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If you've ever tried to lose weight, quit smoking, train for your first half marathon, or reach some other lofty personal development goal, one thing becomes clear very quickly: establishing new habits is tough stuff.

Chris Boyce feels your pain. He's the CEO at Virgin Pulse, a company partially held by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group that develops mobile and desktop apps aimed at helping workforces develop healthy habits. Its products are similar to those offered by consumer wellness companies--think a mobile feature that gently prods employees to make daily progress toward, say, a financial goal, and a wrist band similar to a Fitbit that tracks activity and sleep habits. But Virgin Pulse aims to compete mainly with wellness programs offered by insurance companies. 

Boyce says the difference with Pulse is that it strives to offer something responsive to employees’ desires, rather than prescribing specific actions or participation. And Pulse uses positive reinforcement to help people establish new habits. 

Inc. recently caught up with Boyce to discuss a five-pronged approach for making habits stick, regardless of whether you use a wearable device:

A 2014 Oxford Economics Assessment of Paid Time Off in the U.S. showed 42% of employees with paid time off finished the year with unused days, leaving an average of 8.1 days unused.

Small business owners are especially bad at taking time away. According to the 2013 Sage Reinvention of Small Business Study, 43% of small business owners are taking less vacation time than five years ago.

The fact that we don't use all of our vacation time isn’t all that surprising. After all, getting away for a few days or weeks can be overwhelming when it feels like stepping away from the office will create a painful backlog of work when you return.

But what if stepping away from the daily grind made you better at your job?

It only takes seven minutes to change how you approach your day. Using the routine described below when you get to work will make a world of difference in your productivity, your attitude, your success, and your health. It's like the approach you make to the tee on a golf course. You plan out how you will hit the shot, which is more important than the actual swing. Before you start your day, this routine will provide the right mindset. Will you follow it?

Note: I'm going to call this routine "The Seven," as in, "Did you do your Seven this morning?" Feel free to borrow that term or send me ideas on a better name.

Study, work hard, and you will be successful.

This was the mantra repeated by educators throughout my youth. None of them added "be happy" to the success equation.

But a growing body of research in positive psychology and neuroscience is demonstrating that happiness is the secret ingredient to success. It turns out, our brains are more engaged, creative, productive, and resilient when in a positive state.

All this unhappiness comes with a high price tag to businesses, costing more than $550 billion a year in lost productivity. In his book, Donovan identifies 60 simple steps individuals can take to improve their happiness and get back on the path to success. Here are six of the top things happy workers do: