Habit Formation
Habit formation is the process by which certain behaviors—positive, negative, or neutral—become automatic, occurring regularly and often without conscious thought. Habits can form without a person intending to acquire them, but they can also be deliberately cultivated—or eliminated—to better suit one’s personal goals.
How We Form Habits
People develop countless habits as they navigate the world, whether they are aware of them or not. By simply repeating particular behaviors in certain contexts or in response to certain cues, our brains build and strengthen the associated neural pathways which, over time, will render those behaviors automatic.
Habit formation can at times be an adaptive process; the knee-jerk nature of certain healthy habits—such as brushing one's teeth or going for a daily jog—can help people get their needs met more efficiently in everyday life. Yet when habits become deeply ingrained in our brains—even if a particular habit creates more problems than it solves—it can be difficult to break. Understanding how habits take shape may help dismantle and replace them.
Habits may be harmful, health-promoting, or neither. Instinctively reaching for a cigarette upon waking is widely understood to be an unhealthy habit, for example, but buckling one's seat belt immediately after getting in the car is a healthy habit that most of us engage in without conscious thought.
One likely reason humans evolved to be creatures of habit is that habits are efficient: They allow us to routinely perform useful behaviors without wasting time and energy deliberating about what to do. This tendency toward quick-and-efficient responses can backfire, however—as when it gets hijacked by the use of addictive drugs or consumption of unhealthy food.
Habits are built through learning and repetition. A person is thought to develop a habit in the course of pursuing goals (such as driving to a destination or satisfying an appetite) by beginning to associate certain sensory or temporal cues with behavioral responses that help meet the goal (turning at certain streets or stopping at a drive-thru with a familiar sign). Over time, thoughts of the behavior and ultimately the behavior itself are likely to be triggered by the mere presence of these cues—meaning your environment can shape your habits as much or even more than your conscious choices.
A “habit loop,” a concept popularized by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, describes several related elements that produce habits. These elements have been called the cue (or trigger), the routine (or behavior), and the reward. Stress, for example, could serve as a cue that one responds to by eating, smoking, or drinking; when this routine behavior consistently triggers a reward—in this case, the (often temporary) reduction of stress—a habit loop may begin to form.
Surveys suggest that a majority of American adults knowingly engage in at least one habit they see as unhealthy. Among the more widespread bad habits are drinking or eating more than is recommended, smoking cigarettes, and misusing drugs and alcohol. Other common and potentially harmful habits include excessive screen time, nail-biting, or procrastinating on important tasks.
Because habits are built to make things happen without us having to think much about them, we don't often stop to scrutinize our own habits or devote much mental energy to figuring out how they work. For this reason, consciously intervening in one’s own habitual behavior likely won’t come naturally, so breaking a habit often requires some consideration and effort. Bad habits, in particular, are especially hard to shake, largely due to the rewarding feelings that they bring—or, often, that they used to bring when the habit was formed.
Research in neurobiology and psychology estimates that as much as 45 percent of our daily behavior may be the result of habit rather than conscious thought. Daily habitual behaviors may include always drinking a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, taking the same route to school or work every day, or automatically turning the lights off when leaving a room.
How to Build Better Habits
Old habits can be difficult to shake, and healthy habits are often harder to develop than one would like. But through repetition, it's possible to form—and maintain—new habits. Even long-time habits that are detrimental to one’s health and well-being can be broken with enough determination and a smart approach.
To turn a healthy behavior into a habit, it's important to consider context and be mindful of potential pitfalls. Making good habits that actually stick typically necessitates 1) routinely putting yourself in situations in which you are more likely to engage in the desired behavior; 2) removing or minimizing points of friction that get in the way of the behavior; and 3) attaching a small reward that doesn’t itself impede the behavior. For example, someone who wants to start exercising first thing in the morning might 1) join a nearby gym that allows them to sign up for morning classes in advance; 2) lay out their clothes the night before so they don't need to expend energy deciding what to wear; and 3) treat themselves to a favorite smoothie after a successful workout as a reward.
While intrinsic motivation—the internal force pushing us to engage in a behavior—is ultimately invaluable, decades of neuroscience and psychology research make clear that incentives or rewards are also a key component of habit-building, likely because they trigger the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter strongly implicated in the habit-formation cycle. Recent online trends like "little treat culture," then, might actually be supported by science, which finds that rewarding ourselves with things that make us happy—even if they seem small or silly—can help strengthen the neural pathways in our brain that are connected to positive habits.
It's widely believed that new habits form in a set amount of time; a common pop psychology refrain, for example, suggests that it only takes 21 days for a habit to become ingrained in your brain. In reality, the time needed to build a habit depends on multiple factors, including the individual and the intended behavior, and the journey to real, lasting change is often much slower than self-help gurus suggest. While you might be able to pick up a new habit in a matter of weeks, some research indicates that building healthy habits can also take many months.
Trying to mindfully consider why you engage in a bad habit—and what other options there are—may help. So could taking some time to think about what prompts the bad habit and reevaluating what you get out of it (or don’t). Consider and keep in mind why you want to make a change, including how the change reflects your values. When a habit is part of an addiction or other mental health condition, professional treatment may be the best way to achieve change.
