The Science of Making & Breaking Habits | Episode 53

The scientific literature and the health literature really points to the incredibly positive effects of getting 150 minutes to 180 minutes per week minimum of what's called zone 2 cardio. Zone 2 cardio is basically any cardiovascular exercise that gets you moving and your heart pumping and breathing but not so hard that you can't hold a conversation.

Think about the hardest habits to form and the habits that you most want to form that are hardest for you to adopt and maintain, and I highly suggest placing those somewhere within this phase 1 of 0-8 hours after waking.

Notifications to either engage in habits or to not engage in habits, actually, were not very effective over time. They were effective in the immediate period.... but, in the long-term, did not predict whether or not people would effectively stick to habits they were trying to stick to or break habits that they were trying to break.

This study found that for the same habit to be formed, it can take anywhere from 18 days to as many as 254 days for different individuals to form that habit.

One thing that you've probably heard over and over about habit formation is not true. And what I'm referring to is this idea that if you are very specific about exactly when you're going to perform a particular habit, that you are more likely to perform that habit. And while that is true in the short-term, it is not true in the long-term.

Regardless of what you do, the neuromodulators norepinephrine as well as epinephrine—so, that's noradrenaline and adrenaline—as well as the neuromodulator dopamine tend to be elevated during that first 0 to 8 hours after waking.

It's estimated that up to 70% of our waking behavior is made up of habitual behavior.