How Better Habits Can Make Your Day

Crucial though it is, willpower doesn’t act alone. It is channeled–or undermined–by our daily routines, the patterns of behavior we mindlessly follow. So contends The Power of Habit, a new book by New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg. More than 40% of the actions we perform each day are the product not of deliberate decisions but of habit, Duhigg notes, and many of these rote activities work against what we consciously desire, as when we put too much food on our plate despite wanting to lose weight.

Fortunately, it’s possible to change our habits. The “golden rule of habit change,” according to Duhigg, is to keep the old cue (the signal that leads you to initiate a routine) and the old reward (the gratifying experience that reinforces the routine) but insert a new routine in place of the old one. If getting home from work is usually a cue to flop onto the couch and munch chips while watching TV, put a pair of laced-up sneakers by the front door. Substitute a new routine–an early-evening run–for the old one of snacking, but keep the reward: after exercising, allow yourself to watch your favorite show. Repeat this often enough and you will have a habit you want to keep.

With Duhigg’s ideas in mind, let’s consider a typical weekday morning, when the routine involves jumping up at the alarm’s buzz, diving into the shower and rushing out the door with barely a moment to think. A stressful commute gets your blood pressure climbing. Once at the office, you glance through the newspaper’s array of discouraging stories. With a sigh, you pour yourself a cup of coffee and get down to work, ready to do some creative, original problem solving.

Good luck with that.

The habits most of us follow each morning, it turns out, run exactly counter to the conditions that neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists tell us promote flexible, open-minded thinking. Our hurried wake-up leads us to miss imaginative insights, which are most likely to come to us when we’re groggy and unfocused. The stress of our commute can damage the substance that insulates our brain cells. And reading downbeat news hampers our ability to solve problems creatively.

The only thing most of us do right, in fact, is drink coffee. Caffeine increases the brain’s level of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that promotes feelings of motivation and reward when we hit on a great idea.

So what would a better morning routine look like? We’d set the alarm to go off a few minutes early and lie awake in bed, following our thoughts where they lead (with a pen and paper nearby to jot down any evanescent inspirations). We’d stand a little longer in the warm water of the shower, dismissing task-oriented thoughts (“What will I say at that 9 a.m. meeting?”) in favor of a few more minutes of mental dilation. We’d take some deep breaths during our commute instead of succumbing to road rage. And once in the office–after getting that cup of coffee–we’d direct our computer browser not to the news of the day but to a funny video. Laughing babies and a double latte: now that’s a routine with which to start the day.

TO READ ANNIE MURPHY PAUL’S WEEKLY COLUMN, GO TO time.com/brilliant