HABITS FE ATURE

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by DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT

he word ‘habits’ gets thrown around a lot. Your GP

encourages you to get into the ‘good habit’ of eating five
portions of fruit and veg a day; your friend worries
about their ‘bad habit’ of checking Twitter before bed;
maybe you once had a music teacher who kept on at you
to practise your scales until they ‘feel habitual’. Or
perhaps you’ve been telling yourself that you want to
get ‘into the habit’ of going to the gym twice a week.
All this talk makes sense at a colloquial level, but
psychologists are more pedantic about it. In fact, not
everything you do, or aspire to do, frequently or regularly, is
necessarily a habit. Some of the situations above are more about
goals (what you hope to achieve at some point in the future),
ILLUSTRATION: KYLE SMART

intentions (your plans for what you’re going to do) and skills
(such as being able to hit musical notes consistently), than
about habits per se. Routines – such as going to the gym
regularly – have the potential to become habitual, but it’s not
inevitable that they will. So what exactly is a habit? And what
does it take to make one that’s ‘good’ or break one that’s ‘bad’? ´

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