But habits, even good habits, have drawbacks as well as benefits. Habits speed time, because when every day is the same, experience shortens and blurs; by contrast, time slows down when habits are interrupted, when the brain must process new information. That’s why the first month at a new job seems to last longer than the fifth year at that job. And, as it speeds time, habit also deadens. An early-morning cup of coffee was delightful the first few times, until it gradually became part of the background of my day; now I don’t really taste it, but I’m frantic if I don’t get it. Habit makes it dangerously easy to become numb to our own existence.
For good and bad, habits are the invisible architecture of daily life. Research suggests that about 45 percent of our behavior is repeated almost daily, and mostly in the same context. I bet my own percentage is higher: I wake up at the same time every day; I give my husband, Jamie, a good-morning kiss at the same time; I wear the same outfit of running shoes, yoga pants, and white T-shirt; I work at my laptop in the same places every day; I walk the same routes around my New York City neighborhood; I work on my email at the same time; I put my daughters, thirteen-year-old Eliza and seven-year-old Eleanor, to bed in the same unchanging sequence. When I ask myself, “Why is my life the way it is today?” I see that it has been shaped, to a great degree, by my habits. As architect Christopher Alexander described it:
If I consider my life honestly, I see that it is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again.
Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, having a drink at a friend’s house, driving on the freeway, going to bed again. There are a few more.
There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person’s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen. Look at your own life and you will find the same. It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me.
Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can’t.
In the area of health alone, our unthinking actions may have a profound effect. Poor diet, inactivity, smoking, and drinking are among the leading causes of illness and death in the United States—and these are health habits within our control. In many ways, our habits are our destiny.
And changing our habits allows us to alter that destiny. Generally, I’ve observed, we seek changes that fall into the “Essential Seven.” People—including me—most want to foster the habits that will allow them to:
1. Eat and drink more healthfully (give up sugar, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol)
2. Exercise regularly
3. Save, spend, and earn wisely (save regularly, pay down debt, donate to worthy causes, stick to a budget)
4. Rest, relax, and enjoy (stop watching TV in bed, turn off a cell phone, spend time in nature, cultivate silence, get enough sleep, spend less time in the car)
5. Accomplish more, stop procrastinating (practice an instrument, work without interruption, learn a language, maintain a blog)
6. Simplify, clear, clean, and organize (make the bed, file regularly, put keys away in the same place, recycle)
7. Engage more deeply in relationships—with other people, with God, with the world (call friends, volunteer, have more sex, spend more time with family, attend religious services)
The same habit can satisfy different needs. A morning walk in the park might be a form of exercise (#2); a way to rest and enjoy (#4); or, in the company of a friend, a way to engage more deeply in a relationship (#7). And people value different habits. For one person, organized files are a crucial tool for creativity; another finds inspiration in unexpected juxtapositions.
The Essential Seven reflect the fact that we often feel both tired and wired. We feel exhausted, but also feel jacked up on adrenaline, caffeine, and sugar. We feel frantically busy, but also feel that we’re not spending enough time on the things that really matter. I wasn’t going to bed on time, but I wasn’t staying up late talking to friends, either; I was watching a midnight episode of The Office that I know by heart. I wasn’t typing up my work notes or reading a novel, but mindlessly scrolling through the addictive “People You May Know” section on LinkedIn.
Slowly, as my research proceeded, my ideas about habits began to take a more coherent shape. Habits make change possible, I’d concluded, by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control. That notion led to another key issue: If habits make it possible for us to change, how exactly, then, do we shape our habits? That enormous question became my subject.
First, I settled on some basic definitions and questions. In my study, I would embrace a generous conception of the term “habit,” to reflect how people use the term in everyday life: “I’m in the habit of going to the gym” or “I want to improve my eating habits.” A “routine” is a string of habits, and a “ritual” is a habit charged with transcendent meaning. I wouldn’t attempt to tackle addictions, compulsions, disorders, or nervous habits, or to explain the neuroscience of habits (I was only mildly interested in understanding how my brain lights up when I see a cinnamon-raisin bagel). And while some might argue that it’s unhelpful to label habits as “good” or “bad,” I decided to use the colloquial term “good habit” for any habit I want to cultivate, and “bad habit” for one I want to squelch.
My main focus would be the methods of habit change. From my giant trove of notes about habits—detailing the research I’d examined, the examples I’d witnessed, and the advice I’d read—I’d discern all the various “strategies” that we can use to change a habit. It’s odd; most discussions of habit change champion a single approach, as if one approach could work for everyone. Hard experience proves that this assumption isn’t true. If only there were one simple, cookie-cutter answer! But I knew that different people need different solutions, so I aimed to identify every possible option.
Because self-knowledge is indispensable to successful habit formation, the first section of the book, “Self-Knowledge,” would explore the two strategies that help us to understand ourselves: Four Tendencies and Distinctions. Next would come “Pillars of Habits,” the section that would examine the well-known, essential Strategies of Monitoring, Foundation, Scheduling, and Accountability. The section “The Best Time to Begin” would consider the particular importance of the time of beginning when forming a habit, as explored in the Strategies of First Steps, Clean Slate, and Lightning Bolt. Next, the section “Desire, Ease, and Excuses” would take into account our desires to avoid effort and experience pleasure—which play a role in the Strategies of Abstaining, Convenience, Inconvenience, Safeguards, Loophole-Spotting, Distraction, Reward, Treats, and Pairing. (Loophole-Spotting is the funniest strategy.) Finally, the section “Unique, Just like Everyone Else” would investigate the strategies that arise from our drive to understand and define ourselves in the context of other people, in the Strategies of Clarity, Identity, and Other People.