For many, the past year has disrupted deeply rooted habits. Some complain that they exercise less, others drink more. That’s why it’s worth re-examining what conclusions scientists have reached about how to create good habits and get rid of bad ones.
Habits are like shortcuts—they’re things we can do quickly and without thinking because we’ve done them so many times that they’ve become automatic, says psychologist Katie Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies behavior.
One important characteristic of habits is that they are triggered by cues in our environment, says Wendy Wood, a social psychologist at the University of Southern California whose research studies how we form and change habits. The trigger can be a time of day, a specific place or another activity. Getting out of bed each morning and going to the kitchen, for example, might prompt you to grab some beans in the grinder and start making coffee. Common behavior usually offers a reward – in this case, a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
In an ideal world, good habits like exercise, healthy eating and reading would be as easy to pick up as making coffee. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. “We have failed to organize the environment in a way that allows us to easily form good habits,” says Wood.
It has already become commonplace that the beginning of the year is the perfect time for a new beginning. Milkman agrees, but points out that throughout the year we can find dates significant enough to start the change – like birthdays, holidays, and even an ordinary Monday.
The New Year is not the only time when we can make a decision to change our habits
Since changing habits means breaking the routine, it can be more effective if we combine the new habit, or giving up an old one, with another big change in our life, adds Wood – “for example when you move, change jobs or go on vacation”. During the pandemic, for example, many people got into the habit of cooking more at home and therefore eat healthier, adds the psychologist.
But just a fresh start is not enough. However, most New Year’s resolutions fail. “Most things require more than immediate motivation,” says Milkman.
Timing is important for building good habits, but the reward must be immediate, notes Wood. That’s because dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in reinforcing certain behaviors, works in a time frame of a few seconds.
Unfortunately, many desirable behaviors do not have immediate rewards. For example, if you start running for the first time, it will probably be difficult and painful for the first week or two, and the benefits will not be apparent as quickly. This lack of instant gratification can be demotivating. On the other hand, sitting on the couch and watching a movie has an immediate reward – so it’s easier to get into the habit.
Given dopamine’s short timeline, Wood says strategies that rely on long-term rewards, such as paying people weekly or monthly compensation if they exercise more, don’t form habits. The same mechanisms for acquiring habits in the brain do not work here.
So you need a different strategy. Milkman, for example, only allowed herself to listen to Harry Potter audiobooks when she was at the gym. In this way, exercise gave her the instant gratification of hearing the next chapter of a compelling book and helped her build an exercise habit.
The initial change of integrating a new behavior into a daily routine is the hardest, says Eliot Berkman, a psychologist specializing in addiction, goal setting and motivation at the University of Oregon. “They often seem to us unnatural and that we are forced to behave differently”. But he advises that we take that strange, unpleasant feeling as a sign that we’re on the right track to developing a new habit.
Consistency is important when establishing new habits, researchers say, but there’s also the danger of being too rigid. Milkman and her collaborator, Harvard Business School economist John Beshears, learned this lesson when they were working with Google on how to get the company’s employees to exercise more in the gym they had in their office building.
In a new book, How to changeshe describes a study in which she and Beshears divided 2,500 employees into two groups: one that received a reward for going to the fitness center at the same time every day for a month, and another that received a reward for exercising every day, regardless of the time of day .
Milkman hypothesized that the group with stricter guidelines would build stronger habits. That didn’t happen. In reality, when people in that group couldn’t leave at the specified time, they ended up not going at all. Those in the second group simply found a different way. Forty weeks later, the people in the group who had more flexibility still exercised more often than the others.
A new habit should start with small steps, says Alan Stacey, who studies health habits and addiction at Claremont University in California. For running, for example, Stacey advises that the first step might be finding the time – waking up 20 minutes earlier or using part of your lunch break. The next step might be to set up cues to guide you in the right direction, such as putting on your sneakers before your morning coffee so you’re ready to go and less likely to give up on your plan. (Or take it a step further and sleep in your running clothes, as Wood did to stay consistent until she reached her goal.)
Stace’s research on promoting healthy habits such as condom use among drug users also illustrates the importance of preparation. In one study, drug addiction program participants were given basic information about the health benefits of condoms. About a third of them also did exercises on the computer where they were offered a choice of different situations, such as whether to put condoms in their pocket or purse before going to a party or bar. The computer program then prompted them to visualize what they would do if they ended up leaving the house without a condom and asked them to describe in their own words the steps they would take in that case.
Compared to participants who received only health information, those who did these additional exercises reported more frequent condom use when the researchers checked them three months later. “People have to prepare themselves for that kind of behavior,” says Stacey. Breaking down behaviors into smaller steps and tying them into a specific chain of activities can help reinforce them.
Most of us know which behaviors are beneficial and which are harmful. So why do we still do things we know are bad for us? This was the question that drew Stacey to this area of research. Growing up, his father was an alcoholic, and later, when Stacey worked as a musician, he saw people overusing alcohol and drugs despite knowing the consequences. “I’ve always been interested in why people do things when they know the consequences,” wonders Stacey.
Some of the strategies researchers recommend for forming habits, such as preparation, can also help people break bad habits.
Stacey and his team are developing an app to help people who are addicted to drugs, cigarettes or alcohol choose alternative behaviors that they can plan ahead of time.
Being around other smokers, for example, can trigger the urge to smoke. The application presents alternatives when, for example, you go out for coffee with friends. The app, which provides feedback on progress, will help people prepare when they find themselves in a similar situation.
Instead of trying to simply eliminate a bad habit, Berkman recommends replacing one behavior with another. For example, one study found that a healthier snack helped participants replace their usual snack. “It’s much easier to say, ‘When I have a craving for a cigarette, I’ll do this instead,’ than, ‘When I have a craving for a cigarette, I’ll just not smoke,’ or drink tea instead.”
Understanding the motivation and triggers of the habit can also help break it. Berkman and his team are working on a project to see if thinking about all the ways cigarettes are embedded in their lives helps smokers trying to quit using nicotine replacement therapy.
For one person, smoking can be a way to take a break from work. So helping that person find another way to do the same thing—perhaps taking 10 minutes every few hours to chat with a friend or read a magazine—gives them other ways to fulfill their need for a break. For another person, the physical aspect of holding something in their hand can be helpful, so replacing smoking with an activity like knitting would be welcome.
Wood suggests trying to take time to think instead of operating on autopilot—say, reflexively pouring a second glass of wine after finishing the first. People tend to fall back on their habits when they’re distracted or feel pressed by time constraints, she says. But when they have a few moments to think about their actions, they can make better decisions.
How long does it take to form a new habit or actually break an old one? Unfortunately, there is no magic number, says Benjamin Gardner, a social and health psychologist at the University of Cambridge. Studies of habit formation generally suggest a time frame ranging from several weeks to several months.
Source: www.sitoireseto.com
