{"id":16465,"date":"2024-08-27T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-27T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=16465"},"modified":"2025-11-13T11:11:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:11:14","slug":"foundation-more-than-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/27\/foundation-more-than-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"A Solid Foundation is More Than Just Good Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m launching my new program, Foundations<\/a>, in one month. It is a 12-month course designed to help you build or improve the essential building blocks we all need to live a good life. It\u2019s also a learning project for myself, which I\u2019ll be covering on the blog.<\/p>\n

A common misconception I\u2019ve seen since I first started writing about foundations is that having a solid foundation is, essentially, just a result of having good habits. <\/p>\n

Habits are essential, but focusing exclusively on habits can be misleading to both the short-term requirements for self-improvement as well as challenges in maintaining change long-term.<\/p>\n

What Habits Are (And What They Aren\u2019t)<\/h2>\n

Simply put, a habit is any behavior that has been at least partly automated. Habits are behaviors we can perform without significant effort, attention or thought.<\/p>\n

I use the words \u201cpartly\u201d and \u201csignificant\u201d here because most real-life behaviors cannot be completely automated. This was one of the central findings of Shiffrin and Schneider\u2019s original experiments on controlled and automatic processing.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

As we repeatedly perform a behavior, such as trying to form a habit or practicing a new skill, some parts of the skill get offloaded to areas of the brain that do not require conscious attention to operate. However, other parts of decision making continue to require conscious control.<\/p>\n

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Consider driving a car. When you first learned to drive, you needed to pay attention to everything\u2014from which pedal was the gas pedal to how much to rotate the steering wheel to turn the car\u2019s tires the right amount. Eventually, most of these things became mindless\u2014you just drive the car without minding the details. But, even in these cases, we still need to pay attention while we drive, or we\u2019ll get in an accident.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when we build a new habit, such as regular exercise, healthy eating, or reading more books, some components of that action get automated, making it easier to do the right thing. But it rarely reaches a point where the behavior is completely on autopilot.<\/p>\n

Habits alone are probably not enough for most people to sustain long-term changes.<\/p>\n

What Else Do We Need to Make Changes Last?<\/h2>\n

If effortless habits aren\u2019t enough, what else do we need to make long-term changes stick?<\/p>\n

I can think of several different psychological processes that make behavior change last in the long term, including:<\/p>\n