So today we're going to do something

new. I'm going to react to content about

healthy habit formation on YouTube and

we're going to look at the question, is

it really backed by science or is it a

load of If you don't know me,

my name is Spencer. I'm the founder of

clearerthinking.org and we run lots of

studies on human psychology, including

some studies on habit formation. I'm

going to be pedantic with these videos

because I really want you to understand

the actual detailed truth. But a lot of

times people who make these kinds of

videos, they're speaking loosely.

They're trying to give you helpful

information. So, I'm not meaning to pick

on them, but I just want you to know

what's actually true in detail and get

the definitions right. This video is by

Mel Robbins. She has 4 million

subscribers on YouTube, and she puts out

tons of self-improvement content.

>> So, let's just start with the basics.

What is a habit? A habit is something

that you do so often that it's

automatic.

>> Okay, so that's not not actually true.

It's not totally wrong. I mean, it could

be useful for some people to think of a

habit that way, but what is a habit

actually? A habit is a learned behavior

that happens automatically in response

to a Q. So there's some cue in the world

like you see a certain thing or your

clock hits a certain time and then

you've learned a behavior to do

automatically subconsciously when that

queue occurs. That's what a habit

actually is. She describes a habit as

something you do so often that it

becomes automatic. But you could

actually have a habit that you learned

many years ago. you literally haven't

done the behavior for years and then you

see the queue again for the first time

in many years and then you do the

behavior. So, it doesn't have to be

something you do often.

>> If you're somebody who's struggling to

change, like maybe you're trying to

become a better student or you want to

be better with your money or more

organized or you'd love a rockolid

morning routine or how about carving out

the time to put yourself first, that'd

be a great habit. I think she's pointing

at something very important there, which

is that habits are such a general and

powerful tool that we can apply them to

almost any area of our life, whether

it's improving our sleep, our work, our

relationships. So once you kind of have

this idea of a habit and how to form

them, you can then start thinking, well,

what do I want to improve my life? And

you can kind of direct the habit at that

area. So this one's a video by Big

Think. They have 8 million subscribers

on YouTube. Let's see what they have to

say about habits.

The ability to form habits is one of the

most important [music] and amazing.

>> You know, it's funny they say a habit is

a regular tendency or practice that

usually is hard to give up. It's not

what a habit is. Um, and in fact, we

often have a habit and then the habit

goes away. You know, a change in our

environment can make a habit go away. Or

seeing a cue that normally triggers a

habit, but then not doing the habit

enough times can sometimes make a habit

go away. So, I don't think it's true

that a habit automatically is hard to

give up. In fact, I think we lose habits

a lot. Um, there are certain types of

habits that are hard to give up, and

that's another matter.

>> When you form a habit, you [music] can

execute a fairly complex series of

behaviors without having to think

really, really hard about it. And what

that means is that it lets us think

about other [music] things. But the

downside of a habit is that you stop

thinking while you're doing a habit. So,

as a result, you become less aware of

the negative consequences of that

behavior. [music] I think that's a

really critical point because habits are

automatic. They're essentially

implementing a behavior again and again

and again without reflection. And

sometimes that's really good. A healthy

habit is going to get propagated into

the future. But an unhealthy habit will

also get propagated into the future. And

because it's automatic, we're going to

think less about it. And therefore, if

we have the wrong habits, we might end

up having a bunch of behavior that's bad

for us that we're not really reflecting

on.

>> There is a woman named Wendywood who did

a study when she was [music] at Duke.

And what she found was that about 45% of

all the behaviors that someone did in a

day was habit. It wasn't [music]

decision-m.

Okay. So, I wanted to figure out where

the heck this 45% number comes from cuz

I heard that sometimes people say 43% of

your behaviors are habits. It's like

where does that come from? It's so oddly

specific. It makes it seem like it was

from one study. And indeed, it was from

one study. But the funny thing about it

is that this number is not the

percentage of habits that people were

engaging in. So what did the study

actually measure? What is this famous

45% number? So this is the paper habits

in everyday life, thought, emotion, and

action by Wendy Wood and at all. And so

let's see what they actually measured

with this 45%. And we can see here in

table two, the number they're referring

to is actually this number. It's 43%.

And it says very clearly habitual

performed almost daily, usually in the

same location. So what they did is they

had people take diaries every hour of

what they were doing and then they had

them write down answers to questions

about that behavior they were doing

every hour. And one of the things that

they wrote down is about whether it's

habitual. In other words, is it

performed almost daily, usually in the

same location. But what's funny about

that is that is not a habit. That's not

the definition of a habit. A habit is a

behavior that's learned and it happens

automatically when there's a Q, right?

So something happens in the world, a Q,

and then you engage in the behavior

automatically and you've critically

you've learned that behavior. A habitual

behavior is something different. A

habitual behavior is a behavior you do

regularly. And you could think of

habitual behaviors as coming to two

broad categories. There's habits, so

they're behaviors that are automatic.

And then there's routines. Routines are

behaviors that you simply do by default

at a certain time or a certain place,

but they're not a habit because they're

not subconscious. they're not triggered

automatically. So, for example, maybe on

Sundays you like to go to the gym, but

maybe it's not a habit in the technical

sense because maybe you're not just

subconsciously automatically queued into

going to the gym. Maybe every Sunday you

wake up and you're like, "Oh yeah, this

is the day I go to the gym." And you

think about it and you decide to go to

the gym and that's what you do every

Sunday. Specifically, this paper was not

measuring what percentage of their

behaviors were habits. It was measuring

what percentage of their behavior was

habitual, which is a different thing. So

this brings us to this other paper which

the video doesn't mention. How habitual

is everyday life? And in this paper they

do something quite interesting. They

randomly ping people at different times

of day and they ask them for the

behavior you're doing right now was it

kicked off by a habit? And also does

executing the behavior involve a habit

and they found different numbers. They

found 65% of the behaviors people

reported them as being habitually

instigated and 88% reported as being

habitually executed. And this raises an

interesting point. What does it really

mean for a behavior to be a habit? So

let's go back to going to the gym every

day. It might be a habit that gets you

thinking, oh, I'm supposed to go to the

gym today, right? So maybe there's a cue

in your environment that reminds you

that you want to go to the gym. Well,

that's the habit piece. But then

actually going to the gym that might be

consciously executed, right? You're

actually like thinking about the fact

you need to go to the gym, but then when

you're driving, that might become a

habit again. So in real life, often

times we've got these behaviors that are

complex. There might be habits that form

parts of them, but the whole behavior

might not be a habit. There's this thing

called the habit loop. There's three

parts [music] to it. There's first a

cue, which is a trigger for a behavior,

and then the behavior itself, which we

usually refer to as a routine, [music]

and then there's the reward. And the

reward is actually why the habit happens

in the first place. how you

>> that's an interesting perspective and I

think it's a useful perspective that

you've got the cue, you've got the

routine and you've got the reward. But

notice he said that the reward is the

reason that the habit happens and that's

not actually true. You can totally form

a habit without any reward simply by

repeating the same behavior when you

have the same queue. A good example of

this is martial arts. In martial arts,

your teacher might tell you, you know,

after I do this punch, I want you to do

this parry. You practice punch, parry,

punch, parry, punch, parry, and

eventually it becomes a habit. There

doesn't need to be a reward. Now, there

could be a reward. Maybe you feel good

about yourself every time you do it. But

there doesn't have to be. Simply forcing

yourself to do it over and over again in

response to the same cue, it will start

to become a habit. That being said, I I

don't hate the way he's presenting this

because a reward can be a powerful way

to make a habit stick. If there is a

reward, that may make the habit

stickier. It may make it faster to

produce the habit. It's just not a

necessary feature and it's often

presented as necessary. I don't know why

that is.

>> And there's this thing that's known as

the golden rule of habit change which is

if a habit is made up of a cue, a

routine, and a reward, you can't [music]

change all three parts at once. In fact,

you shouldn't even try. What you really

want to change is you want to change the

routine.

>> So this is this is an interesting idea

that suppose you have a bad habit,

right? There's some cue that occurs. You

have a routine. I don't like the word

routine because the word routine often

actually doesn't refer to a habit. But

let's just call it routine because

that's what he's calling it. You got the

queue, you got the routine or the

behavior you engage in, and then you've

got the reward. And he's saying what you

should try to do is change the routine.

So, for example, if every day at 3 p.m.

you go down and get a donut, and that's

an unhealthy behavior you want to

change. Well, you still have the cue of

it being 3 p.m., you're not going to be

able to change that. Then you've got the

reward of, you know, what you're getting

out of it. He's saying change the

routine, change the behavior. So maybe

if you're what you're seeking there is

just, you know, dealing with a little

bit of hunger, what you could go do is

eat something else that's healthier

instead. So you still get the reward of

reducing the hunger, but you've just

shifted the routine. And I think that's

a perfectly fine strategy. And often

that can be a really good thing to do.

So nothing wrong with that, but there

are other solutions. You can often just

change the queue. So for example, like

if you move to a new job, maybe now

during 3 p.m. you're going to be in a

meeting and you're going to be

distracted. you're not even going to

think about getting a donut, right? So,

I don't think it's unreasonable to say

sometimes we can just change the queue

or change your environment so the queue

happens less often or doesn't happen at

all. So, this is a video about habits

from Ted Ed and they have 22 million

subscribers.

>> A seemingly automated morning routine,

for example, saves you both time and

precious mental energy. Still, many

people have habits that no longer serve

them. Yet, research shows that

intentions alone often fail to lead to

long-term behavior change. Well, that's

absolutely true. Intention is an

important part of behavior change. It's

not everything there's to behavior

change, but if you don't even intend to

change, then you're probably not going

to. In our framework for behavior change

called the 10 conditions for change, you

can actually see where intention fits

in. We have intention as the third part

of a behavior change. So, you first

consider the behavior, then you desire

to engage in it, and then you intend to

engage in it. And these are key elements

that can help a behavior actually

happen. But so intention is part of it,

but there's a lot more to behavior

change than just intention. Let's go to

Huberman. This is from Andrew Huberman.

You've probably heard of him. He has 7

million subscribers. He's famous for

talking about self-improvement, but also

bringing in neuroscience into the

discussions.

>> Now, many people think that habits are

just like reflexes. But pure reflexes

are things like the eyelink reflex. you

know, something comes toward your eye

and you don't want it to get in your

eye, you'll blink. Those aren't habits.

Those are what we call hardwired

reflexes. Habits are things that our

nervous system learned, but not always

consciously. Sometimes we develop habits

that we're not even aware of.

>> That's also a good point. We have many

habits that we don't learn consciously,

right? We just when a queue happens, we

engage in behavior. It happens again and

again. Eventually, it's a habit. You

know, an interesting example of this

would be let's say you have a foot

injury and you get some pain walking a

certain way. And so what happens is over

a period of a week, you start walking a

bit differently than normal to avoid the

pain. As you're walking, you keep doing

this over and over and over again. You

could actually develop a habit of

walking in a different way than you

normally do. None of it was conscious.

You never tried to do it, but you've

learned a new habit of how to walk.

>> Now, this is absolutely critical to

understand for the following reason.

Another thing that you'll hear out there

in the literature is that 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? Well, it turns out that

there's excellent peer-reviewed data on

this. There's a study published in 2010

first author Lai Ly. 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.

>> The study he's talking about is one

where you have different individuals

trying to form the same habit. And yes,

there can be a wide variety of times it

takes to form the habit. That's

absolutely true. But habits can also

happen much faster. Let's say, for

instance, you want to form a habit that

every time you walk through a doorway,

you want to be mindful. Well, you could

actually practice that habit. You could

do it hundreds of times today purposely

walking through a doorway and then being

mindful. Walking through a doorway being

mindful. And also every time you do it

naturally, just when you happen to walk

through a door, you try to be mindful as

well. You could actually form the habit

in one or two days. So thinking in terms

of number of repetitions is probably a

more natural way to think about habits

forming than in terms of number of days.

But there are other factors that matter

too. How consistent is that Q that sets

off your behavior? If the Q is the same

every single time and it's always going

to be the same, then you can form a

habit more easily. But if the Q is

really varied, it might be harder to

form the habit because you have to learn

an association between that Q and that

behavior and you have to learn all the

different variations of that Q that

might occur. If you're trying to learn

to every time you walk through a doorway

to be mindful, it's easier to do that if

the doorway is always the same exact

doorway. But if you're going to be in

different places every day, it may take

longer to form the habit because your

brain has to learn to associate all

kinds of different doorways that all

look different that present different

stimuli to go along with that habit. If

you sometimes miss the queue and don't

engage in the behavior, it's going to

take longer for it to become a habit.

So, I really recommend if you're trying

to form a new habit, try to hit the

queue every single time with that

behavior at the beginning, right? Try

not to miss a single instance of the

queue. just to always engage in that

behavior when you hit the queue and that

will make it go faster. If you're

interested in forming a new healthy

habit, you can use our app Thoughtsaver.

It's available for iPhone, Android, and

web, and it helps you design and stick

with your perfect daily routine. This is

my first time ever doing this format, so

if you enjoyed it, please let me know in

the comments and I'll do more. If you

want to learn more about psychology, I'd

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our channel. We put out new videos every

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