I've been reading and learning a bit about research related to habits, why they exist and how they can be changed. I've been reading Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit, which is a reporter's interpretation of the research related to habit. Meanwhile, I've been listening to one of the "Great Courses" available on Audible, "Scientific Secrets for Self-Control."*Duhigg has a couple of useful infographics posted online: How to Change a Habit and How to Create a Habit.
What he is saying fits nicely into the lectures I'm listening to. Basically, there is a habit cycle, with a cue to trigger a routine (the "habit"), the routine itself, and a reward for doing the routine.
To create a habit, you identify a cue (or trigger), do the routine you want to make a habit every time you encounter the trigger, and give yourself a reward. Wash, rinse, and repeat until the habit is, well, --habitual.
So I found this app that I really like to help me build new habits, called The Fabulous. I live with my smart phone in my hand or at my elbow at all times, so this really works for me. I'm also a sucker for nice graphics and soothing music. So when The Fabulous takes over my phone, plays pretty music, and tells me to drink water, I do it. Then it tells me what a good job I've done, and, just like my dog, I wag my tail and feel good about myself. If I'm lucky, the habit will be ingrained before I get tired of the tail-wagging part (that is, the habit itself will become an intrinsic motivator before the extrinsic motivator of "good girl" wears off.) There are a number of habit-building apps and programs that do the same type of thing (just google apps for habits and you will find a bunch).
As a student, I was awesome at creating a habit for studying. I didn't know it was a habit, and I certainly didn't use any theory to create it, but it made sense for me. Here were my steps:
- Set aside specific times for studying--between classes, in big blocks of time on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, or whatever fit my schedule for the semester.
- Figure out what needed to be done both short-term (homework assignments, reading through class notes, cramming--er, I mean, "final touch-ups of my knowledge base"--for exams) and long term (papers. projects). I had a big 4-month calendar on the wall with dates of assignments on it (that's a habit that stuck; I'm still all about the whiteboards and calendars). The calendar or to do list, combined with the time-of-day study block was the cue.
- Here's the important part: When I did something as I planned, I gave myself a reward, and made it contingent on doing the homework. "If I finish this book that's due on Friday, I can take Thursday night off and hang out with friends, but if I don't finish it, I have to stay in my room on Thursday night."
The trick there, though, is the willpower to not hang out with friends when you haven't done your homework.
What I'm learning about willpower in the Audible course mentioned above, is that the "limited energy model" indicates that we only have so much energy to devote to willpower. If you do one thing that uses up your reservoir of willpower for the day, it's much harder to stay on plan for the next bit of willpower. That's part of the reason they tell you to exercise first thing in the morning, so that you do it before you have used up your willpower stores by everyday self-control activities. Studies show that the act of self-control even goes so far as to use up glucose in our bodies, making us less able to complete multiple acts of self-control without restoring those levels.
The good news is that once something becomes a habit, it no longer takes willpower to make it happen. Your brain treats a habit differently than a new routine. So it used to take a whole lot of concentration and willpower for me to remember to drink a full glass of water, take my morning prescription med, and wait to eat breakfast for the required half hour for the med to work on an empty stomach. My habit had been to have breakfast immediately upon getting up. A year or two later, it's now habit to do the water and pill, so I'm going to add to that sequence an exercise routine before breakfast. (So the cue for this habit is actually an existing habit) Adding an exercise routine is a challenge for me, so I'm doing everything that I can to make it easy--having workout clothes and shoes right by the bed, just as I always have a water bottle on my bedside table for the earlier morning ritual. As for rewards, I'm giving myself a breakfast treat--allowing myself a bit of cheese as my breakfast protein and my favorite fresh berries, regardless of what's in season.
Breaking a habit uses the same theory, but is harder because it never really disappears from your brain. Almost 30 years after moving away from Springfield, Ohio, I can go back and drive to where I used to live and take the route I used to go to work every day. I can't find my way around in that town on routes I took less often, and I don't consciously remember the route, but the habit pops up as soon as the cue of my apartment building is in sight.
So the key is not really breaking a habit, but changing it, according to Duhigg. So you diagnose the cue and the reward that have made up your habit, and you substitute and activity that is triggered by the old cue AND delivers the old reward. So, if my habit is to come home from work and have a glass of wine, I can change that habit by realizing that I've connected drinking that wine with allowing myself to sit still and relax after work. So, if I add a different relaxing activity into that time space--reading a book, meditating for a bit, or even exercising--I can change the habit.
So what habits are you contemplating these days? What habits do you have that you don't even notice? Drop me a line in the comments, and let's talk.
*Note: none of these resources are available through our library. The book is available through the Transylvania County Library. I have not purchased it for our library because it is a journalistic take on the topic, reporting secondary research, which is probably less useful for our students than more scholarly works on the subject.
