“Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure.”

Habits are a big part of who we are what

we do habitually makes up much of what

we do entirely in fact it's estimated

that up to 70 percent of our waking

behavior

is made up of habitual behavior

people are highly variable and if you

can't form one habit easily it doesn't

mean that you can't form other habits

easily

it takes 21 days to form a habit some

people say 18 some people say 21 some

people say 30 days some people say 60

days so which one is it does it depend

on the habit that one is trying to form

or does it depend on the person that's

trying to form the habit there's a study

published in 2010 first author lally

l-a-l-l-y

this study found that for the same habit

to be formed

it can take anywhere from 18 days to as

many as 254 days for different

individuals to form that habit

so what i'd like to do is to take the

scientific literature of how the nervous

system learns and engages in

neuroplasticity and apply that to habit

formation habit maintenance and

if so desired how to break particular

habits i'd like to give you a particular

tool that's gleaned from the research

psychology literature

with each repetition of a habit

small changes occur in the cognitive and

neural mechanisms as a sodium associated

with procedural memory so i just want to

talk for a second about what procedural

memory is

in the neuroscience of memory we

distinguish between what's called

episodic memory and procedural memory

episodic memory is a recall of a

particular set of events that happened

whereas procedural memory is holding in

mind the specific sequence of things

that need to happen in order for a

particular outcome to occur so think of

it like a recipe or a protocol or if for

the sake of exercise it's like sets and

reps or a particular course that you're

going to run or cycle or the number of

laps you're going to swim and how you're

going to perform it

it's very clear that for anyone trying

to adopt new habits

getting into the mindset of procedural

memory is very useful for overcoming

that barrier that we call limbic

friction how do you do that well

a simple

visualization exerciser doesn't even

have to be done eyes closed you know

oftentimes we hear visualization

exercise you think about sitting in the

lotus position eyes closed

trying really hard to visualize

something doesn't need to be anything

like that it can simply be

if you are deciding to

adopt a new habit to just think about

the very specific sequence of steps

that's required to execute that habit

and i'll use a trivial example but this

could be applied to anything let's say i

want to get into the habit of making

myself or someone else in my household a

cup of espresso every morning

i would actually think through each of

those steps

walk into the kitchen turn on the

espresso machine draw the espresso

walking through each of those steps from

start to finish and turns out just that

simple mental exercise done once can

shift people toward a much higher

likelihood of performing that habit

regularly not just the first time but as

they continue out into the days and

weeks that follow so that's remarkable

to me and the literature is really

robust

so now i'd like to discuss a second and

what i think is perhaps the most

powerful tool for being able to acquire

and stick to new habits

the tool that i'm referring to

is something called task bracketing and

the neural circuits associated with task

bracketing

are basically the neural circuits that

are going to allow you to learn any new

type of habit or break any habit that

you'd like to break

we have in our brain a set of neural

circuits that fall under the umbrella

term of the basal ganglia the basal

ganglia are involved in action execution

meaning doing certain things and action

suppression

not doing certain things

in the experimental realm these are

referred to as go meaning do or no go

don't do certain things

and some of us fall more into the

category of we find it very easy to do

certain things

but harder to not do other things some

people have a lot of no-go type circuits

that are very robust and they have a lot

of behavioral constraint

but they have a harder time getting into

action and some people have a perfect

balance of both but i've never met one

of those people

task bracketing involves a particular

set of neural circuits within the basal

ganglia we have particular circuits in

our brain

that are devoted to framing the events

that happen just before and as we

initiate a habit and just after and as

we terminate a habit

in other words it acts as a sort of

marker for the habit execution but not

the execution of the habit per se

this is very important because

task bracketing

is what underlies whether or not a habit

will be context dependent or not whether

or not it will be strong and likely to

occur even if we didn't get a good

night's sleep the night before even if

we're feeling distracted even if we are

not feeling like doing something

emotionally or if we are you know

completely overwhelmed by other events

if the neural circuits for task

bracketing are deeply embedded in us

meaning they are very robust around a

particular habit well then it's likely

that we're going to go out for that zone

2 cardio no matter what that we're going

to brush our teeth no matter what in

fact brushing our teeth is a pretty good

example because for most people even if

you got a terrible night's sleep

even if everything in your life is going

wrong

chances are unless you're very depressed

if you're gonna leave to work or even if

you're not that you're going to still

carry out the behavior of brushing your

teeth in the morning i would hope so

actually

but you are probably less likely to

perform

particular habits that are

not what you deem as necessary but if

you think about it

brushing your teeth exercise eating

particular foods maybe engaging socially

in particular ways

you are the one that places any kind of

value assessment on which ones are

essential and which ones are negotiable

so task bracketing sets a neural imprint

a kind of a fingerprint in your brain of

this thing has to happen at this

particular time of day so much so that

it's reflexive

while it is important to think about the

sequence of events that would be

required in order to engage in that

behavior that procedural memory

visualization exercise we talked about

before that will help

there is a way also that you can orient

your nervous system toward this tax

bracketing process so that your nervous

system is shifted or oriented towards

the execution of a given habit

so this is sort of like warming up your

body to exercise

when the dorsolateral striatum is

engaged your body and your brain are

primed to execute a habit and then you

get to consciously insert which habit

you want to perform

if you are considering adopting a new

habit or if you are trying to break a

habit it's very useful to think not just

about the procedural

aspects of what you're going to do but

also think about the events that precede

and follow that particular habit and the

execution or at least the effort to

execute that habit

what you're doing is you're casting a

kind of a spotlight or around a bin of

time or a set of events for which

dopamine can be associated what does

this look like in the practical sense

well again i'll just try and use very

simple concrete examples but this could

carry over to anything let's say i were

somebody who has a hard time

getting in that 30 to 60 minutes of zone

2 cardiovascular exercise

mid-morning what i should do

is positively anticipate the onset and

the offset of that session right so

thinking about

leaning into the effort

going out and doing that zone 2 cardio

session and i should think about how i'm

going to feel after so not just thinking

about how great i'm going to feel after

but also thinking about how

hard it's going to be at the beginning

and then trying to reward myself

subjectively for the entire experience

in other words start rewarding task

bracketing in addition to rewarding the

execution of the habit itself

i'll get into the specific tool for

breaking habits

capture the sequence of events not that

led to the bad habit execution

but actually to take advantage of the

fact that the neurons that were

responsible for generating that bad

habit were

were active a moment ago

and to actually engage in a replacement

behavior immediately afterward now this

is really interesting and i think

powerful because i would have thought

that you have to engage in a replacement

behavior

that truly replaces the bad habit

behavior right

that you would have to be able to

identify your state of mind or the

sequence of events leading into the bad

habit but rather

the stage or the period immediately

after the bad habit execution is a

unique opportunity to insert a different

type of what we would call adaptive

behavior but that could be any behavior

that's not

in line with the bad behavior so let's

give an example let's say you find

yourself um you're trying to do focused

work you pick up your phone you're

disappointing yourself for for picking

up your phone

you could of course just put it down or

you and re-engage

and the work behavior but if you were

good at that then you probably wouldn't

have done it in the first place and so

what turns out to be very effective is

to go engage in some other positive

habit now this has two major effects the

first one is you start to link in time

the execution of a bad behavior to this

other good behavior

and in doing so you start to recruit

other neural circuits

other neurons that can start to

somewhat dismantle the sequence of

firing associated with the bad behavior

in other words you start to create a

kind of a double habit that starts with

a bad habit and then ends with a good

habit and that seems to create

enough of a temporal mismatch so that

then recognizing when you're heading

toward the bad habit becomes more

apparent to you so again i want to make

this very very concrete let's say that

the behavior is reflexively picking up

one's phone you do that you think oh

goodness i did it again here's what i'm

going to do you would set that down and

then you would engage in some other

positive behavior that you've deemed

positive and here it's very subjective

so it's hard for me to give an example

that will necessarily make sense to

everybody but perhaps um you're working

on hydration so maybe you go have a

glass of water maybe you um you are

trying to uh do breath work or something

maybe you're you are trying to uh

enhance your language speaking skills

and so you go and you spend five minutes

doing

a particular type of language learning

you literally exit whatever you are

doing and perform that other new

positive habit in the immediate period

right after that even for a short period

of time