Habit, routine or ritual?

During my time in exercise prescription I generally subscribed to the idea that if you can make your exercise a habit, it will stick and all will be solved. “It takes 6 months to build a habit”, I recited. “Find some cues for exercising and it will become an automated habit that you will not have to think about. You will break that ‘bad’ habit of inactivity”. I have been reflecting on those times and realise that I had been following some fairly shaky assumptions around habits.

We catch ourselves parroting things that we have read or heard. Things that we probably had not thought too much about – but repeated them as facts. But what do these things really mean? How accurate are they, and what are the impacts of those words on others? Where did that 6 months figure really come from? Lally et al. (2010) offered participants in their study the option of trying to develop a simple eating, drinking or physical activity habit. It took an average of 66 days for those habits to be automatic – so less than 6 months! But the more telling statistics from their study were that habit formation ranged from 18 to 254 days ( I struggle with 18 days being a habit!), 15% dropped out of the study, and an activity habit took 1.5 times longer that the others. Without long term follow up, who knows how long those supposed ‘habits’ actually continued.

Beshears et al. (2021) recruited 2500 Google employees, trying to reinforce habit development by offering cash incentives if participants attended a work based gym during specific hours. They found that the programme with incentives and rigid routines seemed to be counterproductive to habit formation. Those permitted to attend at their discretion had better attendance regardless of incentives. So I remain unsure about the science of habits, the likely time frame and indeed the value of developing a habit around exercise. Now that last point might seem a little strange to you.

The problem I have is that habits are things that we supposedly do automatically without much thought. Established habits involve consistent behaviours that usually take place at the same time, same place, and in response to similar cues. That’s OK for getting my teeth brushed, but I am not sure that I want my exercise to be that way. I concede that mindless exercise might work for some, they may prefer it that way. But I want physical activity to be more mindful. Something that was enjoyed at the time, enjoyed after the fact, or as something to look forward to. I know that is not going to work for everyone, but I feel as though inactivity is going to dominate as long as we keep packaging physical activity as this ‘bitter medicine’ or unpleasant act that must be done. We can do better!

We should forget seeking to form habits, instead promoting the idea of routines. Routines take conscious effort and require deliberate choices, and to me those are good things. Routines have some flexibility in that they are under the control of the individual, they are associated with specific goals and aims and are amenable to social and lifestyle factors that may conflict with that routine on that day or at that time. If it is a rigid habit and not mindful, participants are likely missing some of the joy of physical activity, being in nature, or interacting socially with others – the very things that ultimately convince us to continue those routines.

References for interest

Beshears, J., Lee, H. N., Milkman, K. L., Mislavsky, R., & Wisdom, J. (2021). Creating exercise habits using incentives: The trade-off between flexibility and routinization. Management science, 67(7), 4139-4171.

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C.H.M., Potts, H.W.W., Wardle, J. (2010) How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world. Eur J Soc Psychol. 40:998-1009.