# What habits are

A habit is anything that psychology broadly classifies as "conditioned response". Unless we're making a [conscious](humanity.md) [choice](people-decisions.md), our behaviors are dictated by habits.

Habits are a type of neurological [story](stories.md) with a relatively simple mechanism:

1. A **trigger** or craving is an [emotional](mind-feelings.md) burst of dopamine based on a subconscious [imagination](imagination.md) of a [result](results.md).
   - We regard it as enough of a [perceived fact](reality.md) that we [believe it](understanding-certainty.md).
   - Triggers can be either environmental (e.g., sight, sound, or sentence) or in our perceptions (e.g., memory, [feeling](mind-feelings.md), a simple thought).
2. A **method** of [thinking](understanding.md) or [doing](results.md).
   - Methods always represent as a series of smaller, programmed steps.
   - Recursively, most of the programmed steps are additional habits.
3. A **reward** as another dopamine flow that sits at the end of a method.
   - The reward could be *anything* real or imagined, including a feeling or sense of duty.
   - That reward comes through a [belief](understanding-certainty.md) that the current incident will play out the same way we encoded a prior experience in our [memory](mind-memory.md).

Another way to see habits is as the transition our conscious [decisions](people-decisions.md) to the subconscious.

Habits are more powerful than mere [decisions](people-decisions.md) because they bypass our conscious mind, which removes our [internal negotiation](conflicts-inner.md) from the [decision-making](people-decisions.md) process. They are effectively the long-term way we [conform](people-changes.md) to a situation.

We don't usually need to learn *how* habits work because they work automatically, though awareness of our habits can be useful for [diagnosing](https://adequate.life/fix/) a failed [decision](people-decisions.md) or [consequence](results.md).

We chemically experience pleasure when we create the [results](results.md) we [expected](imagination.md), but it's diminished when we don't.

[Addictions](addiction.md) complicate this situation through a type of [religious devotion](religion.md) to the substance.

Starting with [infancy](maturity.md), we build habits into ever-increasing structures:

1. Before people can talk, they attempt to imitate their guardians. They build associations between sounds and ideas ("baby talk") and try basic activities ("grab").
2. With routine use, those sounds become clearer and compound into elaborate expressions ("toddler speak") and complex maneuvers ("using a fork").
3. Through rote memorization, they learn and can reproduce representations of familiar sounds and ideas ("[language](language.md)") and develop fine motor skills ("writing").
4. After enough [experience](understanding.md), they chunk their habits together to understand and communicate complex ideas ("words/sentences/paragraphs") and increase their motor skills even further ("cursive writing").
5. If you're reading this, you've done it without paying attention. You're so reliable at it that you'll fix the typos as you red automatically (as you may have just noticed).

## Automation

Everything with a routine or pattern can (and will) become a habit. Habits simplify life because they removes the need to think about mundane matters by using information in [the environment](reality.md) instead. In fact, they do such a good job that they *prevent* [self-awareness](awareness.md) when left alone.

By adulthood, 90% of our lives' decisions are automated into habits:

- [Language](language.md)
- [Purchases](money-saving.md) for routine things
- Daily activities
- Unspoken [social rules](people-rules.md)
- [Lying](people-lying.md)
- What we [expect](imagination.md) from others
- [What we would like to do](imagination.md)

Habits are extremely persistent because each habit provides *two* [emotional](mind-feelings.md) spikes of dopamine:

1. We can often perform a task that has no more reward to it, but starting it made us feel good.
2. We can do things we don't like, but prior experience at the end makes us [expect](imagination.md) it will feel good.
3. Even when a task is no longer rewarding in any tangible way, the familiarity of it can still provide a rewarding experience.

[Mathematically](math.md), habits have an exponential curve. The first month may produce 4 of something, the second produces 12, the third 40, and so on, up until we reach [logistical](logistics.md) constraints defined by our available [technology](technology.md).

Living "[in the moment](awareness.md)" is the only way to fight habits' eventual takeover. Anytime we feel an impulse or urge, a habit is triggering.

As we [age](maturity.md), habits become increasingly difficult to change, mostly because our brains run *many* neural pathways along highly-used pathways. It's always possible for us to change, but we tend to [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md) it more as we get older because we've grown accustomed to the way we've done things.

Since we're not directly conscious of most of our habits, time passes *much* more quickly when we let them run our lives. People will remember the events of their first 20 years (especially [adolescence](maturity.md)) much more than the next 30 because there are comparatively few *[new](image.md)* events that require new [decisions](people-decisions.md).

## Adaptations

Humans are the only creatures on this planet that can stop mid-habit and question their actions and thoughts. That knowledge gives us the profound [power](power.md) to change our flow of behavior with new [decisions](people-decisions.md).

Whenever the pleasure of a reward lasts for more than 8 seconds, it's hitting *far* more than mere animal stimuli. At that point, it affects our [souls](humanity.md).

APPLICATION: To change our habits, we must control our methods, since we can only control our triggers in a [cult](culture-cults.md) and have no control over the [results](results.md) directly.

The pleasurable reward for habits [diminishes](results.md) as we do it more frequently, and is a huge component of [diminishing return](economics.md).

We can develop pleasure from the habit of *not* doing a habit as a type of counter-habit. Since our experiences are so relative, abstinence can sometimes *intensify* our pleasure.

Further, we can reprogram a pleasurable reward from painful things that give *no* outward benefit, and this is often a key component of [success](success-5_persevering.md)

Mental disorders from our [upbringing](people-family.md) can make a relatively non-moral matter into a [moral one](morality.md), which can severely constrain our lifestyles.

Even when there's no benefit, we typically [feel](mind-feelings.md) comfortable with what we're familiar with. Our [guardians](people-family.md) raised us in a [culture](people-culture.md) we believed as children to be "the best way" irrespective of [reality](reality.md), and it's not uncommon for people to persist in it, at least partly.

However, a minority of people will break so hard from their culture that they feel more comfortable with change than familiarity. These people tend to [break rules](morality-taboo.md) and start [trends](trends.md). If they're [successful](success-1_why.md) enough, their [risks](socialrisk.md) will pay off.

## The good and bad effects of habits

Habits are a neutral mechanism. While all virtues are good habits, as well as all [outward success](success-1_why.md), habits also magnify [evil](morality-evil.md) and [failure](results.md) as well.

APPLICATION: While habits are inherently neutral, the results they create and their [original motivation](morality.md) can determine if they're good or bad. Staying on top of them requires [changing](people-changes.md) to attain the [results](results.md) you want.

One of the benefits of habits is that they free up our mind to think about other things. If we *still* [analyze](logic.md) our established habits instead of letting the subconscious perform the tasks, we tend to produce inferior [results](results.md) than if we had simply [trusted](trust.md) our habits.

[Bad habits destroy us](https://adequate.life/habits/). We usually permit bad habits because they provide short-term benefits, and we tend not to [feel](mind-feelings.md) long-term adverse consequences without training. Or, to put it more plainly, hard work pays off tomorrow while laziness pays off now.

Life is relatively short, but the experience becomes shorter when we don't perceive reality from habitual patterns. Thus, it serves well to do habits that build [the good life](goodlife.md) and stop all destructive habits immediately to avoid making life even *more* short or [meaningless](meaning.md).

APPLICATION: Habits compound, so we can't afford to let another day persist in knowing a bad habit and not [wishing](purpose.md) to change it. It only gets harder as we get older.

APPLICATION: Habits are a string of pleasure/method/pleasure. For that reason, it can string together into other habits (pleasure/method/pleasure/method/pleasure). Over time, it can lead to *severe* results:

- pleasure/method/.../method/pleasure of [transforming millions of lives](goodlife.md)
- pleasure/method/.../method/pleasure, and now being [arrested](people-rules.md)

One unique quality that [humanity](humanity.md) has compared to any other organism is the ability to stop mid-habit and ask, "Why am I doing this?" We can do it *constantly*, but it can often be stifled by [trauma](hardship-ptsd.md). If someone experiences enough trauma [as they age](maturity.md) without resolving it, they become completely automated into strange, largely obsolete patterns.

The only way to kill a bad habit is to either spend lots of time *not* doing the habit, or to reprogram the habit to something else as a reward. Quitting outright is very difficult, and even *years* later can surge back again if we do it only once. Reconditioning a habit is much easier and is frequently the only difference between failure and [success](success-1_why.md) at pretty much anything.

APPLICATION: Bad habits are wildly destructive, but they're not irredeemable. People can [change their methods](habits.md) to suit their needs while sidestepping the adverse behaviors that first caused their issues.

## Meaningfulness

If anyone finds [meaning](meaning.md) in some aspect of performing a habit, it's a tradition.

Traditions [maintain society](people-culture.md) and [bind groups together](groups-small.md), mostly in how practicing them reinforces what everyone already [knows](understanding.md).

APPLICATION: The value of tradition comes through how much we find meaning in it, so getting a *[group](groups-small.md)* to find meaning requires several simultaneous approaches:

1. Give the same thing for the low-openness people.
2. Give new things for the high-openness people.
3. Make a small part of it mandatory that involves *everyone*, and the rest being optional as people desire to do it.

However, traditions only have value to the degree they're not boring. As soon as they're boring, they're simply a mindless set of tasks to accomplish a [purpose](purpose.md). Each of our [personalities'](personality.md) openness to new experiences dictates how fast we get bored.

Over time, if a tradition becomes a set of mindless tasks, and [the younger generation](maturity.md) is successfully [suppressed](people-conflicts.md), the [group](groups-small.md) will forget the original purpose for the tradition.

APPLICATION: The mechanism of convention (i.e., habits across society) explains many elements of society:

- Companies rarely cut wages in a recession (it violates workers' expectations and hurts moral), and instead prefer to lay people off
- Every major car company releases its new models in September, even though there would be less competition if each company released its cars in different months
- Clothing retailers apply a simple 50% markup, then give gigantic discounts if the items don't sell
- It costs as much to see a lousy movie in its last week of release as a hugely popular film on opening night
- Grocery stores are capable of always having stock available, but don't have to throw much food away compared to what they're selling