We are all creatures of habit. Whether we want to to improve our fitness or to eat better, to spend less time on TikTok or screens, many of us regularly strive to ditch our unhealthy habits, start afresh, and become fitter, stronger, more focused, more attentive to our families and friends, and ultimately happier.
Nearly half of us fail. A study published in PLOS One (2020) followed more than 1,000 participants who made resolutions for one year to track their success in introducing a new habit or breaking a bad one. The most popular resolutions were physical health, weight loss, and eating habits.
After one year, just over half (55%) of participants successfully sustained their resolutions. Participants introducing a new habit were more successful (58.9%) than those avoiding a bad habit (47.1%).
A paper in Annual Reviews (2016) describes how actions are deliberate during the early stages of habit formation and activate the decision parts of your brain (the pre-frontal cortex). Instead of hitting the snooze button, you decide to get out of bed.
With the formation of a new routine, brain circuits or neural networks are activated, making the habit automatic and subconscious. The more often you repeat the action, the stronger and more efficient these neural networks become. This reorganising and strengthening of connections between neurons is called neuroplasticity.
Dr Wendy Wood, psychology and business lecturer at the University of Southern California and the research’s lead author, describes how you need more minor cues or triggers to activate the same network of cells each time you perform a new action.
Catherine Roscoe Barr, a wellness coach and author of Feel Better Now (2025), suggests that we can manipulate new brain networks that strengthen habits by consciously reflecting on how habits affect us.
Manipulating these new brain networks involves reflecting on how unhealthy behaviours make you feel bad and healthy behaviours make you feel good. Then, write them down, tell someone about them, and re-read what you’ve written.
“When you see the data that you’ve done what you said you would do, you develop a belief in yourself,” she writes. “You can use the mind to change your physical brain and hardwire that belief. When you see the data, you know that it works.
Public health doctor Dr Catherine Conlon
Public health doctor Dr Catherine Conlon
“It convinces your brain through your own words and your own writing that yes, indeed, this is really powerful.’
Experts advocate another tool for hardwiring a new habit: getting on a roll and trying not to “break a streak”. I have been known to march around the house at the end of the day to reach my daily 10,000 steps goal.
The word puzzle Wordle, developed by Josh Wardle in 2021, became a global hit. It motivates people to keep going and not break their streak by missing a day.
Streaks can motivate us to build good habits, ditch bad ones and help us reach goals. Behavioural scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of How to Change, Katy Milkman suggests that keeping a streak can motivate people because “there’s something bright and shiny they can reach for. There’s a prize, in a sense, making you more motivated to get a thing done.”
Author of Good Habits, Bad Habits, Dr Wendy Wood adds that turning a streak into a habit can make it easier to repeat. “Get yourself to repeat something often enough — and in the same context — and ultimately it might become automatic, “ she says.
Believing you can change a habit is also critical. A study in Computers in Human Behaviour (2022) highlighted how believing in change and being aware of its potential, along with your commitment to practise, is key.
James Clear, author of the hit Atomic Habits, suggests the best way to form a new habit is to tie it to an existing one. For example, a morning coffee can be tied to a one-minute meditation or (carefully) standing on one leg. Flopping on the couch at the end of the day might be a good time to do a single yoga pose.
Stanford researcher and author of Tiny Habits BJ Fogg notes that big changes in habits require so much motivation it can become unsustainable. Incremental changes are more doable in the long term.
Fogg describes how he started a daily push-up habit with just two push-ups in the morning, progressing to 80 push-ups daily.
A European Journal of Social Psychology study (2009) found that it could take 18 to 254 days for a task to become automatic. The average time was 66 days.
Research suggests it’s possible to form new healthy habits, but they are more likely to last if we start small, build them incrementally, do them often and try to maintain a streak without a break. Make a note of your successes and tell everyone who will listen.
Habit stacking — tying a new habit to an old one — can make all the difference.
Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor