Daily HABITS : How WE Work

Extremely successful people of all times have one thing in common – they give great importance to their daily routines and habits.

It does not matter if we are talking about getting more things done at work, leading a healthier lifestyle or mastering a new skill, – those who manage to control and optimize their habits tend to achieve higher results with less effort.

What is a habit?

 According to Charles Duhigg – an author of a best–selling book called The Power of Habit, there is a simple 3–step pattern that every habit follows (learn more 1). Sometimes it is called “3R’s of Habit Change”:

 1) Reminder – an external cue that causes an overall spike in your brain activity (alarm ringing)

2) Routine – a certain activity you are performing when faced a particular cue (brushing your teeth)

 3) Reward – a benefit that you receive after completing the routine (fresh teeth) Each element is equally important and should be addressed while forming a new habit

How to form a habit?

 Analyze your potential Before introducing any new habits into your daily routine, you need to do your homework – find out your current habits and understand how you can improve them.

It can be done simply by observing your own behavior for several days and writing down your actions during each hour of the day. Consider using apps like Moment, Break Free or Rescue Time to track your phone/computer usage.

 After several days, you will identify some patterns of your behavior that you might not necessarily like. Spending the first 20 minutes after waking up checking your phone; listening to the radio for 3 hours per day while commuting; or getting snacks from a vending machine downstairs when you feel tired? If it sounds familiar, you have just identified a high-potential improvement area to introduce new habits.

This is a place to start.

Start slow Do not try to change all your habits at once. Overnight success never happens when we speak about habit change. True results can be achieved only step by step. One possible way is to focus first on habits that disturb you the most.

You can also divide all your habits into smaller groups associated with different parts of the day and work only with one group at the same time.

Start with optimizing your morning routine: replacing the old habits you are not happy with the new ones (reading newspapers instead of watching tv-series during breakfast) or introducing completely new habits (waking up 20 minutes earlier to do morning exercises). When you feel confident about your new morning routine, you can start optimizing the next group of habits – your end-of-the-day routine.

How does the brain work?

To understand the importance of habits, let’s start with some basic insights from cognitive neuroscience.

Our brains have a powerful habit-forming system. The brain section called – the basal ganglia – is tasked with programming a repetitive day-to-day behavior. Its activity does not require much energy. Therefore, we hardly even think about taking a decision and just follow our instincts. Brushing your teeth in the morning; waiting for a green light to cross the street or doing groceries.

For most people these actions just happen “on autopilot” without spending any effort on a decision-making process. The prefrontal cortex is a section of our brain that is responsible for self-control and willpower. It is in charge of everything related to conscious, reasonable decision making. Unlike the basal ganglia, this part of our brain is able to take long-term consequences of our actions into account.

Going to the gym twice per week to keep fit; studying lectures during the whole semester not to be overloaded during the exam period or waking up early in the morning to go jogging before work. All these actions are rational decisions that correspond with our long-term objectives.

However, taking the right decisions all the time requires spending a lot of energy. Therefore, the prefrontal cortex gets tired very fast and the basal ganglia usually overpowers it. That is why very often we find ourselves coming back to our “autopilot” behavior: ending up at McDonald’s after a strict diet, scrolling down a facebook newsfeed instead of writing a thesis or watching another episode on Netflix instead of reading a book you can not finish for last two months

 What is wrong with the prefrontal cortex and why is it so weak? An influential willpower/ego depletion theory suggests that willpower is a limited resource, which means that when the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired. A lot of supporting evidence of willpower/ego depletion theory has accumulated over the last decade, however, further research is still needed to draw definite conclusions.

What we do know for sure is that willpower should not be treated as something given. Otherwise, willpower is like a muscle; it takes work and discipline, but you can build your willpower up through creating new habits and changing existing ones.

How long does it take to form a new habit?

A definite time period of 21 days.?. It is nothing but a common misconception. It started in the 1950s when Maxwell Maltz – a plastic surgeon – noticed that normally it took his patients about 21 days to adjust and get used to their new situations (appearance/physical condition). Later this fact was published in his book about self-development – Psycho-Cybernetics – that became a multimillion-copy bestseller and instantly spread the “21 days” myth across the globe). Unfortunately, in reality, there is no simple answer to the question above. How long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on individual behavior, personality type and circumstances.

Famous Lally’s study on habit formation indicates that it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people participating in her research to form a new habit To sum up, set your expectations appropriately and try to be patient.

The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice .All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensue discussion or debate.

Thank you … Keep it small Undoubtedly it is very important to have big goals. However, to achieve them we need to work with small daily habits.

The greatest hurdle we face is going from inertia to mobility. Small habits make this important step much easier, which increases the overall likelihood of success. If you are studying a foreign language – commit to learning 3 new words a day and not 30;

If you want to add morning exercises to your daily routine – start with a 15 min early work-out and not 45. Moreover, when you are already in motion, you need less willpower to continue your actions.

One more way to make the first step easier is to adjust your external environment. Make sure that you can reach your goal with the least possible effort required and otherwise, introduce additional barriers to overcome to follow temptation.

Have you heard about “if-then planning”? This technique is uniquely useful when it comes to resisting temptation and building good habits because it can introduce two crucial concepts of any habit – reminder and routine – at the same time. It was found that 91% of people who used if-then planning stuck to their exercise program opposed to 39% who didn’t .

This technique works great for all spheres of our life because it affects our subconscious mind. When we form if-then statements, our brain will unconsciously scan our environment for “if” cases. When “if” case actually happens, “then” case will be triggered automatically without requiring much willpower.

Setting small goals that are realistic enough and easy to achieve will definitely help you to avoid “What the Hell Effect”. However, it is even more important to change your mindset and focus on how often you succeed rather than on the fact of failure.

Good luck with your new habits that will make you better!

Sometimes, pearls of wisdom from a trusted source can help a person get on the success path. !

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