Breaking a bad habit feels like an uphill battle. Whether it’s snacking too often, procrastinating, or staying up late — we've all been there. But with the right strategy, you can transform bad habits into good ones in just 20 seconds.
What Are Habits?
Habits are the small, automatic actions we perform daily. From brushing your teeth to getting dressed in the morning, these actions don’t require much thought. This is why habits are powerful — they shape our behaviour without us even realising it.
Take a moment to think about your morning routine. Did you consciously decide to put on clothes today? Probably not. You most likely just did it - the same way you probably didn’t have to remind yourself to keep wearing your clothes all day. It was second nature, automatic, a habit.
In other words, habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. And as a result, when an action becomes automatic, the brain uses less energy for making decisions and instead can focus on other things that may need the energy.
How Do We Create Habits?
Common sense isn't always translated into action. For instance, even though most of us know that cigarettes are not good for us, and that exercise, sleep and healthy eating are beneficial to our mental and physical wellbeing, many of us choose not to act accordingly.
William James, an American educator who offered the first psychology course in the United States in the mid 19th century, stated that humans are “mere bundles of habits” and one has to implement "daily strokes of effort" to create good habits.
This is basically just the old saying of “practice makes perfect”, which means that a person would have to invest a little bit of effort every day to get the desired habitual action and make it a daily routine.
To break this down, the process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps:
- Cue
- Craving
- Response
- Reward
First, there is the cue, which triggers your brain to initiate a certain behaviour, and leads us to a craving. This craving is then the motivational force that makes us want to act. If the craving is strong enough, we respond, which in turn delivers a reward and is the end goal of the habit.
For example, when you brush your teeth, you don’t have to consciously remind yourself that you’re supposed to brush daily. I mean, often the second we lay sight on our toothbrush, we almost automatically reach for it, squeeze out the toothpaste, and begin brushing our teeth.
It has become such a strong habit, because we have repeated it so many times before, that it takes no conscious thought or self-control.
As William James put it:
“A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain ‘grows’ to their use.”
Why Willpower Isn’t Enough
One of the major factors that prevents us from doing the things we know we should be doing, is willpower. Anyone who has ever tried to maintain a strict diet knows all too well the difficulty of maintaining your willpower.
As we repeatedly deny ourselves from certain foods, we are forcing ourselves to get to a point where we all of a sudden can’t take it anymore, and the floodgates break open. This is why we can have five successful days of eating healthy, followed by two days of bing eating on fast food or feasting on a meal fit for five.
There are numerous studies that have tested this. For example, in 1996, Rob Baumeister conducted a study on the power of willpower by tempting participants with chocolate chip cookies and teasing them by placing the treats next to a plate of radishes.
While the control group got to experience the sweet satisfaction of their sugary treats, the participants in the experimental condition, whose willpower was being tested, were asked to eat the radishes. Needless to say, they weren't pleased.
After enduring this temptation, participants were then aksed to solve a 'simple' puzzle, which in reality was unsolvable. But the results of the experiement were clear and immediate. Those who had been asked to eat radishes before attempting the puzzle, made far fewer attempts to solve the puzzle and devoted much less time than the chocolate-eating participants.
In other words, those who were already worn out from having to resist the sweets and force themselves to eat vegetables, were no longer able to find the energy and motivation to fully engage in another task.
In the psychological world, this seemingly simple study revealed a significant breakthrough: willpower is really important when it comes to doing all kinds of things, but it can be drained if it is overused.
This showed that self-regulation is not a skill that can be easily and quickly learned. Just like a muscle, it gets weak, tired, and ineffective when you exercise it too much.
It makes sense then why we often give in to our old habits, to the more comfortable and easy path, as we make our way through the day. However, this invisible force towards the ‘path of least resistance’ can have a much greater impact on our lives than we think, building a solid barrier to any sort of change or growth.
The Path of Least Resistance
The path of least resistance is the metaphorical pathway that provides the least resistance to forward motion by a given object or entity, among a set of alternative paths.
In other words, the path of least resistance is the easiest course of action someone can take. For example, instead of going to the gym, we choose to stay at home and lay on the couch. Instead of working on that new business idea, we choose to watch the newest episode of our favourite TV show.
However, studies have shown that we don't get as much enjoyment out of these ‘passive leisures’ as we expect. In fact, these type of activities only gives us pleasure for about 30 minutes. Instead, spending time in ‘active leisures’, like hobbies, games, and sports, are things that contributes to our happiness.
Nonetheless, we choose to spend our free time watching TV or going out for drinks with friends, rather than engaging in sports or hobbies, simply because it requires less effort.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this 'activation energy', which in physics refers to the initial spark needed to catalyse a reaction.
The same energy, both physical and mental, is needed of people to overcome inertia and kick-start a positive habit. Otherwise, human nature takes us down the path of least resistance time and time again.
The 20-Second Rule
This is where the 20-second rule comes in. Developed by Shawn Achor in The Happiness Advantage, it’s a simple way to make habits easier to start or bad habits harder to continue.
In his book, he discussed his own struggle with behavioural change. He wanted to practice playing guitar more often while reducing the amount of time he spent watching TV.
He made a plan to play the guitar every day for 21 days. However, after the 21 days, to his great surprise, he had only crossed off 4 days. He realised that simply wanting to play the guitar, wasn’t enough to make it a habit, and he had to disrupt his default behavioural patterns. So, he came up with a different plan.
Instead of having to first go to his closet, then take out his guitar in order to play, which only took about 20 seconds, he decided to get a guitar stand, so he could put his guitar in the living room. Now, whenever he wanted to play, he could simply grab his guitar, rather than having to go to his closet to search for his guitar. This way, he was able to lower the activation energy needed to initiate the behaviour.
He applied the same 20-second rule to his TV habit. However, instead of lowering the activation energy, he increased it by taking the batteries out of the remote control and placing them in a drawer 20 second away. Now, whenever he wanted to watch TV, he had to walk to the drawer to grab the batteries and put them back in the remote control. As this requires effort, he didn’t feel like watching TV and instead played the guitar or read a book.
In other words, if you want to build or break a habit, you have to make it easier or harder to integrate the habit into your life by decreasing or increasing the activation energy.
References
- Neal DT, Wood W, Labrecque JS, Lally P. How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2012 Mar 1;48(2):492-8.
- Wood W, Neal DT. A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological review. 2007 Oct;114(4):843.
- Dunn WW. Habit: What's the brain got to do with it?. The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research. 2000 Jan;20(1_suppl):6S-20S.
- Duhigg C. The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do and how to change. Random House; 2013.
- Clear J. Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. Penguin; 2018.
- Baumeister RF, Bratslavsky E, Muraven M, Tice DM. Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource?. InSelf-regulation and self-control 2018 Jan 19 (pp. 16-44). Routledge.
- Achor S. The happiness advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work. Random House; 2011 Sep 30.