30% OFF·code APEX30

Keystone habit

How do I deal with keystone habit?

A keystone habit is one whose adoption causes other behaviours to shift without being targeted directly. Sleep, movement and a fixed wake time are the usual candidates, because each changes the conditions under which every other decision is made.

What to do about it

Fix sleep before you fix anything downstream of it.

Books that work on this

Each is a 90-day programme. Start with the first — later books assume the work in the earlier ones.

Part of the Discipline series.

How people say it

Nobody looks this up by its clinical name. These are the ways it actually gets said.

  • one habit that changes everything
  • where do I even start
  • which habit first
  • the domino habit
  • fixing sleep fixed everything
  • best first habit to build
  • one change with the biggest effect

Written by Brian Spiker, who has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — the receipts. More terms in the encyclopedia.

About the author

Brian Spiker has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — a real service business with real customers, real Google reviews, and 13 years of work most self-help authors will never do.

He writes the way operators talk: brutal, funny, and built from work that actually has to get done. Verify everything at spikercarpetandtilecare.com.