Imagine you are asked to build a house; you might put down the foundation and, brick by brick, build the structure. Our habits and daily routines are not so different from the process of building a house: after all, they are consistent behaviours we develop over time that become the building blocks of our lifestyle.
In psychology, habits are understood as actions we end up taking as a response to specific contextual cues that are connected to our actions. To put it simply, habits like brushing teeth at night are always done after dinner, or going for a walk may be done before taking a bath. Habits become automatic over time for many people (there may be exceptions among neurodivergent people), and we might do many of our habits on autopilot. But routines are a more conscious way we structure our day with things we want to achieve, and there is a chance routines are not as automatic as habits.
But both routines and habits can be helpful for our mental well-being, especially when paired with interventions like therapy or medications, whenever necessary.
But why are we talking about routines or habits?
A paper highlighted that one of the major concerns is how effective an intervention is, dependent upon adherence to the changes suggested/prescribed (Arlinghaus & Johnston, 2018). In simple words, consistent changes in our lifestyle can be very helpful in seeing positive health-related outcomes from therapy, medications or other goals (like exercise).
So, how do we set a routine that works?
A paper on types of routines elaborated on the two categories that we can divide them into (Hou, et al. 2020):
Primary Routines:
These include behaviours needed for maintaining livelihood and biological needs, such as hygiene, sleep and eating.
Secondary Routines:
Individual circumstances, motivations and preferences and include exercising, leisure/social activities and practices associated with work or study. including time management and meeting goals.
Building a routine is not easy and can look very different for people, many of us try to pack our day with as many things that we can. But that could be demotivating, especially if we are repeatedly unable to maintain our routine. Being able to complete our tasks (that we plan to do throughout the day) can release dopamine, which plays a significant role in habit formation because it creates a sense of fulfillment after we successfully complete a task (Wyatt, 2024).
A routine that incorporates the primary needs of people and the secondary needs in a sustainable way, has more promising effects on our lifestyle.
- Combining both Primary and Secondary Needs for our routines: For many of us, it can be easy to forget our basic needs to pursue greatness. Seriously though, many people would consistently sleep poorly to give more time to work. But a routine that prioritizes both can have long term benefits for us. Focusing primary needs like:
- Sleep: Sleep is probably one of the most crucial aspects that influences how we feel throughout the day. Consistent sleep deprivation can hamper our attention, memory and problem solving ability (abilities that we require in her daily life).
- Balanced food habits whenever possible: This can be difficult for some people, depending on the cost of groceries and how much time they get to cook during the week. But, maintaining a balanced routine around food can have long term benefits for our wellbeing (especially if we have health-ssues that directly or indirectly affect our mental health)
- Maintaining basic hygiene as much as we can (people with severe depression may struggle with this). This might seem trivial to many people, but for people struggling through depressive periods, grief, anxiety, work stress, sometimes, these “trivial” things can either become a struggle or ways they ground themselves. When making a routine, focusing on these primary actions can be grounding when nothing else seems possible.
- Making our daily routine realistic:
- It can be very tempting to do the most that we can each day of our life but that is hardly a realistic way to live through life. For many of us, it can be too many things to do in a day and since we aren’t machines, we might be unable to complete our daily to-do lists. Building a routine that focuses on 3-4 tasks and doing them regularly and consistenly can help us turn them into daily habits.
- Focusing on 1-2 primary needs (maybe financially, eating a balanced meal is not always possible, so focusing on consuming one nutricious meal, or when going to the gym isn’t possible replacing them with regular walks) and catering them to our life situation can be a good way to habituate ourselves. Secondary routines like taking an hour out of the day regularly to learn a new skill that might help with workplace promotions, focusing on building a hobby even if for thirty minutes out of the day can be beneficial long term. This way we can maintain a lifestyle that is not too focused on work or inactivity.
- Giving ourselves a break: It is natural to have hurdles where we are not able to always follow our routine. A last minute meeting, travelling for work or maybe a family emergency, unpredictable things can happen and in those days if we can focus on only one of the things in our daily routine (maybe only making sure we could get proper sleep or even making sure we could go for a walk) can be grounding. But even if our routine goes awry, we can still go back to how things were; these situations aren’t permanent.
- Relying on discipline rather than motivation: Usually, researchers have focused on habit formation more than on routines, and while habits are dependent on a cue (brushing your teeth after waking up), which also becomes easier to do without thinking over time, not every part of our routine will feel automatic. In such cases, building a discipline-focused routine system rather than a motivation-focused routine system can yield better adherence. What that looks like is focusing on 2-3 things to do every day, irrespective of where we are, and focusing on doing these behaviours at least once per day or for 5 minutes (for some people it can look like trying to get at least 6 hours of sleep regularly, physical activity daily and spending at least 4-5 hours in a week learning something new). That way we can build a practice of doing an activity regularly, rather than doing too many things inconsistently.
When building our daily routine, we also need to account for daily breaks between our tasks (many of us won’t look forward to learning a new skill after a long day of work, and we are less likely to consistently maintain it). Many of us might never get used to exercising daily or other aspects of our routine because we consciously make choices that will benefit us in the long term. So, it is all the more important that, even if part of the routine doesn’t become a habit, we still try to be as consistent with it as we can, using the aforementioned pointers.
References:
Arlinghaus, K. R., & Johnston, C. A. (2018). The importance of creating habits and routine. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 13(2), 142–144.
Hou, W. K., Lai, F. T., Ben-Ezra, M., & Goodwin, R. (2020). Regularizing daily routines for mental health during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Global Health, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.10.020315
Wyatt, Z. (2024). The neuroscience of habit formation. Neurology and Neuroscience, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.33425/2692-7918.1063
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