The Habit Cycle: How We Build and Break Habits for Professional Success

You might not think about it, but many of your day-to-day actions at home and work are governed by habits you built over time. 

Just think—your morning coffee, when you first open your email for the day, and the order of people you say “good morning” to are all habits. 

So many of the beneficial or detrimental things we do at work are the product of these deeply ingrained habits. Knowing more about how you build and break them can supercharge your ability to perform at your best. 

Good habits can be transformational in your work life—they can help you focus better, make more money, and find a better work-life balance. The opposite is true, too—bad habits can kill productivity and drain your energy. 

Here we’ll discuss what the habit cycle is and how you can use it to do more of what you want to do and less of what you don’t want to do. 

What is the Habit Cycle? 

Habits are formed in a four-stage cycle. Every time you act out of habit—grabbing an afternoon coffee, for example—your brain runs through these steps. 

Building on the original work of Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, James Clear explains these stages: 

1. Cue: This is something that tells your brain to automatically let a behavior unfold.
2. Craving: The motivational force behind a habit; the desire for something that prompts action.
3. Response: The actual habit or behavior you perform.
4. Reward: The end goal of every habit. 

So if we go back to the habit of picking up an afternoon coffee, it might look something like this: 

• Cue: The clock hits 3:00 p.m. and you’re feeling a bit sleepy 
• Craving: This prompts you to think about getting a coffee for a caffeine hit 
• Response: You get up and head to the closest coffee shop (or The Post’s cafe, if you’re a member here!) 
• Reward: You take a sip and, ahhh, it tastes good and gives you the energy boost you wanted  

Knowing that your brain goes through this same cycle for every habit gives you a number of places to influence or change a habit. 

As a result, you can start to recognize habits and use them to your advantage. 

Using the Habit Cycle to Perform Better

Understanding the four stages of the habit cycle helps you control it. You can either use the knowledge to break a habit you want to get rid of or build a new, positive habit. Let’s look at both scenarios. 

Breaking Bad Habits

We’ve all got our bad habits we want to change. It might be hitting snooze, drinking one glass of wine too many, or getting sidetracked as your energy levels fade throughout the workday. 

Whatever it is, you can use the habit cycle to perform better at work and in your life. Let’s drill deeper into the habit of picking up an afternoon coffee and analyze how you might break it, which you may wish to do to save money or cut down on caffeine.

Start by asking three questions: 

• What behavior do I want to change? 
• What reward do I get from this behavior? 
• What cues trigger this behavior? 

The first is obvious—the behavior to change is picking up a coffee. 

Next, the reward. What do you get out of it? At first thought, you might think that it’s the caffeine pick-me-up. But what if you’re actually just looking for a reason to get out of the office or connect with the colleague who normally goes with you? 

To test what you’re really craving, adjust your routine slightly to test your rewards—go for a walk, talk to someone on the phone, or buy a snack instead of a coffee. If after doing those things, you go back to your desk without a coffee, you can see that the reward was not about a caffeine hit, but something else. 

The other way you can break a habit is by analyzing the cues that trigger it. There are five habit cues, each of which you should take note of surrounding your specific habit:

• Time: When do you go grab a coffee each day? 
• Location: Where are you when you feel the urge to grab a coffee? 
• Preceding event: What happens before you get a coffee? 
• Emotional state: How are you feeling when you get a coffee? 
• Other people: Is there someone around before you go grab a coffee? 

Get curious about your habit by jotting down responses to these questions for a few days and notice if there are any patterns. 

You may notice that you get coffee at 3:00 p.m. every day—time is your trigger. 

You may have a colleague who pops by your desk every day to get a coffee—other people are your trigger. 

Once you know those triggers, you can change them. You can do another activity at 3:00 p.m. or tell your colleague you don’t want to go anymore.

Building Better Habits

There are many “good habits” we all want to initiate in our lives. Common ones often surround self-care like eating better or moving more. 

But you can also think of positive habits specific to the workplace, such as speaking up in meetings, always being on time, or establishing a daily start-up and wind-down routine. 

Let’s take one habit and look at how you can establish it through the habit cycle: creating an efficient morning routine for the workday. 

Again, cues are particularly important when establishing a new habit. Think about the five cues discussed above—which one will help you establish a morning routine? 

For example, you may attach organizing your email inbox to a preceding event you already do, such as making a cup of coffee. 

Or, you may use the cue of other people and locations to be productive in the morning. In this case, choosing your workplace is important, and something like getting out of the house to a coworking space may make all the difference. 

Another question you can ask is what reward will I get out of establishing this new habit? If you get clear on the positive benefits of an efficient morning routine, you will be motivated to keep going. Habits become habits because of that final step in the loop—the reward for doing it. 

So, where do you go from here? If you’re looking to level up at work through your habits, it all starts by knowing your habits. Take some time to jot down your daily routine to see what you’re currently doing and what you may like to change. 

From there, you can use the habit cycle to increase self-awareness of your habits and make positive changes in work and life. 

Breaking and building habits gives you power over your daily life to do what you want, not just what’s ingrained into your life from old patterns. It takes time to break the subconscious habit cycle, but through awareness and self-experimentation, it’s possible to reclaim your habit cycles for the better. 

If you’re in search of a positive professional workspace that surrounds you with supportive, like-minded professionals, you’ll find it at The Post. Book a tour of The Post today.