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0How to form good habits, and break bad ones: trick your brain
Did you make any resolutions this new year? If you did, are you keeping to them? Well done if you are. Polling in America suggests half of new-year resolvers give up by the end of March. More rigorous scientific studies confirm, regardless of when you start, that it takes months for a new behaviour to stick.
Habitual behaviour emerges in response to dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure, being produced as a consequence of a certain action. Two brain systems are involved. One, in the basal ganglia (a set of structures deep in the brain’s interior), responds automatically and predictably to certain stimuli. For example, your morning alarm is a stimulus that activates your “getting up” habit. This will include sub-habits such as “shower”, “make coffee”, “get dressed”, “drive to office” and so on, each with their own triggering stimuli and dopamine reward.
The other brain system, which is goal-directed, is located in the cortex, that organ’s outer layer. Its dopamine reward comes from a deliberate action being successfully performed. This goal-directed system can, if needs be, override the stimulus-response one. For example, if the radio tells you of a traffic problem, the “drive to office” subroutine will need conscious modification.
For one-off modifications of habits, this arrangement of routine and override works well. But permanent changes, such as either breaking an old habit or making a new one, require, respectively, weakening the stimulus-driven system to reduce the pertinence of old stimuli and strengthening the goal-directed one to increase that of new ones.
In a paper published in January, Eike Buabang and his colleagues at Trinity College, Dublin, review the evidence behind various ways in which this can be done. In practice, most proven approaches seem to operate on the stimulus-response side of the equation. Deliberate repetition, that stalwart of hopeful resolution-makers, trains the brain so that what was once goal-directed becomes automatic. In the case of driving to work, the incentive to do this is high (you won’t get paid otherwise). For things more easily abandoned, reinforcement with small rewards (whether the kick of having lost another kilo at your weekly weigh-in or the praise generated by language-learning or fitness apps) works similarly. To break an unwanted habit, on the other hand, consider removing familiar stimuli: moving house, for example, is known to help—though calling in the removal vans is a drastic approach to resolution-keeping.
Why people learn bad habits in the first place remains mysterious. Most habits form precisely because they are helpful. Automatic behaviours, such as those involved in a morning routine, reduce cognitive load and free mental resources for other tasks, such as working out what to say in the ten-o’clock meeting. But these mechanisms can be subverted. The nicotine inhaled by smoking tobacco—a type of habit so powerful that it has a special name, “addiction”—stimulates dopamine production directly. This is something natural selection could not have foreseen. Non-addictive habits like procrastination are harder to explain.
In the end, though, all this science continues to support the idea that, when it comes to habit-formation, good, old-fashioned willpower is the way forward. As the old joke has it: “How many psychoanalysts does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.”
resolution /ˌrezəˈluːʃn/ n. 决心
例句：Her resolution to quit smoking collapsed when she saw colleagues vaping.（看到同事抽电子烟后，她的戒烟决心瞬间崩塌。）
辨析：resolve（v.）表坚决决定，determination 更强调持久性。
dopamine /ˈdoʊpəmiːn/ n. 多巴胺
例句：Scrolling short videos triggers dopamine release, making it hard to stop.（刷短视频会触发多巴胺分泌，让人欲罢不能。）
stimulus /ˈstɪmjələs/ n. 刺激（复数 stimuli）
例句：Morning alarms act as stimuli for coffee-making routines.（闹钟声是触发煮咖啡习惯的刺激源。）
override /ˌoʊvərˈraɪd/ v. 覆盖
例句：Willpower can override the urge to check WeChat during work.（意志力能压制工作时刷微信的冲动。）
procrastination /prəˌkræstɪˈneɪʃn/ n. 拖延
例句：Binge-watching dramas is classic procrastination behavior.（狂追剧是典型的拖延行为。）
近义：delay（中性），procrastination 含贬义。
addiction /əˈdɪkʃn/ n. 成瘾
例句：Social media addiction rewires brain reward circuits.（社交媒体成瘾会重塑大脑奖赏回路。）
辨析：habit（习惯）可好可坏，addiction 指病态依赖。
reinforcement /ˌriːɪnˈfɔːrsmənt/ n. 强化
例句：Fitness apps use virtual medals as positive reinforcement.（健身APP用虚拟勋章作为正向强化。）
反义：punishment（惩罚）
cognitive /ˈkɑːɡnətɪv/ adj. 认知的
例句：Multitasking increases cognitive load, reducing efficiency.（多线程工作增加认知负荷，反而降低效率。）
搭配：~ load（认知负荷）
deliberate /dɪˈlɪbərət/ adj. 刻意的
例句：Deliberate practice is key to mastering any skill.（刻意练习是精通技能的关键。）
反义：automatic（自动的）
rigorous /ˈrɪɡərəs/ adj. 严格的
例句：*Rigorous scientific studies debunked the 21-day habit myth.*（严格科学研究证伪了21天养成习惯的说法。）
近义：stringent（严厉的），但 rigorous 侧重精确性。
