How To Form Habits (Real Life Version)
I’ve been thinking a lot about habits lately.
The simple way of thinking about habits is as a cue, followed by a response. So, if you’re trying to start exercising, you might think of a habit as:
CUE: I finish work for the day → RESPONSE: I go to the gym.
CUE: I wake up in the morning → RESPONSE: I go for a run.
CUE: I finish putting the kids to bed → RESPONSE: I do a home workout.
Over time, these cue-response relationships strengthen. This makes deciding to exercise more automatic and effortless over time. If you always work out right when you wake up, it may feel weird at first, but after three months, it feels totally normal.
This is the principle of classical conditioning, first discovered when Ivan Pavlov realized his dogs would salivate when hearing the dinner bell, even before the food the bell predicted showed up. Classical conditioning is ubiquitous in the animal world — even sea squirts do it — thus, it is as close to a universal principle of psychology as one can get.
At the same time, anyone who has actually started a new habit, such as exercise, knows that real life isn’t so simple.
