Nir Eyal defines a habit as an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. About half of what you do each day runs on autopilot. Learning to drive shows how habits form: it takes effort at first, then becomes automatic, for better or worse.
What's a habit? And why should we care about this? Yeah, so a habit is defined as an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. It's about half of what you do every single day, day in and day out, is spurred by these unconscious impulses to do things without really thinking about them. So when you learn to drive a car, right, at first you're white knuckling it, you're really nervous, you're thinking about every little thing you're doing. Then as you get more proficient, as that habit is formed, you can do all kinds of things as you're driving, right? You could talk to the person next to you. You can listen to a podcast, maybe this one. You can do all kinds of things because you've been put on autopilot, because those behaviors that you learned are something you can do with little or no conscious thought. So if we can harness those habits, then we can have them serve us in many ways. And of course, if we are not careful, we can have bad habits, which then we end up serving.
Your Beliefs Are Sabotaging You (Here's Why) - Beyond Belief for Athletes with Nir Eyal
