Introduction: Creating Habits to Break the Cycle of Procrastination
What if procrastination could be defeated with habits so automatic they require no willpower? Procrastination often thrives on indecision and mental fatigue, but by forming simple, effective habits, you can turn daily tasks into seamless parts of your routine. In this blog, we introduce the third and final step in the ‘3 Strategy Action Plan: Stop Procrastination in Its Tracks’: Create New Habits. With strategies rooted in behavioral science, you’ll learn how to transform your environment, leverage cues, and use habit stacking to make productivity effortless.
This final step builds on the momentum of BLOG 10, where you broke down overwhelming goals into smaller steps, and BLOG 11, where the 5-Minute Rule helped you overcome the resistance to starting. By integrating these steps into habits, you’ll create a sustainable system for long-term productivity and success.
Strategy #3: Create New Habits
Building habits is one of the most effective ways to overcome procrastination and make daily tasks feel automatic. Habits allow your brain to function more efficiently because they require less conscious thought and decision-making. The more you turn certain tasks into habits, the less mental energy is required to get started, making it easier to stick to your goals over the long term.
Research by Dr. Wendy Wood, a leading psychologist in the field of habit formation, highlights the critical role of habits in everyday behavior. According to Wood, habits account for approximately 43% of our daily actions, many of which we perform without even thinking about them. This is because habits rely on automaticity—a process where behavior is triggered by specific cues in the environment, requiring minimal conscious effort (Wood, 2014). The goal is to set up these cues so that positive behaviors, like working out or meal prepping, become second nature.
How Habits Help Reduce Procrastination
When you create a habit, your brain uses less energy to make decisions. This is crucial because procrastination often arises from decision fatigue—the mental exhaustion that comes from having to make too many decisions throughout the day. Every time you debate whether to go to the gym, prep your meals, or work on a project, you’re using up valuable cognitive resources. By the time the end of the day comes, your brain is tired, and it’s much easier to procrastinate. But when a behavior becomes a habit, the decision-making process is eliminated, reducing the likelihood of procrastination.
Dr. Wendy Wood explains that habit formation involves creating specific cues or triggers that prompt a desired behavior. These cues can be environmental (like seeing your gym clothes laid out) or time-based (like exercising first thing in the morning). Over time, your brain associates the cue with the behavior, and the behavior becomes automatic. When this happens, you don’t have to rely on willpower or motivation, which can fluctuate, to get things done. Instead, the behavior becomes an automatic response to the cue.
The Science of Habit Formation: Cues, Routine, and Reward
Wood’s research breaks habit formation down into three key components:
1. Cues: A cue is a trigger that signals your brain to begin the habit. It could be an external reminder, like putting your gym shoes by the door or setting an alarm, or it could be a particular time of day. For instance, if your goal is to work out regularly, a simple cue like seeing your workout clothes laid out the night before can prompt you to follow through with your workout in the morning. Cues help remove the mental energy required to think about what you should do next.
2. Routine: The routine is the actual behavior you want to turn into a habit, such as exercising, meal prepping, or stretching. Once you’ve established a routine in response to a specific cue, the behavior becomes automatic. Over time, repeating the behavior in response to the same cue strengthens the habit.
3. Reward: Finally, the habit loop is reinforced by a reward. In this case, the reward could be a sense of accomplishment after completing a workout or the satisfaction of having healthy meals prepped for the week. Rewards provide positive reinforcement, which strengthens the habit loop and makes it more likely that the behavior will continue.
This three-step loop—cue, routine, and reward—helps behaviors become ingrained as habits. Once the loop is established, your brain begins to anticipate the reward as soon as it recognizes the cue, making it easier to follow through on the behavior.
How to Apply This: Using Cues to Eliminate Decision Fatigue
Procrastination often results from having too many decisions to make. For example, if you decide to go to the gym after work but haven’t set out your workout clothes or planned your session, you might feel overwhelmed by the choices you need to make. You might think, “What should I wear? What workout should I do? Do I have time to go?” This leads to decision fatigue, making it easier to put off the workout altogether.
However, if you create simple, automatic habits, you remove the need to make those decisions. For instance, laying out your gym clothes the night before serves as a cue to trigger the habit of going to the gym. By the time you wake up, the decision has already been made for you. This small step eliminates unnecessary thinking, reduces resistance, and gets you moving.
Wood’s research also highlights that the more consistent the cue, the stronger the habit becomes. For example, if you always prep your meals at the same time on Sunday afternoons, your brain begins to associate Sunday afternoons with meal prep. The act of prepping meals becomes automatic because it’s linked to a specific time cue, making it less likely that you’ll procrastinate.
The Power of Automaticity: Reducing Cognitive Load
When a task becomes habitual, your brain doesn’t need to engage in active decision-making. This concept, known as automaticity, allows you to perform a behavior with little to no conscious thought. For example, if you always go for a run at 7 a.m., you’re less likely to procrastinate because your brain no longer views it as a decision—it’s simply something you do at that time. The process feels automatic because the habit has been ingrained into your routine.
Automaticity plays a critical role in reducing cognitive load—the mental effort required to think through and complete a task. The less cognitive load required, the more likely you are to stick to the habit and avoid procrastination. Once a habit is formed, your brain uses far less energy to execute it, which is why highly habitual behaviors, like brushing your teeth or driving to work, feel effortless.
Habit Stacking: Building Habits by Adding to Existing Routines
Dr. B.J. Fogg and James Clear, both experts in habit formation, discuss the concept of habit stacking—a method where you “stack” a new habit onto an existing one. This is particularly useful for creating new habits that support your fitness goals. For example, if you already have a habit of making coffee every morning, you could “stack” the habit of stretching or doing a quick bodyweight workout right after your coffee routine. Because the coffee-making habit is already ingrained, the new behavior becomes easier to adopt since it’s linked to an established routine (Clear, 2018).
Habit stacking works because it leverages the power of existing habits to form new ones. Your brain doesn’t have to work as hard to remember the new behavior because it’s anchored to something you already do automatically.
Practical Strategies for Creating New Habits
1. Start Small: One of the keys to successful habit formation is to start with a behavior that’s easy to achieve. For example, instead of setting a goal to work out for an hour every day, start with just 10 minutes. As you repeat the behavior, your brain will begin to recognize the cue, and the habit will become automatic.
2. Use Visual Cues: Place visual reminders in your environment to trigger the behavior. If your goal is to work out more consistently, keep your gym shoes by the door or put a yoga mat where you can see it. These cues help remind you of the behavior and make it easier to follow through.
3. Set a Consistent Time: Create a habit by linking the behavior to a specific time of day. For example, if you want to start meal prepping, choose a consistent time every week to do it, such as Sunday afternoons. The more regular the time cue, the easier it is for the behavior to become automatic.
4. Track Your Progress: Habit formation is reinforced by seeing progress. Keeping a habit tracker—where you check off each day you complete your new habit—provides a visual cue that reinforces the behavior and motivates you to continue.
5. Celebrate Small Wins: Don’t forget to reward yourself! Every time you complete your habit, acknowledge the achievement. Whether it’s a moment of self-praise or something tangible, the reward reinforces the habit loop and strengthens the behavior.
Building Long-Lasting Habits to Combat Procrastination
Habits are powerful because they make behaviors automatic. Once you’ve established the habit of prepping your meals, exercising regularly, or organizing your time, you won’t need to rely on motivation or willpower, which are often inconsistent and unreliable. Instead, the behavior becomes an ingrained part of your routine. By reducing the mental effort required to start a task, habits help you overcome procrastination and stay on track with your goals.
What’s Next?
In the next blog, we’ll dive deeper into how your environment can fuel procrastination and what you can do to create spaces that encourage action, not delays. Stay tuned!
Conclusion
Creating habits eliminates the need for constant motivation and willpower, turning actions like working out or meal prepping into effortless parts of your routine. By leveraging cues, routines, and rewards, you’ll reduce mental fatigue, build momentum, and combat procrastination with ease.
With the ‘3 Strategy Action Plan’ complete, you now have the tools to stop procrastination in its tracks: break down big goals, start small with the 5-Minute Rule, and transform tasks into automatic habits. The journey doesn’t end here—stay tuned for insights on optimizing your environment to further support your success!
