Good Habits, Bad Habits - Wendy Wood 1/12/22
by siuwaimingdaniel@ · 6 things on Twos
- Every day, approximately 43 percent of our actions are performed out of habit. That means that rather than actually thinking about our behavior and consciously deciding how to act, we live almost half of our lives habitually – behaving automatically in the very same ways we’ve behaved before. Whether it’s the things that you eat, the way you interact with others, or even your tendency to exercise, habits determine some of the most important aspects of our lives. So why not take advantage of them, and make them work for us?
- Habit influences our actions more strongly than self-control does.- One of the problems with the way we approach change is that we focus on willpower and self-discipline. Because these are conscious processes, we imagine that they’re the most important ones. If only we had a bit more self-control, we could cut our spending, ditch the cigarettes, and finally go on that jog – right? Well . . . maybe not. The problem with focusing on self-control is that it overlooks the importance of habits. Breaking bad habits and forming good ones is a far better way to change your lifestyle than hoping you’ll develop steely self-discipline overnight. Instead of allowing us to resist temptations at every turn, self-control actually comes in handy at the initial stage of habit formation. In other words, self-control can lead to success when we use it to form good habits – not when we rely on it to guide every action we take.
- Your environment can shape the habits you develop. A driving force is an aspect of your environment that encourages you to behave in a certain way – in this case, to watch more TV. The term driving force was coined by the German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin. Lewin argued that behavior is a function of a person and her environment. According to Lewin, human behavior is determined by two types of forces: internal forces – like fears and desires – and external – environmental forces exerted by the world around us. Now, we’ve already come across one type of environmental force – the driving force that encourages you to act in certain ways. The opposite type of influence is a restrictive force, which acts as a deterrent.
Consistently repeating an action is a key step in forming a habit. So step one is out of the way. You’ve redesigned your environment to make good habits easier to fall into and bad habits harder to practice. You’ve hidden your phone and displayed your fruit bowl. So what comes next? How long will it take for your new behavior to become habitual? Not 21 days – although that’s a popular answer. The truth is a little more complex. What’s clear is that repetition is vital. It’s only by consciously performing actions again and again, day after day, that they eventually start to become habitual. There’s no exact number of times an action needs to be repeated before it becomes a habit. Like anything else, it varies a lot from person to person – and also depends on the difficulty of the habit in question. This is especially true where your desired habits come into conflict with a preexisting tendency – if your new habit of going to the gym, for example, clashes with your old habit of curling up in front of the television. At the start, it’ll be difficult to opt for the new and unfamiliar behavior instead of your old, ingrained response. But if you persist, you’ll notice a gradual reversal – and bit by bit, the desired behavior will start to come naturally, and the old habit will begin to lose its grip.
- Habits control our lives – whether we notice them or not. Whether it’s our morning routines or our exercise regimens, habits influence our behavior more than most of us know. So why do we so often overlook them? Because habits operate below the level of conscious thought. You see, habits differ from other mental processes, like decision-making and willpower. These occur at the conscious level of the mind. When you hem and haw about which cereal to buy, you’re fully aware of the thought process you’re experiencing – it’s a thoughtful cognitive process. Habits, on the other hand, work below the level of conscious awareness. They don’t really involve thought. Instead, they’re nonconscious repetitions of actions you’ve performed many times before.
- In order to form a habit, you need to experience a sense of reward. The idea that rewards can make a habit stick is actually grounded in recent neuroscientific research. That’s because dopamine, a neurotransmitter crucial to the experience of reward, plays an essential role in forming habits. How? Well, it has to do with making experiences memorable. When you get a reward, the spike of dopamine in your brain helps stamp the experience into your memory – making your desired habit take root more easily. When it comes to cultivating a new habit, not all rewards are equal. Believe it or not, uncertain rewards actually work best. In one study, students who played a challenging game were both more accurate and willing to play for longer periods when the points they won were determined by the roll of a dice. When the points were fixed, their performance and willingness to play dropped. Another thing to bear in mind when considering rewards is that timing matters. In brief, the reward should follow the action as quickly as possible. Far-off rewards, like the promise of being able to sleep in the next morning or have a chocolate bar the following day, might motivate you to act – but because of the delay, they won’t actually help your habit to take root.
- When we’re under stress, we naturally rely on our habits - In stressful circumstances, our habits come to the fore. Unlike our conscious mental processes, habits don’t suffer when we undergo stress; on the contrary, stressful spells are actually their time to shine.