Habits constitute our lives. Good habits form the staircase we climb towards achievement. Bad habits form the cliff we fall from into unrest and chaos.

Each day, we walk ourselves through different habits and routines. Some of our routines may actually be defined by a lack of habits or schedule. Our routine could resemble a dearth of structure and discipline. It isn’t uncommon to get used to a lack of routine — this too is a habit.

Whether we intend to or not, everyday actions build our habits (or cement their absence). What time we wake up, our first decision in the mornings, how much Netflix we watch, the things we do before bed — things automate and become ingrained in our minds.

Habits are shortcuts. Automatic movements and actions that proceed on their own accord. They allow us to move freely and they take away many layers of choice throughout the day.

Decisions and discipline

By disciplining ourselves to a set of habits, we are free to focus our efforts and decision-making on other, unregulated tasks.

Our attention can be better placed elsewhere when we aren’t allocating our cognition to things we can automate with habits. While there is controversy about the validity of decision fatigue, the day becomes smoother when a series of choices are pre-established in your favor.

For example, the habit of going for a run every single morning automates the decision-making process for your first activity each day. Alternatively, a habit of hitting the snooze on your alarm automates your decision to wake up promptly too.

The popularity of morning routines backs this up. Waking up at the same time every morning, engaging in the same workout, same meditation, and same breakfast helps expedite the process and kickstart a productive day.

Decision-making is absent from a set morning routine because habits have already been established.

While it’s easy to give in to social media notifications, email bleeps, text message badges, and the like, habits help fortify us against fleeting dopamine hits and poor choices.

Creating a series of positive, healthy habits takes discipline. Like a muscle, the discipline strengthens with use.

Activities such as reading, exercising, meditating, drinking water, minimizing caffeine, and others are seemingly insignificant small tasks. However, mastering positive habits helps master our entire lives. It can help set the day in order, center our physical, mental, and spiritual health, and rejuvenate purpose in our lives.

Need-to-do’s

The discipline required to build the habit pays back dividends. Eventually, it can even become more difficult to avoid completing the habit. Certain things become so unequivocally need-to-do that skipping them has a more detrimental impact than fulfilling them.

Instilling a new habit as part of a daily routine takes effort at first. Practicing a new habit takes conscious and intentional striving. Some claim it takes a month, others claim it only takes 10 or 14 days.

The goal is to automate the habit so that, rather than thinking about and acting upon that habit, the habit becomes the thing that takes care of you automatically.

The roles switch; your habits take care of you after you’ve taken care of establishing your habits.

Our goal should be to transform positive habits into these need-to-do’s: an inarguable and un-skippable part of the day, one that pushes you to be a better, stronger individual.

We are our habits

While life may seem long and tortuous and unpredictable, it can be scaled down and examined within a day-by-day basis. Each day is comprised of our small habits.

Habits make up our day. Days make up our lives. Hence, habits make up our lives.

We become are habits.

The small, daily intentional actions define us and solidify the direction we aim in, the goals we achieve and don’t achieve, the failures we overcome. Without a set of positive, healthy habits, our routine is subject to our own anarchy and faulty decisions.

Without these habits, we may opt to watch television rather than exercise. We may opt for a pizza slice rather than a salad or fruit. We may scroll through social media rather than picking up a book.

Extend these less than ideal decisions across a 5-, 10-, 20- year span, and what are you left with?

An individual who routinely picks poorly? An individual incapable of establishing habits based on a life without them? An empty cavity rather than a strong, practiced muscle of discipline?

Habits protect us from these outcomes. They provide fortitude to protect us from our own vices. Habits require discipline, and discipline begets stronger, more resolute individuals.

We don’t make our habits. Our habits make us.

Author: Phil Rosen. Editor, columnist, and travel writer based in Hong Kong. Born and raised in California.