Have you ever set a goal to change your routine, only to get halfway through your day and realize you’d forgotten all about your plan?

If so, you’re not alone. That exact thing happened to me recently.

Last week, I decided to shake up my morning structure with my six-year-old son. Typically, we save getting dressed in his school clothes until after breakfast, which is closely followed by brushing his teeth, before it’s go-time and we’re on our way to the bus stop.

Unfortunately, there’s usually a lot of delaying, turning a well-paced 15 minutes into a stressful seven—crammed with getting dressed, brushing teeth, and wrestling into winter clothes, all overshadowed by a fear of missing the bus.

So, we decided to move getting dressed up in our schedule so that it lands before breakfast. That way, all we have to do is get his teeth brushed before donning winter clothes and sliding out the door.

I’m happy to report that this was a brilliant change to the routine! Suddenly there were no more mad dashes down the driveway, as we prayed we didn’t see the bus go by while we hustled our way down our street.

The problem is that our new order of things lasted all of two days until I completely forgot that I’d committed to something new and simply reverted to my old routine.

I’m betting this has happened to you, too. You come up with some magnificent idea about how you can revolutionize your routine and it goes splendidly—for a couple of days. Then perhaps the weekend hits or something else happens and you get tripped up and abandon your intentions without even realizing it.

That’s because habit change doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology found that habit formation can take as little as 18 days (which still seems like a long time!) and as long as 254 days, which is the equivalent of 36 weeks. The bottom line is that doing anything worth doing has to be done more times than we would think for it to stick.

The problem is—how do we stay consistent long enough to make that desired behaviour as automatic as our morning ritual of brushing our teeth or drinking our coffee?

A great place to start is in keeping the desired behaviour at the front of your mind so you don’t simply forget, like I did.

Here are three simple ways that you can do this:

Set Alarms or Notifications

Setting an alarm or a notification that will sound on your phone or your watch at the crucial moment is an excellent way to cue your desired habit. If you want to add some positive reinforcement, you can label notifications with affirmations or motivating statements like, “It’s 1130am. Your mid-afternoon mood thanks you”, if you’re trying to get into the habit of eating lunch at a regular time to avoid an energy slump or the hangries.

Use Visual Cues

I’m a big fan of visual reminders. To get me back on track with getting my son dressed before breakfast, I’m placing a sticky note on my kitchen counter tonight. This is the perfect location because I’m in the kitchen packing his lunch when it’s time to remember to get him dressed.

Aside from sticky notes, you can also write a note on any other surface that’s amenable to it and is strategically placed. This might be a whiteboard in your office or kitchen or using a glass-safe pen to jot a note on your bathroom mirror.

Other visual cues offer great reminders too. If you’re trying to trigger yourself to drink water first thing in the morning, placing a glass in front of your coffeemaker will work. If you’re trying to remind yourself to get out for a walk as soon as you come home from the office, having your shoes sitting right in front of the door can be effective too.

Get an Accountability Partner

Enlisting someone who has already mastered the habit you want to build is a great way to model their behavior—especially if their consistency helps reinforce yours. For example, if you want to workout more, making a date with someone who you know is very consistent with their workout schedule and who will check in with you to make sure you’re on track will be enough to keep that activity at the front of your mind. You’re less likely to “forget” the habit you’re trying to build when you’ve promised someone else that you’ll show up. Isn’t it interesting how we’re often more accountable to others than we are to ourselves?

My only caveat here is don’t rely on a six-year-old to remind you to remind them to get dressed. It will be a massive fail. Choose someone who has a vested interest in your success!

Remember that building habits is hard because it takes you out of what’s comfortable and familiar. If you’ve tried and slipped up and let your new behaviour go, it’s a pretty normal thing to do. That being said, you can increase the chances of your success in building in new behaviours if you frontload your efforts. Using simple cues like alarms, visual reminders, or the power of an accountability partner can make all the difference in helping you pattern the things you want to become automatic. Just don’t nix those cues too soon—research shows that you’ll have to stick to your reminders for weeks, if not months, before a habit becomes second nature.

What simple reminder can you try this week to help you solidify a new habit?