Why Your Habits Don't Stick (And Why It's Not Always About Discipline)
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → The Quietly Disruptive Business Podcast
It's the last week of January, that time of year where founders find themselves in one of two camps, especially when it comes to habits, goals, and things they wanted to change when the New Year flipped onto the calendar.
Camp 1 is where those habits or goals you made in the New Year are starting to stick. You've gone through the wobbles, the ups and downs, and figured out how to make it work.
Camp 2 is a little different. It's the one where you're feeling disheartened about those habits you set. You started well. You managed a week, then 10 days, and then something popped up unannounced, knocking you off your streak. And instead of missing a day and picking up where you left off, you just couldn't do it. It was like all your motivation, want, and will had gone.
You tell yourself that the habit or goal wasn't meant to be. It wasn't the right time, or you didn't want it enough. Or you didn't have the skills to make it happen. All the reasons under the sun come up, all of them so easy to justify to yourself as to why it didn't work out.
But even though you have all those reasons—all those easy-to-spot surface reasons as to why your habits aren't sticking—they're probably not the root cause. It's something else.
For Quietly Disruptive founders, one of the most common reasons habits don't stick is, deep down, you don't have the runway to make them happen. You don't have enough space.
And that's what this piece is all about today.
The Two-Step Trap
When we plan to make a change or achieve a goal, the way we traditionally approach this is by a two-step process. We think about what we want, and then we make the steps to achieve it.
The Example: Starting a Weekly Blog
Say you want to start a weekly blog, with a blog a week. You've always wanted to write one, and you know that it's a great way to connect with your clients. You love writing long-form content and digging deep into topics that interest you and your clients. And so, you plan the blog posts, what topics you want to talk about, and research and figure out a platform to publish them on. You're all set.
This is the first step complete, and so you then move onto the second part: taking the action.
You start well, writing one, and then the second blog. You upload them to your platform and you're really proud of yourself. This is happening and you're ticking those blogs off your list. They're really good posts, and your clients have read them, finding them really useful.
When Things Fall Apart
And then something comes up. An unexpected project comes your way. A project that you can't turn down as you need the income. Another client has a deadline that moves and they need you to get it done ASAP. Life gets messy for a few days as you're wrapped up in client delivery and helping your clients get what they need.
You continue to try and write your blog posts during this time. You turn to AI to write the third one, saying "Just this once" as you want to keep the streak going. You give it the topic, and it spits out the blog post within minutes, and it's really good. You make a couple of tiny edits and upload it.
By the fourth post, you're wrestling with the ethics and the facts. Is a blog post still yours if you ask AI to write it? Am I really a blogger? You start to question whether you can actually do this and whether you have what it takes to write a weekly blog. Whether you have what it takes. Or whether you're a writer or just someone who had two good posts in them and nothing more. And so, you don't write or do anything.
By the fifth week the streak is gone. You've stopped writing blogs completely. You're still trying to finish your projects and the things your clients need, and you justify that they come first and pay the bills, and so writing blog posts get shelved for the moment.
Another week goes past, and that nagging thought of not being consistent enough is always there. You feel like you don't have the discipline or motivation to make it work.
The Real Problem
And in this example—an imagining that may sound all too familiar—what if the problem wasn't discipline or motivation at all?
What if the problem was that you never actually had space for this habit in the first place? That your business was already consuming everything, and the blog was trying to grow in soil that had nothing left to give?
For many quietly disruptive founders, habits don't fail because you're broken or uncommitted. They fail because the business you're in doesn't have room for them to breathe and flourish.
Trying to add new habits to a cage business is like planting vegetables in a garden already completely full of flowers. There's no space, no light, no room for anything new to grow.
The Garden Metaphor
A great way to visualize this is to imagine a garden. Imagine a traditional cottage garden full of flowers, plants, and beautiful blooms. It looks gorgeous, vibrant, and full of life.
But say one day you get inspired and want to have a garden full of vegetables and flowers. You really want to grow your own vegetables, but when you look at the garden there are no gaps. There are plants everywhere. No sunlight reaches the soil, and if any does, it's taken up with plants already there. There is no room for anything new to take root and grow.
The garden isn't bad. It looks lovely, vibrant, and full, but if you wanted to plant seeds to grow vegetables, it would be difficult, as they wouldn't be able to compete with everything already growing there.
If we relate this analogy to our example about the founder wanting to create a blog, when we move away all the surface reasons, the root cause of not being able to make this goal happen is the lack of time and space for it to grow and thrive.
When they started the project, they had space and time, but then unexpected things popped up—projects and clients—and that derailed it all.
When Your Business Is the Problem
That's what happens when you try to add new habits to a business that is restrictive and keeps you small and stuck. It doesn't let things grow, or more specifically, it doesn't let things grow that can help you move forward toward the things you want to do and be.
This sort of business is what I call a cage business—a business that looks successful on paper but feels suffocating from the inside. It usually means working with clients you don't love, saying yes when you mean no, and being so busy that you can't remember what it's like not to be.
This is the exact reason why habits can't thrive when you're in a restrictive cage business. There is no room, no margin, no space for new things to take root.
The habit isn't the problem. The business consuming all your space is the problem.
My Own Story
I know this because I lived it.
When I was in my cage business, juggling social media management, copywriting, and being a brand strategist, I tried to cultivate a daily writing habit. Alongside my client work, I had books that I wanted to write and I knew that the best way to chip away at this big goal was to get into the habit of writing daily.
It would always start so well. I'd manage a few days writing every day, get a streak going, but then something would happen. Things like a project would appear that I needed to say yes to because I had bills to pay, or a client would move a deadline and ask me to move everything to get it done. That or I would take on too much work that some days writing for myself seemed like a mountain to climb, and I'd put it off. I would inevitably break the streak and never get back to it, easily justifying this move because I had other things I SHOULD be doing.
The Wrong Diagnosis
I thought I lacked discipline or that I wasn't serious enough. That maybe I didn't actually want to be a writer, because if I really wanted it, wouldn't I just make it happen?
The thing was it wasn't as simple as that. It was a much deeper problem. It took a long time to realize that I couldn't get the habit to stick because I hadn't given myself the space for it to exist. I was in a business where the focus was on filling every space with tasks, projects, and client work, so much so that I couldn't make space for things I wanted to do. Things, ultimately, that could have a very big impact.
My business consumed everything—my creativity, my energy, and time. Writing was always the thing that got pushed to the edges, squeezed into whatever time was left over, which was usually not much.
What Changed
So when I rebuilt my business—the non-cage edition—I did something different.
I put writing first. Yes, I'm a business coach, but I write books too, and writing books is something that you eat like an elephant. You create a book one bite, or one sentence, at a time. That's why now I write every day before my attention is diverted onto different things. Before I check my emails, I write, and that mountain of a book seems a little closer.
Now that habit sticks because there's space for it and it's not fighting for survival against everything else. That's the difference.
In a cage business, habits wither and die because there's no room for them. You're trying to grow something new in a garden that's already completely full.
In a business with space, with actual breathing room, habits can take root because they're not competing with everything else for survival.
It's Not Always About the Habit
Now, there are lots of reasons why habits stick or don't stick. Maybe the habit itself is wrong for you or the timing's off, but for quietly disruptive founders specifically, the most common reason habits fail is that you're in a cage business. And the cage is consuming everything.
So if you're in that second camp I mentioned at the start—the one where your habits haven't stuck and you're feeling disappointed—I want you to ask yourself something different.
Not "What's wrong with me?" or "Why can't I just be consistent?"
But instead to ask: "Is this actually about the habit, or is this about my business not having space for it?"
Once I rebuilt my business with space, habits stuck effortlessly.
Are you trying to grow something new in a business that's already consuming every bit of energy you have?
Because if the answer is yes, then the problem isn't you. It's not your discipline or willpower. It's not that you're broken.
The problem is you're trying to change in a business that won't let you.
And until you see that, until you recognize that your business itself is what's killing your habits, you're going to keep blaming yourself for something that was never your fault.
What to Do About It
As an actionable takeaway, I'd like you to think about your business. Not the version you show on LinkedIn or the one you show at networking events, but the real one, and ask: where is the space (or where isn't there space)?
What's taking all the nutrients in your business? What's blocking the light? What's taking up all the soil so nothing new can grow?
Because you can't change what you can't see.
Once you see clearly what's actually taking up all the space, then you can start making different choices. You can start creating the space your habits need. You can start building a business that has room for the things you actually want to do.
The habits aren't the problem. They never were. It's the business. And you get to rebuild that anytime you want.
Which Camp Are You In?
If you're in camp one, if your habits are sticking, you've created the space, whether you realized it or not.
But if you're in camp two? You haven't failed. You've just discovered that the foundation needs work before anything else can grow. And that realization is not failure but clarity.
I see you. And I believe in you.
Onwards and upwards.
- Becky :)
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone helps Quietly Disruptive founders escape the cage businesses keeping them from their real purpose. If you're so busy surviving that you can't remember why you started, or the impact you actually wanted to create, she gets it. Using The Two Questions Framework, Becky works with established entrepreneurs to move from trapped and silent, to free and making the impact they know, deep down, they're meant to create. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom, she's walked this path herself.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
If these signs resonated with you and you want to explore what breaking free could look like, join The Founders Club, my weekly newsletter for Quietly Disruptive founders who are done with cage businesses and ready to build differently. Every week, I share insights, stories, and permission to build the business you actually want, not the one everyone says you should have.
