Table of Contents
The process of habit formation is not easy. There are different factors affecting our ability to form new habits or to end current ones. Let’s start with the habit loop to understand the process.
The Habit Loop
At the core of every habit, there is a neurological loop that dictates our actions and affects our routines. It is formed by the 3 R’s: Reminder, Routine, and Reward.
Think about this loop for a moment: 
A habit is cued by a reminder, which then affects your action or routine, which then gives you a sense of reward or fulfillment, and so on. In other words:
- Reminder: the trigger that cues your action or behavior
- Routine: the action or behavior itself
- Reward: the sense of fulfillment or benefit that you get from doing an action or by following a behavior
You can only eradicate a habit if you understand why you keep doing it in the first place. At the same time, you can only create a new habit if you know what can trigger it and what you can get from it.
Let’s take eating lunch as an example. What is the reminder, routine, and reward of eating lunch?
- Reminder: The reminder that triggers you to eat lunch can be the time (it is midday, so you eat lunch), hunger (your stomach grumbles, so you eat lunch), or both.
- Routine: The routine is the action, which is eating lunch.
- Reward: The reward you get from eating lunch can be the satisfaction from the taste of the food, a full stomach, a refreshed energy, or all of them.
When the reward is positive, you are enticed to repeat the routine whenever the reminder triggers you. Over time, this repetitive process turns the routine into a habit, which then becomes an involuntary action, which you perform even when the reminder or reward is absent.
Breaking A Bad Habit
Now that you know about the 3 R’s of habit, let’s put them at work. In particular, how do you break a bad habit? Here’s another example:
Every afternoon, you take a five-minute cigarette break at work. You head down to the smoking area, where you light a cigarette and talk to your co-workers who are also enjoying an afternoon smoke. Now, you have been experiencing a shortness of breath for the past couple of weeks, and you think that it is because of smoking. You want to break this habit, or at least to cut back on your afternoon smoke at the office, but it seems so hard to stop it now. What can you do?
Step 1: Identify the Routine
The first step in breaking this habit is to identify the routine. Here in this case it is smoking. Let’s put it in the diagram:
Now that you have recognized the routine, you have to identify the reminder that makes you want to smoke. You also have to identify the reward that you attain from this routine. Ask yourself these questions:
- Why do I want to smoke? Is it because of boredom? Is it a way to decompress before I begin another task at work? Or is it for appearance only?
- Also, what do I get from smoking? Does it relax my mind before going back to my tasks? Does it please me when I talk to my colleagues in the smoking area? Or does the nicotine rush satisfy me?
After identifying your reminders and rewards, you may now proceed to the second step.
Step 2: Play with the Rewards
Your actions and behaviors are reinforced by the benefits that you get from them. We have identified three possible rewards for smoking: relaxation, interaction, and satisfaction.
Now, what you need to do is to think of alternate routines that will deliver the same rewards. However, you want each alternate routine to be specific to a single reward. Here are some examples:
- Relaxation: Instead of going for a smoke, you may consider meditating for a few minutes. Create a playlist of soothing music on your phone or computer, and then listen to it while you are sitting at your desk. Take deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling slowly for a few seconds each.
- Interaction: Instead of heading down to the smoking area to talk to your work friends, you may go to the cafeteria and talk to the people there. They may not be the usual co-workers with whom you talk to, but there is still interaction, which is the point of going to the smoking area in the first place.
- Satisfaction: Instead of smoking, you may consider other actions that will give you satisfaction. For example, eat a piece of fruit and enjoy the health benefits instead of a nicotine rush, or drink a cup of coffee for the caffeine.
After each routine, take a notepad and write down three words that describe how you feel about the change. This exercise will help you 1) become more aware of your emotions and actions, and 2) remember this moment for future reference. The latter is important because you can’t possibly perform this experiment in a single day. It will take days, weeks, or longer to properly deduce a conclusion for the experiment. Hence, a reminder is necessary when it is time for you to compare your results with each other.
The next part of this step is to set an alarm for about 10 to 15 minutes after you have completed the action. When the alarm sets off, evaluate yourself. Do you still want to go for a smoke?
If you still WANT to smoke 10 to 15 minutes after you:
- meditated, then relaxation is not the driving reward for “your routine”.
- went to the cafeteria, then the interaction is not the driving reward for “your routine”.
- ate a snack and drank coffee, then satisfaction is not the driving reward for “your routine.”
On the other hand, if you DO NOT WANT to smoke 10 to 15 minutes after a specific routine, then the reward that comes along with it is the driving factor for the bad habit that you want to break.
For the purpose of this example, let’s say interaction is the driving reward for your routine. Let’s put it in the diagram:
Now that you have identified two of the 3 R’s, how do you isolate the reminder? You will find out in the third step.
Step 3: Pinpoint the Reminder
Trying to pinpoint a reminder is the hardest step in the process of habit formation. Why? Because there are a lot of different triggers around us, and isolating a specific trigger is almost as impossible as finding a cheetah in a field full of jaguars.
So how do you pinpoint the reminder of your habit amidst all of these other triggers? The trick is to identify certain patterns of action and behavior in regard to different habitual categories.
But what are these categories? According to different research studies, there are five habitual categories that distinctly affect your action and behavior. These include the time of day, your location, your current emotional state, other people in the area, and the action immediately preceding your urge. Basically, the third step in the process of breaking a bad habit involves taking note of each category whenever you feel the urge to perform an action or follow a behavior. By doing so, you can clearly see the pattern of the reminder.
Let’s put these categories in context with our smoking example. Look at the table below:
As you can see, the only category that exhibits a pattern is your emotional state; whenever you feel bored, you are triggered to go for a smoke. Hence, your emotional state (in this case, boredom) is the reminder of this habit. Let’s put it in the diagram:
As you can see, your habit of smoking makes more sense. Whenever you feel bored, you go down to the smoking area to smoke. At the same time, whenever you are in the smoking area, you interact with your coworkers, which then relieves you of the feeling of boredom.
Once the cycle is clear to you, you can now take necessary changes in your actions and behaviors. (Excerpt is from ‘The Habit Handbook’ by Jack Morris)
