Make a habit of it: How to create sustainable behaviour change

What is a habit?

Webster’s dictionary states that starting a blog post with a dictionary definition is a cliché.
But clichés, like habits, are born of repetition. And people don’t repeat things they don’t get rewarded for… Until they do.

Professor Wendy Wood of the University of Southern California describes habits as learning mechanisms. She says “a habit is a sort of mental shortcut to repeat what we did in the past that worked for us and got us some reward”. And for a habit to truly be a habit, there’s got to be an element of automaticity… that if we do something habitually, we do it without needing to think about it or even be rewarded for it.

We become more reliant on habits when our willpower is low, when we’re absentminded or distracted, and when we’re stressed.

So how does a behaviour become habitual?

Let’s look at the basic components of a habit: willingness, ability, and repetition… and, honestly? Not necessarily in that order.

Willingness: You’ve got to be willing and motivated to do the behaviour that will become your habit. So reward yourself, instantly, consistently and noticeably when you do the desired behaviour.
Ability: You’ve got to be able to do the thing you want to do, and it’s got to be easy to do and to repeat… or at least easier than competing behaviours. This applies to breaking habits too. You want to drink less coffee? Take a route home that doesn’t involve walking past your favourite coffee shop. By limiting exposure to the competing behaviour (drinking coffee), you’re making it more difficult to do it automatically. Reduce frictions and costs (whether that’s money, time, effort, or anything else) associated with the desired behaviour, and increase frictions and costs associated with undesired behaviours.
Repetition: Further to making it easy and communicating success, you’ve got to repeat the desired behaviour. Take control of habit cues. A habit cue can be a physical location, an internal state of being, or preceding actions in a sequence, but every time you encounter your habit cue, you need to do the behaviour. For example, every time you flush the toilet (this is the habit cue), you (hopefully) wash your hands (this is the behaviour). So, choose habit cues that are stable and consistently available. And consider time: habits are best built during times that are most consistently uninterrupted.

Alright, and how do I know if it’s worked?

Based on a study from 2009 (if you know of something more recent, please let me know!), habits could take anywhere between 18 to 254 days to form.

A habit with low automaticity and low performance frequency is a weak habit, whereas a habit with high automaticity and high performance frequency is a strong habit. In other words, the more you do it and the less you think about doing it, the stronger the habit.

One way to test a habit is to slowly withdraw the rewards associated with the behaviour. Habits have formed when the behaviour is repeated even after the reward has been reduced in value or is no longer tied to the response.

Avoid leaving the new behaviour reward-less though. I guess the only real difference between a good habit and a bad habit is whether or not it brings value. So don’t leave your habit hungry.

Make a habit of it: How to create sustainable behaviour change

What is a habit?

So how does a behaviour become habitual?

Alright, and how do I know if it’s worked?

Further reading

Got a challenge we can help you with?

Learn more about what we do:

More thinking

Designing the employee experience

Let your audience do the work for you

Event write-up: The panda made me do it

How Generation Z will drive organisational change