Habits Become Us
Notes on Habits
Deep Life Notes | Habits
Habits are less about good and bad, and more about whether they are effective or ineffective in helping us live the kind of life we want.
Where I live, there’s only one road out. It leads onto a motorway and nine times out of ten, that’s the route I take. But when it’s that tenth time, there’s a good chance I miss the turn I need because I’m on autopilot. This usually results in me asking myself, slightly bemused, “where are you going?” Maybe this is familiar to you, too.
Welcome to habits.
The Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner believed much of human behaviour could be understood through conditioning. His experiments were famous for producing repeatable and predictable events. Skinner was one of the key figures behind the science of behaviourism, and it’s the foundation of much of our understanding of habits today.
We can break habits into a three-part loop: cue; routine; and reward. First, you sense an external cue, say, your morning alarm. This creates a spike in your brain activity as your brain decides which habit is appropriate for the situation.
Then comes the routine, meaning the activity you’re used to acting out when faced with this particular cue. You reach over to your bedside table and drink a glass of water with your brain pretty much on autopilot.
Finally, you get a reward, a feeling of success, and in this case, you feel hydrated and more alert.
Not all 'bad' habits are bad
We often group habits into good and bad. But that might be too simplistic, and besides, the dividing line isn’t always clear. Many consider chewing gum a bad habit, for example. Yet, I frequently chew gum while working and writing because I find it helps me focus. I’ve since learned that some research suggests that chewing gum immediately before a mentally difficult task may improve thinking and alertness.
There are other examples of supposed bad habits being good for us. Take daydreaming. Instead of a sign of laziness or procrastination, daydreaming has been shown to help problem solving, with your mind taking the time to address more important questions in your life.
It might be more helpful to think of habits as effective or ineffective, and in the context of your own life. In this way, ‘bad’ habits like chewing gum and daydreaming may actually be effective ones.
A harder question is which habits are helping our lives, and which are getting in the way. But it’s not always easy. Take the habits of the great twentieth-century writer, Franz Kafka.
The writing habits of Franz Kafka
It fascinated me to read about the daily routine of Kafka. Unlike most other prominent writers, Kafka held a full-time job working for an insurance company. When he was promoted to chief clerk, he moved to a one-shift system, working from 8:30am until 2:30pm.
After Kafka finished work at 2:30pm, he went for lunch until 3:30pm, then slept until 7:30pm. Then he’d exercise and have a family dinner (Kafka still lived with his parents). He’d only start writing at 11pm, but dedicated the first hour or two to his letters and diaries. And then he’d write, “depending on my strength, inclination, and luck, until one, two or three o’clock, once even until six in the morning.” Then “every imaginable effort to go to sleep.”
This routine left him permanently in a state of near collapse.
When his fiance Felice Bauer suggested there may be a better way, Kafka replied, “The present way is the only possible one; if I can’t bear it, so much the worse; but I will bear it somehow.” And he did.
It would be a stretch to say Kafka’s routine was in any way good. In fact, it was very much bad, destructive even; a recipe for collapse familiar to many today. But one could also say it was effective. Kafka produced great works on themes of alienation, guilt, absurdity, persecution, and existential anxiety, even, or perhaps because of, this insane regime.
Kafka being Kafka meant there was no happy ending, at least not immediately. He died unknown and told his friend Max Brod to destroy all his unfinished works, of which there were many. The world can thank Brod for not following his friend’s wishes, publishing his work and allowing millions to enjoy Kafka’s strange and brilliant mind.
I don't endorse Kafka’s habits, but I do respect his devotion to his craft. Kafka considered writing “a form of prayer.” His identity was as a writer, nothing else. It was this belief that somehow sustained him.
Still, some habits are not merely eccentric or inconvenient. They are plainly ruinous. The question then becomes whether the craving underneath them can be redirected rather than simply denied.
Redirecting the craving
Habits stick because they create craving. But that can also be a problem when trying to get rid of destructive habits. One of the more useful ideas in habit change is not to resist the craving outright, but to redirect it. The cue and reward may stay the same, while the routine changes.
Alcoholics Anonymous has long worked with this insight. For many people, the craving is not only for intoxication, but for relief, ritual, companionship, or escape. AA offers a different routine around some of those same needs: meetings, sponsors, conversation, accountability.
While this works well, research on AA members shows that alone, it’s not enough. As soon as a stressful event takes place, the old habit is simply too strong to resist.
Further research revealed that those who resisted relapse and stayed sober often relied on belief. That belief is strongly linked to their identity: who they are and what they are capable of, which makes them more resilient in the face of stressful life events.
The things we say about ourselves have a big impact on our self-esteem, and ultimately, who we are. One of the more successful ways to change ineffective habits is to focus less on what we want to achieve, and more on who we want to become.
Habits and becoming
Seen this way—less about achieving and more about becoming—habits become more like clues. They reveal what we repeat, what we reward, and what kind of person we are rehearsing being.
Here’s a few ideas worth considering in that spirit:
A habits scorecard can make behaviour more visible. A simple exercise recommended by James Clear in Atomic Habits to become more aware of your behaviour. A scorecard can help you recognise all your habits and the cues that trigger them. You see which habits are effective and which are ineffective so you can focus on the former and reduce the latter.
Systems often matter more than goals. Goals are about the results you want to achieve; systems are about the processes that lead to those results. Many people start to change their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads to habits built around outcomes. Instead, it can be more helpful think about identity, focusing on who you want to become. Rather than “I want to lose 10kg”, it may be more useful to think, “I want to be fit and healthy.”
Some habits can change more than one thing. These are small habits where one little positive change has the potential to create other positive changes in other parts of your routine. An example could be a habit of reading fifteen minutes a day. It has the potential to change your identity, “I am a reader,” as well as improve your focus and attention. The best ones tend to be simple enough to repeat and visible enough to notice.
Willpower can be prepared for. Research has shown willpower to be an important habit in life. But some days it can feel almost impossible. Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habit, compares willpower to a muscle: it can tire. But, by implication, it can also be strengthened. This can mean mentally preparing for moments of low willpower before they arrive. For example, telling yourself you’ll do what you need to do for two minutes only. Often, it’s getting started that is the hardest part. Two minutes is often enough to get past the first hurdle of resistance.
None of this makes habits a road to perfection. That would be another trap. Habits are human, which means they are inconsistent, compromised, and sometimes a little ridiculous.
But being able to recognise whether a habit is helping us live the kind of life we want at least keeps us on the right road, even if the route is never perfect.
And for the record, I’m sticking with the chewing gum.
Pass It On
If this note was worth your time, it may be worth someone else’s.
Share it with a friend, or read more Deep Life Notes here.