essay on what is habit

How Are Habits Formed? The Psychology of Habit Formation

Actions that are repeated over time gradually became habits, with a curious life of their own.

Ravaisson was most fascinated by positive or adaptive habits, those we develop mindfully (Malabou, 2008).

Of course, not all habits are developed mindfully.

Some habits develop unconsciously, from internal or external stress. These tend to be negative or maladaptive habits.

Neuroscientists have also had much to say about habits, including how positive ones are formed and how negative ones can be broken (Yin & Knowlton, 2006).

We will look into opinions and research, and then answer the question of how habits are formed  in this article.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

This Article Contains:

How are habits formed 101, the psychology behind habits: 3 theories, habits and the brain: 5 fascinating studies, 5 habits that will improve your life, positivepsychology.com’s helpful resources, a take-home message.

The question of habit formation can be approached from a scientific perspective or a more subjective and experiential one.

The subjective experience of habit formation

Bergson was a French philosopher who took cues from Ravaisson’s prior discussion of habits and their formation.

Bergson (1911) wrote of both active and passive habits.

Passive habits  arise from exposure to things we eventually get used to. High-altitude climbers gradually adapt their bodies to the lower levels of oxygen available as they climb above 7,000 feet.

Active habits are those we develop by repeated intention and effort, crystalizing as skills we perform with little or no thought. A gymnast practices walking, jumping, and flipping on a narrow beam until she can do all these maneuvers smoothly without falling.

Habits as skills can also be seen as a springboard to creativity. Based on what we can habitually do, we reach new heights, as when a jazz musician ingrains the playing of a basic melody, then improvises new and adventurous notes on top of the underlying theme.

The scientific perspective on habit formation is exemplified today by neuroscience research . This research has highlighted crucial brain pathways involved in forming habits.

The neuroscience of habit formation

When you first learn to tie your shoes, the attempts are quite conscious and effortful. As you practice this skill, it becomes a habit, something you can do easily and automatically, even while thinking of other things.

Neuroscience has asked how conscious and goal-directed actions are converted into a habit (Yin & Knowlton, 2006).

Clues to the mystery of habit formation can be found in an ancient area of the brain called the basal ganglia (Yin & Knowlton, 2006).

The basal ganglia are deep structures near the base of the brain that developed early in the evolution of our nervous system.

These structures play a major role in coordinating all kinds of voluntary movements, including the complex motions involved in walking, running, eating, talking, and grasping and manipulating with the hands, etc.

The basal ganglia, in conjunction with the brain’s frontal or “executive” lobe, also help perform the crucial task of rapidly selecting which type of movement should be made, out of the many options available in a given situation.

When faced with a tiger suddenly springing from the bushes, what should you do? Stand still, run to climb a tree, or make a dash for the river and hope the tiger can’t swim? The movement program chosen at this point might determine whether you get to pass your genes along to any offspring.

Since movements are most effective when well learned or habitual, the basal ganglia are also very involved in habit formation.

Certain habits appear to be formed through the interplay between two distinct basal ganglia pathways (Yin & Knowlton, 2006).

One of these pathways is associative . It consciously collects information needed for reaching goals such as staying warm, finding food, finding a mate, and expressing oneself artistically.

A second pathway is more automatic . This route takes those lessons learned from the first pathway and includes them in a repertoire of stored habits.

These habits are then available to be called upon, when cued by a given situation.

When I sit down on my stoop before going for a run, this triggers the habit of putting on my running shoes, in a sequence of actions that is well learned and often automatic.

Another key aspect to habit formation is positive reinforcement or reward. For an activity to become a habit, it helps if it’s not only repeated often, but also positively reinforced.

We can trigger positive reinforcement through an external reward, like money, food, or praise. Such experiences release dopamine, one of the brain’s favorite “feel good” neurochemicals. A rewarding dopamine release can also occur through internal triggers, like visualizing yourself reaching a cherished goal (Neuroscience News, 2015).

Dopamine release has been shown to depend on neurons within the limbic system, another ancient brain circuit that processes emotions and the experience of reward. The limbic system is deeply connected with the basal ganglia and can stamp our memories and habits with emotional and reward value (Trafton, 2012).

James (1914) thought of habit as the result of repeating the same action over and over, in similar circumstances, until it is ingrained in our brain circuitry.

He also believed that ingrained habits would automatically arise in the face of strong cues associated with their formation. When walking into your darkened room, the room and darkness cue the automatic habit of reaching for the light switch.

Behaviorists such as B. F. Skinner would expand on James’s insights into habit, with animal studies that emphasized how habit formation is fueled by rewards.

Skinner (1953) created cages for pigeons with buttons that dropped a food pellet when pushed. In exploring the cage, the hungry pigeons would eventually peck the button on the wall. They soon came to realize that pecking the button would produce a food pellet.

This experimental scenario included what for Skinner were the primary factors in producing a habit:

• Stimulus, like the button to be pecked
• Behavior, like pecking the button
• Reward, like the food pellet

Skinner (1953) believed that behaviors repeatedly engaged in for the sake of a reward will become habits. This hypothesis was borne out by his pigeons repeatedly pressing the button, even when that action was no longer followed by a food pellet.

Other theories sought to go beyond behaviorism’s focus on observed behavior alone, to include a mental or cognitive component in habit. Edward Tolman (1948, 1954) believed that repeated or habitual responses involved the use of internal ideas, or “maps,” as cognitive components that helped navigate mazes, etc.

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Dr. Wendy Wood, a psychologist at the University of Southern California’s Habit Lab, found that an estimated 43% of the activities engaged in each day by her study participants were done habitually, while they were thinking of something else (Wood, Quinn, & Kashy, 2002).

How do we know when to start and stop such habitual activities if they are not done consciously?

Neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that when practicing a habitual routine such as brushing one’s teeth, certain neurons in the basal ganglia will activate or “fire” at the beginning of the routine. Then, they lay quiet while the routine proceeds. Finally, they fire again when the routine is completed (Martiros, Burgess, & Graybiel, 2018).

This means that even if you are thinking about something else, you can automatically start and then finish a habitual routine, because these specialized neurons will tell you to do so.

Another common question about habits is: How long does it take to form new ones?

One often-cited study (Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, 2010) indicated an average of 66 days to establish a new pro-health habit, such as exercising for at least 30 minutes per day.

Research suggests the following tips for breaking negative habits and forming new and more positive ones.

Find ways to lower your stress level.

Many negative habits such as smoking, overeating, and oversleeping have developed as a response to stress (Schwabe & Wolf, 2009).

If you lower your stress level, you should be less inclined to take that cigarette break, eat that snack you don’t really need, or flop down on the couch in the middle of the day.

Simple measures can reduce stress like taking a walk or practicing techniques such as yogic breathing and mindfulness exercises .

Become aware of your negative habits.

Since they are largely automatic, we are often unaware of our habits and their associated experiences. Being mindful of our negative habits and what they involve can make them easier to break (Brewer, 2019).

For example, when asked to become mindful of what cigarette smoking tastes and smells like, some smokers realize that the actual sensations of smoking are not pleasant for them. Reflecting on the sensory experience of smoking can make the habit easier to break (Brewer, 2019).

Avoid cues that were associated with developing the negative habit in the first place.

Most habits can be triggered by the cues or contexts in which they developed (Dickinson & Balleine, 1994).

Negative habits can therefore be left dormant if their associated cues or contexts are avoided. For example, in trying to weaken the habit of snacking between meals, I should avoid leaving out easily accessible snacks.

Replace the old habit with a new one that opposes it.

This can be done by explicitly planning a different course and repeating what it prescribes.

This technique was used successfully in a study on breaking old and random recycling habits in the workplace and replacing them with a clear strategy for consistent recycling (Holland, Aarts, & Langendam, 2006).

The following are five habits highlighted by Kanaat for improving health, financial status, career, and psychological wellbeing (adapted from Wanderlust Worker ).

A key health habit: 10,000 Steps per day

Kanaat describes this as a “keystone habit,” one that lends support to other positive health habits such as drinking enough water, being conscious of what we eat, and leaving sufficient time for exercise.

This basic habit can be supported by using a pedometer or smartphone health app to track one’s steps toward the daily goal of 10,000.

A positive financial habit: Expense journaling

According to Kanaat, this keystone financial habit supports financial awareness, financial planning, and positive spending habits.

He cites the example of John D. Rockefeller, whose mother instilled in him the habit of writing down every penny he spent from an early age. She also encouraged him early in the habits of saving and wisely investing his money. Rockefeller credited his mother and the habits she instilled as keys to his financial success (Rockefeller, 2019).

A critical success habit: Active goal setting

Kanaat distinguishes active from passive goal setting. In the latter, we set goals that are usually longer term, then tend to forget about them. Active goal setting involves tracking your progress toward each goal every day. He also advocates for “SMART” goal setting: making sure goals are:

A crucial career habit: Time management

Kanaat recommends using the “quadrant” system for time management, first developed by Dwight D. Eisenhower and later included in the bestselling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  (Covey, 2020).

In this system, each activity we do can be categorized as involving some combination of urgency and importance. We naturally tend to focus on short-term, quadrant-1 objectives, which are both urgent and important.

We need to be even more mindful of long-term quadrant-2 objectives, which, while not urgent, are very important.

The remaining third and fourth quadrant activities are distractions and time-wasters, and should be avoided and strictly limited, respectively.

An important wellness habit: Daily gratitude.

If we focus on what we lack, we will see and experience what is missing.

On the other hand, if we focus on and are grateful for what we have now, we will see and experience gratitude and fullness.

Kanaat recommends practicing daily gratitude for 15 minutes each morning, by writing down everything for which we are grateful. He further recommends doing this every day for 90 days to set the habit. He adds that this can bring a positive transformation in mindset, from thinking only of lack to being mindful of and grateful for all we have.

The science of making & breaking habits – Andrew Huberman

The following resources can help you or your clients break negative habits and form new and positive ones.

• Building New Habits This tool is designed to help you develop an “If-Then” plan for positive habits you want to cultivate, concerning health, finances, relationships, and wellbeing.
• Goal Setting Our article on goal setting with templates and worksheets includes various tips and resources for the important habit of active goal setting.
• Nurturing vs. Depleting Activities This tool can help you become aware of and make adjustments to your habits around using and restoring personal energy through healthy eating, sleeping, exercising, etc.
• Gratitude Journal A tool to help cultivate daily gratitude and the various benefits that come with it.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others reach their goals, this collection contains 17 validated motivation & goals-achievement tools for practitioners. Use them to help others turn their dreams into reality by applying the latest science-based behavioral change techniques.

17 Tools To Increase Motivation and Goal Achievement

These 17 Motivation & Goal Achievement Exercises [PDF] contain all you need to help others set meaningful goals, increase self-drive, and experience greater accomplishment and life satisfaction.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Habits are a force in each of our lives, often with positive, but sometimes with negative, results.

Although negative habits can be stubborn things, research has shown they can be broken and replaced with more positive ones.

Awareness of our habits can help distinguish between those that align with our goals and those that stand in our way.

Positive habits that we consciously form retain elements of the mindful intention that initiated them. At their best, such habits assure mastery. They can also become a springboard to creativity, as when an experienced mountaineer picks just the right route up a new and challenging face.

Certain positive habits can also be “keystones” for others, as when the daily habit of taking at least 10,000 steps helps reinforce other habits like healthy eating and spending some time outside each day.

We hope the tools and techniques offered in this article for strengthening positive habits and breaking negative ones will be useful for you or your clients.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free .

• Adams, R. L. (2013). The art of persistence: The simple secrets to long-term success . Author.
• Adams, R. L. (2014). Habit flip: Transform your life with 101 small changes to your daily routines . Author.
• Bergson, H. (1911). Matter and memory (N. M. Paul & W. S. Palmer, Trans.). George Allen & Co.
• Brewer, J. (2019). Mindfulness training for addictions: Has neuroscience revealed a brain hack by which awareness subverts the addictive process? Current Opinion in Psychology , 28 , 198–203.
• Covey, S. R. (2020). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Restoring the character ethic . Simon and Schuster.
• Dickinson, A., & Balleine, B. (1994). Motivational control of goal-directed action. Animal Learning & Behavior , 22 , 1–18.
• Holland, R. W., Aarts, H., & Langendam, D. (2006). Breaking and creating habits on the working floor: A field-experiment on the power of implementation intentions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 42 (6), 776–783.
• James, W. (1914). Habit . H. Holt.
• Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology , 40 , 998–1009.
• Malabou, C. (2008). Addiction and grace: Preface to Felix Ravaisson’s Of Habit. In F. Ravaisson, Of habit (pp. vii – xx). Continuum.
• Martiros, N., Burgess, A. A., & Graybiel, A. M. (2018). Inversely active striatal projection neurons and interneurons selectively delimit useful behavioral sequences. Current Biology , 28 (4), 560–573.
• Neuroscience News (2015, November 24). The role of dopamine in motivation and learning. Neuroscience News. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://neurosciencenews.com/dopamine-learning-reward-3157/
• Ravaisson, F. (2008). Of habit (C. Carlisle and M. Sinclair, Trans.). Continuum (Original work published 1838).
• Rockefeller, J. D. (2019). The classic autobiography of John D. Rockefeller: Random reminiscences of men and events . Compass Circle.
• Schwabe, L., & Wolf, O. T. (2009). Stress prompts habit behavior in humans. The Journal of Neuroscience , 29 (22), 7191–7198.
• Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior . Macmillan.
• Tolman, E. C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review , 55 , 189–208.
• Tolman, E. C. (1954). Freedom and the cognitive mind. American Psychologist , 9 (9), 536–538.
• Trafton, A. (2012). How the brain controls our habits. MIT News . Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://news.mit.edu/2012/understanding-how-brains-control-our-habits-1029
• Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life: Thought, emotion, and action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 83 (6), 1281–1297.
• Yin, H., & Knowlton, B. (2006). The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience , 7 , 464–476.

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Habit Formation

Behavioral Change

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Habit formation is the process by which behaviors become automatic. Habits can form without a person intending to acquire them, but they can also be deliberately cultivated—or eliminated—to better suit one’s personal goals .

• How We Form Habits
• How to Build Better Habits

People develop countless habits as they navigate the world, whether they are aware of them or not. The knee-jerk nature of these behaviors can help people get their needs met more efficiently in everyday life. Yet the fact that habits become deeply ingrained in our brains means that even if a particular habit creates more problems than it solves, it can be difficult to break. Understanding how habits take shape to begin with may be helpful in dismantling and replacing them.

Habits may be harmful or health-promoting. Instinctively reaching for a cigarette after waking up—or any drug associated with particular cues—is a habit. So is picking up a pair of running shoes after getting home each day or buckling your seatbelt without thinking about it.

One likely reason people are creatures of habit is that habits are efficient: People can perform useful behaviors without wasting time and energy deliberating about what to do. This tendency toward quick-and-efficient responses can backfire, however—as when it gets hijacked by the use of addictive drugs or consumption of unhealthy food.

Habits are built through learning and repetition. A person is thought to develop a habit in the course of pursuing goals (such as driving to a destination or satisfying an appetite ) by beginning to associate certain cues with behavioral responses that help meet the goal (turning at certain streets, or stopping at a drive-thru with a familiar sign). Over time, thoughts of the behavior and ultimately the behavior itself are likely to be triggered by these cues.

A “habit loop” is a way of describing several related elements that produce habits . These elements have been called the cue (or trigger), the routine (or behavior), and the reward. For example, stress could serve as a cue that one responds to by eating, smoking , or drinking, which produces the reward (the reduction of stress—at least temporarily). The “habit loop” concept was popularized by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit .

While a routine involves repeated behavior, it’s not necessarily performed in response to an ingrained impulse, like a habit is. You might routinely wash the dishes or go to the gym without feeling an impulse to do so because you feel you need to do those things .

Widespread bad habits include drinking or eating more than is recommended, smoking, and drug misuse. Other common and potentially harmful habits include excessive viewing of phones or other devices (which can, for example, be disruptive to sleep when done at night).

A person may not be fully aware of how her habit works—habits are built to make things happen without us having to think much about them. Consciously intervening in one’s own habitual behavior likely won’t come naturally, so breaking a habit can require some consideration and effort.

Old habits can be difficult to shake, and healthy habits are often harder to develop than one would like. But through repetition, it's possible to form—and maintain—new habits. Even long-time habits that are detrimental to one’s health and well-being can be broken with enough determination and a smart approach.

Consider the context and dynamics that lead to habits. Building healthy habits can involve putting yourself in situations in which you are more likely to engage in the desired behavior, planning to repeat the behavior, and attaching a small reward to the behavior that doesn’t impede it (such as by watching TV or listening to music while exercising).

While intrinsic motivation —the internal force pushing us to engage in a behavior—is ultimately invaluable, incentives or rewards may help with habit-building by getting a person to begin to engage in the hoped-for behavior (such as working out) in the first place. 

The amount of time needed to build a habit will depend on multiple factors, including the individual and the intended behavior. While you might be able to pick up a new habit in a matter of weeks, some research indicates that building healthy habits can also take many months .

Habits are a person’s behavior running on auto-pilot: The brain is likely not used to scrutinizing why a bad habit is carried out. Bad habits are also ingrained in the mind due to the rewarding feelings that they bring—or used to bring, when the habit was formed. 

Trying to mindfully consider why you engage in a bad habit —and what other options there are—may help. So could taking some time to think about what prompts the bad habit and reevaluating what you get out of it (or don’t). Consider and keep in mind why you want to make a change , including how the change reflects your values. When a habit is part of an addiction  or other mental health condition, professional treatment may be the best way to achieve change.

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The Power of Habit

This article was adapted  from Duhigg’s New York Times bestseller, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business .

In 2005, the late writer David Foster Wallace shared the following cautionary tale with a group of graduating college students:

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’ The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”

Foster Wallace was reminding the students that, just like those fish, our lives are largely determined by factors we never fully notice: our habits , those unthinking, automatic choices that surround us each day. They guide how we get dressed in the morning and fall asleep at night. They affect what we eat, how we do business, and whether we exercise or have a beer after work.

Each of our habits has a different catalyst and offers a unique payoff. Some are simple and others are complex, drawing upon emotional triggers and offering subtle neurochemical prizes. But every habit, no matter its complexity, is malleable. The most addicted alcoholic can become sober. The most dysfunctional families can transform themselves. A high school dropout can become a successful executive.

Changing habits is not just a matter of willpower, despite what you’ve probably learned. Sure, we all have habits we’ve tried to break and failed. And good habits we’ve tried to acquire and dropped. But the real obstacle to change for most people is not a lack of determination — it’s a lack of understanding how habit works.

As it happens, habits all get modified in somewhat the same way. When an individual successfully quits smoking or an organization changes collective behavior to improve its safety standards, there are certain universal patterns at work.

During their extensive studies of the underpinnings of habit in the 1990s, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered a simple neurological loop at the core of every habit. All habits, it turns out, consist of three parts: a routine, a reward and a cue. The researchers dubbed this the “habit loop.”

As they studied people and organizations who had successfully changed stubborn, pernicious behaviors , they learned that they all followed more or less the same steps: They had identified the routine around the habit, experimented with different rewards to satisfy the craving the behavior was trying to fulfill, and isolated the cue that triggered the behavior in the first place. Finally, those who successfully executed habit change had put a plan in place that would help them respond differently to the cue (whether it was fatigue driving them to caffeine or loneliness driving them to the bar) and nudge them in the direction of the new habit, thus preventing an unconscious return to the old behavior.

If you have a problem behavior with which you’re ready to part ways (and who doesn’t?), the following steps will show you how to deploy this framework so you can manifest the change you want to embrace .

Step One: Identify the Routine

Let’s say you have a bad habit. Maybe it’s a habit like my chocolate chip cookie routine. (I work at the New York Times , and for a long time every afternoon I’d head for the cafeteria for a cookie and a little socializing.)

Let’s say your habit has caused you to gain a few pounds. In fact, let’s say this habit has caused you to gain exactly 8 pounds, and that your wife has made a few pointed comments. You’ve tried to force yourself to stop — you even went so far as to put a Post-it on your computer that reads NO MORE COOKIES.

But every afternoon you manage to ignore that note, get up, wander toward the cafeteria, buy a cookie, and, while chatting with colleagues around the cash register, eat it. It feels good. Then it feels bad. Tomorrow, you promise yourself, you’ll muster the willpower to resist. Tomorrow will be different.

But tomorrow the habit takes hold again.

How do you ever hope to change this behavior, especially if the cookies are good?

The first step is to identify the routine. With most habits, the routine is the most obvious aspect: It’s the behavior you want to change. Let’s say your routine, like mine, is that you get up from your desk in the afternoon, walk to the cafeteria, buy a cookie, and eat it while chatting with friends.

Next, some less obvious questions: What’s the cue for this routine? Is it hunger? Boredom? Low blood sugar? That you need a break before plunging into another task?

And what’s the reward? The cookie itself? The change of scenery? The temporary distraction? Socializing with colleagues? Or the burst of energy that comes with that blast of sugar?

To figure this out, you’ll need to do a little experimentation.

Step Two: Experiment With Rewards

Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings. We’re often not conscious of the cravings that actually drive our behaviors, though. We might think we’re craving a little online shopping, but it’s really something else we’re after — distraction from an odious task, or the chance to daydream a little.

To figure out which cravings are driving particular habits, it’s useful to experiment with different rewards . This might take a few days, or a week or sometimes even longer. No matter how long it takes, you shouldn’t feel any pressure to make a real change yet. At this point, just think of yourself as a scientist collecting data.

On the first day of the experiment, when you feel the urge to submit to a habit you want to change, adjust your routine so it delivers a different reward.

For instance, if it involves getting a cookie, you can still get up from your desk, but instead of walking to the cafeteria, walk around the block and go back to your desk without eating anything.

The next day, go to the cafeteria and buy a doughnut or a candy bar, and eat it at your desk. The day after that, go to the cafeteria, buy an apple, and eat it while chatting with your friends. Then, try a cup of coffee. Then, instead of going to the cafeteria, walk over to your not-too-busy friend’s office and chat for a few minutes before going back to your desk.

You get the idea. What you choose to do instead of buying a cookie isn’t important. The point is to test different hypotheses to see which craving is driving your routine.

Addicts in recovery learn early that they almost never drink for the intoxication, but because it helps them access certain rewards: relief from work stress, escape from worries, or freedom from social anxiety.

So are you really craving the cookie, or is it a break from work? If it’s the cookie, is it because you’re hungry? (In which case, the apple should work just as well.) Or is it because you want the burst of energy the cookie provides? (If so, the coffee or apple might suffice.) Or are you wandering up to the cafeteria as an excuse to socialize, and the cookie is just a convenient excuse? (If so, walking to someone’s desk and gossiping for a few minutes may satisfy the urge.)

As you test four or five different rewards, you can use an old trick to look for patterns: After each activity, jot down on a piece of paper the first three things that come to mind. They can be emotions , random thoughts, reflections on your feelings or just the first three words that pop into your head.

The reason why it’s important to write down three things (even if they are meaningless words) is twofold. It forces a momentary awareness of what you are thinking or feeling . And studies show that writing down a few words helps you recall later what you were thinking at that moment.

At the end of the experiment, when you review your notes, it will be much easier to remember what you were thinking and feeling after you got the reward. This will help you figure out what it is.

After you’ve scribbled down a few words, set an alarm on your watch or computer for 15 minutes. When it goes off, ask yourself: Do you still feel the urge for that cookie?

The purpose of this exercise is to determine the reward you’re craving . If, 15 minutes after eating a doughnut at your desk instead of a cookie by the cash register, you still feel an urge to get up and go to the cafeteria, then your habit isn’t motivated by a sugar craving. If, after gossiping at your colleague’s desk, you still want a cookie, then the need for human contact isn’t driving your behavior.

On the other hand, if 15 minutes after chatting with a friend you find it easy to get back to work, then you’ve identified the desired reward — temporary distraction and socializing — that your habit sought to satisfy.

By experimenting with different rewards, you can isolate what you are actually craving, which is essential in redesigning the habit.

Once you’ve figured out the routine and the reward, the next step involves identifying the cue — which is the last component of the habit loop. After that, you’ll be ready to make a plan.

Step Three: Isolate the Cue

Cues are the triggers for our habitual behaviors. They are often the most difficult part of habits to identify, because there is so much information bombarding us as our behaviors unfold. Do you eat at a certain time of day because you are hungry? Or because the clock says 7:30? Or because your kids have started eating?

To identify a cue amid the noise, we can use the same system as researchers in the field: Identify categories of behavior ahead of time to scrutinize them for patterns. Experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fall into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, immediately preceding action.

Write down the information for these five things the moment an urge hits. (These are my actual notes from when I was trying to diagnose my cookie habit):

• Where are you? (Sitting at my desk)
• What time is it? (3:36 p.m.)
• What’s your emotional state ? (Bored)
• Who else is around? (No one)
• What action preceded the urge? (Answered an email)

I did this for three days, and it became pretty clear which cue was triggering my cookie habit: time. I felt an urge to snack around 3:30 each day. I had already figured out, in step two, that it wasn’t hunger driving my behavior. The reward I was seeking was temporary distraction — the kind that comes from gossiping with a friend.

My habit loop was completed.

Once you’ve identified your own habit loop, you can begin to shift the behavior. You can develop a better routine by planning for the cue and choosing a behavior that more constructively delivers the real rewards you are craving.

Step Four: Have a Plan

A habit is a choice we make at some point, and then stop thinking about, but continue doing. Often we do it every day. Put another way, a habit is a formula our brain automatically follows: When I see this cue, I will do this routine in order to get that reward.

To reengineer that formula, we need to begin making conscious choices again. And the easiest way to do this, according to study after study, is to have a plan . Within psychology, these plans are known as “implementation intentions.”

I learned that my cue was time — roughly 3:30 in the afternoon. I knew my routine was to go to the cafeteria, buy a cookie and chat with friends. And, through experimentation, I had learned it wasn’t really the cookie I craved; rather, it was a moment of distraction and an opportunity to socialize .

So I wrote a plan: At 3:30, every day, I will walk to a friend’s desk and talk for 10 minutes.

It didn’t work immediately. There were some days I was too busy and ignored the alarm, and then fell off the wagon. Other times it seemed like too much work to find a friend willing to chat, so it was easier to get a cookie in the cafeteria, where someone to gossip with is also easier to come by.

But on those days I abided by my plan, I found I ended the workday feeling better. Eventually, it got to be automatic: When my alarm rang , I found a friend and ended the day feeling a small, but real, sense of accomplishment. After a few weeks, I hardly thought about the routine anymore.

I no longer have my watch — I lost it at some point. But at about 3:30 every day, I absent-mindedly stand up, look around the newsroom for someone to talk to, spend 10 minutes gossiping about the news and then go back to my desk. It occurs almost without me thinking about it. It has become a habit.

Obviously, changing certain habits can be more difficult. Quitting a habit of texting while driving asks less of you than renouncing an addiction to cigarettes or alcohol . Sometimes change takes a long time. Sometimes it requires repeated experiments and failures. And sometimes it is incredibly hard. But this framework is a place to start. Once you understand how a habit operates, you gain power over it. And then you’re on your way.

Keystone Habits

When Lisa Allen decided to quit smoking, she was borderline obese with $10,000 in debt and creditors hounding her. Four years later, she had lost 60 pounds, run a marathon, started a master’s degree and bought a home. The conviction that she had to quit smoking to accomplish her goals touched off a series of changes that would ultimately radiate out to other parts of her life.

There are certain habits that, once broken or adopted, tend to produce a landslide of other positive changes . These are known as “keystone habits.” They reveal that successful change doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers.

Studies from the past decade examining the impact of fitness on people’s daily routines have found that when people start exercising even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly.

Typically, people who exercise start eating better and become more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, taking time for fitness is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.

“Exercise spills over,” says James Prochaska , a University of Rhode Island researcher. “There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.”

Here are some other keystone habits:

Eating family meals. Studies have documented that families that habitually eat dinner together seem to raise children with better homework skills, higher grades, greater emotional control and more confidence.

Making your bed each morning. This behavior is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being and greater facility with following a budget.

Keeping a food journal. A 2009 study funded by the National Institutes of Health assembled a group of 1,600 obese people and asked them to write down everything they ate at least one day per week. This one habit — food journaling — created a structure that helped other good habits flourish by allowing subjects to identify their patterns and set up plans for healthy alternatives. Six months into the study, the people who kept daily food records had lost twice as much weight as everyone else.

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Psychology Discussion

Essay on a habit | psychology.

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After reading this article you will learn about Habit:- 1. Nature of Habit 2. Characteristics of Habit 3. Relationship between Habit and Actions 4. Laws 5. Functions 6. Rules of Breaking Bad Habits .

Essay # Nature of Habit:

A habit is the product of repeated voluntary actions. When a voluntary action is repeated very often, it is turned into a habit. Voluntary actions involve an effort of will or volition. But when they become habitual, they dispense with the guidance of attention and volition, and become automatic. Habitual actions are acquired.

They are sometimes called secondarily automatic actions, because they are uniform and mechanical, and are performed with ease and facility. Running, reading, writing, type-writing, swimming, etc., are habitual actions. They are the results of repeated voluntary actions. They are learned actions as distinguished from unlearned actions. Instinctive acts also may by repeated and fixed as habits.

Essay # Characteristics of Habit:

(a) Habitual actions are uniform actions. Voluntary actions vary in their nature in order to adjust the organism to new situations. But habitual actions performed in the same way. A person talks or writes in the same way.

(b) Habitual actions are performed prom­ptly. The stronger is the habit, the quicker is the motor response to the situation. The soldiers who parade every day perform the required movements quickly as soon as they hear the commands of an officer.

(c) Habitual actions are performed not only prom­ptly, but also accurately. The stronger is the habit the more precise is the motor response. The soldiers perform the precise movements in a parade in execution of the officer’s commands.

(d) Habitual actions are performed automatically without the guidance of attention and consciousness. If they are attended to, they are hindered. When we attend to buttoning our coats or tying the laces of our shoes, the normally habitual actions are thwarted and lose their automatic nature. But habitual actions are started by attention, and carried on automatically without attention.

(v) Habitual actions are performed with ease and facility. As habits are firmly established, they diminish fatigue. The miners do not feel fatigue when they are accustomed to their work. The chief difference between the skilled and the unskilled workman is that the former trains his brain and the letters trains his muscles.

(f) The stronger is the habit, the greater is the difficulty of breaking it. An inveterate drunkard finds it extremely difficult to break the habit of drinking. Habits leave mental dispositions and physiological dispositions which compel the individual to perform them.

A habitual opium-eater feels an irresistible impulse to take doses of opium regularly. Habits resists modification. They are characterised by resistance to modification.

Essay # Relationship between Habit and Actions:

(a) Habit and Instinct:

Habits and instincts are alike marked by uniformity and facility. They are both mechanical and accurate. They both give rise to periodic cravings, as in smoking, drinking, etc. They both dispense with the guidance of volition. They are non-voluntary in their nature.

But there is an important difference between them. Instincts are innate, while habits are learned by repeated voluntary actions. Sometimes instincts are said to be racial habits while habits are said to be individual habits.

(b) Habit and Reflex Action:

A habit and a reflex action are alike prompt and uniform in character. Both are automatic and mechanical. Both are without the guidance of consciousness, attention, and volition. But the reflex action is native, while the habitual action is acquired.

The former is simple, while the latter is complex. For example, swimming is a very complex action, while sneezing is a simple action. Swimming is a habitual action, while sneezing is a sensation-reflex.

(c) Habit and Voluntary Action:

A habit is the product of repeated voluntary actions. It is mechanical and uniform in nature. But a voluntary action is the new response to a novel situation. The new response is exploratory and tentative, while habit is fixed and definite. The new response is slow and uncertain, while habit is fairly quick and accurate. The new response is variable, while habit is regular.

The new response is attended by effort and strained attention, while habit is easy and often, only half-conscious. The new response is apt to be un­satisfying to the one who makes it, whole habit is comfortable and a source of satisfaction. To break a habit is most uncomfortable. To do it we must form a counter-habit, or opposite habit.

(d) Habit, Character and Conduct:

Habits are results of repeated voluntary actions. They are the foundation of character. Good habits build good character. Bad (habits build bad character. Character is the permanent bent of the mind, constituted by settled habits of will. It is a system of permanent tendencies or dispositions to thought, emotions and actions voluntarily acquired.

Character is the result of habits of thought, emotion and will. Ethical writers lay stress on habits of the will in the formation of character.

But habits of thought and emotional habits are equally important factors in the formation of character McDougall emphasize the importance of sentiments, especially the sentiment or self-regard, as the foundation of character. The sentiment of self-regard is the highest sentiment under which all other sentiments are organized.

Character is different from nature. Nature is innate, but charac­ter is acquired. Character is acquired by an individual who has voluntary actions. It is built up by a person out of his natural impulses by controlling and regulating them by reason.

Natural impulses are converted into desires by self-consciousness. The desires are turned by the self into volitions. These volitions are converted into habits by repetition. Habits produce a permanent disposition which we call character. Natural impulses are the given elements which supply the self with raw materials for the formation of character.

Character, on the other hand, is the acquired habit of controlling and regulating these impulsive tendencies by will or volition in conformity with consciously conceived ends. Character is the habitual mode in which the will regulates natural impulses and desires.

It is the result of volitions, which, are, in their turn, regulated by it. The self-acquired character is the result of volitions. Volitions are determined by the character of the self.

Character is expressed in conduct. Conduct is the outer expression of character. It includes voluntary and habitual actions. They are overt or outward actions. They are determined by charac­ter of the self. Character is not absolutely fixed and permanent.

It grows and develops. Free acts of will alter the character already formed. These volitions are partly determined by past character. But they are free volitions of the self, though they are influenced by past character. Thus, neither character nor conduct is fixed and unalterable. They are plastic and modifiable. They are modified by each other.

Essay # Laws of Habit- Formation of Habit:

William James gives four laws of formation of habits.

They are the following:

(a) Begin a new habit with a firm resolution. If you make a start with a firm determination, it often carries you along and fixes the habit. If you want to rise early in the morning, first make a firm resolve to do it.

(b) Seize the first opportunity to put the new resolve into practice. When you have made a firm resolve to rise early, begin it the very next day. Do not wait for the first day of the next months or the New Year’s Day to start to work. If you do so, your resolution will become weak and inspiration will vanish.

(c) Never allow an exception to occur till the new habit is well-learned. Once you have started rising early, continue the action from day to day and never allow an exception on any pretext. If you break it once, the pathway that is formed in the nervous system will become faint, your resolve will become weak, and you may revert to your old habit. But do not permit an exception to occur, and the new habit will be formed.

(d) Keep yourself young by a little free practice every day. In order to cultivate the strength of mind, you should perform a difficult action every day which requires a great effort of will. Habits make us conservative. We move in fixed grooves of thought and action.

But we must be open to new ideas, to new methods. We can best do this according to James, by a little practice of doing some­thing new and difficult every day.

Essay # Functions of Habits:

Many bodily habits e.g., habits of personal cleanliness are fixed during childhood. Habits of dressing, behaving with others, moral and religious habits, are fixed during adolescence. Pro­fessional habits are naturally acquired later. The people belonging to different professions have their characteristic gestures, attitudes, and habits of thought and action. These habits help mental develop­ment.

Habits play an important role in mental development. They set the mind free to acquire knowledge of new things and perform new actions in new situations. The mind can pass from victory to victory on account of habits which are handed over to the body. Without habits we can never make any progress.

But habits are also a drag to mental progress. They keep the mind within the fixed grooves of thought and action. They make the mind conservative. So the mind should be on the alert to respond to new ideas and new ways, of life in novel situations.

The mind should be alive to broader and truer ideas of life and cultivate wider and wider interests. It should not be a slave of habits. When Harvey discovered circulation of blood in the body, men above forty shook their heads, but younger men readily accepted the truth of his new discovery.

Essay # Rules of Breaking Bad Habits:

Habits may be either good or bad. Good habits should be cultivated. Bad habits should be broken.

We should observe the following rules to break bad habits:

(a) Stop the bad habit at once; do not wait for a suitable opportunity. Do not gradually break a bad habit, if the result be not physically injurious. Stop the habit of smoking or drinking or rising late at once.

(b) Cultivate a positive counter-habit. Do not try merely to stop the bad habit. Try, if possible, to from a good habit in place of it. If you are in the habit of going to the cinema every evening, try to form the habit of listening to radio music at that time.

A drunkard may cultivate the habit of taking hot milk instead of wine at stated times. He should continue the habit until he feels sure that the grip of the old habit is loosened.

(c) Live in an environment, which is favourable to the forma­tion of a good habit and the breaking of a bad habit, and which offers the least possible temptation. Try to have a congenial environ­ment. Give up the company of the habitual cinema-goers if you want to break the habit of cinema-going. A drunkard must give up the company of drunkards and keep the company of sober people.

(d) Make your body an ally instead of your enemy. The nervous system is the physiological basis of habits. Nervous path-ways are formed in the nervous system by habitual actions. There must be effected by steady, persistent and continuous formation of positive counter-habits. Mere penitent mood will not be enough to break old habits. Form good habits in place of bad habits.

Related Articles:

• Habits: Meaning, Characteristics and Role
• Difference between Voluntary and Non-Voluntary Actions | Psychology
• Habit Formation: Basis, Types and Measures for Effective Habit Formation
• Major Advantages and Disadvantages of Habit Formation

Essay on My Habits

Students are often asked to write an essay on My Habits in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on My Habits

Introduction.

Habits are routine behaviors that we perform regularly. They can be good, like brushing our teeth, or bad, like biting our nails. I have several habits that shape my daily life.

Good Habits

I have a few good habits. I wake up early in the morning, which helps me start my day positively. I also love reading books, which improves my knowledge and imagination.

Everyone has some bad habits, and so do I. Sometimes, I procrastinate on my homework, which isn’t good for my studies. I am trying to overcome this habit.

Habits play a crucial role in our lives. They shape our health, productivity, and happiness. It’s important to cultivate good habits and get rid of the bad ones.

250 Words Essay on My Habits

Habits are the building blocks of our character, shaping our daily routines and, ultimately, our lives. They can be powerful tools for self-improvement, or they can act as obstacles that hinder our progress. As a college student, my habits have evolved over time, reflecting the complexity of my academic and personal journey.

Academic Habits

My academic habits are a blend of discipline, curiosity, and resilience. I have a strict study schedule, dedicating specific hours each day to each subject. This routine has helped me maintain a consistent academic performance. However, it’s not just about rote learning; I also cultivate the habit of critical thinking. I constantly question, analyze, and synthesize information, a habit that has deepened my understanding of the subjects.

Physical Habits

Physical habits play a crucial role in my well-being. Regular exercise, a balanced diet, and adequate sleep are non-negotiable aspects of my daily routine. These habits not only keep me physically fit but also boost my mental agility, enhancing my overall academic performance.

Social Habits

My social habits are about maintaining a balance between solitude and companionship. While I value my alone time for introspection and self-growth, I also understand the importance of social interactions. Engaging in meaningful conversations, participating in group activities, and volunteering are habits that have enriched my college experience.

In conclusion, my habits are a reflection of my commitment to personal growth and academic excellence. They are the outcome of conscious choices, driven by the desire to make the most of my college years. As I continue to evolve, I am certain that my habits will, too, adapt to serve my changing needs and aspirations.

500 Words Essay on My Habits

Introduction to my habits.

Habits, the regular tendencies or practices that one engages in, are often seen as a reflection of one’s character. They serve as a mirror, reflecting our personality, values, and lifestyle. As a college student, I have cultivated a set of habits that I believe contribute significantly to my personal and academic growth.

Embracing the Morning

I am an ardent believer in the power of mornings. I have made it a habit to rise early, usually around 5 a.m. This practice provides me with a quiet, uninterrupted space to plan my day, meditate, and engage in a brief exercise routine. The tranquility of the morning hours helps me to start my day with a clear mind and a calm spirit.

Continuous Learning

The habit of continuous learning is another cornerstone of my lifestyle. I dedicate a portion of my day to reading, be it academic literature, novels, or news articles. This habit not only broadens my knowledge but also helps me to develop critical thinking skills, fostering a deeper understanding of the world around me and my place within it.

Self-Care and Wellness

In the hustle and bustle of college life, self-care is a habit that is often overlooked but is of paramount importance. I make it a point to engage in activities that nourish my body, mind, and spirit. This includes a balanced diet, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep. Additionally, I engage in mindfulness practices such as meditation and yoga, which help to maintain my mental well-being.

Time Management

Time is a precious resource, and managing it effectively is a habit I have deliberately cultivated. I use various tools and techniques, such as to-do lists and time blocking, to ensure that I make the most of my day. This habit has increased my productivity and reduced stress, allowing me to balance my academic responsibilities with leisure and relaxation.

Reflection and Gratitude

Each day, before I retire to bed, I spend a few moments reflecting on the day’s events. I consider the lessons learned, the achievements made, and the challenges faced. This habit of reflection helps me to grow and evolve continually. Alongside reflection, I practice gratitude, acknowledging the positive aspects of my life. This habit has cultivated a positive outlook and has significantly improved my overall happiness and satisfaction.

In conclusion, my habits serve as the framework for my daily life. They are the building blocks that shape my character, influence my actions, and guide my journey towards personal and academic growth. While these habits have been beneficial, I am aware of the need for flexibility and adaptation, as change is a constant part of life. As I continue to grow and evolve, I am open to cultivating new habits that contribute positively to my life’s journey.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Health and Food Habits
• Essay on Food Habits
• Essay on Habits

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Habit by Antti Gronow LAST REVIEWED: 19 November 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 28 November 2016 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0186

The concept of habit refers to routine behavior which is based on repeated exposure to same kinds of environmental cues. These cues lead to an automatic association with the cue and the behavior that follows irrespective of whether a desired goal is reached. The basic idea thus is that when actions are repeated often enough, they tend to habituate and routinize, which takes them out of the spotlight of conscious reflection. Instead of conscious intentions, contextual cues become important because they activate the related habit. Habits can be explicitly taught or implicitly learned but often a combination of both kinds of incorporation is involved. Habits have been studied in psychology since the end of the 19th century. The stimulus–response model of classical behaviorism comes close to the idea of habits, as both contain the idea that action results from responses to environmental stimuli. However, classical behaviorism denied that inner motivational states, such as valued goals, would have any role in explaining behavior, whereas most contemporary psychologists and cognitive scientists think that habits refer to inner dispositions rather than their overt manifestations. The latter are sometimes called routines to distinguish overt behavior from inner dispositions. Whether habits are dispositions or routines may sound like hair splitting but treating habits as the dispositions that give rise to (or may fail to do so) routine behavior leaves the door open for the option that habits do not cease to exist when their manifestation is blocked for some reason. The can still exist as potentialities for action, waiting for the right environmental conditions to activate themselves. The concept of habit has traditionally also figured in philosophy and more recently in social sciences. Psychological discussions often focus on the ways in which habits reveal the workings of the unconscious, whereas social scientists are keener on analyzing the role of habits in the reproduction of social structures. For social scientists and social theorists, this kind of analysis makes it possible to take into account both the bodily basis of action and the fundamental sociality of our being. Sociological and anthropological perspective on habits underscore enculturation and socialized dispositions. The concept of habit is accordingly used to show how collectively held culture is linked to individual action. Popular science also refers to the idea of habits—often discussing ways to get rid of so-called bad habits.

The theme of habits is probably too specific to draw the attention of book-length academic discussions or journals that would be exclusively devoted to the topic. However, the situation is somewhat different in the field of popular science. The following articles do a good job in highlighting different aspects of habits. Camic 1986 is almost a classical statement on the way in which the concept has figured in sociology. According to Camic, the meaning of habit refers to a continuum: on the lower levels one finds dispositions to perform elementary and specific activities, whereas on the upper reaches habits relate to conduct of life and/or the idea of character. Neal, et al. 2006 gives a short overview of the issues involved from the view of psychologists. Kilpinen 2009 outlines the terrain when the concept of habit is taken as formative for action and social theory.

Camic, Charles. 1986. The matter of habit. American Journal of Sociology 91:1039–1087.

DOI: 10.1086/228386

This article is a thorough review of the history of the habit concept in social sciences. It shows that classical sociologists referred to habits (although not very often). The concept was eventually written out of the history of social theory by Talcott Parsons. The main reason for this loss had to do with an exaggerated aversion to behaviorism.

Kilpinen, Erkki. 2009. The habitual conception of action and social theory. Semiotica 173:99–128.

An insightful discussion on the social sharing of habits. Kilpinen argues that rather than viewing habits and practices as something that one possesses as an individual, it is more fruitful to follow a participatory notion: habits are not necessarily exactly similar for everyone involved in a social activity. Rather, a working agreement about the basics of the activity is more to the point.

Neal, David T., Wendy Wood, and Jeffrey M. Quinn. 2006. Habits—A repeat performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science 15:198–202.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00435.x

This is a short and general introduction into the psychological mechanisms behind habitual responses. Based on empirical evidence, the authors conclude that especially the direct-context-cuing model receives support. This model argues that a repeated co-activation of a particular context and the representation of a response forge a direct link in memory, thus leading to the formation of a habit.

Sparrow, Tom, and Adam Hutchinson, eds. 2015. A history of habit. From Aristotle to Bourdieu . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

A collection of articles rather than a systematic presentation of the history of the idea of habits. The book includes chapters on the philosophical forefathers of the idea (Aquinas, Montaigne, Hume, etc.) and also chapters on more modern authors, such as Dewey and Bourdieu. The psychological side of things seems a bit underrepresented.

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A review and analysis of the use of ‘habit’ in understanding, predicting and influencing health-related behaviour

Benjamin gardner.

a Health Behaviour Research Centre, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health , University College London , Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

The term ‘habit’ is widely used to predict and explain behaviour. This paper examines use of the term in the context of health-related behaviour, and explores how the concept might be made more useful. A narrative review is presented, drawing on a scoping review of 136 empirical studies and 8 literature reviews undertaken to document usage of the term ‘habit’, and methods to measure it. A coherent definition of ‘habit’, and proposals for improved methods for studying it, were derived from findings. Definitions of ‘habit’ have varied in ways that are often implicit and not coherently linked with an underlying theory. A definition is proposed whereby habit is a process by which a stimulus generates an impulse to act as a result of a learned stimulus-response association. Habit-generated impulses may compete or combine with impulses and inhibitions arising from other sources, including conscious decision-making, to influence responses, and need not generate behaviour. Most research on habit is based on correlational studies using self-report measures. Adopting a coherent definition of ‘habit’, and a wider range of paradigms, designs and measures to study it, may accelerate progress in habit theory and application.

Habits are considered to play a fundamental role in generating behaviour (e.g., James, 1891 ; Triandis, 1977 ; Watson, 1913 ). Although used in everyday parlance to refer to frequent, persistent or customary behaviour, within health psychology ‘habit’ is defined as a phenomenon whereby behaviour is prompted automatically by situational cues, as a result of learned cue-behaviour associations (Wood & Neal, 2009 ). Habits form through repetition of behaviour in a specific context (Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, 2010 ). This reinforces a mental context-behaviour association, such that alternative options become less accessible in memory (Danner, Aarts, & de Vries, 2007 , 2008 ), and the context acquires the potential to activate behaviour in the absence of awareness, conscious control, cognitive effort or deliberation (Bargh, 1994 ). Although habit has long been known to underpin behaviour (e.g., James, 1891 ; Watson, 1913 ), there has been a recent resurgence of interest in habit within health psychology (e.g., Gardner, de Bruijn, & Lally, 2011 ; Lally & Gardner, 2013 ; van t'Riet, Sijtsema, Dagevos, & de Bruijn, 2011 ).

Habit is hypothesised to have several characteristics that make it pertinent to understanding and changing health behaviour. Dual process models propose two parallel processing systems, analogous to two pathways to behaviour (Hofmann, Friese, & Wiers, 2008 ; Strack & Deutsch, 2004 ). Habit is depicted on an impulsive pathway, such that perception of cues activates low-level context-behaviour associations, which prompt behaviour rapidly and efficiently, with minimal forethought. Reasoned cognitions (e.g., intentions) are portrayed on a reflective pathway, whereby a cue initiates rule-based deliberation, which directs behaviour slowly and effortfully. Theory predicts that, in associated contexts, habit will consistently elicit behaviour and override counter-habitual intentions (Hall & Fong, 2007 ; Triandis, 1977 ). As habits form, action control is transferred to environmental stimuli, and reliance on attentional or motivational processes decreases (Lally, Wardle, & Gardner, 2011 ). Habits should thus persist even where conscious motivation wanes. This has led to calls for habit formation to be encouraged in interventions, to promote long-term maintenance (Rothman, Sheeran, & Wood, 2009 ).

The application of habit to the health domain has, however, proven controversial. Commentators have questioned whether health behaviours can be undertaken without conscious mediation (Ajzen, 2002 ; Maddux, 1997 ). Concerns have been raised around the coherence of the habit concept and popular measures of it (Gardner, Abraham, Lally, & de Bruijn, 2012 ; Sniehotta & Presseau, 2012 ). It would seem prudent, and timely, to evaluate the persuasiveness of evidence of the applicability of habit to health behaviour.

This paper examines the conceptual and methodological assumptions underpinning applications of habit to health behaviour. It is not a comprehensive literature summary, but is based on a scoping review conducted using systematic search and filter procedures. Evidence was identified via systematic searches of literature covering a 15-year period (1998–2013). Evidence was sorted into two strands: one to identify explicit definitions of habit from literature reviews (8 papers) and one to identify empirical research applying habit to health behaviours (136 studies; Supplemental Table 1). Details of evidence identification procedures are available as Supplemental Data.

The first two sections of this review explore the definitions of ‘habit’ and ‘habitual behaviour’, as extracted from extant evidence reviews. Next, the methods used in empirical applications of habit to health behaviour are assessed, in respective sections on habit measures, and the designs and analyses used to test theoretical predictions around habit and behaviour.

Conceptualising habit and habitual behaviour

What is a ‘habit’.

As an abstract and socially defined concept, there can be no objectively ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ definition of habit (West & Brown, 2013 ). Definitions must be judged according to their usefulness for predicting, explaining and changing behaviour. The lay definition of ‘habit’ as frequent, regular or persistent behaviour is unsatisfactory because it offers no explanatory mechanism for these characteristics, and is not discussed further.

Table 1 presents explicit definitions of habit cited within (eight) literature reviews. These definitions concur in describing elements of a process whereby behaviour is contextually cued, without conscious thought, via activation of a mental context-behaviour association learned through context-consistent performances. They differ in the location of ‘habit’ in this process. Five definitions portray ‘habit’ as behaviour generated by this process (Gardner et al., 2011 , 2012 ; Nilsen, Bourne, & Verplanken, 2008 ; Nilsen, Roback, Broström, & Ellström, 2012 ; van t'Riet et al., 2011 ). One views habit as a tendency to engage in behaviour (Ouellette & Wood, 1998 ), and two as the automaticity of responses (Verplanken & Wood, 2006 ; Wood & Neal, 2009 ).

Treating habit as a form of behaviour is incompatible with the portrayal of habit, within health behaviour models, as a determinant of action (e.g., Triandis, 1977 ). As Maddux ( 1997 ) noted, ‘to say that behavior that is an automatic response to situational cues is caused by habit is to say that a habit is caused by a habit … a habit cannot be both the behavior and the cause of the behavior’ (pp. 335–336). Viewing habit as a tendency towards behaviour is similarly problematic. Such a tendency must be inferred from and summarise occurrences of behaviour, so lacks explanatory value; stating that an individual tends to perform behaviour because they have a tendency to perform behaviour is truistic. Portraying habit as a form of automaticity avoids such problems by specifying habit as a cognitive mechanism independent of behaviour.

Six definitions depict habitual behaviour as directly or automatically triggered by associated cues (Gardner et al., 2011 , 2012 ; Nilsen et al., 2008 , 2012 ; Wood & Neal, 2009 ), so implying that the behavioural response is an inevitable outcome of cue encounters. Yet, empirical evidence suggests that contextually cued automatic behavioural responses can be consciously inhibited. Participants in one observational diary study reported some successes in inhibiting unwanted actions performed in stable contexts, through the spontaneous use of vigilant monitoring of cues and behaviour, or distraction (Quinn, Pascoe, Wood, & Neal, 2010 ). Planning alternative responses to habit cues has also been found to reduce engagement in self-reported habitual behaviours (Adriaanse et al., 2010 ). Behaviour may therefore not be a necessary consequence of encountering habit cues. Rather, habits can be inhibited – albeit sometimes with difficulty – given sufficient will-power and self-regulatory resources (Neal, Wood, & Drolet, 2013 ).

Logical inconsistencies between these definitions and theoretical and empirical evidence may be resolved by viewing habit as a process by which a stimulus automatically generates an impulse towards action, based on learned stimulus-response associations (see also West & Brown, 2013 ). This conceptualisation offers a coherent- and evidence-based explanatory mechanism for behaviour, and is novel in two respects. First, it represents habit as a process by which action is cued. This minimises conceptual and logical tensions that arise from portraying habit as behaviour, automaticity or any other single element of the wider process. It also incorporates the cue-dependence, automaticity and conditioned stimulus-response associations that characterise and distinguish habitual action from other forms of automatic behaviour (Gardner et al., 2012 ; Lally et al., 2010 ; Orbell & Verplanken, 2010 ; Wood & Neal, 2009 ). Second, depicting the ‘response’ to habit cues as an impulse allows for the possibility that habitual tendencies may, once activated, be overridden prior to translation into action. Impulses can be defined as high-level schematic representations of action which, if insufficiently opposed, trigger execution of action (e.g., Michie & West, 2013 ). A habitual impulse may be one of many momentary motivational forces competing to direct behaviour, so vying with various opposing forces favouring alternative actions or inhibition of the habitual response. PRIME Theory proposes that impulse generation is a low-level cognitive process that lies outside of awareness unless the impulse is frustrated, in which case it becomes consciously experienced as an urge to engage in behaviour (West & Brown, 2013 ). Thus, habitual behaviour may be experienced as directly cued where the impulse is unopposed, but inhibited where opposing forces are stronger.

What is a ‘habitual (health) behaviour’?

Habit has been applied to a variety of health behaviours, including dietary consumption (e.g., Adriaanse et al., 2010 ), physical activity (Rhodes & de Bruijn, 2010 ), alcohol consumption (Norman, 2011 ) and medication adherence (Bolman, Arwert, & Vollink, 2011 ). There is a disconnect between these relatively complex behaviours and the simple actions that have been the focus of investigation within other sub-disciplines of psychology. Early behaviourist studies of habit centred on behaviours such as pulling strings and lifting latches (Watson, 1913 ), and neuroscientists, for example, continue to investigate habit through observations of key presses, lever pushes and simple object-selection tasks (e.g., de Wit & Dickinson, 2009 ). The tacit assumption that the automatisation of simple actions can be transposed to complex health behaviours remains largely unquestioned (but see Maddux, 1997 ). Behaviourists have traditionally viewed complex habitual actions as concatenated sequences of simpler habitual actions (i.e., ‘composite habits’; Campbell, 1956 ), such that the cessation of each (habitual) action within a given sequence habitually activates the subsequent action until the sequence is completed. No study identified by the scoping review offers compelling evidence to suggest that the health actions to which habit has been applied are performed in rigid sequential order without conscious input. The notion that everyday health behaviours may be wholly rigidly automated and performed with little control, awareness or intention does not match the subjective experience of most health behaviours (Maddux, 1997 ).

Maddux ( 1997 ) proposed that, for complex health behaviours, habit be seen as a mechanism that cues conscious decision-making that in turn prompts behaviour, rather than regulating the procedural enactment of behaviour. This conceptualisation of ‘habitual behaviour’ as necessarily consciously mediated is incompatible with the definition of habit outlined here (and those in Table 1 ), and with empirical evidence demonstrating that action can be automatically cued without, or contrary to, conscious motivation (Neal, Wood, Wu, & Kurlander, 2011 ). A broader distinction between the (automatic) initiation and the (conscious) performance of behaviour, however, is concordant with the present definition. From this perspective, a ‘habitual’ bicycle commuter, for example, may automatically opt to use a bicycle rather than alternative transport (so automatically enacting the first behaviour in a superordinate ‘bicycle commuting’ sequence, such as putting on a cycle helmet), but negotiating the journey may require higher-level cognitive input. Conversely, a ‘habitual’ exerciser may consciously decide to visit the gym, but enact their subsequent pattern of exercises within the gym automatically, with little conscious thought. Indeed, the distinction between initiation and performance of behaviour implies three possible types of ‘habitual behaviour’, that is, those which are habitually initiated but consciously (non-habitually) performed (e.g., bicycle commuting); consciously initiated but habitually performed (e.g., exercising in the gym); or habitually initiated and habitually performed (e.g., eating unhealthy snacks).

The distinction between behavioural initiation and performance is crude; after a complex behaviour sequence is initiated, performance to completion will require initiation of further lower-level actions, each of which may potentially be governed by independent habit processes. For bicycle commuters, for example, the movements required to ‘remove the bicycle from the shed’ may be activated by a ‘removing the bicycle from the shed’ habit, whereas ‘walking the bicycle to the road’ may be governed by a separate habit. The distinction is, however, useful from a practical perspective. It demands, for example, that habit formation intervention developers determine whether to target the automatic selection of a behavioural option (e.g., automatically opting to eat from a small plate so as to reduce portion size; Lally, Chipperfield, & Wardle, 2008 ) – possibly with the aim that, once initiated, disengagement from the behaviour (replacing it with a larger plate) will be unlikely – or to automate sequential activation of multiple behaviours within a higher-order sequence (e.g., performing rehabilitation exercises in a given order; Fleig et al., 2013 ). The latter may not be feasible for all behaviours; tentative evidence suggests complex sequences of actions may take longer to become habitual, and participants better adhere to habit formation attempts for simpler actions (Lally et al., 2010 ).

Habitual behaviour may be defined, broadly, as any action, or sequence of actions, that is controlled by habit . This allows for habit to be involved in initiation or performance of action, the former resonating more strongly with everyday experiences of complex behaviours (Maddux, 1997 ), and the latter reconnecting with historical treatments of ‘habitual behaviour’ as chunked automated sequences of lower-level actions (e.g., Graybiel, 2008 ; Watson, 1913 ). However, greater precision may be achieved by distinguishing between habitually initiated behaviour , which is instigated by a habitual impulse but may require cognitive input to be performed, and habitually performed behaviour , the execution of which is facilitated by the activation of one or more habits, regardless of whether consciously or non-consciously instigated. This distinction may be less important for simple behaviours for which initiation and performance cannot easily be separated, such as drinking water (e.g., Lally et al., 2010 ), but is pertinent to behaviours composed of multiple sub-actions, such as physical activity. Future work might use this distinction to specify more precisely the role(s) of habit in action.

Are existing methods for capturing ‘habit’ adequate?

Measuring habit.

Progress in habit theory and application depends on reliable measures of the characteristics of habit: automatic impulse generation, impulses (or urges) to perform behaviour, cue-dependency, and an underlying stimulus-response association. Past behaviour has been used as a proxy for the potential for habit to regulate action (i.e., ‘habit strength’; Hull, 1943 ), but fails to distinguish between habit and non-habit processes (Ajzen, 2002 ). The scoping review identified four discrete habit measures.

Ouellette and Wood's ( 1998 ) ‘ Behaviour Frequency × Context Stability ’ ( BFCS ) measures, used in 16 studies (12% of all quantitative studies identified), assume that past behaviour reliably reflects habit in unvarying settings. Scores represent the multiplicative product of self-reported (past or typical) behaviour frequency (‘how often do you do X?’) and contextual covariation (‘when you do X, how often is cue Y present?’, with ‘cue Y’ typically specified as location, time, presence of others or mood; e.g., Ji & Wood, 2007 ). The Exercise Habit Survey (EHS), used in one study (1%; Tappe & Glanz, 2013 ), consists of 10 items addressing 4 factors: three contextual covariates of exercise behaviour (location, presence of others and time of day), and the rigidity of exercise sequences (e.g., ‘Every day that I exercised, I performed the same exercise(s)’). Both BFCS and EHS tap cue-dependency, but applications have been limited by a reliance on researcher-generated cues. It has been suggested that any environmental feature can cue habit given sufficient cue-behaviour pairings (Verplanken, 2005 ), and so BFCS measures may perhaps be enhanced by focusing on cues preliminarily elicited from participants (e.g., Judah, Gardner, & Aunger, 2013 ). Moreover, by focusing on cue stability, both BFCS and EHS assess the likelihood that habit has formed, not the automaticity with which habitual impulses are generated. Additionally, the BFCS implies a compensatory relationship between behaviour frequency and context stability, such that frequent enactment in varying settings is expected to have equivalent influence on habit strength as infrequent enactment in unvarying settings (B. Verplanken, personal communication, November 26, 2013). Empirical data are needed to explore the impact of variation in frequency and stability on the automaticity with which habitual behaviour proceeds.

One hundred and nineteen studies (88%) have used the Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI) (or abbreviations thereof), which is designed to capture automaticity (Verplanken & Orbell, 2003 ). Twelve items follow a stem (‘Behaviour X is something…’) and focus on three facets of automaticity – lack of awareness (‘…I do without thinking’), lack of control (‘…that would require effort not to do’) and mental efficiency (‘…I have no need to think about doing’) – behavioural frequency (‘…I do frequently’) and self-identity (‘…that's typically “me”’). The SRHI assumes that people can be aware, through reflection on the consequences of action, that they were unaware of initiating action at the time of performance (e.g., ‘I cannot recall lighting my cigarette, yet it is lit, so I must have lit it automatically’; Gardner et al., 2012 ; Sniehotta & Presseau, 2012 ).

SRHI applications have been criticised for neglecting cues (Sniehotta & Presseau, 2012 ). Any behaviour may be regulated by habit in one setting and deliberation in another, and so context-free estimates of the habitual nature of ‘behaviour X’ may conflate habitual and non-habitual performances. The SRHI can be adapted to incorporate contextual cues (e.g., ‘Behaviour X in Context Y is something I do automatically’; Sniehotta & Presseau, 2012 ). It is also unclear whether the SRHI captures habitual initiation or performance of action, though it may be easily modified to specify initiation rather than execution (e.g., ‘ choosing to eat unhealthy snacks is something I do automatically’).

The SRHI also contains potentially conceptually redundant items. Identity is not a defining characteristic of habit (see e.g., Table 1 ). Although intended to capture the experience of repetitive action rather than to estimate frequency (Verplanken & Orbell, 2003 ), behavioural frequency SRHI items are likely to invite responses that covary closely with enactment frequency (e.g., Gardner et al., 2011 ). This is logically problematic: if habits are responses to cues, performance frequency will vary with the frequency with which cues are encountered. For example, for weekly cinema-goers with habits for eating popcorn in the cinema, the habitual popcorn impulse will be activated weekly, but monthly for monthly cinema-goers (Neal et al., 2011 ). The mechanism that underpins habitual action is automaticity; behaviour frequency is an antecedent, and consequence, of automaticity (Sniehotta & Presseau, 2012 ). The contribution of past performance to habit should be reflected in the automaticity with which the habitual impulse is activated.

Automaticity scales have been proposed. One measure, used in two studies (1%), is a six-item subscale of the Smoking Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ; Spielberger, 1986 ), and requires reflection on smoking automatically, without remembering lighting up, or when preoccupied with other tasks relate to lighting cigarettes. The domain specificity of the SMQ precludes its application to other behaviours. Automaticity-specific SRHI subscales have been more commonly employed. The most systematically developed is the ‘Self-Report Behavioural Automaticity Index’ [SRBAI, used in nine studies (7%)], which comprises four items shown to have content validity as automaticity indicators (Gardner et al., 2012 ). It is unclear whether the SRBAI remains sensitive to discrete facets of automaticity (mental efficiency, lack of awareness and control), but close observed SRHI–SRBAI convergence suggests participants do not distinguish between these. By not accounting for repetition history, the SRBAI may fail to discern habit from non-learned forms of automaticity. For behaviour prediction or habit tracking studies however, the SRBAI offers a more parsimonious and potentially conceptually clear alternative to the SRHI (Gardner et al., 2012 ).

Association tests , used in one study (1%; Danner, Aarts, Papies, & de Vries, 2011 ), are designed to assess the cue-behaviour associations that underpin behavioural habits. These operate on the basis that habitual responses are more mentally accessible than non-habit responses, so will be recognised more quickly and frequently in the presence of cues (e.g., Danner et al., 2008 ; Neal, Wood, Labrecque, & Lally, 2012 ). Repeated cue-dependent performance quickens responses to these tasks (Webb, Sheeran, & Luszczynska, 2009 ). Associative measures may be seen as a ‘gold standard’, in that they assess cue-response associations directly, bypassing the subjectivity of participant self-report. However, they require administration in controlled conditions, and prior knowledge of likely cues to habitual behaviour, making them unsuitable for the self-administered survey study designs that dominate the habit literature.

The habit process cannot be directly observed. Existing measures are necessarily imperfect, relying on inference from the conduciveness of conditions to habit formation and maintenance (Ouellette & Wood, 1998 ; Triandis, 1977 ) or observation of the characteristics and consequences of habitual responding (Danner et al., 2008 ; Spielberger, 1986 ; Tappe & Glanz, 2013 ; Verplanken & Orbell, 2003 ). The most theoretically valid measures use implicit association or response time tasks to directly assess cue-behaviour associations, but these are impractical in uncontrolled research settings. Consequently, self-report measures dominate. The accuracy of self-reports of behaviour, automaticity and cues is however questionable (Gardner & Tang, in press ). This is problematic, given that predictive validity is used as a criterion for measurement accuracy (Gardner et al., 2012 ; Tappe & Glanz, 2013 ); a failure to detect habitual behaviour may indicate that behaviour is not habitual, or that the measure is insensitive to true habit. Similarly, temporal variations in habit scores could reflect habit strength fluctuations or an unstable and unreliable measure. Available self-report measures also fail to comprehensively capture habit: the BFCS and EHS measure cue-dependency but not automaticity, and the SRHI addresses automaticity but is rarely used to assess cue-dependency. Measures must tap the cue-dependency of the habit process (Orbell & Verplanken, 2010 ), and their sensitivity to automaticity might be assessed against associative tests. Self-report measures infer habit from reflections on behavioural performance (e.g., ‘behaviour X is something I do automatically’), but as argued above, habit need not prompt behaviour. Where habitual impulses are blocked, they can be consciously experienced as urges to enact the habitual response. Simple self-report measures of urges are available (Fidler, Shahab, & West, 2011 ) and might complement measures of automaticity and cue-dependence, as a proxy for the strength of the cue-response association that underpins habit.

Predicting habitual behaviour and behavioural habit

The majority of studies have investigated effects of habit on health behaviour (82 studies; 60% of all studies). These have tended to focus on ongoing habits and behaviour, testing two hypotheses (Triandis, 1977 ). First, habit strength will correlate positively with the likelihood of behavioural enactment. Second, habit will moderate the influence of conscious intentions on action, such that, as habit strength increases, the intention–behaviour relationship will diminish. Although derived from the Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour (TIB; Triandis, 1977 ), these hypotheses have mostly been tested within the framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991 ). Figure 1 portrays these two effects (Paths A and B) within a generic social cognitive framework.

Note: Path A: Direct effect of habit strength on behaviour frequency (Triandis, 1977 ); Path B: Moderating impact of habit on the intention–behaviour relationship (Triandis, 1977 ); Path C: Effect of behavioural repetition on habit formation (Lally et al., 2010 ).

Twelve studies (9%) have sought to predict habit strength. Habit is defined by its acquisition through (context-dependent) repeated performance (Path C in Figure 1 ). A study of the formation of dietary and physical activity habits found variation in the speed with which habit strengthened, and the level at which it peaked, despite identical repetitions (Lally et al., 2010 ). Additional variables may strengthen habit by moderating the reinforcement value of each performance on the cue-response association. For example, the Associative Cybernetic Model proposes that rewarding outcomes of behaviour can hasten learning of cue-response relationships (de Wit & Dickinson, 2009 ). Repeated sequential presentation of context, behaviour and rewarding outcomes can imbue the context with the motivational properties of the reward, so that the context comes to signal both an opportunity and incentive to act. This should be expressed via an interaction between reward and repetition, such that repetition has a stronger impact on habit strength where behaviour is rewarded. Determinants of habit strength may thus be logically organised into four stages: those that aid intention formation; those that facilitate the translation of intention into action; those that aid continuation of a new behaviour and those that moderate the relationship between context-dependent repetition (CDR) and habit development (Lally & Gardner, 2013 ).

Predicting behaviour

Empirical tests have tended to support the two predicted effects of habit on action, but some results have been unexpected. Meta-analyses of SRHI applications have shown moderate-to-strong habit–behaviour correlations (Gardner et al., 2011 ), though coefficients are smaller when estimated using automaticity-specific SRHI measures (Gardner et al., 2012 ). Such modest effects concur with the proposition that, because impulses may be inhibited, habit need not prompt action. Moderation tests (conducted in 24 studies; see Supplemental Table 2) have tended to show intention to become less predictive of behaviour as habit strength increases, so that, where intention is weak and habit strong, behaviour corresponds with habit and not intention (18 studies, 75% of moderation tests; Gardner et al., 2011 ). Yet, four tests (17%) found no habit–intention interaction (e.g., Gardner et al., 2012 ), and three (13%) showed intention to be more predictive of behaviour at stronger levels of habit (de Bruijn, Rhodes, & van Osch, 2012 ; Gardner, de Bruijn, & Lally, 2012 ; Rhodes & de Bruijn, 2010 ). 1 It is unlikely that the direction of habit–intention interactions is behaviour-specific. Physical activity studies, for example, have produced mixed findings, with habits variously shown to weaken (seven studies), strengthen (two studies), or have no impact on intention–behaviour relations (two studies).

Inconsistent study findings may arise from limitations inherent to the designs and analyses used to predict habitual action. Interaction tests have mostly been based on measures of congruent intentions, habits and behaviour (e.g., intentions to snack, snacking habits, snacking frequency; 21 studies [88%]), with habit–intention conflict inferred from projected behaviour patterns where intention is weak and habit strong. Such estimates can lack ecological validity, because habits and intentions tend to correlate positively and strongly (e.g., de Bruijn et al., 2012 ; van Bree et al., 2013 ). This is unsurprising: habits form through repetition of intentional actions (Lally & Gardner, 2013 ), and so, in the absence of intervention, habit and intentions should concur. Automatic action can proceed in the absence of conscious intention, but habitual actions need not be performed without, or contrary to, intention (Bargh, 1994 ). Additionally, intentions are always measured in relation to a single behavioural option (‘to what extent do you intend to do X?’). A weak intention to perform a behaviour (e.g., eat unhealthy snacks) need not, however, reflect a strong intention to perform an alternative (eat healthy snacks) or inhibit the focal behaviour ( avoid eating unhealthy snacks). The distinction between the absence of a habit-congruent intention ( not intending to do a habitual behaviour), and the presence of a counter-habitual intention ( intending not to do a habitual behaviour), is important for action regulation. In one experimental study, participants who formed an intention to perform a counter-habitual action were able to consciously suppress their habitual responses and act in line with their intentions, contrary to TIB predictions (Danner et al., 2011 ). It has also been suggested that, where habits concur with intentions, habits can effectively facilitate the translation of intention into action (Neal et al., 2013 ). Habitual actions tend to persist even when self-regulatory resources are depleted, and so habits can shield pursuit of an intended (and habitual) behaviour from derailment which might otherwise occur when the will-power required to act on intention is diminished (Neal et al., 2013 ). More precise estimation of intention–habit conflict requires identification of situations or samples in which intentions are expected to shift, or have shifted, away from established habits. Only two studies (8%) have explored whether counter-intentional habits moderate intention–behaviour relationships, and neither found a habit–intention interaction (Gardner et al., 2012 ; Murtagh, Rowe, Elliott, McMinn, & Nelson, 2012 ).

Seventy-four behaviour prediction studies (90% of such studies) have used context-free habit measures, which may obscure true habit–behaviour relationships. Identification of habitual action requires specification of cues in both habit and behaviour measures, to differentiate between performances conditional upon associated contexts, and unconditional performances (Sniehotta, 2009 ). Conditional behaviour measures are most urgently demanded where contextual cues are rarely encountered, or where behaviour occurs non-habitually in other contexts (Sniehotta, 2009 ). In such situations, frequency is unlikely to reflect habit. This may add noise to habit–behaviour correlations. The timing of questionnaire administration may affect associations between habit, intention and behaviour (e.g., Schwarzer, 2014 ). Intentions may change or be forgotten between measurement and encountering action opportunities (e.g., Sheeran & Abraham, 2003 ). This may weaken observed intention–behaviour relationships, independently of habit. Real-time data collection methods are available that capture cognitions more proximal to the moment of action (Jones & Johnston, 2011 ).

Theory has also been inadequately tested at the individual level. Most (80; 98%) studies have exclusively modelled between-person variation in habit, based on aggregates of individuals' habit scores. Yet, habitual action is inherently idiosyncratic, based on personally acquired behavioural responses to personally meaningful cues. Within-person effects cannot be reliably interpreted from aggregations of processes that differ between people (Jaccard, 2012 ; Molenaar, 2004 ). Studies of between-person differences cannot reveal, for example, whether an individual is more likely to act in line with habits or counter-habitual intentions. Habit requires study as an intra-individual phenomenon (Conroy, Maher, Elavsky, Hyde, & Doerksen, 2013 ; Lally et al., 2010 ). More appropriate methods are available. For example, observational single-case designs can capture habit development, or the impact of habit on behaviour, within the individual by capturing multiple in-situ observations from one person over time (Lally et al., 2010 ). Similarly, N -of-1 trials can evaluate the impact of experimental manipulations versus control treatments as administered to one individual over several time points (Hobbs, Dixon, Johnston, & Howie, 2013 ). Multilevel modelling also facilitates individual-level analyses by estimating within-person variation while controlling for between-person variance (Conroy et al., 2013 ; Johnston & Johnson, 2013 ).

Predicting habit

Eleven (quantitative) studies have sought to predict or model habit strength (Supplemental Table 3). A distinction must be drawn between studies of the habit formation process, and observational studies of ongoing habits. Only formation studies, which focus on participants undergoing natural or purposive interventions to create new habits, are available (Fleig et al., 2013 ; Judah et al., 2013 ; Lally et al., 2010 ). Most (8; 73%) studies have sought to predict ongoing habits, by investigating determinants of habit over and above behavioural repetition, or moderators of the repetition–habit strength relationship. For example, one cross-sectional study examined the effect of self-determination on the relationship between past behaviour (as a proxy for behavioural repetition) and habit strength (Gardner & Lally, 2013 ). Studies of ongoing habits may obscure the temporal nature of relationships between context-dependent behavioural repetition and habit formation. In the formative stages, motivation prompts behavioural repetition, which in turn strengthens habit, and as habit develops, it acquires the potential to cue further repetition (Lally et al., 2010 , 2011 ). Any given sample may consist of participants forming habits, for whom repetition should shape habit (Path C in Figure 1 ), and those with established habits, for whom habit should prompt repetition (Path A). Group-level aggregations of behaviour–habit correlation coefficients potentially conflate causal repetition-habit and habit-repetition effects, thereby overestimating the true size of either effect in isolation and precluding reliable interpretation of causality (Weinstein, 2007 ). This problem is not reliably circumvented by prospective designs in which baseline measures of behavioural repetition and additional factors are used to predict habit at a later point. After habit strength peaks, repetition has little impact on habit (Lally et al., 2010 ); habit should prompt behaviour, not vice versa. In the absence of intervention, habit strength and behaviour frequency should be stable over time (Verplanken & Orbell, 2003 ). ‘Predictive’ effects of behaviour frequency on later habit scores may reflect the impact of a stable habit on an ongoing behaviour, rather than a causal behaviour–habit effect (Weinstein, 2007 ).

Studies of ongoing habits have also been limited by a focus on between-person differences in habit strength. The between-person habit strength distribution in a given sample may not reflect the asymptotic distribution of within-person scores as habit forms (Lally et al., 2010 ). Between-person variance in habit may reflect variation in the level at which habit has peaked, or, for those engaged in formation attempts, the speed with which habit has developed. Correlational studies of between-participant differences give limited insight into the habit formation process.

Observing causal influences on habit strength requires a focus on longitudinal habit changes within individuals undergoing habit formation attempts (e.g., Lally et al., 2010 ), or the use of experimental methods to manipulate habit formation (e.g., Webb et al., 2009 ). Such studies are rare. Formation studies may be most ecologically valid in depicting processes of habit change, but are costly and time-consuming, as they demand an effective behaviour change intervention to initiate and maintain a formation attempt, and multiple long-term follow-up measures to record progress (e.g., Judah et al., 2013 ). Studies of ongoing habits can play an important but limited role as pilot studies, to identify hypotheses warranting further investigation (Weinstein, 2007 ).

Habit and behavioural change interventions

Habit theory yields important implications for behaviour change interventions: forming ‘good’ habits should maintain intervention impact over time, and unwanted habitual health-risk behaviours (‘bad habits’) might be resistant to change via deliberative pathways (Rothman et al., 2009 ; Verplanken & Wood, 2006 ). Only 21 behavioural intervention studies (15% of all studies; Supplemental Table 4) have incorporated habit in any capacity, and thirteen (62%) of these entered habit only as a potential covariate, mediator or moderator of effects on behaviour. Only eight (38%) interventions have explicitly been designed to change habits.

Habit formation may be used as an intervention outcome, or a behaviour change technique based on CDR (Michie et al., 2013 ). Seven (purposive) interventions have used habit formation in either capacity. Of these, four used formation as an outcome and a technique, to change dietary consumption and physical activity. Carels et al. ( in press ) found a habit-based diet and activity intervention to have greater impact on weight loss at six-month follow-up than a non-habit treatment, based on addressing relationships with food, body dissatisfaction and weight bias. Relative to a no-treatment control condition, habit-based interventions evaluated by Lally et al. ( 2008 ) and McGowan et al. ( 2013 ) yielded greater automaticity and behaviour gains at 8-week follow-up, and in both instances, automaticity change correlated positively with behaviour change indicators. Lally et al. ( 2008 ) also observed weight losses in the intervention group at 32-week follow-up. Wind, Kremers, Thijs, and Brug ( 2005 ) found that an intervention promoting brushing teeth daily at regular time points increased brushing at one-year follow-up, yet failed to modify habit strength.

One retrospective observational study focused on students' responses to a natural habit disruption intervention (moving university; Wood, Tam, & Guerrero Witt, 2005 ). Reduced engagement in previously habitual behaviours (watching TV and physical activity) was observed where the usual contexts for performance of those behaviours were deemed to be significantly different across the two universities.

Habit change interventions offer opportunities to test causal links between conscious motivation, habit and behaviour that cannot be reliably inferred from studies of ongoing habits (Weinstein, 2007 ). The few available intervention studies have demonstrated relationships between habit and gains in health-promoting behaviour (Lally et al., 2008 ; McGowan et al., 2013 ), and habit disruption and decreased engagement in unhealthy behaviours (Wood et al., 2005 ). However, key hypotheses remain untested. Habit formation interventions have been compared with unmatched active treatments, or no treatment, making it difficult to identify whether CDR advice is the ‘active ingredient’ of habit formation interventions. It is possible that simple advice to repeat a chosen behaviour may be more novel or easier to follow than non-CDR advice, so changing behaviour via deliberation, rather than habit. Comparisons of automaticity and behaviour changes in CDR-based interventions with matched non-CDR treatments are required to estimate the unique contribution of CDR advice to habit formation. Longer follow-ups are also required to test assumptions about the sustainability of habits over time.

Habit may inform behaviour change intervention design and evaluation in several respects. No intervention trial has yet used habit strength to identify intervention recipients, or to tailor intervention techniques (Michie & Prestwich, 2010 ). Such trials would inform theory by testing the assumption that self-regulatory strategies are more effective than intention change in disrupting habitual unhealthy behaviour (Verplanken & Wood, 2006 ). Formation and disruption studies tend to require investment of considerable time and financial resources to track habit change over time. Using intervention trials for theory testing purposes may maximise returns on this investment.

Towards a new research agenda

Habit may be most coherently defined as a cognitive-motivational process, conceptually distinct from behaviour. The distinction between habit and behaviour is not new (e.g., Verplanken & Orbell, 2003 ), but its implications have not been fully considered. Habits are cue-contingent, such that the habit-generated impulse will not be activated when the cue is not encountered (Orbell & Verplanken, 2010 ). It is therefore possible for ‘habitual’ behaviours to be automatic yet infrequent. These might be thought of as ‘implicit habits’, whereby stored cue-response associations retain the potential to activate action impulses, but have not done so for some time because cues have not been encountered. ‘Implicit habits’ have important implications for predicting and changing behaviour. Discontinuation of cue exposure has been suggested as a method to disrupt habitual behaviour (Verplanken, Walker, Davis, & Jurasek, 2008 ), but may fail to yield lasting behaviour changes because returning to previous contexts after the intervention period may activate implicit habits. This offers one explanation as to why behavioural interventions typically yield short-term gains, which erode as old behaviours re-emerge (e.g., Jeffery et al., 1990 ). The habit–behaviour separation invokes a further distinction between the extinction of behaviour, and the unlearning, or overwriting, of cue-response associations (Bouton, 2000 ). It is possible that interventions designed to ‘break habits’ may discontinue habitually regulated behaviours yet fail to disrupt the underlying cue-response association, making spontaneous recovery of unwanted implicit habits a possibility. No empirical investigations of changes in habit following habit disruption interventions were found; the sole study to have observed people with strong habits following context disruption focused on behaviour, not habit, change (Wood et al., 2005 ). The habit behaviour distinction may not be important where cue exposure is permanently discontinued, such as when moving house (Verplanken et al., 2008 ). Empirical research is needed to investigate whether, when settings are only temporarily disrupted, habit recovery undermines long-term behaviour change, and the impact of discontinued cue exposure on habit strength.

The portrayal of habit as an impulse-generating process achieves consistency with theory and empirical evidence by recognising that habits may be inhibited (Quinn et al., 2010 ; Strack & Deutsch, 2004 ). The Reflective–Impulsive Model proposes that the impulsive processing system (which generates habitual behaviour) is constantly active, but reflective system activity depends on cognitive capacity (Strack & Deutsch, 2004 ). Thus, while the reflective system will be disengaged and impulses will regulate behaviour by default where cognitive capacity is diminished (Neal et al., 2013 ; Strack & Deutsch, 2004 ), impulsive behavioural tendencies can be inhibited where sufficient cognitive resources are available. Indeed, mindful in-situ self-monitoring of behaviour and contexts can block unwanted actions (Quinn et al., 2010 ). Self-control is cognitively effortful, and draws on finite resources that deplete through exertion, so reducing capacity for further self-regulation (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2009 ). Self-regulation depletion thus prevents inhibition of unwanted habits (Neal et al., 2013 ). Self-regulatory resources may however be mobilised by the formation of strong intentions (Fleig et al., 2013 ), and so counter-habitual intention formation may inhibit unwanted habitual actions (Danner et al., 2011 ). This qualifies predictions that intention modification will have little impact on habitual behaviour (Triandis, 1977 ), and suggests that self-regulatory skills training may be a valuable addition to interventions aimed at modifying habits via reflective motivation change. Further experimental research might establish the most effective methods for inhibiting habitual behaviour and disrupting cue-response associations.

This review highlighted important knowledge gaps around the role of habit in health behaviour. Fundamental theoretical predictions that, in unchanging contexts, habits will remain stable over time, consistently prompt behaviour, and override conscious deliberative tendencies (Triandis, 1977 ; Verplanken & Wood, 2006 ), have not been adequately tested. Little empirical attention has been paid to the sustainability of habits over time. One study found that gains in dental flossing automaticity partially eroded six months after cessation of a habit formation procedure (Judah et al., 2013 ). The potential for habit decay is underexplored. Other knowledge gaps exist because methodological problems have constrained theory-testing. For example, tests of habit–intention interactions have focused on concordant habits and intentions, which reveal little about the influence of ‘bad’ habits on the translation of ‘good’ intentions into action. Studies of counter-intentional habits and intentions are needed. Additionally, studies have relied heavily on observational and correlational designs to test causal relationships, typically among pre-existing behaviours and habits. Experimental designs, intervention trials, and longitudinal observational studies of habit formation or disruption offer valuable opportunities to establish causality and so may be used to apply, test and refine habit theory (e.g., Head & Noar, 2014 ; Michie & Prestwich, 2010 ; Rhodes, 2014 ).

This review focused solely on health-related habits, neglecting theoretical and empirical evidence from other epistemological strands of psychology. Nonetheless, it is important to assess the extent to which evidence derived from other sub-disciplines applies to health behaviour. Decades of research have consistently shown that learned stimulus-response associations can direct human action (e.g., Graybiel, 2008 ; James, 1891 ; Watson, 1913 ). Yet, the most compelling studies have been based on the automatisation of simple actions, such as pulling levers (Watson, 1913 ). It is important to consider the role(s) that habit may play in the broad behavioural categories of interest to health psychologists, such as dietary consumption, physical activity, or drinking alcohol. Further work is required to document more convincingly the relevance of habit to health behaviour.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Phillippa Lally, Bas Verplanken and Robert West for invaluable comments on earlier draft of the manuscript. Thanks too to Gaby Judah, Phillippa Lally, Susan Michie and Robert West for stimulating conversations that led to the generation of ideas expressed in this paper.

1. One study (Rhodes & de Bruijn, 2010 ) found habit to weaken intention–behaviour relationships for moderate physical activity but to strengthen intention–behaviour relations for vigorous physical activity, and so is counted twice in this and subsequent lists.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2013.876238 .

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Essay on Good Habits 13 Models

Last updated Friday , 15-03-2024 on 11:17 am

Essay on good habits, It is important to write an article about good habits because it makes us look at our behavior and evaluate it and discover what we are doing in terms of good or bad habits.

In addition, we carefully observe the behavior of others and their good habits. We acquire good habits through the society in which we live, and the greatest influence in this is the family, school, friends and the various media.

Good habits earn us the respect of others, and often a person needs a good example in order to acquire good habits easily and effortlessly.

Essay on Good Habits

Each society is characterized by a set of customs and traditions that its members practice without thinking. Therefore, it is important that these habits be good, because this will save a lot of time and effort to improve the behavior of individuals, because the person acquires all his information and behavior from the surrounding community environment, and is affected by what he sees and hears.

How do we Build Good Habits?

There is no doubt that the family is the main element in teaching its children good habits. When the family has good habits, its children will learn them easily and effortlessly.

A child imitates his family and acquires from them his customs and traditions, and he may keep these habits throughout his life.

Therefore, it is important to educate the family about the great and very influential role in teaching their children good habits.

Then comes the late childhood stage, where the school also plays a big role, as it teaches students the concepts that reinforce good habits and correct bad habits.

In the stage of youth and beyond, a person is able to modify his behavior and acquire new good habits that help him organize his life and make it more comfortable.

Often we acquire good habits by practicing for a long time, and what motivates us to maintain these good habits is the good results we feel as a result of the good habits we do, such as the respect and praise of others for our behavior.

What are the Good Habits

Examples of good habits that every family should teach their children are honesty and not lying, loyalty, commitment, respecting the elder and listening to his advice, kindness to the young and bringing him pleasure, helping the poor and the needy, maintaining our personal hygiene, maintaining the cleanliness of the environment, taking care of eating healthy foods, exercising, getting up early, and many other good habits that form our behavior in the future.

The acquisition of good habits makes us confident and self-esteem, and this makes us proud of what we learned in childhood, and makes us feel thanks to our family, which made us respectable people in our society.

Oftentimes, we see people who have a great deal of knowledge, but their habits may be bad, which makes us feel disgusted with their behavior, in which case we cannot take them as role models.

The Importance of Good Habits for a Person and for Society

There is no doubt that good habits are very beneficial for both the individual and society. For an individual, for example, he feels respected by others as a result of his adherence to good habits, and this makes him self-confident and self-esteem.

We form our opinions about ourselves as a result of how others view us. When we gain the respect and appreciation of others, we will stick to good habits, and good habits make us feel content and unscathed.

When citizens are of good morals and practice good habits, this will be reflected on the community, and there will be safety, honesty, seriousness in work and other good habits that work on the progress and prosperity of society.

Very Short Essay on Good Habits

There is no doubt that childhood is the most important stage in a person’s life, during which he learns many concepts and acquires most of the habits that accompany him throughout his life. Therefore, it is important for the family to take care of raising children and teaching them good habits.

Learning in childhood is through imitation, and therefore the child acquires most of the habits from his family, relatives and neighbors. It is important that those around the child be good people so that he learns good habits from them automatically.

An example of this is that a father cannot tell his son not to smoke while he smokes. How will he convince his son of the harms of smoking while he smokes. Likewise, the mother cannot tell her daughter not to lie, while the mother does.

When you want to teach the child a good habit, you must be convinced of this habit and practice it regularly, then the child will learn it easily and without any problems.

Examples of good habits that children should learn from a young age are honesty – respect for others – hard work – punctuality – keeping promises – exercising – getting up early – eating healthy – helping the needy – respecting the elderly.

Paragraph on good habits

Good habits earn us the respect of others, and one of the best good habits I learned as a kid is honesty. This habit made me a high position with others, everyone trusted me.

Oftentimes, my friends ask me for my opinion on matters pertaining to them, and in this case I tell them my opinion in all honesty.

I can not lie or hypocrisy, but I say my opinion frankly, but it is important that I choose the words in which I express my opinion so that others do not feel embarrassed, we can advise others, but in a polite way.

Therefore, all my friends love me and consult me ​​on many personal matters, and they know very well that I will tell them the truth.

Honesty is a beautiful trait and I got used to it since childhood, as my mother did not allow us to lie for any reason, even if we made a mistake, we must tell the truth.

Reading is a good habit essay

There is no doubt that good habits are many and useful, and one of these habits is the reading habit. I feel that the reading habit is the best good habit I have learned since childhood, thanks to my father.

My father had a library at home that contained many books and magazines, and I used to watch my father every night before bed. He went to the library and sat reading for two hours.

When I learned to read at the age of six, he bought me a gift, and this gift was a collection of children’s stories. I started reading when I was six years old, and my father used to ask me: Have you finished reading the story? And what did you gain from it??

There is no doubt that my father’s care of me made me think about everything I read. Then the habit of reading became essential to me, and I could not sleep until I read for two hours.

This habit of reading had good effects for my whole life. This good habit helped me to excel in my studies. In addition, it made me more aware of what happens in the world. In addition, it gave me confidence in myself, as my knowledge increased greatly.

Good Study Habits Essay

Undoubtedly, every student wants to excel  in his studies, but there are some good habits that he must follow in order to achieve the desired result, among which are commitment and seriousness.

Because a serious committed person will implement the plans carefully without laziness, the character of commitment and seriousness must be one of the most important habits you have, then after that comes planning and time management.

As well as the habit of getting up early is one of the most important habits that help you study your lessons.

It is important to develop a plan for yourself in order to achieve the goal, which is to succeed and excel in your studies.

One of the good habits that you must adhere to is also to write your notes about what you have read, or to summarize what you have read, as this makes you remember the information easily.

You should also know that asking your teachers for help is a good thing, because you will get the right information in the shortest time.

My good habits essay

My family has cultivated in me good habits, such as honesty and respect for others, helping the needy and other good habits.

But I have also added some good habits, which I practice regularly. Like playing sports and reading, in middle school I realized the importance of both exercising as well as reading, so I made sure that this is a habit that I practice regularly.

I was on the school soccer team, but I also play this favorite sport with my friends. On the weekends, my friends and I play soccer in the park.

As for reading, this good habit got a lot of interest from me. I have a small library at home but now I read books through mobile apps.

In fact, the use of mobile phones and the Internet has made reading available to everyone, and has made millions of books available to us.

That’s why I read a lot, sometimes I read while I’m on my bed, at home or on the transportation means. Reading has become available without effort, so we can read at any time we want, and in any place as well.

Good habits essay in english

In fact, I realized the merit of my father and mother when I grew up and had many friends. I have noticed that I have good habits that they do not have, and these habits I acquired from my childhood and it was my family’s credit for that, because I learned it from my father.

An example of these good habits is commitment. When I have an appointment with someone, I make sure to be there on time without delay. Also, when I promise someone that I will do something for them, I keep my promise no matter the circumstances.

One of the good habits that I learned as a child is to respect those who are older than me.

This good habit has brought me many benefits, because when I respect those who are older than me, they try to benefit me and pass on their experiences in life.

Also, helping the needy is a good habit and we must learn it from childhood, and this habit makes us feel happy because we helped a needy person.

Good food habits essay

There is no doubt that each of us likes to know what are the good habits of nutrition, especially after obesity has become so prevalent that it was called the “ disease of the age “.

One of the good eating habits is to eat fruit two hours before or two hours after food, and not to drink carbonated water, and not to eat food and then sleep directly, but it is preferable that the last meal be three hours before bed.

There are many doctors who specialize in nutrition, and many people resort to dieting. But it is important to know that each person has a diet that suits him, and the food must contain all the nutrients the body needs, such as protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and salts.

The amount of water we drink should be appropriate for our body weight. There is a general rule if people follow it, they will not suffer from obesity, which says: “Do not eat until you are hungry, and if you do eat, you will not be satisfied.”

Every person can follow the appropriate diet for him, and from recent information discovered by researchers that fasting is one of the successful methods in the treatment of obesity.

Good habits and bad habits essay

Childhood is one of the most important stages of life in which a person’s personality is formed, as he acquires customs and traditions from his family through what he sees or hears from them. Therefore, there are many good habits we learn from childhood, as well as some bad habits.

Examples of good habits are honesty and respect for others, and these beautiful habits, if learned in our childhood, will be a reason for our success in life.

On the contrary, if the child learns some bad habits such as lying, cheating, bullying, etc., it will be difficult to get rid of these bad habits, and he will be hated by others because of these bad habits.

Therefore, the family has a great responsibility in raising its children and teaching them good habits that will benefit them in their future.

Composition on good habits

I have a friend who I love very much because he has good habits, he is an energetic and organized person. He can do many things and excel in them, and when I asked him about the reason for this superiority, he said that the credit is due to his mother, who is the reason for his return to getting up early and thus he can start his day early. He can study his lessons, play sports, go to the club, and visit his relatives, all these things he can do without trouble.

In fact, I try to imitate him in these good habits, but I find it difficult to wake up early, as I used to wake up late, especially on vacation.

I realized the importance of acquiring good habits from a young age, because learning them in childhood is much easier.

Write a paragraph on good habits

What we learn from good habits in our childhood remains with us throughout life. A person who is accustomed to truthfulness in his childhood, it is difficult for him to lie when he grows up, and this is one of the good habits that we must adhere to. Also, one of the good habits is to respect those who are older than us. One of the good habits that I grew up with is also helping the needy. The person may be poor and need financial assistance, and he may be weak or sick and need someone to meet his needs. And we should offer help to anyone who needs help because that spreads love among people.

Good and Bad Habits Essay

I have some good habits that I will keep throughout my life like getting up early and exercising regularly, and I never lie and hate liars. One of my good habits is to respect others, even if I differ with them in opinion.

But I have some bad habits that I try to get rid of, such as the habit of smoking. This is one of the worst habits because it is harmful to health, but I will get rid of this bad habit soon.

In addition, I am disorganized and this habit is also very bad because it makes me not do much work, so I decided to make a plan in advance of the work that I must do in my day.

Writing good habits essay 

One of the best habits that I got accustomed to since I was young is the gathering of all family members at my grandfather’s house on the day of the holiday. On that day there will be many children and young people in addition to my grandfather and grandmother.

On that day we eat the most delicious food, children play and have fun, young people talk about their future dreams, and parents and grandparents talk about memories of the past.

It is a day in which ideas and experiences are exchanged, as well as a feeling of love and strong bonding between family members.

This good habit has helped me a lot, I have learned many things from those who are older than me, in addition to my feeling of safety and that my family always supports me.

The habit of cooperation has become widespread among my family members because we meet and talk and each one of us knows the other’s problem and tries to help him solve this problem.

Conclusion Dear student, a basic form was submitted for the topic on good habits, In addition to many other models such as, Essay on good habits, How do we build good habits?, What are the good habits. If you prefer to add any other topic, you can contact us through the comments of this article and we will study your request and add it as soon as possible. To read more related articles, you can click on the following links below the article.

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Essay on “Habits” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Essay No. 01

Man is a bundle of habits. Anything done often and repeatedly is called a habit. It is an acquired pattern of action which becomes easy and automatic because of repetition. Thus, habits, once formed, are difficult to be removed. That is why the saying, ‘Old habits die hard’. The root of habit is practice and regularity. The more we repeat a habit, the more easy and permanent it becomes. We are bound to repeat a habit, because if we do not we feel uncomfortable and uneasy. This is called the force of habit.

Habits can be good as well as bad. But it is very easy to acquire bad habits. Bad habits once acquired become the bonds and chains forever. If one becomes a victim of bad habits, they render his escape impossible. Habits become part of a man’s nature. They cannot be changed, specially at advanced stage. As a cat cannot change its stripes, so you cannot change or get rid of evil habits. Like ones name they stick fast till the grave. Habits make or spoil our destiny. They actually form the foundation of our fortunes. In the words of an author: “Sow an ‘act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.” Thus, habits form the cornerstone of one’s personality and destiny. We are the maker of our destiny because we acquire good or bad habits and have the results accordingly. It is the use which causes origin and growth of a habit. Without use and frequency there would be no habit at all. A thing done occasionally, say once in a blue moon, cannot be called a habit. 1 n the words of Dryden “Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.” The same fact is underlined by the poet Hannah More in the following words: “Small(evil) habits, well pursued betimes, May reach the dignity of crimes.” The same principle applies to the formation of good habits. But healthy and good habits can be formed only with a great labour and long continuous practice. You cannot acquire a good habit simply by determination, chance or by fits and starts. You have to perspire and persevere to acquire a good habit. It is far more easy to acquire good habits early in life when there is lot of flexibility both in body and nature. Once you have attained a good habit, it will always stand you in good stead. By possessing them you become quite capable to bear the ups and downs of life like a real, man. Good habits, like those of hard working, sincerity, honesty, courtesy, punctuality, simplicity, frugality, accuracy, tenacity of purpose, etc., constitute a sure security against ills of fortune and circumstances. They form a firm ladder to success and happiness. They are to be acquired, cultivated and possessed by hard labour, practice and constant use. And early youth is the best period to have them because then they make not so much demand on us. In brief, habits make the man. What actually you are, depends on your habits. You are good, excellent, bad or worse in proportion to your good and evil habits and their intensity.

There are many forces which play an important role in forming habits. Early education, impressions, company, association, etc., are some of the major factors in habit-formation. Gradually they get ingrained in our nature. Idleness, smoking, drinking, telling lies, flattery, gambling, cheating, stealing, spitting here and there are some of the major evil habits. Habits are also acquired because of imitation. Parents, elders, friends, etc., help them in their formation, and development. For example, a boy, who sees his father smoking, is likely to acquire the evil habit of smoking. The boy may think that in smoking there should be some pleasure and excitement that is why his father is a smoker. And then he may try it stealthily as smoking material is easily available to him. Gradually he may become a habitual smoker. Curiosity, routine and boredom also help in acquiring bad habits. One may start drinking or taking a drug just out of curiosity, or to have a little thrill and excitement at first, but rater may become a hardened drinker and drug-addict. Bad company generally leads innocent and good people into evil habits. A drinker may offer drinks fret of cost first, to his friend, and thereby help him form a bad habit of drinking. One bad habit leads to another bad habit. It is a vicious circle from which, there is hardly any rescue and escape. Therefore, we should be very cautious in choosing company and friends. One requires a lot of money to satisfy bad habits which the young men and women are not likely to have, they being students in schools and colleges. Therefore, they may take to stealing or such other undesired activities.

Even good things become evil when done too often. For example, work is good. Hard and continuous work is necessary for success in life. But excess of work, beyond ones capacity, is harmful. It would soon start telling upon ones health both mental and physical. That is why it is said, “Excess of everything is bad”. We should maintain a proper balance even in doing good things. All excess is dangerous and sinful whether it is work or rest, eating or enjoying life. We should ever be temperate in all things. One should never overwork or give way to free self – indulgence. We must attempt things according to our own strength, measure and capacity. We must always be on our guard against every type of excess, even that of good things.

Essay No. 02

Outline: All have habits-anything done repeatedly becomes, a habit – habits may be good or bad – necessary to cultivate good habits and avoid bad ones – good habits help us to succeed in life.

All of us have habits. Anything that is done repeatedly becomes a habit. Once we get into a habit we do a thing without thinking about it. Habits may be good or bad. Rising early, working hard, being punctual are good habits. Gambling, swearing, lying, using bad language, drinking, stealing- and quarrelling are bad habits.

It is necessary to cultivate good habits and avoid bad ones. There is a saying that habits are at first cobwebs but after- wards cables. This shows that habits might be weak at first, but, once they become strong, they are difficult to break. Hence we should try to acquire only good habits.

Everyone respects a man who has good habits. Good habits help one to succeed, in life. A person with bad habits is despised and mocked at.

Childhood is the right time to instill good habits in children. If a child grows up with bad habits no one can make him unlearn them when he grows up. Hence parents should be careful to see that children have only good habits.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Study — What is a study habit

What is a Study Habit

• Categories: Habits Study

About this sample

Words: 911 |

Published: Jan 29, 2019

Words: 911 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

• Try not to do too much studying at one time.
• Plan specific times for studying.
• Try to study at the same times each day.
• Set specific goals for their study times.
• Start studying when planned.
• Work on the assignment they find most difficult first. Your most difficult assignment will require the most effort. Start with your most difficult assignment since this is when you have the most mental energy.
• Review their notes before beginning an assignment. Reviewing your notes can help you make sure you are doing an assignment correctly. Also, your notes may include information that will help you complete an assignment.
• Call another student when they have difficulty with an assignment.
• Review their schoolwork over the weekend. Yes, weekends should be fun time. But there is also time to do some review. This will help you be ready to go on Monday morning when another school week begins.
• Procrastination
• Connectivity
• Lack Of Preparation
• Insufficient Time
• Wrong Study Partners

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HabitYear - Simple Tracker 4+

Atomic streak daily habitkit, nguyen hong phuc, designed for ipad, screenshots, description.

HabitYEAR: Simple Daily Habit Tracker Stay motivated and crush your goals with HabitYEAR - the beautifully designed, highly visual habit tracking app. With its tile-based grid charts, HabitYEAR makes it effortless to visualize your progress and maintain momentum. Key Features: • Tile Grid Dashboard: Watch your dashboard come alive as tiles fill with color for every completed habit. A powerful visual motivator! • Customizable: Personalize your experience by choosing your own colors, icons, and descriptions for habits. Make it your own. • User-Friendly: Intuitive navigation and a clean interface ensure tracking habits is a breeze. • Progress Tracking: Easily review your habit streaks, milestones, and trends over time. Whether you're building new positive routines or breaking old habits, HabitYEAR provides the tools and motivation to make lasting changes. Join the many users transformed by the power of simple habit tracking. Download HabitYEAR kit today and take control of your daily habits!

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The Details of Shohei Ohtani’s Interpreter‘s Gambling Habit Are Stunning

• Author: Jimmy Traina

In this story:

1. Shohei Ohtani's interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, has been accused by the U.S. government of stealing more than $16 million from the Dodgers superstar . He faces up 30 years in prison.

How did Mizuhara get to this point? By betting. A lot.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I'm way more fascinated by Mizuhara's tonage of wagers than the money he bet.

The numbers are absolutely staggering.

In 26 months, from December 2021 to January 2024, Mizuhara made 19,000 bets. That checks out to 730 bets per month. That checks out to 24 bets per day.

The complaint against Mizuhara alleges that he won $142,256,769.74 and lost $182,935,206.68, with a total net loss of $40,678,436.94.

Mizuhara was so bad at gambling, he apparently had 11-point favorites losing outright.

That would've been UCLA's 40-37 loss to Fresno State on Sept. 18, 2021. UCLA was an 11-point favorite. pic.twitter.com/Zjo5iDWEB4 — jon greenberg (@jon_greenberg) April 11, 2024

The one question I still have is that if Mizuhara lost $40 million, how did he only allegedly steal $16 million from Ohtani. How did he pay off the other $24 million?

In another twist to this absurd story, it's also alleged that Mizuhara used $325,000 of the stolen money for something other than gambling debts: baseball cards

Two interesting paragraphs in the government's statement on Shohei Ohtani's interpreter: - In addition to gambling, Mizuhara was buying collectibles - Ohtani gave investigators his phone. They say "no evidence" to suggest his complicity. pic.twitter.com/JTwDceKzAi — Eben Novy-Williams (@novy_williams) April 11, 2024

2. NBA fans were blessed that when a fan threw a chicken wing on the court during Thursday's Pelicans-Kings game, Kevin Harlan was behind the mic for the call.

Kevin Harlan calling a chicken wing getting thrown on the floor in Sacramento is an EMMY pic.twitter.com/e3zAj0q9IP — CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) April 12, 2024

3. Classy move by ESPN on Thursday to air a tribute to CBS's Verne Lundquist, who will retire this weekend after calling his 40th Masters .

ESPN had this excellent tribute piece for Verne Lundquist as he enters his 40th and final Masters. ⛳️🎙️ pic.twitter.com/JDk7QXKtK1 — Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 11, 2024

4. Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow appeared at the New Heights live podcast taping in Cincinnati on Thursday, and once again was on the right side of history by explaining why he is pro taunting.

Joe Burrow: “Yea, I’m pro taunting.” Why? “We're all grown adults that work really hard at what we do. And sometimes we'd like to show it. I'm not gonna get my feelings hurt if somebody sacks me and taunts me like you made a play. I get it. Like good for you.” #Bengals | @WLWT pic.twitter.com/c7FA9pXcN9 — Olivia Ray (@OliviaRayTV) April 12, 2024

Let the guys taunt. — Joey Burrow (@JoeyB) January 28, 2024

5. TNT aired its final regular-season game Thursday night, so the Inside the NBA crew of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal looked back at some of their best moments from the 2023-24 season.

It's always a good time in Studio J 😂 Take a look back at some of the best moments from the 2023-24 #NBAonTNT regular season! pic.twitter.com/kQFgq6OWN6 — NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 12, 2024

6. This week's  SI Media With Jimmy Traina  is a big show.

First up is author and reporter, Jim Miller, to discuss ESPN parting ways with senior vice president, Norby Williamson . Williamson, who was at ESPN for 40 years, has been called out a couple of times by Pat McAfee for being "a rat" and leaking negative stories. Miller explains why ESPN cut ties with Williamson, shares his thoughts on the McAfee-Williamson feud and discusses reaction to Williamson's dismissal. Miller also talks about the possibility of ESPN buying the NFL Network , the challenges facing ESPN today and more.

Following Miller, Dan Rapaport from Barstool's  Fore Play  podcast joins the show to talk about the Masters and offer Masters betting advice. Should you bet on Tiger Woods making the cut? Who would make a good long-shot bet to win the tournament? What prop should you bet on Saturday and Sunday of the tournament? Is there any risk in betting Scottie Scheffler to finish in the top five?

Following Rapaport, Sal Licata from WFAN and SNY joins me for our weekly "Traina Thoughts" segment. This week's topics include a recap of  WrestleMania 40,  the Yankees' hot start, Sal's issues with his new house and more.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking into the tweet below or by visiting  Apple  and  Spotify .

Brand new SI MEDIA PODCAST - Jim Miller on ESPN-Norby Williamson-Pat McAfee + the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” finale - Dan Rapaport handicaps the Masters, offers betting tips https://t.co/dGAjS11eWc — Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) April 11, 2024

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY : Happy 77th birthday to the great David Letterman.

David Letterman puts on a New York #Yankees uniform and practices his bunting at Yankee Stadium! Check out Buck Showalter and Frank Howard! (1992) #MLB #Baseball #History ⚾️ Happy 77th Birthday Dave! pic.twitter.com/qFaMHd7ilE — Baseball by BSmile (@BSmile) April 12, 2024

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Health Reporting in the States

Young adults who started vaping as teens still can't shake the habit.

John Daley - Colorado Public Radio

Many young people who started vaping nicotine as teens several years ago haven't quit the habit, data show. Daisy-Daisy/Getty Images hide caption

Many young people who started vaping nicotine as teens several years ago haven't quit the habit, data show.

G Kumar's vaping addiction peaked in college at the University of Colorado, when flavored, disposable vapes were taking off.

The disposables would have more than a thousand puffs in them. "I'd go through, let's say, 1,200 puffs in a week," said Kumar, who uses they/them pronouns.

Vaping became a crutch. Like losing a cell phone, losing a vape pen would set off a mad scramble. "It needs to be right next to my head when I fall asleep at night and then in the morning I have to thrash through the sheets and pick it up and find it," Kumar recalled.

They got sick often, including catching COVID — and vaping through all of it.

Kumar, now 24, did end up quitting. But many of their generation can't shake the habit.

"Everyone knows it's not good for you and everyone wants to stop," said CU senior Jacob Garza who works to raise awareness about substance use as part of the school's Health Promotion program.

"But at this point, doing it all these years ... it's just second nature now," he said. "They're hooked on it."

Shots - Health News

They're illegal. so why is it so easy to buy the disposable vapes favored by teens.

For years, slick marketing by e-cigarette companies, and the allure of sweet, fruity or even candy-like flavors and names, led teens to try vaping. As more high schoolers and even younger kids picked up the behavior, doctors and researchers warned it could lead to widespread addiction, creating a 'Generation Vape.'

Now, new data about substance use among young adults suggests that many of those former teen vapers haven't quit.

Vaping use drops among teens, rises among young adults

In Colorado, the share of those aged 18 to 24 who regularly vaped rose by about 61% from 2020 to 2022 – to nearly a quarter of that age group.

"That's an astounding increase in just two years," says Dr. Delaney Ruston , a primary care physician and documentary filmmaker.

Nationally, vaping rates for young adults increased from 7.6% in 2018 to 11% in 2021 .

Disposable electronic cigarette devices displayed for sale on June 26, 2023. While most flavored disposables are officially banned in the U.S., they continue to be sold. Rebecca Blackwell/AP hide caption

Disposable electronic cigarette devices displayed for sale on June 26, 2023. While most flavored disposables are officially banned in the U.S., they continue to be sold.

Research has shown nicotine is highly rewarding to the brains of young people.

"It's not surprising that many of them start in high school for social reasons, for all sorts of reasons," says Ruston, whose latest film is Screenagers Under the Influence: Addressing Vaping, Drugs, and Alcohol in the Digital Ag e . "And many of them now — we're seeing this — have continued to college and beyond."

Meanwhile, vape rates have actually dropped among Colorado high schoolers, said Tiffany Schommer, the tobacco cessation supervisor with Colorado's state health department.

At one point, before the pandemic, Colorado led the nation in youth vaping, topping 37 states surveyed for use of electronic cigarettes among high school students.

Vaping peaked among minors in Colorado in 2017 with 27% of Colorado youth reporting they had vaped in the past month, according to the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey . But by 2021, the most recent year for which there's data, that dropped to 16%.

Nationally vaping rates among high schoolers dropped from 28% in 2019 to 12.6% in 2023 , according to the Annual National Youth Tobacco Survey.

But for many young people who started vaping at the height of the trend, a habit was set.

"E-cigarette use has increased, particularly among people who have never smoked [traditional cigarettes,]" said Schommer. "So these are folks who started with vapes, continue with vapes."

Preliminary data indicates that almost half of those vaping 18- to 24-year-olds started vaping before they turned 18, according to the Colorado 2022 Tobacco Attitudes and Behaviors Survey.

'They weren't able to stop.'

At Children's Hospital Colorado, pediatric pulmonologist Dr. Heather De Keyser pulls up on her screen a clouded X-ray of the lung of a young adult damaged by vaping.

"This is a patient with vaping-related lung injury," she says.

For years, doctors like her and public health experts wondered about the potential harmful impact of vaping on pre-adult bodies and brains — especially the big risk of addiction

Dr. Heather De Keyser, pediatric pulmonologist at Children's Hospital Colorado, points to the X-ray of a lung of a young adult damaged by vaping. John Daley/CPR News hide caption

Dr. Heather De Keyser, pediatric pulmonologist at Children's Hospital Colorado, points to the X-ray of a lung of a young adult damaged by vaping.

"I think, unfortunately those lessons that we were worried we were going to be learning, we're learning. The data is bearing out in that," said De Keyser, an associate professor of pediatrics in the Breathing Institute at Children's Hospital Colorado . "We're seeing increases in those young adults. They weren't able to stop."

It's no coincidence the vaping rates soared during the pandemic, according to several public health experts.

For the past couple of years, undergraduates have talked about the challenges of isolation and using more substances, said Alyssa Wright, Early Intervention program manager at Health Promotion at CU Boulder .

"Just being home, being bored, being a little bit anxious, not knowing what's happening in the world," Wright said. "We don't have that social connection, and it feels like people are still even trying to catch up from that experience."

Other factors driving addiction are the high nicotine levels in vaping devices, and "stealth culture," says Chris Lord, CU Boulder's associate director of the Collegiate Recovery Center .

"The products they were using had five times more nicotine than previous vapes had," he says. "So getting hooked on that was ... almost impossible to avoid."

As far as "stealth culture," Lord means that vaping is exciting, something forbidden and secret. "I think as an adolescent, our brains are kind of wired that way, a lot of us," Lord said.

The Juul effect

Wind the clock back half a decade and one could see the seeds of these current vaping rates.

In 2019, if you typed the word "Juul" into the search bar on YouTube, you could find an endless stream of videos of young people showing off how cool it was to use the company's sleek, high-tech-looking vaping device.

Juul packages are seen on a shop shelf on December 07, 2022. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption

Juul packages are seen on a shop shelf on December 07, 2022.

In one video Colorado Public Radio found in 2019, two young women show how they "make parties more fun."

"We just chillin',' one says, laughing. "We vapin' and we Juul-in'."

Many of those videos are no longer available, pulled off the platform once the trend took off. Searching for Juul now brings up many videos warning of the dangers and how to talk to kids .

All over the U.S., state and local governments, including Colorado, filed suit, alleging Juul Labs misrepresented the health risks of its products.

Juul agreed to pay hundreds of millions in settlements , including a nearly $32 million settlement last year with Colorado.

Juul had become No. 1, the top e-cigarette company, the lawsuits argued, by first aggressively marketing directly to kids, who then spread the word themselves by posting to social media sites like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

"What vaping has done, getting high schoolers, in some cases even middle schoolers, hooked on vaping, is now playing out," says Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser , a parent of two teens himself. He said vape companies followed the tobacco industry playbook — with a similar impact on young consumers. "They're still hooked. This is a very addictive product."

Juul did not respond to requests for comment.

R.J. Reynolds, which makes another popular brand , Vuse, sent NPR this statement: "We steer clear of youth enticing flavors, such as bubble gum and cotton candy, providing a stark juxtaposition to illicit disposable vapor products."

Other big vape companies , like Esco Bar, Elf Bar, Breeze Smoke and Puff Bar didn't respond to requests for comment.

"If we lived in an ideal world, adults would reach the age of 24 without ever having experimented with adult substances. In reality, young adults experiment," said Greg Conley, director of legislative & external affairs with American Vapor Manufacturers. "This predates the advent of nicotine vaping."

The FDA banned flavored vape cartridges in 2020 in an effort to crack down on marketing to minors, but the products are still easy to find .

Debate over vaping's role in smoking cessation

One claim often made in defense of vaping is that it can help users quit cigarette smoking.

Joe Miklosi, a consultant to the Rocky Mountain Smoke-Free Alliance, a trade group for vape shops contends the shops are not driving vaping rates among young adults in Colorado.

"We keep demographic data in our 125 stores. Our average age (of customers) is 42," he says.

Vape shops sell products to help adult smokers quit, Miklosi says, with lower levels of nicotine than big companies like Juul. Miklosi claims he's talked to thousands of consumers who claimed vaping helped them quit smoking cigarettes.

But the Colorado data belies that, according to longtime tobacco researcher Stanton Glantz.

The 18-24 age group leads all age groups in regular use, and use gradually dropped with each age cohort, up to the 65+ demographic, of which just 1% use e-cigarettes.

The data are "completely inconsistent with the argument that most e-cigarette use is adult smokers trying to use them to quit," said Glantz, the now-retired director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California San Francisco.

Glantz says because of the onslaught of sleek technology, flavors, and marketing used by Juul and other companies "the kids are getting addicted younger and faster," compared to earlier decades when traditional cigarettes dominated the tobacco market.

Finding the will to quit

For recent college graduate G Kumar, now a rock climber, the impetus to quit vaping was more ecological than health-related. It was "knowing the amount of trash [from used up vape devices] that I was accumulating and the amount of money I was spending," they said.

Kumar got some help from a package of cessation literature and quitting aids from CU's Health Promotion program. It included two boxes of eucalyptus-flavored toothpicks, which tasted awful to Kumar, but provided a distraction and helped with oral cravings.

"The fact that I could just gnaw on toothpicks for weeks on end was, I think, what kept me sane," Kumar said.

It took a while and a lot of willpower to overcome the intense psychological craving, something many others in that generation know all too well.

This story was produced in partnership with CPR News and KFF Health News.

• nicotine addiction
• youth vaping
• young adults

Don't break the bank with your reading habit: Here's where to buy cheap books near you

Have you caught the reading bug from BookTok ? Looking to check out a viral series ? Getting into reading is all fun and games until you realize new releases can run you about $30 a hardcover. 

But you don’t have to ask for a raise to finance your reading habits – there are many online platforms dedicated to making reading an accessible and even free experience. Libraries are a go-to, but there are also options for those who want to own a physical copy to build up their bookshelf.

Where to buy cheap books

The art of low-cost book buying lies in the unexpected gems. You might find a book you’ve been dying to read with a cover that's a little worse for wear or a cheap read you’ve never heard of. Searching for inexpensive books can be a great way to expand your reading palate.

Get into the habit of checking out sale sections as well. Many bookstores have a discount table or sell used books for only a few dollars. 

Check out: USA TODAY's weekly Best-selling Booklist

Buy cheap books online

While you can find cheap, used books on Amazon or eBay, you may also have luck at e-commerce platforms that specialize in low-cost books. Check out one of these sites to make your next read a steal:

• ThriftBooks
• Better World Books
• Half Price Books
• Awesome Books
• Book Outlet

Swap books with another reader

Why not kill two birds with one stone? You can donate a book and get a new one with a trusty book swap, either through friends or at an online retailer like Paperback Swap or Book Mooch .

Check for local sales

Some libraries raise funds by selling second-hand books. Find the closest public library to you using this U.S. map created with data from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and ask your librarian if they have a "for sale" table.

Independent bookstores may let you trade your old books for store credit that you can use to snag a new one. Thrift stores and consignment shops also typically sell used books.

Another place to scour is Facebook Marketplace. You never know who is doing a closet cleanout and wants to get rid of their old books for a few dollars. 

How to read books for free

You don’t have to shell out any money to become well-read – a library card is all you need to unlock a world of literature. Start by visiting your local library . You typically only need proof of address to apply for a library card.

Little Free Library’s take-a-book, leave-a-book model is also a great place for finding new free books. These outdoor pop-up hutches are all over the country. Check out Little Free Library’s map of registered libraries across the U.S. to find one near you.

You can also try e-reading. The Libby app lets readers borrow e-books, digital audiobooks and magazines with your library card.

Audiobooks are another low-cost way to access books and popular platforms like Audible , Libro.fm , B&N Audiobooks and Audiobooks.com let you listen at your leisure with a monthly subscription fee. Spotify recently unveiled a new audiobook program as well where eligible Spotify premium subscribers can enjoy 15 hours of monthly listening from over 200,000 audiobooks.

Where to donate books

You can donate books at many of the same locations where you purchase or borrow them, like libraries, donation centers, bookstores and community centers. If you’re doing some spring cleaning, check out USA TODAY’s comprehensive guide to donating and selling your books .

Keep up with the reading trends: How to find book recommendations on BookTok

Just Curious for more? We've got you covered.

USA TODAY is exploring the questions you and others ask every day. From "How to play Solitaire" to "What is my love language?" to "Do dogs smile?" – we're striving to find answers to the most common questions you ask every day. Head to our Just Curious section to see what else we can answer for you.