We often think in terms of developing better habits we need to change our outcomes or improve on our current state in terms of developing a fitness habit, developing better eating habits, recovery habits, high performance habits and any number of other things we want to do to achieve that specific outcome. This growing obsession with habits has been partly driven by popular science writers and the self-help industry, but is this type of thinking serving us or hindering us?
Firstly, let’s look at what a habit is. It is an autonomous action that is carried out in response to a specific or relevant cue or stimulus to achieve the desired outcome. It has been proposed that around 40%, or potentially more, of our daily actions are conducted through habit to conserve energy and cognitive resources for more deliberate actions or responses. Habits are then usually formed to reduce this energy expenditure when responding to certain cues that we encounter regularly within our lives or to allow those actions to be conducted autonomously…
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