Bad Habit BEST
Some NIH-funded research is exploring whether certain medications can help to disrupt hard-wired automatic behaviors in the brain and make it easier to form new memories and behaviors. Other scientific teams are searching for genes that might allow some people to easily form and others to readily suppress habits.
Bad Habit
Not enough sleep? Too much screen time? Bad Habit skincare is purposefully designed to reset your stressed-out skin (and mind). Our daily essentials and targeted quick fixes give your skin the good it needs to cancel out all your bad habits.
Good posture enhances your bones and joint alignment, which ensures your muscles are used properly. You can avoid joint pain, arthritis, muscle fatigue, muscle strain, and reduce your risk of injury if you correct your posture. A healthy spine is directly influenced by good posture. Sitting for too long without adequate back support or habitually slouching can cause constricted nerves and blood vessels. In order to prevent unhealthy stress on your spine, good posture is a must. The goal is to recondition your body to be comfortable with good posture.
According to Duhigg's research, the only way to short-circuit the habitual pattern is to identify the cue, the routine, and the reward they deliver. Since the habit (the routine) might be more obvious as the behavior you're trying to eliminate, the greater challenge can be isolating the cue and the reward.
I've previously written about the science of how habits start, so now let's focus on the practice of making changes in the real world. How can you delete your bad behaviors and stick to good ones instead?
Most of the time, bad habits are simply a way of dealing with stress and boredom. Everything from biting your nails to overspending on a shopping spree to drinking every weekend to wasting time on the internet can be a simple response to stress and boredom.1
Sometimes the benefit is biological like it is with smoking or drugs. Sometimes it's emotional like it is when you stay in a relationship that is bad for you. And in many cases, your bad habit is a simple way to cope with stress. For example, biting your nails, pulling your hair, tapping your foot, or clenching your jaw.
Choose a substitute for your bad habit. You need to have a plan ahead of time for how you will respond when you face the stress or boredom that prompts your bad habit. What are you going to do when you get the urge to smoke? (Example: breathing exercises instead.) What are you going to do when Facebook is calling to you to procrastinate? (Example: write one sentence for work.) Whatever it is and whatever you're dealing with, you need to have a plan for what you will do instead of your bad habit.
Visualize yourself succeeding. See yourself throwing away the cigarettes or buying healthy food or waking up early. Whatever the bad habit is that you are looking to break, visualize yourself crushing it, smiling, and enjoying your success. See yourself building a new identity.
Here's a simple way to start: just track how many times per day your bad habit happens. Put a piece of paper in your pocket and a pen. Each time your bad habit happens, mark it down on your paper. At the end of the day, count up all of the tally marks and see what your total is.
In the beginning your goal isn't to judge yourself or feel guilty about doing something unhealthy or unproductive. The only goal is to be aware of when it happens and how often it happens. Wrap your head around the problem by being aware of it. Then, you can start to implement the ideas in this article and break your bad habit.
Breaking bad habits takes time and effort, but mostly it takes perseverance. Most people who end up breaking bad habits try and fail multiple times before they make it work. You might not have success right away, but that doesn't mean you can't have it at all.
P.S. If you want more practical ideas for how to build new habits (and break bad habits), check out my book Atomic Habits, which will show you how small changes in habits can lead to remarkable results.
James Clear writes about habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. The book has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 50 languages.
What strategies can people use to control unwanted habits? Past work has focused on controlling other kinds of automatic impulses, especially temptations. The nature of habit cuing calls for certain self-control strategies. Because the slow-to-change memory trace of habits is not amenable to change or reinterpretation, successful habit control involves inhibiting the unwanted response when activated in memory. In support, two episode-sampling diary studies demonstrated that bad habits, unlike responses to temptations, were controlled most effectively through spontaneous use of vigilant monitoring (thinking "don't do it," watching carefully for slipups). No other strategy was useful in controlling strong habits, despite that stimulus control was effective at inhibiting responses to temptations. A subsequent experiment showed that vigilant monitoring aids habit control, not by changing the strength of the habit memory trace but by heightening inhibitory, cognitive control processes. The implications of these findings for behavior change interventions are discussed.
The myth that a person can develop new habits within 21 days relates to anecdotes from individuals who had received plastic surgery. Research suggests that people can psychologically readjust to their new appearance within 21 days.
Research suggests that this 21-day timeframe is not accurate. This misinformation can lead to individuals feeling frustrated when they have not formed a new habit or broken an old one within this time.
Further research looked at the act of learning a new behavior in order to counteract the old habit. They found that, although individuals were able to learn the new behavior, this did not necessarily result in the disappearance of the old habit.
If a friend or partner also wishes to break a habit, they may wish to consider doing it together. This can offer encouragement, mutual accountability, and another person to share their struggles with.
An individual may wish to enlist the help of a professional for habits for which they have experienced significant consequences, such as smoking or drinking alcohol, or if they have had difficulty making changes on their own.
By practicing mindfulness, a person may be able to break bad habits. This is because mindfulness can clear and relax the mind. People may also be able to use mindfulness exercises to visualize themselves breaking the habit.
To break a habit, a person should set realistic goals, know their reasons for wanting to break the habit, and identify triggers. They may also wish to seek professional assistance and practice mindfulness exercises.
There are a host of bad habits many of us do every day, and research shows these habits really hurt our productivity, especially at work. The more aware we are of how these things are affecting our productivity, the more proactive we can be at taking responsibility for our choices.
Getting out of the habit of multitasking is difficult, but certainly doable. Removing notifications from your work computer (see #5) and putting away your cell phone (see #6) are two great ways to start. Other ideas include establishing a no-laptop rule for meetings, using the Pomodoro Technique (where you work in sprints in a way that complements the body's natural ultradian rhythm), and planning your day in blocks that include built-in breaks.
The best way to break this habit? Buy an alarm clock that's not your phone, and charge your phone in a separate room so you avoid the temptation of checking it altogether. If you're worried about missing an emergency call, then try sending those last-minute texts 30-60 minutes before you hit the hay. It'll mean you get more sleep and higher quality sleep, leading you to operate at peak productivity the following day. (Read this blog post for tips on getting the most out of your sleep.)
Moral licensing is a common indicator of lower productivity at best and a fast track to a performance improvement plan at worst. Using a good deed to cover up a bad one is morally wrong and can become a bad habit before you know it.
Once developed, this type of bad habit can cause you to procrastinate on your work, take shortcuts, miss deadlines, and leave your team in a lurch. It might seem far-fetched in the beginning to cut corners when nobody is watching, but after it's become a habit, it can wreak havoc on your productivity and work life balance.
Better late than never, but never late is better. Punctuality is a skill that is not innate in most people, it is something we all have to learn as children and practice constantly as adults. The key to not developing the bad habit of being late in the first place is to value your own time and the time of others.
When we communicate clearly and timely, productivity improves as a result. But poor communication can become a bad habit for many reasons which not only impacts you and your work but those you interact with, too.
Poor communication as a bad habit is pretty clear: sending last-minute emails or Slack messages, asking unclear questions, or leaving stakeholders out of the loop are all examples of poor communication that when done frequently or in conjunction with one another, can become a bad habit.
Before you can begin breaking a bad habit, you have to understand why the habit exists to begin with. Almost all habits serve a need and have a trigger. But those two things may be difficult to uncover on the surface level.
For instance, if you have a bad habit of being late, the need is not that you have more time in your day. It's likely that you need to prioritize your day better. With a little more planning, you'll be able to see your time-bound commitments approaching and give yourself enough time to meet them. 041b061a72