Force Yourself to Succeed by Getting a Habit Loop
If you do not have a Goal … YOU ARE OUT
And today, I will tell you one of the secrets of Successful people who do not share it with you … HABIT LOOP.
Practice helps you improve your daily performance.
Habits help you to control your activities and to direct yourself in the right direction.
Habits can play a vital role in encouraging you to achieve success, but they can also be disastrous if you have bad habits.
Bad habits form a part of socially, legally and / or rationally wrong practices.
In this article, I will give you an adoptable idea of the Habit Loop; how to create a custom loop, and how to get the most out of it.
Background of Scientific Research
Courtesy: MIT Research – https://news.mit.edu/2015/neurons-drive-habit-0819
(Excerpts directly from MIT paper)
In a research, two students, in their experiment, allowed the two monkeys to learn the practice on their own, without training, as a way to mimic real learning. They also recorded the activity of 1,600 neurons in the striatum during the study.
The monkeys learned, in a few months, to visualize a series of dots on the screen looking for a random selection that has been “caught,” meaning that the monkey will get juice as its eyes pass through it. When the monkey’s eyes stay on the “dotted” dot, the colour of the dot grid changes, signalling a reward coming.
In time, the monkey’s eyes followed the same pattern over and over again, suggesting that eye movement had become a habit.
In addition, these eye test patterns have been very effective. Monkeys reduced the routes they used to visit the dots in the same way a traveling merchant could improve his sales route.
Structure of the Habit Loop
Remember, depending on our habits, we may or may not be able to achieve the goals we want.
Bad habits lead to bad consequences. E.g.,
- not getting out of bed even when you are awake which means you do not have time for your necessary activities
- Fried foods, chips or too much popcorns, lead to obesity
- buying unnecessary and unnecessary items to satisfy your cravings that lead to financial hardship.
Good habits, such as running on a daily basis, may improve your health and fitness levels, and you will feel better as you take a break from a table chair.
There is no single strategy for practices.
There may be many strategies that can work for you. The reason for this is because different practices require different approaches and different people may find motivation for different motives or outcomes.
This set of strategies in a particular framework is called a habit loop.
Habit Loop Features
The structure of the habit loop consists mainly of three elements.
- Cue
- Program
- Reward
The Habit Loop framework in a broad sense can be represented by following a diagram.
I will talk about the detailed version of Habit Loop (Syed’s Habit Loop) in another article.
Cue
The motivation that provides information about what to do is known as Cue.
An index can be anything that causes a habit.
Cues can be caused more widely:
- Location: e.g., your office restaurant offers really delicious pizza.
- Activity: e.g., whenever you finish your work successfully, you crave chocolate.
- Person: e.g., whenever you see Mr. Gates, you start working hard.
- Emotional: e.g., you see poor children from the slums, you buy yourself food.
- Exact time: e.g., at 3 PM, you get tired and get up from your desk to get some air.
Routine
The cycle is a behavior that is influenced by the trigger (cue).
you wish to change (e.g., smoking or biting your nails) or tightening (e.g., taking stairs instead of cash, or drinking water instead of food).
Reward
Rewards are the reason why the mind decides whether past actions are worth remembering for the future. The reward provides the positive reinforcement of the desired behavior, making it more likely that you will reproduce that behavior in the future. A reward can be anything, from something tangible (e.g.
Short-Circuiting Habit Loop
Because the habit loop controls many automatic responses to the system, shortening the custom loop can be a way to overcome bad habits. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, proposes the following framework for correcting bad habits.
Find Routine
Many habits have a process that is easy to see: behavior that you wish to change. Duhigg explains his habit of going to a restaurant in the afternoon and getting a chocolate cookie and sitting down with friends to chat. From then on, he had to identify the index and the reward.
Try for Prizes
The rewards of a certain practice are not always as obvious as you might think. While the daily craving for chocolate may be just chocolate, it may also be the result of contact with people near a grocery store or an increase in calorie intake (which may be replaced by an apple or a coffee).
Reward checking is a time-consuming part of cheating on your habits. Each time you feel the urge to repeat your schedule, try changing the schedule, reward, or both. Track your changes, and explore different ideas for what drives your schedule. In Duhigg’s case, did he really want a cookie or a coin? Was he hungry or did he just want to be with people? Every time you try a different program, ask yourself 15 minutes if you still crave the original “reward”. Duhigg found that his dream ended when he’s just chatting with friends – he was really looking forward to meeting people, and he shared that passion by trying to reap the rewards.
Split Cue
With so many exciting things happening to you every day, you can consider separate working environments during different times of the days, specifically to stay away from distractions (or triggers).
Important to note that, if you find yourself in an island of cues/triggers, then first find a boat to move away from that island.
Many people want to find one secret strategy that will magically help them with older habit challenges. But that is a false belief.
The cue routine and reward elements are consistent for all the habits.
The habit loop is a framework for understanding how habits work and it is up to you to identify each component, to modify existing habits or build new ones.
So, let’s take a look at what steps you have to take in order to understand and be able to take control over your habits, carries how you can use habit.
Look, if you want to create long lasting habits in your life, number one, identify routine.
Let’s say that you want to improve your health and you want to build a new habit of running few times per week.
The problem is that you have been willing to do it for a month already, but there is always a reason why you skip the run.
The solution is to make the habit.
Start by looking at habit to identify each component and then turning, running into a healthy habit of yours.
So, we definitely know that the routine will be the actual running so we can put it in the place right away.
Experiment with reward
The next step is to try out different things here.
You can experiment with different things.
As a reward, I personally enjoy the feeling of my energy levels, being up and clarity in my head.
After refreshing run in the woods, maybe you really enjoy taking a shower after a run, or you have set yourself a goal and you would enjoy seeing that you have added few more kilometres to your total distance.
There are many things that you can have as a reward after you have completed your routine run. So, feel free to try multiple things.
This step is called experiment with the reward for reasons.
So, you have to be open and try out different things to see what works for you.
If you go for a run three times a week, then give it at least a week to see if the reward works or not.
Come up with a strong cue that forces you to take action
The cue created by you, must compel you to get you to take action and go for a run.
So, let’s take a look at some of the options that you can consider.
One of the weakest cues that you can use is simply setting an alarm for the time when you want to go for a run.
And while it might seem like a good option in reality, it usually doesn’t work because when the alarm will be going off, you’ll be most likely in the middle of another activity and better option would be to use habit stacking.
That way you can stack the running habit onto another already existing habit.
This could be something that you do.
For example, driving home from work, just make sure that you have your running clothes with you.
And then on the way home, you can stop at nearby park and go for a run.
Driving home from work is the habit that you probably do at least five days a week, and why not take advantage of it.
And don’t think about getting home first and then going for a run, because that is going to be much harder option.
There will be so many things that you have to do at home that running will get pushed off your list.
Every time habit stacking is great, but there are a few other things that you could do to get you more motivated and take action.
When it comes to going for a run, studies show that when people approach their goals or habits with someone else, they achieve better results and are able to stick with their habits for longer.
So why not start your new habit with one of your friends who would also benefit for going for a run at least few times per week.
This could be your neighbour or your work colleague.
And even when you feel like not going, you’ll be more likely to show up.
If that is not an option, then you can join the online challenge or the community and make a commitment that you’ll run a certain distance per month.
This way you’ll be more motivated to run or even run longer distances over time to hit your current monthly goal.
You can even get a medal with your name month and distance covered from places like race at your own pace as additional motivation.
So, as you can see, there are many great options that you can use as acute.
When you want to build a new habit, instead of just relying on the alarm that you set on your phone, we have now covered all the elements of the habit loop, and that means that it’s more likely that you will be able to build and stick with your new running habit.
We have a queue driving home from work and stopping at nearby park.
We have a routine running around the park and we have a reward, increased energy levels and sense of achievement.
I hope you guys gained some peculiar aspects of Habit Loop from this article and you now have a good understanding about what habit loop is and how does it work if you use the habit loop framework. I am sure that you will be able to build new, healthy long-lasting habits in any area of your life.
Before I end this article, one very simple but powerful advice… to get rid of old bad habits, you must change your usual path, else you will not be able to avoid the triggers/cues and will stay trapped in endless loop.
Addition of just 1% knowledge everyday can make you 100 times better than others. I hope this article was able to add a little bit in your knowledgebase. In the comments section, please let me know your views or the topics you need me to write the articles on.
Keep Smiling… Keep Excelling…
The author of this article, Mudabbir Syed, is a Motivational Guide, Career Advisor, and Personality Coach besides being a part-time investor in small ventures, stocks and NFTs. He is a Columbia Business School, NY, USA alumnus, and has been helping people around the world with his invaluable experience in the field of “Personal Development” and “Overcoming Hurdles of Life” for over 20 years.
2 thoughts on “Force Yourself to Succeed by Getting a Habit Loop”
Sir, I didn’t know about this practice habit loop. Seems this is a good way to get rid of my distractions. I have just joined a multinational company as a software engineer. Will appreciate if you could guide on career planning or good companies for new joiners. Thank you.
Pingback: Top 10 mistakes done by IIT JEE aspirants - How to Succeed in Life
Comments are closed.