The Psychology of Habits: The Fascinating Part of Unconscious Living

Living consciously all the time is exhausting. Develop good habits instead.

In the past two months, I’ve woken up every day and written three longhand stream of consciousness pages. I’ve written one page of reflection before bed every night. I’ve flossed every night after brushing my teeth and I even pull on the door handle when I lock my car just to make sure it’s locked.

If you look at my medium history, I posted inconsistently up until two months ago where I’ve been writing weekly ever since.

Before that, I wasn’t able to form any of the habits I wanted to consistently. I’ve tried multiple morning routines consisting of meditation, cold showers and many more which didn’t last a week.

So what was the secret?

Just before I began my journey into the collection of good habits, I had a conversation with a friend about my difficulty with living consciously. Contrary to the popular advice I’ve been given, he didn’t tell me to meditate or to do yoga.

Instead, the advice I received was that I didn’t need to live consciously. I needed my unconscious behaviour to be healthy. I needed to protect myself from my least aware self.

Living consciously all the time is not only exhausting, it’s unsustainable and quite possibly impossible. That’s why zen masters spend their entire lives inside temples, not battling the chaos in the world.

He told me a recent story about how he had been building a finance-tracking habit where he would input how much money he’d spent into an app as soon as he bought something. It had become so ingrained that when he got drunk at the club, he still inputted how much he spent into the app.

Inspired by my new understanding of habits, I had to find out more.

Luckily, I came across a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The implementation of the ideas learnt in this book and how it can change your life are going to be the contents of this post.

Introduction: Habits and Their Importance

In the fall of 1993, a man named Eugene Pauly was suffering from viral encephalitis, a disease caused by a usually harmless virus that produces cold sores, fever blisters and mild infections on skin.

In rare cases, the virus can cause damage to tender tissues in our brain leading to permanent brain damage. This was unfortunately the case for Eugene.

In Eugene’s case, it damaged the section of his brain which established new memories. Luckily, he was still able to walk, talk, change clothes and even cook.

Due to his lack of memories, his wife Beverly had to guide him everywhere. Under a doctor’s instructions, Beverly was instructed to take him out to walk around the block every morning and afternoon together because it was important for him to exercise.

However, one morning as Beverly was getting dressed, Eugene disappeared. Beverly ran outside, scanned the street, knocked on the doors of neighbours and eventually ran home to call the police.

As soon as she rushed through the front door, she found Eugene in the living room, watching the History Channel on their television. Noticing the pile of pinecones on the table and his fingers sticky with sap, she noticed that he had just gone on a walk by himself and made his way back.

But if Eugene can’t even remember his way around the block, how did he get back?

Eugene’s story has been instrumental to our understanding of habits today. It has entailed the understanding that the parts of our brains that form habits and the parts that form memories may perhaps be separate.

When we perform the same routines multiple times, our brains develop reflexive shortcuts. Since Eugene had developed a shortcut to go outside every morning, he could go for the same walk around the block.

It’s not what you know, its what you do consistently. — Tony Robbins.

This is exactly what a habit is. Something that you do consistently. And having good habits will change your life.

In fact, they already dominate your life. When you wake up in the morning, it doesn’t take any willpower for you to get up to brush your teeth or go to the toilet. Most of the time when recounting your day, brushing your teeth was so insignificant that you won’t even recall it.

And this is how most of us live. Many of the decisions we think we make are actually default unconscious decisions. But that’s actually okay.

We shouldn’t be waking up every day deciding whether or not we need to brush our teeth, or whether or not we should use toothpaste. You would deplete your willpower long before work.

But what if we make our default decisions healthy and consistent? You can deliberately insert habits into your life to improve it.

If you want to be successful, you don’t need to reinvent yourself. You just need to get small things done consistently.

Structure of Habits: Deconstructing Into Parts

Understanding the structure of habits is important. It permits us to have a greater sense of control over them.

What forms a habit?

Charles Duhigg breaks down a habit into three components.

Cue — what triggers your brain to go into the habit Routine — the physical or mental actions you go through after the cue Reward — what helps your brain figure out if the habit is worth remembering for the future

Just seeing this loop doesn’t do justice to the significance it plays upon our lives. A Duke University researcher published a paper in 2006 which found that more than 40% of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.

That means 40% of our lives are dominated by these loops. And we have the power to turn this 40% into habits that improve our lives that happen automatically.

A loop of a smoker could possibly be:

Cue — bored during the break at work Routine — smoke a cigarette Reward — nicotine rush from smoking

Once you become aware of your habits, they become much easier to change. You can experiment with changing the cues, routines and rewards of your habits to improve your life.

Since every individual is different, there is no one method to changing habits. Duhigg however, does provide a simple framework.

One thing you do have to keep in mind is that habits do not get erased. They can only be replaced. That’s why it’s so easy for a long-time addict to fall right back into their old habits.

The Habit Framework: Add or Reshape Habits

Identify The Routine

Understanding the routine is the first part of understanding what constitutes your habit.

Let’s say you have a habit of going home and binge-watching TV series while over-eating bags of chips and candy. You tell yourself today you’re going to go home and study this time. You’re going to be productive.

But day after day, you keep watching Game of Thrones while consuming monstrous amounts of food.

It feels so good and then it feels so bad.

Usually, the routine is the most obvious. It’s sitting down in front of your computer, opening Netflix, grabbing the bag of chips or pint of ice cream and consuming everything.

Experiment With Rewards

Rewards are essential parts of habits because they teach us that a habit is worth building.

You don’t have to be completely healthy during the experimentation phase.

If you get home and you instantly feel the need to put on a TV series and get out food, instead maybe just put on the TV series. Or just eat a bag of chips. Maybe right as you go home, change your clothes and go for a run.

The point of experimenting with rewards isn’t to fix your habit. It’s to find out what your cue is.

Are you hungry? Bored? Need a break from work?

Reflect every time you change the rewards and write a note (mental or physical) on how you felt after.

Isolate the Cue

Upon experimentation with rewards, you’ll probably find out what you’re really craving. This will help you find what triggers a cue in the first place.

Experiments have shown that all habitual cues fit into one of five categories:

Location

Time

Emotional state

Other people

Immediately preceding action

Find out what your cue is. In our previous example, you could be participating in mass consumption every time you’re bored.

Have a Plan

Now that you’ve identified the cue and rewards you’re craving, you can tweak your routine to better suit your habit.

Reframe your habit into thinking I will do (routine) when (cue) occurs to achieve (reward).

e.g. I will go for a run when I’m bored to achieve the rush of endorphins I get after running.

Keystone Habits: Small Wins Lead to Chain Reactions

An important idea Duhigg presents is the concept of ‘keystone habits’.

Keystone habits are habits that when implemented, have a chain reaction to other parts of your life.

For example, studies done from the past decade examining the impacts of exercise on daily routines illustrate that when people start habitually exercising, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives.

Most people who exercise will start eating better and becoming more productive at work.

A keystone habit that I’ve personally implemented is my nightly reflection journal. Since I reflect on my day every night, I fear writing in my journal that I’ve accomplished nothing today. As a result, I’ve become more productive.

Another keystone habit is food journalling, which can force you to eat healthier because you don’t want to put in large amounts of junk food into your diary. Just having the over-consumption on paper is terrifying.

Habits can even be mental. I’ve gotten into the habit of reflecting on what has happened following emotionally charged events. It was hard at first because it wasn’t a physical task I could do daily, but I’ve since reduced the amount of time it takes for me to reflect.

Somehow these habits have the capacity to force domino effects that establish other good habits. Keystone habits offer ‘small wins’ which create structures of sustainable living and even cultures where improvement is perpetual.

Remember that when establishing new habits or reshaping old ones, you won’t be perfect the entire time. Your goal isn’t to change everything in your life at once, but to slowly improve it. Suffering from perfectionism myself, I’ve fallen into the trap of giving up when I fail once.

Don’t be discouraged by your failure to ingrain new habits right away. All habits take time to become automatic.