5 tips to retrain your brain and go planet-friendly

As many as half of our daily actions are habitual. From a psychological standpoint habits are not just those things we do frequently. Habit is a process which leads us to perform behaviors automatically: we don’t make a conscious choice. When we encounter a situation in which we have performed an action many times before, unless something stops us, we repeat this behavior again. The minute we are under any form of pressure because we are stressed, tired or distracted, habits dominate over our previously expressed intentions. It’s why you might intend to start cycling to work but when the morning comes around, and you’re focused on getting the kids ready, feeding the dogs and answering that urgent email from your boss, you suddenly find yourself in your car halfway to work before you even remember that you’d planned to make a change. So how to stop this automatic override? Here are five tips that help you form sustainable new habits.

1. Make a specific plan

It’s very easy to state broad general plans; “I am going to use my car less” or “I am going to eat less meat”. These plans don’t help us to form habits. To form a habit you need to plan exactly what you are going to do and when you are going to do it. And this needs to be realistic. Do you actually have the time and resources you need to do this? It is important that the situation, or ‘cue’, is clearly defined and will stand out to you. Instead of “I am going to use less energy at home” try “In the morning after I brush my teeth I’ll turn off unused electrical appliances” and “When I am cold at home I will put an extra piece of clothing on”. Once you have made these plans, write them down so you remember them.

2. Make it fun

You are more likely to follow through on your plan if it is enjoyable, and this is one reason to plan behaviors you enjoy. For example, if you want to eat more plant-based foods, find ones that you find delicious. Habits also form quicker when the behavior is more rewarding in the moment that it is performed. If you want to form a habit for something that you don’t find so fun then try to make it more fun. Link this new behavior with something else that you enjoy.

Professor Katy Milkman calls this ‘temptation bundling’. The idea is that you make a rule that you can only do something that you particularly enjoy when you are also doing something that you know you should do but often don’t want to do in the moment. In Milkman’s study the new behavior was going to the gym and the temptation was listening to the Hunger Games audiobook, but this can be applied to many situations; you only order the most delicious take-out coffee if you use your reusable mug, you only read your trashy novel when no the train, and so on. This makes you look forward to the behavior you are trying to make habitual even if it isn’t that fun in itself.

3. Change your environment

The chances that you will act on your plan are significantly increased if you make this new behavior the easiest choice when you encounter your planned cue. When we are making our plans we need to think about how to set ourselves up for success. The best way to break a habit is to not encounter the habit cue (difficult if the cue is a key part of our lives), or to make the behavior impossible, or at least harder to choose. Conversely, the easiest way to make a habit is to increase the chances that you will do it each time the opportunity (or cue) presents itself. Professor Wendy Wood calls this friction. We need to add friction for things we don’t want to do and remove it for those that we do. If you want to start walking to work instead of taking the car, hide the car keys, put your trainers by the door and set your alarm for the required amount earlier than usual. If you want to eat more plant-based foods, fill your house with those foods and make them the easiest to find. If you want to use less energy, put a big sticker over the thermostat to remind you and have a jumper close by to put on instead of turning the heating up.

4. Track your behavior

It’s easy to make a plan and then forget about it when life gets busy. In order to keep going for long enough to form a habit, you need to keep checking in to see if you are following through. If you aren’t then why not? What do you need to change about the plan or the environment? You can track your behavior in many ways: on a piece of paper on the fridge, in an app or in your diary. It doesn’t matter how you do it, what matters is that each day you note if you have been sticking to your plan and you adjust things as needed.

5. Don’t give up

How long does it take to form a habit? There is no magic number. I conducted the first study to try to answer this question and I found that the statistically modeled time needed to form a daily habit ranged from 18 to 254 days. Since then, more studies have looked at this and the averages are around two to three months. This may seem like a long time but it’s worth the effort once you have the habit you will no longer have to think about it to sustain it. While working on your habit, remember that every time you do it you are strengthening the association in your brain between the situation and the action, making it easier for you to do it the next time. Don’t give up if you miss the odd occasion. That association that you are forming is still there and you can just start building it again the next day. People often think that if they fail once, the whole attempt is lost. It isn’t. This happens to everyone. Just start again and keep going.