Buzz
My cat Mira has a habit of doing the same things at the same time every day. Once, while brushing my teeth, I slipped my hand under the bathroom door, which she interpreted as an invitation to play 'try to catch the fingers' while rolling around cutely on the floor.
Now, each time I brush my teeth, Mira watches intently from beside the open door, waiting for the game to begin. She has created a loop: when I brush my teeth, it means playtime for her. Living with a cat is all about these types of loops—what happens at a particular time one day is expected to happen at that same time the next. Anyone who has ever fed a cat later than usual knows this well, but it's more than that. Mira is all about creating habits.
You might think you're smarter than a cat, and in some ways, you probably are. But I’d bet you live in loops just like a cat—doing things every day like clockwork. Some of these habits you probably enjoy, while others, not so much. To change them, you’ll need to recognize them and alter the context that triggers them. Lately, I've started to see my daily habits as remarkably similar to Mira's loops. When it comes to my habits, I’m not so different from my cat. I tend to repeat the same actions at the same time each day and adopt new routines as time passes. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep all of them.
How Habits Develop
So, where do these 'loops' originate? Researchers at University College London summed it up like this: 'As behaviors are repeated in consistent settings, they begin to be performed more efficiently and with less conscious thought, as control of the behavior shifts to environmental cues that trigger an automatic response: a habit.'
In essence, repeating the same action every day in the same setting eventually turns that action into an automatic response. You probably don’t have to remind yourself to brush your teeth—you simply do it every night before bed (in my case, while playing with an overly playful cat).
Researchers from Duke also emphasize the role of context in forming habits: 'When responses and elements of context occur together, associations can form between them, causing contexts to trigger responses.' My cat Mira has learned to associate a particular situation (me, in the bathroom, brushing my teeth) with a specific behavior (waiting for my fingers to appear). We’ve developed a shared habit. Of course, there are habits I wish she didn’t have—like eating houseplants. Fortunately, there’s ample research to help us transform those habits into something more manageable.
The Most Effective Way to Change Habits
The researchers from Duke discovered that relying on self-regulation to break a habit isn’t very effective, especially during stressful times. What actually works, according to the study, is changing your environment. For instance, if you want to stop a habit that occurs at a specific time every day, try changing locations during that time. If you have the habit of cracking open a beer at 5:30 p.m. and wish to break it, avoid your fridge. Better yet, don’t stock beer in your fridge at all.
For a while, Mira had the habit of chewing on one of our plants every morning before we got out of bed. This continued until we disrupted the habit by using a cat deterrent, a can of compressed air that harmlessly activates when she tries to approach the plants. After a few days, we would hear her attempt to chew the plants, but she’d run off when the air can went off. Eventually, she stopped trying to eat the plants, even without the deterrent. We changed the context and broke the habit. We broke the loop.
I've recently been reflecting on my daily routines and realizing they’re not so different from Mira's loops. I tend to repeat the same actions at the same times each day and gradually pick up new little habits. But that doesn’t mean I need to keep them all. Just like I changed Mira's plant-eating habit by introducing a deterrent, I can do the same for myself. This might involve setting up apps to block distractions or unfollowing the most addictive subreddits to make the site less tempting. I need to change my environment.
I could give you specific examples all day, but the core message is simple: if you want to change your habits, don’t just rely on willpower. You need to change the environment that triggers your habits and, in doing so, develop new (hopefully better) habits.
