Habit is automatic behaviour.

There are 3 components that build up a habit:

1. Cue
2. Behavioural response
3. Rewards

Let’s take an example, eating habit.

Cue: time, behavioural response: eating, rewards: pleasure of eating our meal.

Once a habit is formed, you will do that habit automatically based on the cue, no more based on any internal goals or motivation you designed.

Since it works like that, we can leverage our environment to produces cues for good habits.

Focus on Cues

Many of us, when talking about building a new habit, are focusing their effort on the behavior part. Well, most of them are ended up in failing situations. It turns out building a new habit is about giving us a cue as clear as possible so we can do that habit without even thinking of denying it.

For example, if we want to have an exercise habit, we can simply put ourselves in working out clothes every 5 a.m. in the morning. We programmed ourselves to have that cue so every time we wears that suits at 5 a.m. it’s time for exercise. It sounds easier to say than to do, in fact, it’s how we build a habit from consciously. We should keep doing it until our brain take it as a daily routine and we can do the exercise auto-pilot without feeling struggle at all.