Working on new, positive habits is popular. Especially around the turn of the year. But our brain is actually much better at developing bad habits. What are habits again? The American Psychological Association says, in short: a habit is a learned behavior or series of behaviors, linked to a situation, which is carried out unconsciously and automatically over time. Example: when I walk into our bathroom at home and it is dark (situation), I automatically press the light button on the wall with my right hand (behaviour).
We learn most habits on our own. They arise because a certain action ‘works’ in a situation. That action immediately takes us from an unpleasant feeling to a pleasant one. So: the bathroom is dark, which is difficult. But when I press the button, I see everything and that’s easy. Or: you’re sitting with people you don’t know and that makes you nervous. But when you eat dinner, pick up your phone, or start drumming with your fingers (I sometimes do all three), you relax.
Important here: the reward system in our brain responds to immediate positive experiences and does not consider the long term. We display behavior that immediately produces a good feeling – without consciously choosing it. As a result, the action becomes increasingly easier, more automatic and more unconscious. The other way around also applies: we prefer to avoid anything that immediately causes discomfort or pain and is therefore never really easy to do.
So we spend more time in front of the TV than at the gym; we prefer games to homework; we would rather eat chocolate than vegetables; we would rather take the car than the bus; and so on. We are especially good at developing bad habits.
The idea that you can also develop healthy, positive habits, so that you effortlessly automatically start exercising more, being nicer to your partner and less CO2 produces is very attractive. That’s why we like to think, talk and read about it. But in most cases this is an illusion. You can make routines of this kind of behavior, recurring behavior patterns, but they won’t happen ‘by themselves’ anytime soon. Difficult routines; recurring patterns of behavior that take a lot of effort and concentration and don’t bring us immediate satisfaction never become easy habits.
Perhaps there is still a little hope. Habit researchers Benjamin Gardner, Alison Phillips and Gaby Judah distinguish between decision-making habits (habitual instigation) and performance habits (habitual execution). According to them, the decision habit is the most important. Their research shows that an automatic decision, for example to eat healthy or to exercise, linked to a fixed situation, such as a certain moment, is more important than automatically performing all actions afterwards.
So it’s about the first step, the automatic decision in your head. That sets the rest of the routine in motion.
It reminds me of a domino video on youtube. The last domino to fall, in a row of eighteen, is more than six meters high. But the first stone measures no more than twenty centimeters. And so it’s the first one. Feed for new personal behavioral experiments.
Ben Tiggelaar writes weekly about personal leadership, work and management.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on December 18, 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 18, 2021
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