doing a crossword puzzle, listening to calming music, practicing deep breathing exercises, or stretching. Guise recommends keeping your list to about six options, so you don’t spend too much time deciding. He also suggests making all options roughly equal in difficulty—otherwise, you’ll always choose the easiest ones and miss out on variety.

Mix-and-Match Choices Protect You From Feeling Overwhelmed

The freedom to choose from a short list of activities taps into your need to feel in control. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor explains that your sense of control is one of the biggest factors in both happiness and success. When you feel in control, your motivation rises, your stress drops, and you solve problems more effectively.

But when a task feels too overwhelming, you can lose that sense of control. Achor explains that your brain has two competing systems—an emotional one and a rational one. Under heavy stress, the emotional system overpowers the rational one in what he calls an emotional hijack. This makes even small tasks feel impossible, and the resulting frustration creates more stress.

Achor’s solution matches Guise’s mix-and-match approach: Instead of chasing big results all at once, pursue small, achievable progress. On a tough day, picking just one activity from your list gives you a quick sense of accomplishment. That small win calms the emotional brain, helps you think clearly again, and breaks the stress cycle.

Managing Habits When You’re on Vacation

Guise writes that since elastic habits are designed to help you complete them daily, you need a plan for vacations and breaks. He offers several approaches:

1. Skip habits on vacation days: Give yourself permission to skip your habits completely during your break.

2. Modify your habits to fit your vacation: Some habits travel well—for instance, you can read anywhere. For habits that don’t travel well, adapt them. Your exercise habit might become “take a 20-minute walk exploring the area” instead of your usual gym routine.

3. Do extra in advance: Before leaving for your vacation, do extra to cover the days you’ll be gone. For example, if you have an art habit, do some extra studies and sketches before you leave. This way, you won’t feel like you’re losing any progress when you take time off.

4. Use monthly buffer days: Some months have 31 days instead of 30. Treat these extra days as built-in vacation days.

Whatever you choose, make note of your decision on your habit tracker. This keeps your tracking system organized and prevents you from getting confused when you return home.

How Vacations Can Inspire Better Habits

While you might think of vacations as a threat to your daily routines, time off can actually teach you new healthy habits worth adding to your routine. Health experts note that when people take time off, they gravitate toward behaviors that matter to them—spending more time outdoors, moving their bodies through exploration, eating a wider variety of foods, connecting with loved ones, and reading or playing games that stretch their brains. These are all behaviors that could become elastic habits once you return home.

When you return from vacation, the fast pace of everyday life can cause you to lose these behaviors. Therefore, experts suggest you do some reflection before you dive back into your routine. Make a list of pros and cons for the vacation behaviors you’d like to continue. Then make small, sustainable changes to your daily life—park farther from your destination to get more steps, keep the consistent sleep schedule you fell into on vacation, or set aside time every evening for a book or puzzle.