Crafting Powerful Habits
You’ve created powerful routines to prep you for your week, carry through your mornings and nights, and wrap up your week. But at what point do these routines become habits? What do you do about those bad habits that keep throwing a curveball into your routine and knocking you off track? What are habits anyhow?
Habits have gained considerable airtime over the past six years since the publication of the book The Power of Habits: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.
While Duhigg’s book is relatively new, the concept of habits is not. Marcus Aurelius wrote about habits over 1,800 years ago, seeing habits as an essential part of the discipline that Stoics required. Aristotle also expounded the power of habits stating:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
Whatever the source, all agree that habits are core to who we are and what we do as individuals. Research shows that about 40% of our daily activities are habitual meaning that they happen without us consciously thinking about them.
Habits are the result of what is called a habit loop or the process that our brains go through when engaging in a specific behavior.
The three-part habit loop conditions our brain to recognize a particular cue (or trigger), perform specific actions, and then receive an award either physical or chemical (think dopamine — the “happy” chemical). Our brains developed in this way so that we didn’t have to think about every task that we do every day. Could you imagine having to think about all the actions you have to take when you get ready in the morning or drive your car? Habits give us the ability to automate those things that we no longer need to think about so that we can focus on more difficult or challenging activities.
These habits can be formed through us adopting routines that we want to regularly engage in or can be the result of cues that we respond to in order to obtain a specific reward. For example, I may adopt a specific morning routine so that I starting my day off productivity and taking proper care of myself. Over time, the routine of getting up, brushing my teeth, taking medication, and then getting dressed to take my dog for a walk (reward) becomes something that I rarely think about after turning off my alarm (the cue). All those tiny habits happen as a natural part of the habit loop. In this scenario, I’ve formed a routine (a set of tasks/actions) that over time has turned into a habit that I rarely think about.
Unfortunately, habits can also be detrimental to us when they involve actions that cause more harm than good. This could include things like smoking, eating poorly, or saying “I’m sorry” to any kind of confrontation regardless of whether we did anything wrong or not.
How Long Does it Take to Form Habits
How long it takes you to form a habit is closely tied to how embedded that habit is in your life, how strong the reward is, and how disciplined you are to practice the activity to make it become a habit. Don’t pay attention to any of that noise that a habit only takes 21-days to form — the science doesn’t back it up.
Because habits depend on a cue or trigger, it is also easy to disrupt the habit loop as it is being created. Changing up your schedule for a business trip or vacation can interfere with the cues you have in place (which might be why it is such a great time to build a habit now!).
The Best Resources on Habits
There are a lot of books that you can read on habits that will get you into the science of how habits work (The Power of Habits), making habits work (Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything), or ridiculously simple (Atomic Habits).
There is also a wide range of books that will focus on specific aspects of habits like adopting mindsets (Growth Mindset: How We Can Learn to Fulfull Our Potential), timing (When), focus (The One Thing), effectiveness (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), or to become better learners (Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning).
All of these are favorites of mine, but the one that really enabled me to successfully change my behaviors to achieve my goals was Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. It is so approachable and easy to use as you are focused on doing nothing more than getting 1% better. Other books I read left me frustrated and struggling to really make any improvement.
What’s Next?
I thought you’d never ask! Habits can be a messy business as there is So. Much. Out. There. Too much information can lead to analysis paralysis so, over the rest of this week, we will be focused on the following:
- Habit Stacking: Quick ways to help you catch the habit-forming bug
- Habit Hacks: Strategies you can use to overcome those pesky behaviors that keep getting in your way
- Common Habits: Core habits to adopt
- Goal-oriented Habits: Habits that are going to unlock your ability to achieve your goals
- Breaking Bad: How to start kicking those bad habits to the curb
If you’re new here…
We are on a journey to helping you Become the CEO of You so that you can become the best version of yourself. Over the course of the month, we’ll cover knowing yourself, creating goals, adopting mindsets, embracing habits, and practicing self-care. You can find all the posts in our publication Living to Learn. You can also find my random musings on my personal page here.
