Random musings: Stop Confusing Habits for Routines: What You Need To Know

What's the difference and does it really matter?

A lot and apparently so.

Today's blog post is based on an article from getpocket.com:

Habits are hot. Self-help articles extol the power of habits and books on the topic sell by the millions. Yet, like many pop psychology topics, the conventional wisdom about the effectiveness and application of habits is frequently outdated, misapplied, or flat out wrong. Building habits to change behavior the right way can be a wonderful tool to improve your life. But false notions about what habits are and what they can do can backfire.

The idea of building a habit is very appealing. The popular notion that tasks can be put on autopilot makes habits sound effortless. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply make a habit out of doing tasks like exercising, journaling, paying bills, or running a side business? Unfortunately, you can’t. Habits don’t work that way.

I know I've written about habits before but I may have passed on inaccuarate information. I'll leave it up to you to go back and decide for yourself.

So, what are habits?

According to Dr. Benjamin Gardner, a habit researcher at King’s College London, “habit works by generating an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought.” Habits are a type of learning. By forming a habit, the brain frees the mind to do other things without deliberation.

As a child, you needed reminding to wash your hands after using the toilet. Children must focus on the task of turning on the water, dispensing the soap, lathering up, and cleaning their hands. As an adult, you do this automatically (hopefully) and you’re able to think about other things as you take the steps to wash your hands.

Many of the things we do in our morning routine are habits. We usually brush our teeth the same way at approximately the same time most days. We usually shower at about the same time and in the same way. I know showering is the best time for me to solve all the world's problems and I don't have to worry about forgetting to wash my hair and/or body while I'm doing it.

Can we turn any activity into a habit? The short answer is no:

By definition, behaviors that require concentration, deliberation, or extended effort, are not habits. This isn’t just semantics. We shouldn’t try to form a habit out of a task that can never become one. If we do, we will be sorely disappointed.

When we fail at forming a habit, we tend to blame ourselves, rather than the bad advice we read from someone who doesn’t really understand what can and cannot be a habit.
If behaviors that require conscious thought, like cleaning your apartment or writing in a journal daily, are not habits, then what are they? They are routines. A routine is “a sequence of actions regularly followed.”

To change a behavior you need to understand the difference between a habit and a routine. Otherwise, it's like using the blunt end of a screwdriver to bash in a nail. It’s possible, but you’re likely to give up or hurt yourself. You should have used a hammer instead.

How do we tell the difference between behaviors that are good candidates to become habits and those best left as routines? To answer that question we need to start with a more fundamental question, “Why do we do anything?”

In other words, what motivates us? I like this quote on motivation:

For years, we thought that Sigmund Freud’s “pleasure principle” is the basis of human motivation. He promoted the idea that behavior is driven by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner popularized the notion that reinforcements and punishments drive conditioned behavior.

But, we now know that motivation is not driven by pleasure and pain. Rather, neurologically speaking, motivation is the desire to escape discomfort. All human behavior, even the itch of desire to do something pleasurable, is in fact prompted by pain. It’s called the homeostatic response.

Our brains get our bodies to do what they want through discomfort. When we’re cold, we put on a coat. When we feel hunger pangs, we eat. Does feeling warm again or eating food bring pleasure? Of course. But that good feeling comes after we’re spurred into action by an uncomfortable sensation prompting us to take action.

The same rule applies to psychological discomfort. When we feel lonely, bored, or uncertain, we act to relieve our emotional disquietude. We might see a friend to relieve loneliness, or watch a show on television when we’re bored. We may look up something online to satisfy our uncertainty -- all because we seek to escape these uncomfortable sensations.

If we're motivated by avoiding discomfort, then does the above quote still apply? Or would motivation then be automatic?

If all behavior is prompted by discomfort, then habits and routines must follow the same rule. How and when we feel the discomfort of doing, or not doing, a behavior is critical to understanding the difference between habits and routines.

Recall that part of the reason people find the idea of building a habit so appealing is the notion that they can put unfun tasks on autopilot. Tasks like paying bills or doing the laundry annoy us. They hang over our heads until the pain of not doing them gets to be too much. However, if some magic laundry-folding fairy appeared and told you not to worry about the task, you’d happily go about your day. Turns out your brain comes built in with just such a magic pixie, it’s called procrastination.

When we procrastinate, we tell ourselves we’ll avoid the task for later. Doing so is a telltale sign the task is a routine and not a good candidate to become a habit.

I'm really good at procrastinating!

Imagine intending to wash your hands and the water suddenly shuts off. If you’re in the habit, not doing the behavior would feel strange, even uncomfortable. Even if the magic habit fairy told you your hands had been cleaned and there was no need to wash them, it would take you several days, if not weeks, to undo this habitual behavior.

I experienced just such a predicament when the water to my bathroom sink was shut off because of construction in my building. I needed to use the kitchen sink to wash my hands for a week. Even though I was fully aware that the bathroom sink wasn't going to work, I kept turning it on day after day out of habit. Every time I lifted the faucet handle and no water came out, my habit was interrupted and I’d get annoyed. I knew the faucet wouldn’t work, but I kept attempting to do the behavior with little thought.

A habit feels uncomfortable when we don’t do it, exactly the opposite is true of routines. This is where people get into trouble confusing habits and routines. They expect routines to be as effortless as habits, while the only thing about routines that’s easy, is how easy they are to skip. Not doing an effortful task, like doing the laundry or writing in a journal, is easy to forget because such behaviors are not a habit, they are a routine that requires effort.

How can we form habits? Here are some things you can do:

Start with a Routine

Hold the Time

Welcome Discomfort

Pre-Commit

Do It Right

Check out the article and this post I wrote about the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

BTW - there's more to come on this subject tomorrow. Stay tuned!