Y'all. I don't know about you, but I always go to sleep too late. I end up having more energy and giving myself more "fun time" before bed watching a show or playing a videogame on my phone...leading inevitably to inadequate/bad sleep and waking up exhausted, not to mention, reducing the time for me to do my morning routine! Ugh. Time to change this habit.
Okay, enough about my embarrassing story - let’s have you do a quick exercise: Walk yourself through your typical morning:
What time do you wake up?
What do you do immediately when you get up?
What do you usually eat and drink?
What do you do to get ready for work or for a weekend day?
When do you usually start work?
What's the first thing you do to start work?
Now think about how much of this is repeated day to day. This is just your morning…
So where is this going: Studies by neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists, and others indicate that from 40 to 95 percent of human behavior—how we think, what we say, and our overall actions—falls into the habit category.
By that logic, the quality of your life is very much related to the quality of your habits. And to connect this topic to my previous Life’s Puzzle Pieces posts on Purpose, Values, Principles, and Career, hopefully, your habits are helping you get what you want in life.
By the way, it’s not a bad thing that a majority of our life is habit - it just points to an important truth about life design: that we should greater weight to what we want to be unconscious habit. From HBR: “Most of us wildly overvalue our will and discipline. Ingenious research by Roy Baumeister and others has demonstrated that our self-control is a severely limited resource that gets progressively depleted by every act of conscious self-regulation." (on the right is me depleting my self-regulation)
This quote from Atomic Habits also says it really well: “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”
By the way - this post really is a cheaper summary of the two books I cited (Atomic Habits and the Power of Habit) - I actually recommend reading them, because they are very digestible and actionable. This post is here to distill the ideas down into something to get you started.
So in this post, we’ll discuss: (1) why they form, (2) how they work, (3) how to create new habits, (4) how to change bad habits, and (5) some suggestions for how to get started looking at your habits.
Why do we form habits?
From the book, The Power of Habit: “Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.”
In our brains, there is different circuitry for habits than goal-directed behavior. Without going into a lot of detail, habits are connected to our sensorimotor cortex, while goal-directed behavior is our prefrontal cortex (the critical thinking, uniquely human part of the brain).
How do habits work?
I hate to compare us to animals…but…we are! Like a dog or dolphin or monkey, there is a stimulus, a response, and a reward. For example, your alarm clock is the stimulus, your response is to get up and make coffee, and your reward is the satisfaction of delicious taste and an energy boost to start your morning.
A study published in the National Institute of Health journal explains: “Habits are context dependent; they strengthen through repetition and associations with cues from the surrounding environment such that their expression becomes dependent on the relevant cues.” I LOVE the sound of my coffeemaker in the morning......
Some habits might form unconsciously just by doing something the first time. For example, when I first moved to Spain for business school, I was nervous to make it to my first day of school on time (like a child), so I bought a coffee and bocadillo (think jamon sandwich) on campus. This became my breakfast habit! (still kinda miss it though…)
Other habits might form intentionally - this is where we connect back to the topic of principles - your formula for success toward what you want in life. For example, I realized I was not getting as tired as I should when I worked out - so I created a principle of “skin sweating, heart beating and muscles straining” as my way of self-gauging the quality of my workouts. Now, it’s a habit to do at least 2 of the 3.
The aim here is to have your goals and principles and translate them eventually into habits. And for bad habits - change them to better ones 🙂
How to Create New Habits
Creating new habits should start with 1 of 2 things: (1) a strong, consistent stimulus, like an alarm clock, or (2) an already-formed habit that you want to keep. The latter is called “habit stacking”, which can be a great way to keep a stimulus-response chain going for a series of habits you want to go together.
For example, let’s say when it hits 9:30 pm, that’s your cue to get ready for bed. If you want to do a gratitude journal, just add that to your sequence of habits: brush your teeth, floss, set your alarm for the AM, and then on top of this routine, add a moment for gratitude before lights out. In this case, the stimulus is setting the alarm. The reward is perhaps getting to go to sleep happier and more relaxed.
If you’re creating a new habit without stacking, think about what a clear and consistent stimulus might be. Perhaps at the start of every meeting; after having lunch; or when you get home from work (perhaps for remote workers - shutting your laptop!).
When you are designing your habit, be very clear about:
Why this habit? What is the reward?
Example: Help me focus in the morning
When do you do this habit? It can be a specific time and/or day, or after a certain activity.
Example: 7 am every morning, or at the beginning of every meeting
What is the action?
Example: Meditate using the “Daily Morning Routine” on the Balance app, sitting up and off the side of my bed
How long or how many times do you do this action?
Example: 10 minutes, 1 page, or 3 sets
As you can see - intentional habits are very specific, so that you can condition yourself like Pavlov’s dog (bell = saliva).
You can only manage what you measure
To expand on the specificity, it's important that you measure your adherence to a habit that's important to you. How else will you know if you are improving your performance? Leverage technology to do this - if it's health, there are apps and devices to track certain health habits. I have many types of habits, so I prefer to have a central habit tracker, where I define the specific metrics and get to check the habits off when I complete them.
The above is an actual screenshot from November 2022...don't judge me! One note on the above - the fact that I have around a ~30% average completion rate means that I'm doing too much at once. I need to slim down the habits I really need to develop more, and when certain habits are engrained enough, I can add more.
Changing Bad Habits
Habits are hard-wired into our brains. So while it would be nice to be able to erase this hard wiring, it’s not possible. According to the Power of Habit, the “Golden Rule” of habits is: “You can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.” Therefore, you have pretty much 2 options - remove the stimulus, or change the action that follows the stimulus. Also - the old reward has to stay in place!
Let’s start with removing the stimulus in the first place - most of the time, this is not realistic. You can’t ignore hunger, or bed time, or your home. However, if this habit is bad enough, you can make a drastic change in environment - moving to a new place (even extended travel), changing jobs, even cutting someone out of your life. I know - extreme - but if there’s a really bad habit, environment is not to be ignored.
From Psychology Today: “In one study conducted on “habits vs. intentions,” researchers found that students who transferred to another university were the most likely to change their daily habits. They also found those habits easier to change than the control group because they weren’t exposed to familiar external cues.”
Okay let’s focus on probably the more common scenario - you can’t remove the stimulus. Fortunately, there are still ways to change the habit: (1) Modify your environment, (2) change the action after the stimulus, or (3) create a new stimulus-response chain.
Think about modifying your environment this way - “Don’t focus your motivation on doing Behavior X. Instead, focus on making Behavior X easier to do.” You want to make good habits easier to do, and bad habits harder to do.
Let’s take a bad habit of snacks - what are some options?
(Change the environment) Stop going to the same grocery store where you buy that snack
(Change the action) Don’t buy the snack in the first place
You could also reduce the frequency of buying that snack
(Change the action) Replace the snack with something else
(Change the environment) Remove the snack from view
(Change the environment) Make the snack harder to reach
(Create a stimulus-response chain) Create a rule for when you can have the snack - like only if you had your greens that day, or if you exercised
What should you do to get started on habits?
It can be overwhelming to think about all the habits we have - but we need to start somewhere. Here is what I suggest as a process:
Step 1:
Option 1: Think about an area of your life where you are struggling. What is 1 good habit you could develop to improve this area?
Option 2: What is 1 time of day you think you can create a worthwhile habit stack?
Step 2:
Do a habit audit - what are the current habits that you have in relation to either this part of your life, or this time of day? Be specific like we were before - why/the reward, when, what, for how long/how many times.
Step 3:
Evaluate which habits are good and you want to keep vs. bad and you want to change. Note what the stimuli are for the habits you want to stop.
Step 4:
Choose 1 bad habit you are really committed to changing and write the details around that bad habit.
Step 5:
Are there new habits you want to add? Write them down specifically. I would only add 1 habit, or 2 if it’s very simple.
Step 6:
Figure out how to stack the habits. Remember that you want to make these new habits as easy as possible.
Step 7:
Make adjustments to your environment to make good habits easier, and bad habits harder.
Step 8:
Try the new habit chain for at least 2 weeks, and make thoughtful modifications as necessary. You can always modify your plans! Just remember that consistency is key to creating a new pathway in your brain for this new set of automatic actions.
Results
From James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: “On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact. And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances.
In Lally's study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit.” For context, Phillippa Lally is a health psychology researcher at University College London, where she published a study in the European Journal of Social Psychology.
In my own experience, these strategies have really upped my habit game - by putting my floss on my
bed stand (see in the picture to the right!) I floss most nights, whereas before I never did. I also write gratitude journals now, the first time I've kept a consistent journal. I am also improving my posture as a result of a lot of work with my chiropractic care providers which is alllll habit. While the habits are not perfect, they are SO much better than before.
Conclusion
Remember that your life is 50+% habit and that these habits are like compound interest. If you want to improve the results in your life, likely habits are a fruitful area to address. Just make sure that before you are addressing habits, you are clear about your purpose, goals, values, principles, etc., so that you know the right habits to put in place.
If you want to chat through your habits, I’m of course happy to help!
For Learning and With Love,
Chris
Resources:
Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Summary of Book: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (Calvinrosser.com)
Post: Balance the Grind Website, The Sleeping Habits & Routines of 18 Successful People
Article: National Institute of Health: Creates of Habit: The Neuroscience of Habit and Purposeful Behavior
Article: Psychology Today: Want to Change Your Habits? Change Your Environment
Article: Time.com, 8 Things the World’s Most Successful People Have in Common
Article: Harvard Business Review, Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything
Article: BigThink, Habits change your life. Here’s how to change your habits.
Comentários