PREVENTION SCIENCE
5 Myths About Habits
Like the odor of cigarette smoke, outdated beliefs can linger. Here’s how to overcome behavioral hurdles.
BY KATE ROCKWOOD
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDREA DE SANTIS
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MYTH #1
Breaking or forming a habit is all about willpower.
MYTHBUSTER It’s much more about your environment, says Wendy Wood, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California and the author of Good Habits, Bad Habits. Habits are formed not by active will, but by repeating rewarded behaviors in a stable environment, says Wood. If you remain in the same environment, simply trying hard not to do something (or to do something new) will be difficult to sustain. Let’s say you’ve always enjoyed “just one cigarette” when you go to a certain bar…you might be motivated to quit, but the habit will be activated when you’re there. “You can’t simply make a decision and change a habit—that old behavior will still be brought to mind by places where you usually smoked in the past,” she says. But if you go to a place where you’re not used to lighting up, you may not have this automatic urge. Instead of focusing on commitment or willpower, says Wood, “focus on the environment and how to structure it.” This may be as minor as, say, putting healthy food within easy reach or keeping your cell phone plugged in instead of in your pocket when you’re at home so it’s harder to check it constantly.
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MYTH #2
Going cold turkey is the best way to quit smoking.
MYTHBUSTER By the six-month mark, about 95% of people who try to quit smoking cold turkey are back at it. Your best bet for nipping a nicotine habit is a combination of nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) or medication (varenicline or bupropion) and counseling, says Judson Brewer, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor at Brown University and the executive medical director at Sharecare. Using an NRT such as the nicotine patch or nicotine gum, for example, increases chances of quitting by 50% to 60%, research shows. Want to boost those odds even more? Get some support, such as from therapy or a smoking-cessation program. A review of 83 studies found that adding behavioral support, whether in person or by phone, to medication increased people’s chances of putting the habit in the rearview by 10% to 20%.
MYTH #3
Once you’ve had a habit for a long time, it’s permanent.
MYTHBUSTER It’s true that old habits are harder to break because they’re more ingrained in your routine, but breaking them is far from impossible. “The good news is that our brains are always plastic. The more we pay attention to the habit cycle, the faster we break habits, no matter how long we’ve had them,” Dr. Brewer says. To break a habit, you need to disrupt the habit cycle—removing cues, changing your routine, and replacing the reward. Let’s say you stop for a chocolate shake on your drive home from work every day—your cue is getting into your car, your behavior is buying the shake, and the reward is the tasty treat. To break the cycle, you might leave work earlier or later and change your route home. Instead of the shake, you might reward yourself with a dishy podcast in the car. “If you can find something more rewarding than your old bad habit, you can ‘overwrite’ that habit by remembering and experiencing the positive result of a good habit,” Dr. Brewer says.
MYTH #4
You have to do something every day to make it a habit.
MYTHBUSTER Taking a day off isn’t a deal breaker, found a study in the European Journal of Social Psychology. The same study showed that it could take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a habit and a day off didn’t hurt the chances of making that behavior a habit. However, the more often you do something, “the faster your brain will become accustomed to the behavior and make it automatic,” Dr. Brewer says. “Once the habit is established, it will become your default even if you’re not always in the same place or situation.” It is possible to form habits with things you repeat less often than daily, such as going to church weekly, he adds, but these may take longer to stick.
MYTH #5
Once you understand how good something is for you, it will be easy to make it a habit.
MYTHBUSTER If that were true, we’d all eat tons of veggies, get seven hours of shut-eye at night, and exercise daily, says Wood. Good intentions are, well, good, but research has repeatedly found that educating people about the benefits of a certain behavior doesn’t lead to major changes. “That’s the tricky thing about habits. What you’re trying to do doesn’t matter—what you actually do does,” Wood says. So what’s the best way to form healthy habits? Make it as friction-free as possible to repeat the desired behavior. One study showed that people who lived closer to their gyms (3.7 miles away or less) worked out five or more times a month compared with just once a month for those whose gym was 5.1 miles away. “Reducing friction for healthy behaviors makes it easy to repeat them into habits,” she says. ■