How to Overcome Bad Habits

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We associate some trigger with a response that we think is harmful, like eating a donut at 2 p.m. or doing drugs whenever certain friends are around. A more effective way to combat the bad habit is to replace it with something that tries to satisfy the same thing. So if you're hungry, then maybe eat something helpful at 2 o'clock and that's your new habit. Or if you're tired, maybe take a brisk walk at 2 O'clock or maybe have a cup of black coffee,.

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How can we form good habits more effectively? What roles do reward and punishment play in the habit formation process? And what roles should they play? How should we structure our daily schedules around new habits to maximize the likelihood that they'll stick? If our goal is to do 100 push-ups a day, it's often easier to start with 10 and increase the difficulty over time; but at what level of difficulty should we start, and how quickly should we approach the target difficulty? How does willpower connect (or not) with habit formation? Why should we care about animal consciousness? When it comes to estimating how much good specific interventions will do, are bad estimates better than no estimates at all?

Dr. Jim Davies is a professor of cognitive science at Carleton University. He is the author of Imagination: The Science of Your Mind's Greatest Power; Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make us Laugh, Movies Make us Cry, and Religion Makes us Feel One with the Universe; and Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You. He co-hosts (with Dr. Kim Hellemans) the award-winning podcast Minding the Brain. Learn more about him at jimdavies.org or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

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