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How to break bad habits, scientifically

And understanding the habit loop

Kai Wong
4 min readJan 23, 2020
Photo by My Life Journal on Unsplash

Do you want some help with your New Year’s Resolutions?

Have you picked up some bad habits while trying to make new ones?

Each year millions of Americans start to peter out in their resolutions around this time, while many more create bad habits while trying to make new ones.

Maybe you’re eating out a lot more because it’s convenient to after going to the gym.

Maybe you’re drinking too much coffee because it’s easier to do so to remain productive at work.

The traditional way of dealing with this is to cut out the triggers: but that might just eliminate your New Year’s resolutions.

So what do scientists say you should do?

Track it.

The simple method for tracking bad habits

We’ve heard about tracking before. Bullet journals, to-do lists, picture diaries, the list can go on and on.

But honestly, tracking habits shouldn’t be that complicated.

The goal is simple: you want to be aware of how you’re feeling when you decide to indulge in a bad habit.

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Kai Wong
Kai Wong

Written by Kai Wong

7xTop writer in UX Design. UX, Data Viz, and Data. Author of Data-Informed UX Design: https://tinyurl.com/2p83hkav. Substack: https://dataanddesign.substack.com

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