How habits form

I often recommend sacrificing now so that you can achieve later. I also recommend focusing your attention on building healthy habits because habits are something we are, not something we do. The literature on willpower is clear, it operates sort of like a muscle. You can train it, but you can also use up its energy. In this piece we will discuss the relationship between habits and willpower as well as the process of habit formation.

The average brain comprises 40% grey matter and 60% white matter. The white in the white matter comes from neurons or more precisely – myelin which is a layer of isolation. Myelin is one of the reasons why activities become easier the more we do them. Every time you repeat a certain action, for instance playing darts or billiard pool, the neuron gets another layer of myelin which allows the impulse to travel faster. This mechanism makes elite athletes or musicians appear almost supernaturally talented while they are just very, very hard-working. I am not saying that talent doesn’t play a role, it certainly does, but the success comes from repetitions and effort for the most part. Unfortunately, this mechanism also allows us to become very proficient at bad behaviors such as biting your nails in stressful situations. Repetition is the mother of learning says the old Latin proverb and there is a reason why it still stands today, but I’d like to modify it only slightly: repetition is the mother of myelin and myelin is the mother of learning.

The second aspect of habit formation is willpower. Willpower is a skill that can be learned and as I already mentioned at the beginning we have a limited amount of willpower and we can exhaust it. This explains how there are days where you are strict with your diet, you wake up early and go to the gym and then on some other days you just spend 14 hours in bed watching a TV show. In an experiment, the participants were asked to track their finances, track their expenditure in great detail but also to limit how much they spend on fun activities such as going to a restaurant or to the cinema. The results were interesting to say the least. As is to be expected, their financial situation was noticeably improved through savings, but they also decreased their consumption of cigarettes and alcohol and they ate less junk food. The conclusion of the study was that building the willpower muscle in one sphere of your life can be used in another. For instance, if you go to the gym and build our willpower there, we will be able to translate that ability onto our nutrition, our job and our hobbies.

The last aspect I’d like to touch upon is the “autopilot” mode. This aspect connects the first two and gives us the full picture of habits and how they work. I am sure you’ve experienced the autopilot mode with some of the everyday activities such as going to work or school. Your mind simply shuts off and you often can’t remember how you reached the final destination or at the very least you can’t recall most of the details. This happens due to our brain’s ability to group neural activity associated with habits just like the previously mentioned trip to work or the morning hygiene routine. The final product of this grouping is the fact that we enter the autopilot mode. In other words, our brain took a bunch of activities and grouped them together in order to eliminate effort and thinking which preserves willpower. In order to enter this mode, you need a triggering cue. In the morning it is usually the alarm clock. For me, coming back from work signals that I should change and go hit the gym.

Okay, so now we know what happens behind the scenes, but what’s the practical application? My advice to you is that you should find a cue and then build a habit around it by repeating it consistently. In the beginning it is going to be tough as you will need to expend willpower, but the longer you do it the stronger your willpower will be, AND it will become less needed because myelin and the grouping of neural activity. For example, brushing your teeth can be your cue for a 15-minute yoga session or finishing your dinner can be your cue for a 45-minute walk. This method you will add useful, healthy habits such as meditation, working out, walking, reading and learning and by doing this daily you will become A Tiny Bit Better.