Stand with my back to the wall. Reach back and touch it with my left hand. Take a step forward with my left food and tap the ground with my racket. Say the score. Bounce the ball once and serve.
Position paper draft on right side of the screen. Open research notes, online sources, etc. on left side. Turn on music, low volume.
Wrap up daily activities by 10:00 pm. Dress for bed. Read or play computer until midnight.
I put on deodorant, comb my hair, then use three pieces of toilet paper placed on the bottom right corner of my sink counter to clean my razor every morning.
I put on deodorant, comb my hair, then use three pieces of toilet paper placed on the bottom right corner of my sink counter to clean my razor every morning.
What I have described above are three things that I do under certain circumstances. The first is how I serve when playing racquetball. The next is how I write research papers and blog posts. Next is my general evening routine and has been for the last fifteen years. And lastly my morning routine of getting ready for the day.
As I was doing research on this, I was looking for information on "why" we form habits. It turns out that "why" and "habits" don't go together. I wasn't able to find anything addressing the "why" of habit forming, it's all of the fact that forming habits is something we just do.
Habits form when we repeatedly do something. That's it. If you do the same thing the same way, you will eventually form a habit. Now, MIT demonstrated that as we do the same thing over and over, we eventually fine-tune it so that it becomes more efficient. Ultimately thought, we find ourselves slipping into autopilot as we preform these tasks. This can happen for both good behaviors as we all know. But this address the reason that we do not discuss why we form habits. We form habits because we do things, and many of those things are the same thing, over, and over, and over, and over......
So, back to how habits form. Terry Gross from Fresh Air on NPR, did an interview with Charles Duhigg, author of the book The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. There it mentions that habits consist of three parts: cue or trigger, behavior, and reward.
The cue or trigger is the switch that moves us to automatic mode, and can be hard to identify with all of the "noise" associated with our behavior. From the appendix of his book, Charles Duhigg points out that "experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, or immediately preceding action." This means that if you are trying to figure out what triggers your habit you can look to only those five areas. So, just keep track of where you are, what time it is, how you feel, who you are with, and what you were doing before you slipped into automatic. A pattern will eventually appear and you can narrow down the cue.
The behavior can also be called the routine. This is what becomes automatic. It may be my serving routine as described above, or my evening routine. It may be someone reaching for a handful of M&Ms at "that time" in the afternoon. This is usually the most identifiable aspect of the habit and usually what you want to stop.
The reward is what reinforces the habit. For instance, people usually don't develop a habit of putting their hands on a stove. This is simply because it hurts like the devil when you do. There is no reward to that, only pain. So every habit has a reward associated with it, something we feel that we are getting out of our routine. Perhaps it is the feeling that you aren't missing anything, like putting on deodorant or shaving. Or perhaps it feels easier on the eyes to look to the right side of the screen to type and the left to read. Whatever it is, it can be identified. Duhiggs points out that in trying to break a habit you should experiment with rewards so you can narrow down what it is you're craving when you enact the behavior. Once you know what you are craving from the behavior you can find more appropriate behaviors to achieve the same reward.
I should point out that I've presented Duhigg's ideas in almost reverse order. Check out the link to the appendix of his book above. There really is some fascinating stuff there. I was going to get into the neurological aspects of habit building, but I'll have to save that for another post.
I do want to make one thing clear. Many people associate an unusually pervasive habit, such as keeping their desk clean, or a particular action at a particular time EVERY DAY with having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). While I am no expert on OCD, but I have learned a thing or two from conference panels by mental health professionals and following Robison Wells, an author who has "a heavy dose of panic disorder, a moderate case of depression, and a growing, angry case of OCD." I love Rob's books and enjoy reading and listening to his blog and podcasts. In a blog last October, Rob made it clear:
As I was doing research on this, I was looking for information on "why" we form habits. It turns out that "why" and "habits" don't go together. I wasn't able to find anything addressing the "why" of habit forming, it's all of the fact that forming habits is something we just do.
Habits form when we repeatedly do something. That's it. If you do the same thing the same way, you will eventually form a habit. Now, MIT demonstrated that as we do the same thing over and over, we eventually fine-tune it so that it becomes more efficient. Ultimately thought, we find ourselves slipping into autopilot as we preform these tasks. This can happen for both good behaviors as we all know. But this address the reason that we do not discuss why we form habits. We form habits because we do things, and many of those things are the same thing, over, and over, and over, and over......
So, back to how habits form. Terry Gross from Fresh Air on NPR, did an interview with Charles Duhigg, author of the book The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. There it mentions that habits consist of three parts: cue or trigger, behavior, and reward.
The cue or trigger is the switch that moves us to automatic mode, and can be hard to identify with all of the "noise" associated with our behavior. From the appendix of his book, Charles Duhigg points out that "experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, or immediately preceding action." This means that if you are trying to figure out what triggers your habit you can look to only those five areas. So, just keep track of where you are, what time it is, how you feel, who you are with, and what you were doing before you slipped into automatic. A pattern will eventually appear and you can narrow down the cue.
The behavior can also be called the routine. This is what becomes automatic. It may be my serving routine as described above, or my evening routine. It may be someone reaching for a handful of M&Ms at "that time" in the afternoon. This is usually the most identifiable aspect of the habit and usually what you want to stop.
The reward is what reinforces the habit. For instance, people usually don't develop a habit of putting their hands on a stove. This is simply because it hurts like the devil when you do. There is no reward to that, only pain. So every habit has a reward associated with it, something we feel that we are getting out of our routine. Perhaps it is the feeling that you aren't missing anything, like putting on deodorant or shaving. Or perhaps it feels easier on the eyes to look to the right side of the screen to type and the left to read. Whatever it is, it can be identified. Duhiggs points out that in trying to break a habit you should experiment with rewards so you can narrow down what it is you're craving when you enact the behavior. Once you know what you are craving from the behavior you can find more appropriate behaviors to achieve the same reward.
I should point out that I've presented Duhigg's ideas in almost reverse order. Check out the link to the appendix of his book above. There really is some fascinating stuff there. I was going to get into the neurological aspects of habit building, but I'll have to save that for another post.
I do want to make one thing clear. Many people associate an unusually pervasive habit, such as keeping their desk clean, or a particular action at a particular time EVERY DAY with having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). While I am no expert on OCD, but I have learned a thing or two from conference panels by mental health professionals and following Robison Wells, an author who has "a heavy dose of panic disorder, a moderate case of depression, and a growing, angry case of OCD." I love Rob's books and enjoy reading and listening to his blog and podcasts. In a blog last October, Rob made it clear:
"When my OCD literally makes me punch myself in the face, or smash my hand in hopes of breaking it, there's nothing I find more annoying than picky people who like to keep their desk tidy cheerfully declaring "I'm totally OCD!" Words have meaning."Please be considerate of those that struggle with the most prevalent mental disorder out there, the disorder that I have heard referred to as "the King of Mental Illness." If you have a strong habit to do something, that is not an indication of OCD. When you habit impacts everything else you do so you cannot live a normal life - seek professional help. If it isn't OCD, it's probably an addiction. And those come with their own problems as well.
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