A simple rule for lifelong habits: how I stuck with writing for 3652 days.

Habits don’t fail you because you’re weak.  

They fail because they’re stuck in the wrong place.  

Let me explain...  

Today we unpack a simple, powerful rule for consistency: put each habit where it naturally fits your life so it stops feeling like work.  

Think of your day like a kitchen - your daily coffee maker sits by the water and the mugs, not in the back of a cabinet. Your routines deserve the same thoughtful placement.  

Years of weekly training, hundreds of days of writing and language practice, and long-running reading and meditation - I break down exactly how the placement principle keeps these habits alive.  

We explore how friction hides in tiny details: a gym that requires a drive, a planner out of reach, a walk in an unsafe or unpleasant area, or a “react first” habit embedded in chaotic meetings. When the tools, timing, and context don’t match the behavior, every repetition feels like a negotiation. When they do, starting will NEVER become automatic, habits will not survive.  

You’ll learn how to find the perfect slot for each habit by mapping your energy peaks and valleys, pairing high-focus tasks with your sharpest hours and low-effort rituals with natural rhythms.  

If your goal is lifelong change, design beats discipline: reduce friction, keep cues consistent, and let ease and automaticity grow from repetition.  

Ready to make your routines feel seamless instead of heavy?  

Press play, pick one habit, and move it to a better place in your day.  

If this resonated, share it with a friend, start a mini listening club, and leave a quick review so more people can build habits that last.  

Transcript

Why Habits Fail And A Simpler Way

Personal Streaks That Last

The Kitchen Metaphor For Habits

Make Habits Frictionless In Real Life

Find The Perfect Place In Your Day

Morning As Prime Time For Consistency

Key Takeaway And Listener Actions

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello and welcome to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change and personal and collective transformation. And just someone who's really passionate about unlocking more of our human potential for more positive impact in the world and to just make awesome things happen and be happy and fulfilled in our lives. Today, by the end of this podcast, it's gonna be a short one. It's gonna be a mini zode before releasing our longer guest episode. On today's podcast, you're gonna get an insight into why you might not be as good as you'd like to be with sticking or building habits that stick with you for weeks, months, years, sometimes maybe for till the rest of your life. Today you're gonna get a clue, a better understanding of why you might not be as good at it and what is one easy, simple way to get better at it instantly. It's this method or principle doesn't require a lot of work at all. It does require a different kind of approach to building habits, to creating new routines, whether that's not being triggered by certain things in your workplace, at home, certain uh phrases, conversations, or the way people treat you or talk to you, maybe not being triggered, but instead instead of reacting, responding, maybe giving a different kind of feedback or planning differently for your work life, for your personal life. Maybe it's uh leading people differently, maybe it's listening in a different way, and being more and giving other others more space to speak their mind, to discover what they truly care about and what they think about and uh what's on their mind before speaking your mind. Maybe it's a different way of approaching your day-to-day life, your routines, whatever that is. For most of us, there are things that we'd like to change, things that we'd like to change permanently. And so today's podcast is gonna give you a really good clue into how to do so easier, simpler, without resistance, instead of trying to willpower your way through it or get motivated. Before we jump into what and why, I wanna read you some of my personal statistics. Today I wrote a blog, and the blog is linked in the show notes. The name of the blog, how I stuck with writing for 10 years and been going to the gym for 1304 weeks. The first rule of streaks that stick. My blog. I've been writing a daily blog for 550 days straight, one per day. And guys, by the way, I did it while I was flying for two days straight when I didn't feel like my full self and I was kind of sick. I did it changing time zones and not having enough sleep in me. So 550 days. I've been writing consistently, not every day, but consistently for at least 10 years. I started my blog on Medium, for example, in 2015. I've been coaching for at least 5,664 days. Even longer if you count my unofficial coaching before all the certifications that I did in school and throughout college. I've been meditating for 9131 days since I was 13, maybe not every day, but quite consistently. I've been in the gym every week for 25 years, except for a couple of weeks when I was recovering from a motorbike accident. My Kindle says I've been reading for 365 weeks in a row. And I just celebrated yesterday actually a 30 a 300-day streak on Duolingo with my Italian. So parle Italiano? Anybody? I might not know everything about everything, guys, but I could teach the world a thing or two about how to create habits that stick. Hear me out. A very simple metaphor that you all can relate to. If you have a house more or less permanent and you spend some time in the kitchen. So here is the first lesson: building streaks that stick one-on-one. When you buy a new gadget for your kitchen, like a cattle, or maybe this like waffle maker or cake or cupcake maker that you would use once on Christmas or you know, first few days when you're excited, and then once a year. So when you buy a new kitchen gadget, depending on what kind of gadget it is, you need to find the right, the perfect full place for it to be used in and appreciate it either every day or once in a while on Christmas. If you buy something like coffee maker or tea maker that you know you're gonna be using every single day, sometimes several times per day, you probably know that you're not gonna be putting it somewhere like in the corner away from water where you have to. Even a slight friction there would get that would make you crazy because you do this thing every day. So you wanna you will create naturally as little friction as possible, even right away or over time. You're gonna put it right there by the water source, you're gonna put the cups there, you're gonna put everything you need to make your coffee there, because that's the thing you're gonna be doing every day. So you're not gonna want to feel like additional work, a job, a hustle. You wanna get it done and out of the way sometimes when right when you wake up half asleep. So you don't want to be looking for that coffee, also. If there is tea that you make every day, you don't usually put it away somewhere like at the back of some cupboard or somewhere where you need to step on a chair and then grab it, right? It's gonna be somewhere right there, like usually by your tea kettle, so you and with your cup. So you put the thing in, you make your tea, and you are on your way. And then something like a waffle maker or ice cream maker or some swee, what do you call it, to like cooking in the vacuum. The point is, you some devices you use very often, and some once in a while, and then you put them away somewhere in the cupboard. Sometimes you even forget that they that you had them in the first place. The worst kind of scenario is when you need to use something every day or you know, quite often, and it's in this inconvenient place, and every time you use it, you feel like, oh, you know, it's an additional job. Why does it have to feel so hard? And the chances are you're not gonna be using it as much if you put it somewhere there where it feels a little bit more work than your kettle. So, your habits, the habits that you want to make stick for a long period of time. You know, I have clients, most of my clients actually come to me because they want to build certain habits, routines for life, or at least until they figure out a better way or something else they want to do. They want to build long-term routines, whether that's routines that they do for work, like reflecting, planning, prioritizing things on your calendar in a different way, speaking to people in a different way, so you build deeper, better, more fulfilling relationships. Whatever that is, my clients come to me to build this long-term, sticky, consistent habits. And one thing that I'm focused all the time on is helping them to figure out how to make it as easy as it possibly can be, just like that kettle, that coffee maker, that tea maker that you use every day. It's gonna feel frictionless, it's gonna become the flow of your daily life, like almost seamless, that simply and again seamlessly just gets into the flow of your cooking, if life was a kitchen, which is kind of is the same when I I used to travel a lot more. 15 years I lived as a digital nomad, and I changed my place of living, not as often as a lot of digital nomads, but probably every half a year, sometimes maybe every couple of months. And what I learned really fast is I couldn't exist if the things that I need to do every day, like exercise or like grocery shopping that I don't do every day, but I do it every week. I did not want to make things that I needed to do regularly feel like additional job. And that's why before renting an apartment, before renting a house, I would see where are all those things that I know I would need. So it's not out of the way that I have to play my whole day around, or that I need to take a car or a taxi or some public transfer transportation with some weird truth. Even walking, I do walking two, three times per day. I always looked for the place where I could do that comfortably and willingly and enjoyably every single day. The worst scenario I would check out some apartments, and the apartment would be great, the building would be amazing, but I would walk out and outside there's like traffic or really not nice place, not safe place to walk. It just didn't feel right. And so I would say no to the apartment because I know that I'm gonna be walking three times per day. I don't wanna feel like crap pretty three times per day, and I don't want to feel like I don't want to do what I enjoy doing and what works for me, and I would like to do no matter what, two, three times per day. And the same goes to I share it with you how I've been writing for God knows, I don't even remember when I started. I think it started since I was at school because we had to do so many compositions, so I writing became a part of me, or training, or coaching, or reading, or meditating. It has become s like the seamless part of my life because I found first I focused on finding the perfect place in my day, that perfect place on my kitchen counter, which made this routine feels like no work at all. That's why my place now where I've been staying more than a year now in Cape Town and South Africa. I walk to my gym. I don't need to drive there and I enjoy that walk. My groceries right there, I can walk there. Now, once a week it's a lot of groceries, so I I do take an Uber back, but I don't need to drive an Uber there or a car. I can get what I need easily, enjoying my walks, enjoying my daily lifestyle and my walks. I have an amazing place where I absolutely love walking, amazing people, neighbors I meet, and there are some cars, but not so many, and it's green and it's beautiful. Writing. It's first thing in the morning because I know that my day after the morning is so much less in my control. So if I want to do my writing, it has to happen first thing in the morning, also because my mind is in a creative, fresh, very focused, very clear stage that writing happens automatically. I don't have a lot of resistance, I don't have a lot of to work with a lot of my willpower or motivation, there is not much clutter in my mind. So I know that writing works perfectly in my morning routine, ideally with my morning coffee and after exercise. Or before exercise also works, and those things work. I found that perfect place, that perfect kitchen counter where this routines sit perfectly well. Like with my Duolingo, I do it after dinner, so that's a good way for me to finish my dinner, give my stomach a little bit of time today, just before I go for my evening walk. So that's why where my Duolingo sits. And I have dinner almost every night, and I have Duolingo lessons almost every night. And my reading happens before my bedtime. At least 30 minutes before my bedtime, I do my reading. So the lesson here, or how you build streaks that stick, the lesson here is to find that perfect place that makes the whole routine, the whole habit, the whole procedure seamless. And you can manufacture that seamlessness with everything that you want to do consistently. And especially with the things that you want to become a part of your personality, you want to become of your workflow or your daily flow. You want to experiment first and figure out like, okay, based on everything that I know about myself, based on my preferences, based on my knowledge about how my days usually go, and also my knowledge about how I feel at different times of the day, and obviously the freedom that I have to organize certain routines in my day, based on all of that moving forward, or if it's a temporal thing, like for now, where can I park it? Where can I put it on my counter? So it becomes as seamless as possible. And that is where you start. You don't start with motivation, you don't start with the hardest thing ever it can possibly be. You don't start with trying to change yourself or other people or figuring out the perfect ever scenario in your life? No, for right now, where you are in your life, where is this perfect place? Because also we don't always have perfect kitchens. Sometimes it's just the corner and you have to deal with that for some time or for a while. So, where in your life right now can this thing that you are trying to do fit as seamless as possible? Now, obviously, if there are things like exercise that you want to do for the rest of your life, you want to figure out that time of the day when you are more likely to do it for the rest of your life, where you almost always have some freedom. And for most people, I coach for 18 years, for most people, it's their morning. So, where in your day is that perfect place, that perfect counter for the thing that you need to do in an ongoing fashion? Don't make it into that waffle maker that you need for Christmas, make it into that kitchen. Make it it into your coffee or tea maker that you need to use every day. I hope, guys, that was useful. It made you think about your habits, your routines in a different way, and maybe you now have this aha moment. I'm like, ah, that's why I couldn't stick with it. Something would always get in the way. And maybe you're right, something always does get in the way. So you need to change the way of the way this thing works in your life. So I hope this podcast was useful. If it was, please do share it, listen it with other people in your life, with your friends, with your family, with your relatives, anyone you care about and you want them to do the things that they need to do easier. Please do share, please discuss, maybe make it into a podcast listening club where you learn and then discuss and put it into practice. Review, rate this podcast to reach more ears all around the world. We are a global podcast available on all continents except uh Antarctica, I think. So please do share. That would make my day go up almost all the way. So, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Have an amazing day, and till next time, keep changing and keep growing.