Why the power of habits might just live up to the hype

There’s been more than a little buzz about habits lately. To take just one example: James Clear’s 2018 book “Atomic Habits” spent an eye-popping 260 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Books like these – including the 1989 classic “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” – promise that habits are a key to transforming your personal and professional life. And they draw on our collective, perennial desire to form good habits (and break bad ones) as a way of optimizing our life.

But does the power of habits live up to the hype? Experts point to a deep well of neuroscience to show that habits are a potent way to make lasting changes in your life, but they’re not magic. Getting results from your daily habits takes intention, discipline, and a lot of time.

Let’s sift through the fanfare around habits, and get down to the advice that can truly improve your professional or personal life.

What is a habit?

A habit is “a routine that repeats automatically in response to a trigger.”

That’s the definition from Ally Meyers, a certified executive and positive psychology coach, and Yale-certified expert in the science of well-being. It succinctly describes the “habit loop” that’s essential to understand. Let’s break it down.

• The trigger, or cue, is something that prompts you to start a routine. This could be arriving at a certain location, being around a specific person, or seeing the clock reach a certain time of day.
• The thought or action is what happens next in response to the cue.
• The reward is the feel-good moment after the thought or action, which makes you want to do it again in response to that same trigger.

There are endless examples of habits and their attendant loops. You likely have a habit of brushing your teeth every night: You’re cued by the arrival of bedtime, you brush your teeth, and then you feel good for having done so. In a professional setting, you might have a habit of checking in with your boss every morning: You’re cued by your arrival at your desk, you pop into your manager’s office, and then you feel satisfied with getting your day off to a good start. 

This works because your brain can effortlessly follow new paths as they become well-worn with repetition. 

A habit, however, is distinct from something like an addiction. “An addiction is a habit that has spiraled out of control and is causing harm to either yourself or somebody else,” Meyers says. Major medical organizations describe addiction as a chronically relapsing brain disease, which again is a compulsion beyond a simple habit.

Why habits are important at work

Many of us want to accomplish big things at work. Maybe you aspire to a big promotion, or want to check an ambitious project off your to-do list. Accomplishing those things is often a result of habits, whether we realize it or not.

“Success, no matter how you define it, doesn’t come from one standalone act,” Meyers says. “It comes from daily routines, which are made up of all of your small habits. That’s what drives the ship.”

One example of this is creating a habit of a consistent sleep schedule. Getting a good night’s rest every so often is good, but unlikely to create a stable foundation for your work life. Making it a habit – getting eight hours of sleep every night, or at least most nights – can give you the consistent energy to tackle big projects at work over the long haul, or produce higher-quality results.

The limitations (and misconceptions) of habits

Habits are powerful, but they’re not inherently useful unless they serve a larger purpose. It’s great to build and successfully maintain a habit, Meyers says, but not for its own sake. They are a means to an end, so it’s crucial to reflect regularly and make sure your habits are aligned with your desired outcome.

Another misconception is that habits will automatically form in a certain number of days, for everyone in every context. The reality is more complicated. “The likelihood of success depends on so many moving parts,” Meyers says. For example, your environment can accelerate the timeline of habit formation (if people around you are forming similar habits) or lengthen it (if you’re surrounded by competing triggers).

In fact, your environment can do a lot to boost your own willpower, according to USC psychology professor Wendy Wood. It might be tempting to think we can brute-force our way into new habits, but adding helpful cues to our surroundings can go a long way. It’s the classic advice of leaving your gym bag packed, at the door, so you don’t have an excuse to skip the gym in the morning.

And one last thing: Despite what the DuoLingo owl might have you think, missing one day of a habit (i.e. “breaking your streak”) is not catastrophic, Meyers says. What’s more useful is to zoom out and recognize that completing, say, 27 out of 30 days in a month is still a success.

How do habits actually work?

The key to forming new habits, on a brain-level, is something called neuroplasticity. This term “refers to the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections in response to learning and behavioral changes,” according to Jessica Koehler Ph.D.

When you’re forming new habits, you’re taking advantage of that neuroplasticity. Meyers explains it using a metaphor: Imagine you come to the edge of a forest, and there’s no clear way through. You pick a random spot and start bushwacking, scraping yourself on branches along the way. It’s painful, but you make it to the other side. Next time you approach the forest, you can vaguely see the path you took, and you try to follow it – still getting scraped up a bit, but not as much. Eventually, the path becomes so well-worn that you can follow it easily and without effort.

This is, in a way, what happens when you form a new habit. It might feel hard at first, but as you repeat it, the neural pathway becomes stronger in your brain, and easier to follow automatically, Meyers says.

And remember that “cue-routine-reward” loop from earlier? That has a strong basis in neuroscience, too. “Over time, your brain associates the cue with the reward, and the behavior becomes automatic,” Koehler writes.

How to form good habits

There are plenty of good habits you might want to form in your professional life, like time-blocking for deep focus or doing regular check-ins with your manager. Here’s how to do it:

1. Identify the habit you want to create.
2. Choose a cue, or trigger, that will prompt you to start the habit loop.
3. Perform the action.
4. Feel the reward of following through. “It’s key to recognize you just kept that promise to yourself,” Meyers says.

Let’s say you’re trying to create that habit of deep-focus work sessions. Here’s what that could look like:

1. Cue: Each morning, before you start your work day, look at your schedule and identify a block of time you can use for focused work. Put this on your calendar.
2. Action: When the allotted time arrives, silence your notifications and work on your task, uninterrupted, for the duration of the time block.
3. Reward: You’ll get the sense of accomplishment for having made real progress on your project – and will be more likely to repeat the action in the future.

The steps are rather simple, and they can flex to meet your needs. 

For example, Meyers recommends keeping the rewards mostly intrinsic (e.g. that hit of dopamine for feeling productive) rather than extrinsic (e.g. eating a bar of chocolate). But you might want to incorporate the occasional external reward to give yourself an extra incentive to keep up a daily habit, Meyers says.

How to break bad habits

Breaking undesirable habits works basically in reverse. 

1. Identify the habit you’d like to leave behind.
2. Add friction to the undesired action.
3. Create a desirable alternative.
4. Recognize when you successfully avoid the undesired action.

Meyers did this in her own life with the habit of aimlessly scrolling on her phone. She recognized this was something she often did while bored, and wanted to stop. She added friction by turning off her phone in certain situations, or leaving it in the car when she was out. Then, she carried a daily planner with her to create a desirable alternative: In moments of boredom, she’d take out the notebook and reflect on the progress she’d made on her to-do list, which created a hit of dopamine similar to what she got from scrolling.

It’s not perfect: Sometimes Myers still grabs the phone in moments of boredom, but now she’s much more likely to go for the notebook, instead.

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