1. Habits of Individuals

Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well considered decision making, but they are not. They are habits.

According to a study, 40% of actions people performed each day weren't actual decisions, but habits.

If you want to fall asleep fast and wake up feeling good, pay attention to your night time patterns and what you automatically do when you get up.

If you picture the human brain as an onion, composed of layer upon layer of cells, then the outside layers are generally the most recent additions from an evolutionary perspective. This is where the most complex thinking occurs. Deeper inside the brain, are older, more primitive structures. They control our automatic behaviours such as breathing, swallowing or the startle response we feel when someone leaps out from behind a bush.

Towards the centre of the skull is a golf ball sized lump of tissue called basal ganglia. Scientists noticed that animals with injured basal ganglia suddenly developed problems with tasks such as learning how to run through mazes etc.

When you first learn to drive, it requires a major dose of concentration and slowly it reaches a stage where it hardly requires a thought. It occurs by habit. Habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. An efficient brain also allows us to stop thinking constantly about basic behaviours such as walking so that we can devote mental energy for newer learnings or inventions.

But if our brains power down at the wrong moment, we might fail to notice something important such as predator hiding in the bushes or a speeding car as we pull onto the street. So our basal ganglia has devised a clever system to determine when to let the habits take over.

First there is a cue - a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is a routine which can be physical, mental or emotional. Finally there is a reward which helps the brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for future.

The Habit Loop

Cue -------------Routine------------>

  ^                                                   Reward

  |____________________________|

Over time, this loop becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving emerges. A habit is born.

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in the decision making. So unless you deliberately fight a habit - unless you find new routines - the pattern will unfold automatically.

Habits are powerful but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realise. They can cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else including common sense.