January 14, 2024

What are your bad habits? List at least 3 and identify the cue that triggers the habit, the behavior, and the reward you get. What behaviors can you due instead that match the same cue and reward?

Laura Waltje
January 14, 2024

Hello friends,

Today, I want to think about how we can transform the habits that we want to change into habits that serve us better.

As a brief summary for anyone who missed yesterday, I was introduced to the idea of habits being made up of cues, behaviors, and rewards through Charles Duhigg's book The Power of Habit. Cue triggers the behavior and most often falls into one of these five categories: Location, Time, Emotional State, Other People, and Immediately preceding action. Routine/Behavior is the good or bad habit we are trying to identify. Reward is the reason we keep coming back to this habit.

Like yesterday, I recommend breaking up today’s journaling into a few different sections.

(1) For the first five minutes, make a list of all of the habits you would like to change. Don't censor yourself as you write this list.

(2) Once you have your habit list, for the next 5 minutes, try to find the cue and reward for each of the behaviors you listed. If you did the first section for a full five minutes, you likely have more habits listed than you have time for when you are trying to identify cues and rewards, so if you get stuck, skip that habit and go back to it if you have more time at the end.

It will be tempting as we look at habits today to look at negative ones, for example, not sleeping enough, not exercising enough, not eating healthy. I recommend either skipping those or trying to rephrase them as the behavior you actually do and want to change. Instead of not sleeping enough, try staying up late to play video games.

(3) For your final five minutes, look at each set of three and try to find a different behavior that matches the cue and reward.

Take 5-15 minutes and write about

What are your bad habits?

List at least 3 and identify the cue that triggers the habit, the behavior, and the reward you get.

What behaviors can you do instead that match the same cue and reward?

Part 1: Listing habits I'd like to change
Multitasking
Waking up too late
Not exercising
Overpacking my bags until they break
Having my phone in bed
Eating too quickly
Forgetting to turn off the lights at night

I’m proud of myself that as I am reviewing last years list of habits I’d like to change, I was able to address a lot of them. Last year, I bit my nails a lot and scrolled on my phone a ton. There are some habits though that I still have that I’d like to change.

I also realize that I don’t do a lot of things I wish I didn’t, but there are a lot of things I would like to be doing that I currently don’t.

Part 2: Identifying cue and reward
cue: being overstimulated; feeling time pressure
behavior: Multitasking
reward: false sense of productivity

cue: Needing to bring more than I have space for
behavior: Overpacking my bags
reward: feeling like I have everything I need

Part 3: Replacing the behavior
cue: being overstimulated; feeling time pressure
behavior: Doing 1 minute of mindfulness breathing using my watch
reward: actual sense of calm and clarity

cue: Needing to bring more than I have space for
behavior: Unpacking my bag fully and removing 2 items
reward: knowing I have everything I actually need

I hope today’s journaling exercise will give you some clarity about the behaviors in your life that no longer serve you and make you feel empowered to replace them with new habits that better match your goals.

I’ve also noticed for myself that writing my journal response at the same time as I write my contextualization doesn’t lead me to writing my own responses as deeply as I’d like. That is partly because I already address some of that in my contextualization. I think I might try switching to handwriting and then sharing a photo of what I’ve written. I’m trying to figure out whether it makes more sense to do my responses first or try to batch some of the contextualizations. I think I’ll try prepping some of that tomorrow.

Your friend,
Laura