We often think of habits as falling into “good” or “bad” buckets – but what are they, really? Habits are patterns of behaviour that we engage in unconsciously or semi-automatically. Our brains are incredibly good at conserving energy, which is a good thing for an organ that represents less than 2% of our overall body mass but consumes 20% of the energy we take in. By deploying habits and other energy-conserving mechanisms like System 1 thinking (see Danny Kahneman’s work), our brains allow us to navigate through the world without constant decision-making. If you’re a database administrator, you could think of habits as human versions of stored procedures.

Habits operate based on a cue or a trigger. First, we encounter the trigger, an established routine executes and we get a reward. Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit” describes this in more detail, but there’s a short form of the structure of habits with examples on how to change them here.

A simple example might be that I walk into the kitchen, pass the “treat drawer”, grab a biscuit/cookie and eat it – cue, routine, reward. The clear downside of this habit is that if I execute it regularly, I will a) get fat and b) end up with blood sugar issues.

Another example, this one work-related, might be that I present an idea during a meeting, someone dismisses it, and I become defensive. This time the reward is a little harder to judge but it could be that I feel like I didn’t allow someone to walk all over me. This habit can be just as damaging, but this time to my career. I shut down dialogue by behaving this way and don’t learn anything new.

Neuroscience tells us that it is very challenging to dislodge habits once they are established. When our brain encodes a habit into our neural pathways, those connections are pretty “sticky”. It takes a difficult-to-quantify number of pattern executions before the brain says to itself – “this one’s a keeper!” Once embedded, it is a lot easier to form a new habit than to “remove” an old one. Intensely pleasurable habits become embedded more quickly, and simple habits are easier to form than complex ones. For example, coming in from a long day at work, it is far easier to fall onto the sofa and immediately turn on the TV than get into your gym gear and drive straight to the gym to exercise.

In thinking about my habitual behaviours, I have realised that it isn’t inevitable that when I encounter the cue I have to execute the pattern. Duhigg writes about replacing the routines we execute when we meet the cue. For example, instead of taking a cookie when I go into the kitchen, I can take an apple. I still get the sugar hit, but with the added benefit of feeling virtuous for not eating the cookie. This approach doesn’t mean that I can’t ever eat treats – just that I can be more intentional than habitual about it.

Over time, by executing the replacement routine, we weaken the original programming. Simply knowing this can be beneficial in a range of negative behaviours, but can also lead to deliberate decisions to build new, more positive habits. While I am a collection of habits, I don’t need to give in to my negative ones – habitual badness isn’t inevitable!

The next time you notice a habitual behaviour, ask yourself – “how does this serve me?”. If the answer is that it doesn’t, take a look at Charles Duhigg’s work and think about what you might want to adjust to get a better outcome. And persist with the new routine – over time, it will stick and help you become a better version of yourself.

I’ve written in other blog posts about how our biases shape our worldview and responses. This area has been beautifully explained in Danny Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” and many other equally relevant behavioural psychology and behavioural economics works. We use our experience and our mental shortcuts to make quick determinations so that we don’t have to waste valuable resources on a problem we already know the answer to.

Often this works well. For example, typically, we take the most efficient route from home to work without thinking about it every day. We know that traffic will be heavier on certain streets, and we avoid them at certain times of the day. We don’t sit into the car every morning and make a conscious decision to follow our usual route – we’re often halfway to work before we think about driving.

In the medical arena, when a patient presents with an inflamed, irritated, or debilitated knee, a knee surgeon will focus on that joint. They will order x-rays and perhaps MRIs and determine whether more direct surgical intervention is required. The patient may or may not get relief over time from the symptoms, but the surgeon will have treated the immediate crisis. This commentary is not a criticism of the medical profession but an observation – patients are often treated as a presentation of symptoms and not a holistic system. But people are not symptoms, and symptoms are not the root cause of an issue. In the case of knee pain, the problem might be due to poor footwear, an opposite side hip dysplasia, or a gait issue caused by lower back misalignment. Over time, biomechanically incorrect use of the knee joint will cause wear and tear, which leads to the symptoms. Again, what presents is the symptom, not the root cause.

In other areas of work and life, the same is often true. For example, in the technology arena, production outages of a system are often attributed to human error. An operator makes a change, and the system breaks. The operator may have failed to check inputs or follow documentation adequately. The prescription is often “more training” or “four-eyes checking” to address the issue. My contention, however, is that in this case, the problem may not be the operator – human error is a symptom. Instead, the problem may be with the complexity of the system design, that the operator has been working 12-hour shifts, or that there is insufficient automation to assist them.

We are often presented with symptoms rather than root causes in our personal lives. If my teenage daughters suddenly start behaving in a more challenging way than expected, it can be easy for me to dismiss it as them “just being rude”. My reaction to that diagnosis is unlikely to be favourable. I need to continuously bear in mind that a teenage brain is an incredibly complex system attached to other highly complex systems that are in an enormous state of flux all the time.

It is hard to look for and find the real root cause of an issue. It takes real effort, diverse inputs and critical thinking. It requires us to look past the surface and ask next order questions. Instead of just asking the typical “why” question, it can also be helpful to ask, “what might I be assuming that is preventing me from seeing what is going on?”. Or “who can I bring in to help me understand this problem?”. We have to take the time to make an accurate diagnosis of important problems. The next time you are presented with something genuinely impactful, it may be helpful to ask yourself, “am I looking at the problem or just a symptom?”. That question alone may help us make better decisions.