Psychology Archipelago

Improving Everyday Through Habits

All of us have times where we forget to do something or just don’t feel like it. Forming habits is one important way to start doing the things that we need to do consistently. But why do habits work and how do we form them?

When we talk to other about our lives, we often talk about big events: vacations, weddings, or promotions. But in reality, it is the things that we do everyday, those uneventful moments, that define us. Small changes in how we live our lives everyday over the long term can lead to larger changes than almost any single event can. These everyday changes are ruled by habits.

Habits can be defined at a scientific level as a process in which we can act impulsively in response to a stimulus, requiring little to no conscious decision-making. But a more useful way of looking at habits for the layman is to look to how Charles Duhigg, writer of The Power of Habit, defines its three-step process: the cue, the routine, and the reward.

A cue is the context in which habits happen. They can come from your environment or even your preceding actions. For example, most people brush their teeth at night. In this case, dinner or going to bed might be the cue. 


Next is the routine, what it is that you do, such as brushing your teeth or going out for a run. 

Finally, we reap the rewards. In good habits, these rewards are positive over the long run, getting in better health or maintaining oral hygiene. But in bad habits, these rewards might be a quick dopamine hit of watching a useless youtube video, or smoking a cigarette. 

Habits are useful because they can be powerful tool to thwart the dips in motivation that we all experience. This is because habits become impulsive and automatic, meaning that they are less dependent on our motivation to do the task. 

Before creating habits, however, we have to decide what we are striving for. It has been known for a long time that when people feel like they are just following others, they give less consistent and prolonged effort. On the other hand, when they feel like they are the initiator of action, when they feel that they have agency, they have more resilience to push through periods of discomfort. 

To create new habits, we can start a routine based around a naturally occurring cue, such as right after we get up or before we eat dinner. These then serve as a reminder of the routine that you want to perform.

 However, the process to get rid of old habits is much harder. Duhigg’s Golden Rule of Habit Change says that “You can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.” Instead, we need to break our habits into the three steps and only replace the routine, keeping the cue and the reward. 

For example, I have a bad habit of getting distracted as soon as I get on the computer (cue), often opening up youtube (routine) and giving me a dopamine rush (reward). These habits that give you a dopamine rush are the hardest to get rid of. Now, when I get on the computer, I try to get the simplest task on my to-do list done. I still get a similar dopamine rush, and I have a positive momentum going further to do more tasks. 
This is actually a more general habit: the habit of seeking the satisfaction of accomplishment instead of instant gratification. It applies in a variety of situations. When getting up, do you mindlessly scroll through Instagram or get the satisfaction of taking a cold shower? Do you get a black coffee or that Salted Caramel Mocha?

With the right mindset, we do not have to do something big to get satisfaction. Even lacing up your shoes before a run itself can give you a sense of accomplishment. The run, in turn, can give you a sense of accomplishment even in the larger context of training for a race. We can always break down bigger accomplishments into small victories. 

Not all habits, however, are created equally. Duhigg describes “keystone habits,” those that start a chain reaction of positive change and allow us to stick to our principles in the heat of a difficult situation or uncertainty. These might include getting up earlier or exercising. If we can only start at one place, these kind of habits that set you up for future success in forming other habits can be incredibly powerful.
Many habits are so ingrained in us that we do not even recognize them.
In the process of creating habits, one thing we must understand is that habits do not form a linear trajectory. A study from 2009 asked 96 participants to perform a self-chosen activity or diet-related behavior after a defined naturally occurring event (like after breakfast). Each day, they reported whether they completed the activity that day before, and how automatic it felt. The improvement in how automatic the actions were increased most in the beginning before gradually slowing down. It took anywhere from 18 to 254 (!) days to reach a plateau (254 days was a statistical prediction based on the twelve-week period studied). While we might get lucky to form habits in a matter of weeks, it can often take months for true habits to form. In this process, we cannot let one misstep cannot derail the whole process.

Behavior change must be viewed through a long-term lens, separated into phases of initiation and maintenance. While many have the capability and the motivation to initiate change, maintaining the habit can often be difficult, particularly with overestimation of positive outcomes, or underestimation of negative ones. By understanding this, we can adjust our expectations correctly and avoid getting dejected when things don't turn out as planned. 

Habits, according to Duhigg, are like water, “unthinking choices and invisible decisions that surround us every day” but when you look at them they become visible. Most of us live our lives at the whims of our habits, but once we understand that they are changeable, we have the freedom, and the responsibility, to change ourselves for the better. All that remains to be done is to get started.