The Scientific Reason Why Your Habits Don’t Stick
No, it’s not because you ignored the 66 days rule
You and I both have probably read thousands of words of self-help literature about forming healthy habits and ditching harmful ones. You might be familiar with the 66 days rule, first reported in a study by researchers at University College London in 2010. We’ve read everything about the power of habits, but also about the challenge of sticking to them.
But what actually is a habit?
Behavioural scientists describe a habit as an “automatic process”, i.e. the opposite of a “goal-oriented process”. A goal-oriented process, unlike a habit, is slower and involves making a conscious decision. Our behaviour is thought to be determined by the result of the competition between these two types of processes.
The perpetual competition between conscious and automatic actions is the reason why building good habits and breaking bad ones is so important. Making conscious decisions about everything, every day, is time consuming and exhausting. This is known as decision fatigue. Thus, it is thought that the more effective you are at building good habits, the better you can concentrate on decisions that matter.
However, many of us struggle to maintain good habits. I certainly do. It has long been…
