We all form and reform habits throughout our lives. Some are helpful. Some aren’t. When we don’t intentionally build, test, and improve habits, they will likely be suboptimal. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Getting our habits to work in our favor is supremely important. Our minds can only handle so much information at a time; automating some of that information allows us to do more. Habits are this automation solution, freeing up cognitive horsepower for new tasks.
So how do habits form? And how can we control their formation? For that, we need to look at how habits work.
How Habits Work
In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg wrote in detail about how habits work. Essentially, there is a loop that forms. This loop contains four components.
- Cue
- Craving
- Routine
- Reward
The cue is something that triggers your brain into expecting a reward. It could be anything: a bell for Pavlov’s dog, the sound of a slot machine for gamblers, and so on.
The craving is the motivational force in the habit loop. Without cravings, there would be no motivation for action.
The routine is the actual action taking place within the habit. This is the thought or behavior that you perform.
The reward is the outcome of every habit, the thing we initially craved. Rewards are a satisfying conclusion to the habit loop, encouraging us to repeat the habit in the future.
Continuing from The Power of Habit, Duhigg uses the example of Julio, an eight-pound macaque monkey observed in the University of Cambridge’s lab by neuroscience professor Wolfram Schultz. Julio sat on a chair in front of a lever looking at a screen. His job was to press the lever when he saw colored shapes pop up. If Julio pressed the lever when a shape appeared, a drop of blackberry juice would run down a tube from the ceiling for Julio to enjoy.
At first, Julio was unfocused on the task at hand. He didn’t understand what was going on. But after he got one right and tasted the delicious blackberry juice, Julio became intently focused on the screen. Julio, over time, internalized the shapes as a cue. The habit emerged when Julio began to crave the juice. This craving enticed Julio to perform the routine (pressing the lever) so he could receive his reward.
That’s how habits work: cue, craving, routine, reward. CCRR. All of them are needed. Otherwise, there is no habit.
Creating Habits
James Clear builds off of how habits work in his book Atomic Habits by outlining pragmatic strategies for creating new habits. He acknowledges and expands on the terms Duhigg used in his book, except routine. For that, he replaced it with “response.”
Clear refers to his methodology as the Four Laws of Behavior Change.
The 1st Law
Cue: Make the cue obvious. You may not know what all of your cues are. And oftentimes you don’t realize you’ve experienced one. Over time, your brain will pick up on cues without you consciously thinking about it. By making cues obvious, you are making them known both in general and each time you experience one. And in the act of creating a habit, making cues obvious will more easily lead you to the next step.
The 2nd Law
Craving: Make the craving attractive. The more attractive something is, the more desire there is to get it. And the more desire there is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
The 3rd Law
Response: Make the response easy. Humans default to the Law of Least Effort, meaning we gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work. Tackling difficult things requires conscious effort. The easier you make the response (routine), the more likely you are to perform the habit. This applies to your environment as well. Reduce excessive friction in your environment that makes good routines more difficult.
The 4th Law
Reward: Make the reward satisfying. Simply put, you are more likely to repeat a routine when the reward feels good. Obvious rewards are often tangible, like money or a beverage. One of the less obvious ways in which a reward is satisfying is how quickly you receive it. The quicker you get the reward after performing the routine, the more satisfying the reward is. Short feedback loops strengthen habits.
Inverting the Laws of Behavior Change
James Clear also covers how to break undesirable habits with a simple yet effective mental model: inversion. By inverting each law, you make the habit harder to do and less desirable.
The 1st Law Inverted
Cue: Make the cue invisible. If a cue isn’t visible, you won’t initiate the habit sequence. For example, if your phone dinging is a cue to check social media, turn your phone on silent (or at least silent the offending apps). Or put it on silent and leave it in another room. Or delete social media apps. Any of these options are making the cue (the phone dinging) invisible.
The 2nd Law Inverted
Craving: Make the craving unattractive. The more unattractive something is, the more desire there is to avoid it. By highlighting the benefits of avoiding bad habits (e.g. saving money and improving health by not buying and eating candy), it becomes easier to reframe your mindset around destructive cravings.
The 3rd Law Inverted
Response: Make the response difficult. The more difficult something is to do, the less likely you are to do it. An example that Clear uses in the book was having his assistant change his social media passwords every morning. That way, it was much more difficult for him to waste time on social media instead of writing his book. His assistant would give him the passwords every Friday so he had the weekend to scroll before the passwords changed again the following Monday.
The 4th Law Inverted
Reward: Make the reward unsatisfying. Another way of saying that is to transform the reward into a penalty. An example of this is a swear jar to reduce foul language. Or sets of pushups for being late to a sports practice. By enforcing negative consequences with undesirable behaviors, the behaviors are no longer satisfying to do.
Conclusion
Habits are the building blocks of our daily lives, providing the structure we use to navigate the world. When you consistently live out these habitual actions, your brain naturally starts to identify with them. For example, if you swim every morning, you’ll naturally start transitioning from thinking of yourself as someone who swims, to thinking of yourself as a swimmer.
This is the beginning of a beautiful cycle. Because once your habits become part of your identity, then that very identity starts to affect your habits. So from the previous example, when you go from someone who swims to a swimmer, something fundamental shifts. You no longer need as much (or perhaps any) external motivation to swim. Swimming has become an integral part of who you are, making consistency much easier to achieve.
Fighting bad habits is costly; there is only so much effort that each of us has in a day to allocate. Because bad habits are so challenging to reprogram, it’s more advantageous to head them off before they can take hold. This is easier said than done. But understanding the components of a habit (cue, craving, routine, reward), the Four Laws of Behavior Change, and inverting The Laws make it easier to master habits.
Ultimately, habits are malleable. As the components and Four Laws of Behavior Change show, we are the architects of our own identities. We form and reform ourselves over the course of our lives. So that begs the question: what identity have you formed for yourself? And how are you reforming it?
