What Are Habits?

Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day (hand wash, eat breakfast, shower, smoking, brushing teeth, drink water, do 10 sit ups, working). 

How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits.

How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits.

How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits.

Everything from procrastination and productivity to strenght and nutrition – starts with better habits.

When you learn to transform your habits, you can transform your life.

The Science of How Habits Work

All habits proceed through four stages in the same order: cue, craving, response, and reward. 

Cue/Trigger triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward.

 Our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to cues that signaled the location of primary rewards like food, water, and sex.

Today, we spend most of our time learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money and fame, power and status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction.

Because the cue is the first indication that we’re close to a reward, it naturally leads to a craving.

Cravings/Desire are the second step of the habit loop, and they are the motivational force behind every habit.Without some level of motivation or desire—without craving a change—we have no reason to act.

What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers.

You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides. You do not want to turn on the television, you want to be entertained.

Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state.

Cravings differ from person to person. In theory, any piece of information could trigger a craving, but in practice, people are not motivated by the same cues.

Cues are meaningless until they are interpreted. The thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the observer are what transform a cue into a craving.

Response/Action/Routine is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or an action/routine.

 Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior.

If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it.

Your response also depends on your ability. It sounds simple, but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it. If you want to dunk a basketball but can’t jump high enough to reach the hoop, well, you’re out of luck.

Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: (1) they satisfy us and (2) they teach us.

The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving.

Yes, rewards provide benefits on their own. Food and water deliver the energy you need to survive. Getting a promotion brings more money and respect. Getting in shape improves your health and your dating prospects.

Second, rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future.

Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones. 

Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.

1…If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. 

2…Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start.

3…Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act.

4…Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it.

5…And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future.

6…Without the first three steps, a behavior will not occur. 

7…Without all four, a behavior will not be repeated.

The four stages of habit are best described as a feedback loop. They form an endless cycle that is running every moment you are alive. This “habit loop” is continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses, and learning from the results.

 In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue.

Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits.

We can split these four steps into two phases: the problem phase and the solution phase. 

The problem phase includes the cue and the craving, and it is when you realize that something needs to change.

The solution phase includes the response and the reward, and it is when you take action and achieve the change you desire.

All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem. Sometimes the problem is that you notice something good and you want to obtain it. Sometimes the problem is that you are experiencing pain and you want to relieve it.

Either way, the purpose of every habit is to solve the problems you face.

Where to Go From Here

We can transform these four steps into a practical framework that we can use to design good habits and eliminate bad ones.

I refer to this framework as the Four Laws of Behavior Change, and it provides a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones. You can think of each law as a lever that influences human behavior. When the levers are in the right positions, creating good habits is effortless. When they are in the wrong positions, it is nearly impossible.

How to Create a Good Habit

We can invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit.

How to Break a Bad Habit

Inversion of the 1st law (Cue)	Make it invisible.
Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving)	Make it unattractive.
Inversion of the 3rd law (Response)	Make it difficult.
Inversion of the 4th law (Reward)	Make it unsatisfying.

Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself:

1. How can I make it obvious?
2. How can I make it attractive?
3. How can I make it easy?
4. How can I make it satisfying?

It would be irresponsible to claim that these four laws are an exhaustive framework for changing any human behavior, but  they’re close.

If you have ever wondered, “Why don’t I do what I say I’m going to do? Why don’t I lose the weight or stop smoking or save for retirement or start that side business? Why do I say something is important but never seem to make time for it?”

The answers to those questions can be found somewhere in these four laws. The key to creating good habits and breaking bad ones is to understand these fundamental laws and how to alter them to your specifications.

Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature.

What some research suggests is that 21 days to form a habit is probably right, as long as all you want to do is drink a glass of water after breakfast. Anything harder is likely to take longer (66-90 days) to become a really strong habit, and, in the case of some activities, much longer (256 days).

What causes bad habits?

Most of your bad habits are caused by two things…Stress and boredom.

Recognizing the causes of your bad habits is crucial to overcoming them.

You don’t eliminate a bad habit, you replace it.

All of the habits that you have right now — good or bad — are in your life for a reason.

In some way, these behaviors provide a benefit to you, even if they are bad for you in other ways.

Because bad habits provide some type of benefit in your life, it’s very difficult to simply eliminate them. (This is why simplistic advice like “just stop doing it” rarely works.)

In other words, bad habits address certain needs in your life. And for that reason, it’s better to replace your bad habits with a healthier behavior that addresses that same need and provides a similar benefit.

3 Ways to Form Better Habits

Every habit you have — good or bad — follows the same 3–step pattern:

Reminder (the trigger that initiates the behavior),

Routine (the behavior itself; the action you take)

Reward (the benefit you gain from doing the behavior).

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Let’s cover a few examples of what this looks like in real life.

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Problem phase

Solution phase

1. Cue	2. Craving	3. Response	4. Reward
Your phone buzzes with a new text message.	You want to learn the contents of the message.	You grab your phone and read the text.	You satisfy your craving to read the message. Grabbing your phone becomes associated with your phone buzzing.
You are answering emails.	You begin to feel stressed and overwhelmed by work. You want to feel in control.	You bite your nails.	You satisfy your craving to reduce stress. Biting your nails becomes associated with answering email.
You wake up.	You want to feel alert.	You drink a cup of coffee.	You satisfy your craving to feel alert. Drinking coffee becomes associated with waking up.
You smell a doughnut shop as you walk down the street near your office.	You begin to crave a doughnut.	You buy a doughnut and eat it.	You satisfy your craving to eat a doughnut. Buying a doughnut becomes associated with walking down the street near your office.
You hit a stumbling block on a project at work.	You feel stuck and want to relieve your frustration.	You pull out your phone and check social media.	You satisfy your craving to feel relieved. Checking social media becomes associated with feeling stalled at work.

Problem phase

Solution phase

1. Cue	2. Craving	3. Response	4. Reward
You walk into a dark room.	You want to be able to see.	You flip the light switch.	You satisfy your craving to see. Turning on the light switch becomes associated with being in a dark room.