A habit is the brain’s decision-making shortcut – it gets actions started with the least amount of mental energy.

For humans, habits are essential because our brains would be overloaded and debilitated if we had to completely think through every decision.

To efficiently initiate a habit, the brain connects a “trigger event” to the habitual action.

For example, when we wake up in the morning, the surface of our teeth feels fuzzy (trigger event). To solve the problem, we automatically feel the need to brush our teeth (the habitual action).

For recruiting, let’s suppose you want to build the habit of making outbound recruiting calls for one hour a day.

A trigger event for building this habit could be simple things such as:

Schedule to make the calls at the same time every day.
Set a reminder on your phone alerting you it’s time to start your calls.
Shut your office door.

The goal is for the trigger event to cue you to automatically start the activity before rationalizations and distractions steal your time away.