The difference between a habit and a routine can sometimes be confusing.

The key difference between a habit and a routine is a habit is something that you do regularly without much thought whereas your routine is something you do in a sequence like following a standard procedure and is performed mechanically.

One is done without much thought the other is done by following a standard procedure. Now we have the difference out of the way, let’s define each term so you will gain a better understanding.

An example of a habit is something that you do often or regularly, often without thinking about it. Another example of a habit is brushing your teeth after every meal or nail-biting is a habit.

An example of a routine is a newborn baby routine. In the newborn routine, one of the parents will get up early to feed, change the diaper, play and nap and so on. Another routine can be your weekly Saturday morning walk, read the paper and have coffee at the local cafe.

How Do We Form Habits?

The Habit Loop

In order to understand how a habit is a form, we need to look at elements that make up a habit: a cue, a routine, and a reward. This flow of these three elements is what we call a habit loop. To be able to form or break a habit we need to understand each of these three elements.

The Cue

The cue of the habit is essentially the trigger of the habit. The cue can generally fall into three types: a location, a time of a day, other people, an emotional state or an immediately preceding action. An example of a cue could be the smell of a coffee or the music from an ice cream truck. The cue triggers the brain to resist or satisfied the cue.

The Routine

This is the component we tend to associate habits with like smoking or drinking water instead of soft drinks.

The Reward

The reward provides positive reinforcement for the desired behavior and is what makes you want to repeat the same routine the next time. This can be the chocolate or watching Netflicks and what the brain helps decide if you want to repeat this step.

How Do We Break The Habit?

In order to break the habit, we need to break down the entire process and isolate the cue, routine and reward. For example, the habit of going out to buy a hot chocolate downstairs at 3 pm can be broken down into the following.

1. Cue – 3 pm and I Bob bring back a hot chocolate.

2. Routine – I will go downstairs for a walk to the cafe and take a bit of refresh air and sunlight. I will walk up and down the stairs instead of taking the lift. Once at the Cafe I buy my coffee. By breaking this down I initially think the hot chocolate is the reward.

3. Reward – But after analyzing this, I find the reward is, in fact, getting out of the office and getting some fresh air and taking the stairs to get the body moving. After studying this habit, I now make a cup of tea and go downstairs for a walk to get some fresh air instead of hot chocolate.

“A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” ― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

How Do We Form Routines?

Routines can create consistency for our daily schedule, help with time management and getting things done. There are two sides to a routine. It helps us with improving our efficiency and effectiveness if its design properly and can also hinder us if we don’t think about what we do in our routine. A negative routine can be an after-work routine where you arrive home, go to the fridge, grab a beer, chips and watch TV.

In order to create or modify our routine, we need to find our motivation for the routine. Why are we doing this routine? What is our motivation?

We can design a new routine based on what we want to achieve from it. If we want to have a healthy morning routine we can decide to wake up 45 minutes earlier each day and go for a 30-minute walk and read for 15 minutes.

You can breakdown your routine into components and decide whether you want to add to it or modify it.

Adding some positive steps into your routine could be a plus. Instead of going home and watching Netflicks straight away, you can brew a nice cup of tea and snack on something healthy and read a book f,or 30 minutes.

What Next?

Now we know what the difference is between a habit and a routine and how each one is made up we have the tools:

a) Design a new habit or break/modify an old habit

b) Design a new habit or break/modify an old routine

Interpreting The Concepts Learned and Applying it!

I will let you in on what I am doing at the moment. I have listed all my good and bad habits and routines I want to develop, modify and stop.

How To Change My Habits Worksheet

It goes like this…..

1. Create 2 headings on a page and Good Habits, Bad Habits

2. For Bad Habits, which one do I want to change the most

3. I will then prioritize the habits I want to change most and on the next page, I will dissect the habit using the Habit Loop Method mentioned earlier.

4. I will identify the cue, routine and reward for each of the bad habits.

5. Once this is identified, I will go ahead and work out how to change my habit by substituting the reward for something else.

How to Design Your Routine

1. Write down all the daily and weekly routines you have. For example the Morning Routine, Laundry Routine, Sunday Morning Routine, Workout Routine etc

2. I suggest you put Monday to Sunday on a piece of paper. Write down Keep, Eliminate and Modify

3. Analysis them and determine which one is something you want to keep, eliminate or modify.

4. Proceed to prioritize the ones you want to eliminate and break down the tasks you do in the routine.

5. Determine whether you can move them to the other routines.

6. Redesign your other routines and optimize them.

If you like I can create a more comprehensive cheat sheet for this if you comment below. If I get more than 10 comments for a cheat sheet – I’ll create one for you.

Final Thoughts…

Of course, what’s covered in the blog post gives you an overview and I recommend a few books to read if you are interested in this topic

Recommended Books

• The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in Life and Business
• Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
• The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (before 8am) by Hal Elrod

These books provide you a deeper understanding of Habits, How to Build Good Habits and Break them and also developing a life-changing routine.