Habits are routines or behaviors that we repeat frequently and often without thinking. They help us work more efficiently, but bad habits can be detrimental to reaching our goals. To successfully build good habits, there are some golden rules that are important to follow.
Why are habits important?
Habits help us live our lives more efficiently. Instead of having to make a decision every time we need to complete a repetitive task, habits allow us to do things automatically without much thought or effort. This frees up our mental resources for other activities. Some examples of habits include brushing your teeth, checking your phone, or driving the same route to work each day.
Habits can be beneficial when they are behaviors that align with our goals and values. For example, habits like exercising regularly, reading before bed, or saving money each month can help us stay healthy, wind down in the evening, and build financial security.
On the flip side, bad habits can be detrimental if they contradict our goals or have adverse effects on our lives. Smoking cigarettes, biting your nails, procrastinating on work projects are examples of harmful habits that can damage health, appearance, or productivity.
Why is it hard to break bad habits?
Bad habits can be extremely difficult to break because they are ingrained behaviors that we repeat over and over. Even when we consciously want to stop a bad habit, the unconscious urge to engage in the habitual behavior can be challenging to overcome.
Here are some reasons why it’s hard to break bad habits:
- They provide short-term satisfaction – Bad habits often give us immediate gratification which reinforces the behavior. For example, smoking provides stress relief and pleasure in the moment even though it has long-term health consequences.
- The behavior becomes automatic – When we repeat actions frequently over time, they become embedded in our basal ganglia and our brains learn to perform them automatically with very little conscious thought.
- Environmental cues trigger them – Locations, people, emotions can all become triggers that cue our bad habits. The urge to smoke is stronger when hanging out with other smokers, for example.
- Stress and boredom – Negative emotions and states often cause us to fall back on bad habits for relief or stimulation. This distraction makes the habit harder to quit.
- Lack of accountability – With bad habits like overeating or nail biting, it can be easier hide the behavior and avoid accountability that would motivate us to stop.
These factors explain why awareness and motivation are usually not enough. To successfully quit bad habits, we need strategies that can override the automatic unconscious urges and replace the bad behaviors with healthier alternatives.
The golden rules for building good habits
While breaking bad habits is difficult, it is possible to build new, positive habits through discipline and consistency. Here are the golden rules for successfully cultivating good habits:
Start small
When trying to adopt a new habit, start very small. Look for microactions that take little effort but move you closer to your goal. For example, if you want to establish a reading habit, just read one page a day rather than trying to read for 30 minutes. Once the microaction becomes consistent over a few weeks, you can gradually increase.
Reduce friction
Decrease any friction or inconvenience around your new habit. Make it as easy as possible to do. If you want to start exercising in the morning, lay out your workout clothes and shoes next to your bed the night before.
Make it satisfying
New habits have to provide some type of instant gratification to stick. Notice how your habit makes you feel after doing it – even better or more relaxed. Highlight the short term benefits to yourself.
Create accountability
Share your new habit goals with a friend or join an accountability group. Having to report your progress to others helps motivate you to stay consistent, especially on days you lack internal motivation.
Schedule it
Build habits into your routine at the same time each day or week. Consistent repetition during a scheduled time makes habits easier to maintain. For example, set a reminder to meditate for 10 minutes every morning after your shower.
Reward progress
Use rewards, especially in the early stages, to positively reinforce your new habit. After a week of consistent flossing, treat yourself to a nice lunch. Associating your habit with a reward helps your brain remember that the habit is positive.
Review slip ups
If you occasionally slip up and skip your new habit, don’t beat yourself up. Gently review what caused you to miss it, and make a plan to get back on track the next day. Staying positive prevents slip ups from turning into full relapses.
What are mini habits?
Mini habits are a specific technique for making habit changes easier. The core idea behind mini habits is scaling your goal down to an extremely small, “mini” version that requires little effort but gets you started. Here’s an example:
Instead of trying to build a habit of exercising 30 minutes a day, start with a mini habit of doing just 1 push up. Do one push up once a day, at the same time each day, for two weeks until the habit sets in. Once the single push up becomes automatic, then gradually increase the reps.
The reason mini habits work so well is because the tiny actions remove resistance and friction. Once momentum begins with these small steps, scaling up becomes easier over time. Mini habits create a “habit ladder” where each rung builds your capability until the full habit is in place.
Benefits of mini habits
- Easy to start – Requiring minimal effort lowers barriers to beginning.
- Build momentum – Small steps build your confidence to add more.
- Compounding effect – Tiny gains accumulate into big results.
- Prevents excuses – How can you avoid a habit that takes less than 30 seconds?
- Provides flexibility – You can do mini habits anytime that fits your schedule.
Examples of effective mini habits
| Goal | Mini Habit |
|---|---|
| Exercise more | Take 1 lap around the block after dinner |
| Play guitar | Practice guitar for 5 minutes before bed |
| Save money | Put $5 in savings account every Friday |
| Study French | Learn 5 French vocab words after morning coffee |
| Improve posture | Sit up straight for 30 seconds, 3 times per day |
How long does it take to build a habit?
Research shows it takes an average of 66 days to build a habit, though that number can vary widely depending on the person and habit. Some studies have found a new habit can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form.
The 66 days comes from a 2009 study by psychologist Phillippa Lally and her team from University College London. They had 96 participants choose an everyday activity like drinking water with lunch and tracked how long it took to become automatic. The findings showed that on average, it took 66 days for a new behavior to become a habit.
However, there was wide variation among individuals for how long habits took to form:
- Simple habits like drinking a glass of water took as little as 20 days for people to pick up.
- More difficult habits like eating a piece of fruit with lunch took closer to 254 days for most people to turn into a habit.
- On the extreme ends, the easiest habits formed within 18 days for some participants while the hardest habits took 274 days for others.
So while 66 days is a useful rough estimate, the reality is that habit formation can take anywhere from three weeks to nine months depending on the behavior. The key is persistence and consistency no matter how long it takes.
Factors that influence habit formation
Certain factors make habits easier or more difficult to pick up. Here are some key elements that impact how long habits take to form:
- Difficulty – Simple habits form faster. Exercising 1 minute a day can become routine faster than exercising 30 minutes.
- Enjoyment – We stick with habits we enjoy quicker. If you like your new yoga routine, you’ll want to repeat it.
- Existing behaviors – If your habit aligns with your natural tendencies, it may come easier.
- Motivation – You’ll persist with habits aligned with your goals and values.
- Accountability – Reporting to others helps solidify habits sooner.
- Consistency – Repetition day after day is key no matter the duration.
How are habits formed neurologically?
Habits form in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that controls unconscious, automatic behaviors. Neurological studies reveal how repeated actions become hardwired in our brains through “habit loops”.
Here’s an overview of the habit loop process:
- Cue – This is the trigger for your habit. It can be a time of day, location, emotion, or a preceding action.
- Routine – This is the actual habit or behavior you perform, like snacking or checking your phone.
- Reward – The benefit you get from the habit. It could be relief, pleasure, or entertainment.
As you repeat cue-routine-reward cycles, your brain learns to link the cue and reward to the routine behavior. Stimulus and response become bonded until the habit forms. The basal ganglia takes over and runs the habitual behavior on autopilot whenever you receive the habit cue.
This habit loop process is commonly compared to the “rabbit trails” our feet wear into the grass from walking the same path frequently. In the same way, habits carve distinctive neurological pathways that make it easy for electrical signals to travel the route.
Why habits are hard to break neurologically
Since habits form distinct pathways in our brains, it’s difficult to stop habitual behaviors because the neurological tendency is to follow the established trail. However, it is possible to override habits by:
- Identifying the cue to be aware when it happens
- Substituting an alternative routine when cued
- Choosing a satisfying reward to reinforce the new routine
With consistent repetition, you can pave a new neurological route that diminishes the habitual pathway over time. But it takes regular practice to rewire the brain’s automatic responses.
What are the stages of habit formation?
Psychologists propose that habits tend to develop through the following four stages:
1. Cue
The habit process starts with a cue or trigger. This is the signal that initiates your brain to go into automatic mode and set the habit in motion. Common habit cues include:
- A time of day – like waking up in the morning
- A location – like being in the kitchen
- An emotion – like feeling stressed or bored
- A particular action – like finishing dinner or a work call
2. Craving
After receiving the cue, you feel a craving to engage in the habitual behavior. The craving continues the habit loop and pushes you to act on autopilot. Common cravings include:
- A need for pleasure – wanting to eat candy or check social media
- Relief from discomfort – wanting a cigarette or to stop working
- A desire to reduce boredom – wanting to play games or call a friend
- Subconscious anticipation – food cravings or urge to smoke
3. Response
Next, you respond to the craving with the habitual behavior itself. You give in and perform the automatic routine you’ve done many times before. Examples include:
- Smoking a cigarette to satisfy a craving
- Checking your phone to relieve boredom
- Driving home from work via the same route
- Grabbing a cookie when hungry without thinking
4. Reward
Performing the routine provides some type of reward that reinforces the habit. The reward can be anything positive that makes you feel better. For instance:
- Eating unhealthy foods – reward is pleasure and taste satisfaction
- Checking social media – reward is seeing new notifications and interesting content
- Smoking cigarettes – reward is stress relief or taking a break
- Biting your nails – reward is temporary relief from anxiety
This sense of satisfaction wires your brain to repeat the habit loop whenever you receive the cue. Over many repetitions, the habit becomes ingrained.
Conclusion
Habits can significantly improve our lives when positively directed, but they require discipline and time to cultivate. The golden rules for building habits include starting small, reducing friction, finding satisfaction, adding accountability, rewarding progress, and learning from slip ups. Sticking to these principles while moving step-by-step through the habit loop stages can lead to successful habit formation. By understanding how habits work neurologically and the factors that influence them, we can overcome the barriers and rewire our brains for lasting change.