In this instructional video Matt Ragland introduces a three‑step habit loop—cue, routine, reward—and shows how it underlies both good and bad habits. He explains how to identify each component using everyday examples (making coffee, scrolling on a phone when bored) and demonstrates how to replace an unwanted routine with a more desirable one. Ragland then presents the “tow‑truck trick,” a method for attaching a new habit to an existing solid routine by using the existing routine’s completion as the cue for the new behavior, illustrated with his own journaling practice tied to coffee‑making and phone‑charging. He adds practical tips for reinforcing habits, such as celebrating small wins and setting up environmental cues (e.g., placing a journal next to the coffee maker). The video concludes with a call to action for a free webinar on building journaling habits, inviting viewers to sign up and share their habit‑loop goals in the comments.
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Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to another Bullet Journal productivity video. In this episode, I'm really excited to share with you a simple 3-step habit loop that you can use to build good habits. Now the good news and kind of the bad news is that this 3-step habit loop is already kind of built into your brain. And this is good news because it's already something that you're used to doing. It's bad news because it can be at the root of even some of the bad habits that you might have. So let's go ahead and jump right into it, and I'll show you exactly what those 3 steps are and how you can use it to make or break habits going forward. There are 3 simple steps in any habit loop. There's the cue, the routine, and then the reward. So in the example of making coffee in the morning, the cue is that I wake up and I'm tired. So that's the cue that I have. The routine then goes into making coffee, and the reward is that I feel a lot more alert and I'm ready to go for the day. Really simple. That is how you can put together any habit loop of thinking about what is the cue, what's the routine, and then what's the reward that I'm going to get once the routine is complete. So now that you know your habit loop consists of these 3 really simple steps— the cue, the routine, and the reward— it's easy to recognize how those play out every single day of your life. Like in the coffee example, the cue is that you're tired, the routine is that you make coffee, and then the reward is that you feel more alert and get to drink delicious coffee. Now for more good news, you can also use that same loop structure to understand why you might get stuck in some bad habits. So for example, if you are bored, that would be a cue. You have a routine of looking at your phone, scrolling through social media, and the reward that you get even for a bad habit is, say, like the dopamine hit, or just like, I'm not bored, I'm, you know, just kind of like my attention is taken by looking at this other thing or doing this other thing, even if I don't necessarily enjoy it or like it or it's good for me. So how do you replace a bad habit with a good habit? Well, one thing that I would say is don't stress yourself out about thinking about what is the right good habit. It could just be a pretty mundane thing that you do instead. But basically what you're still going to do is just replace the routine, that bad routine, with something that you would rather do instead. Now what I love about this, and I find really exciting, this is something I kind of uncovered, is that you can use an existing habit loop. You can use the routine step in an existing good habit loop to hook up other new habits to this. Let me explain. So let's take the coffee example that I used at the beginning. Cue is that I'm tired. The routine is that I make coffee. The reward is that I'm alert. So let's take that routine step of making coffee and use it to be the new cue for another routine, another habit loop that I want to create. So for example, this is how I built my journaling habit. And the way that I did this is while I was making coffee, so the cue became making the coffee. Then while the coffee was brewing, I was kind of making the coffee, I would also take that 10 to 15 minutes to write in my journal in the morning. And then the reward is that I had a journal entry that I felt really proud of, and I got to drink delicious coffee, and I felt more alert. So I call this the tow truck trick, and it's a really effective way of hooking existing solid habits into new habits that you want to use to kind of pull this new habit along. Another way that I've done this for a nighttime journaling habit is that I put my journal by the phone charger, because I have a habit, very boring but solid habit, of putting my phone into the charger at the end of the day. But then I see my journal, and it cues, it cues me up for thinking, okay, it's time to get into that journaling routine. I write my highlight of the day, that's pretty much it, and then I feel the reward of having entered my journal highlight, and I feel really good about that. So again, that's the cue of plugging in my phone, the routine of then highlighting my day in the journal, and then the reward of like just completing, completing that loop, having something really fun. You could even do something as like subtle and silly as like, you know, do— doing a little, doing a little terrible dad dance, as I would often do, or, you know, something, something really silly, or just like raising your hands and say like I'm awesome, I did this. Even doing it, that little subtle celebration can feel like a reward to your brain, and it helps lock in that habit loop. One little, like, extra bonus cue that can really, really help solidify a habit loop is by creating an environmental cue for your routine. Now, what I mean by that is instead of having to find my journal when I start to make coffee, what I'll do is I'll set my journal next to the coffee maker at the, you know, the evening before. That way when I go and I start to make coffee, I see my journal right there. I don't have to go looking for it. Like, it doesn't have to go like, you know, right over my head. Like, I don't even think about it. It's right there. I think about it. It's an environmental cue of as I start to make the coffee, I see the journal right there. I'm like, oh yes, it's time for my journaling routine. If you want to know more about how to create these habit loops, and especially how to build a journaling habit, which I think can be one of the highest impact things you can do in your life, So I have something else for you to help you learn more about habits, and especially how to start and build a journaling habit. Because I think that a journaling habit is one of the highest impact things you can do in your life, especially relative to the time that it actually takes you to do, which is, you know, often not much. We just have to build in a habit of doing it. So to help you do that, I'm hosting a webinar on Thursday at— wait, Thursday? No, no, no, no, no, that's not right. It's actually Friday. It's Friday, July 17th at 5:00 PM US Eastern Time, 2:00 PM Pacific time. There's a link in the description below where you can go sign up for this. It's going to be probably about 45 minutes to an hour of free training about how to use habit loops and how to start a journaling habit. 5 different methods of journaling, 3, 4, 5, something like that. And I'm gonna tell you all about it. It's really gonna help you. It's totally free and you will learn a lot. So again, sign up in the description below. Tell me what kind of habit loops you want to build in the description— in the comments, not the description, in the comments below. Would love to talk to you and offer any advice that I have, and also offer advice to each other as you see something that like you could help with. Let's be a community that helps each other. I think that's really powerful and one of the things that I like about interacting with all of you. Thank you so much for watching this video, and I'll see you next time. Thanks, bye!
