Repetition is the Key to Forming Habits

Repetition is the key to hacking your brain to form good habits – or so the science suggests.

A study published in Psychological Review demonstrated that, contrary to what you might have thought, the formation of new habits doesn’t really depend on how much you enjoy the action in question – it depends on how often you repeat it.

"Psychologists have been trying to understand what drives our habits for over a century, and one of the recurring questions is how much habits are a product of what we want versus what we do."
– Dr Amitai Shenhav, one of the study authors

The study involved a mathematical model using ‘digital rodents’, with the next stage involving humans in real-world scenarios. If the results are consistent, it’ll be quite clear that repetition, rather than reward, is the key to forming good habits.

Maybe there’s a good deal of wisdom in those habit trackers that have been trending in the Bullet Journal community!