The Science of Forming and Breaking Habits

🧠 Habits make up a significant portion of our behavior, with up to 70% of our waking behavior being habitual.

📅 The time it takes to form a habit varies, ranging from 18 days to 254 days depending on the individual and the habit.

🔁 With each repetition of a habit, small changes occur in the cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with procedural memory.

🧠 Procedural memory is crucial for adopting new habits and overcoming barriers.

🔍 Visualizing the specific sequence of steps required helps to establish a habit.

📚 Research shows the effectiveness of procedural memory in habit formation.

🧠 Task bracketing is a powerful tool for acquiring and sticking to new habits.

⚙️ Neural circuits associated with task bracketing allow us to learn or break any habit.

⚖️ Task bracketing involves framing the events before, during, and after the habit execution.

💡 Neural circuits for task bracketing are deeply embedded in us, making certain habits reflexive and likely to occur.

🧠 Task bracketing creates a neural imprint in our brains, establishing the importance and timing of specific behaviors.

⏰ While some habits are essential and reflexive, we have the ability to determine the value and necessity of other habits.

🔑 The execution of a habit is influenced by priming the brain and consciously inserting the desired habit.

💡 To adopt or break a habit, consider the events that precede and follow the habit, and associate them with dopamine.

⏰ Positively anticipate and reward both the effort and the outcome of performing a habit.

🧠 Replacing bad habits with immediate, unrelated positive behaviors can be effective in breaking the sequence of firing associated with the bad habit.

⏰ The period immediately after executing a bad habit presents a unique opportunity to engage in a different type of adaptive behavior.

📱 For example, if you find yourself picking up your phone instead of doing focused work, engaging in another positive habit can help link the execution of the bad behavior to the new behavior.

Creating a habit loop by replacing a bad habit with a positive one.

Example of replacing phone usage with activities like drinking water or language learning.

Performing the new positive habit immediately after recognizing the bad habit.