The keys to habit-formation
What are we finding in the research?
Last week, we discussed the importance of enjoyment and intrinsic motivation for behaviour change. In order to stick with a behaviour change over time, you need to make sure it’s something you want to do. Hopefully last week, you were able to narrow in on a habit (or two) to focus on.
So now the question is, how do you make a behaviour become a habit? A habit is when an action is no longer something that you are consciously thinking about, it becomes automatic. When something becomes a habit it’s just part of your routine, such as brushing your teeth or making your bed. When your behaviour becomes a habit, you are able to sustain it because you’re not putting any mental energy into doing it.
When people want to implement a behaviour change, they need to do it consistently in order to make it a habit. People will then try and make ‘cues’ to remind themselves to do this behaviour - thereby ingraining the habit. However, people often select the wrong cues to elicit behaviour change.
Recently, a paper was published in BMC Psychology that looked at cues that individuals selected to try and remember a newly-introduced behaviour. The researchers wanted to see what cues people selected and why, and which cues were more likely to be successful in eliciting the behaviour.
In this study, the researchers asked participants to take a Vitamin C tablet daily for three weeks. There were interviews before, during, and following the three weeks, during which they discussed how they were going to remember to take the tablet and why, and whether or not their strategy worked. At the end of the study they also recorded how many days they missed taking their tablet.
When selecting cues, participants tended to choose cues that minimized effort as much as possible. This included strategies such as leaving the tablets somewhere where they could see them, or incorporating them into a previous habit (e.g. if they were already taking medication, taking them at the same time). People also often chose the same selection cues that they had tried for other attempts at behaviour-change (even if they hadn’t worked in the past!).
The researchers observed that the participants who often forgot to take the tablets tended to have a loosely defined plan (e.g. “I’ll take it when I remember”) or they only had one cue to help them remember (e.g. left it in a specific spot so they would see it easily). This reliance on the single cue led them to forget to take the tablet if they didn’t encounter the cue.
On the other hand, people were very successful at remembering to take the pills when there were multiple cues, such as time, object, and location. For example, always leaving the Vitamin C bottle beside their toothbrush, and always taking it right after brushing their teeth.
Finally, many of the participants changed their selection cue(s) partway through the three-week intervention. The researchers suggest that a trial and error period might be beneficial to determine what cues work for each individual. As each person is different, a cue that works for one person may not work for others, and trying out a few different cues might be the biggest determinant of success.
Check out the full article here!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6302524/
What we can take away from this
While these researchers looked at the habit of taking a Vitamin C tablet every day, this can be applied to any habit you’d like to incorporate into your life: adding a daily meditation practice, doing food prep for the next day, adding a walk into your daily routine, etc.
Here are some key take-aways from this article that you can keep in mind when selecting cues for the behaviours that you would like to become habit:
Avoid using vague cues. E.g. I’m going to try and meditate more.
Make sure that it’s specific and involves multiple cues. The cues will change depending on the behaviour but they should include at least two of: time, location, object, or routine. E.g. I’m going to meditate every morning after waking up. Doing it the same time every day will help me remember. I will also get a notification on my phone.
While it might be tempting to use a cue that you’ve done before, if it hasn’t worked for you in the past, don’t use the same cue again! Even if it works for other people, that might not be a good cue for you.
You will likely have to play around a bit with a few different cues. Finding the right selection cue might take some trial and error until you find one that works for you. So if you try something and it fails, don’t worry. Just try something else until you find something that works for you!
