Page 93 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

you are doing while you are performing the habit. It saves energy.
Habitual actions can vary in length. They can be brief: seconds-long
intervals where you smile absently at a passerby or glance at your fingernails to
see whether they are clean. Habits can also take some time—for example, when
you go for a run or watch television for a few hours after you get home from
work.
Habits have four parts:

1. The Cue: This is the trigger that launches you into “zombie mode.”
The cue may be something as simple as seeing the first item on your to-
do list (time to start next week’s homework!) or seeing a text message
from a friend (time to dawdle!). A cue by itself is neither helpful nor
harmful. It’s the routine—what we do in reaction to that cue—that
matters.

2. The Routine: This is your zombie mode—the routine, habitual

response your brain is used to falling into when it receives the cue.
Zombie responses can be harmless, useful, or, in the worst case, so
destructive that they defy common sense.

3. The Reward: Habits develop and continue because they reward us—
give us a dollop of pleasure. Procrastination is an easy habit to develop
because the reward—moving your mind’s focus to something more
pleasant—happens so quickly. But good habits can also be rewarded.

Finding ways to reward good study habits in math and science is vital to
escaping procrastination.

4. The Belief: Habits have power because of your belief in them. For
example, you might feel that you’ll never be able to change your habit
of putting off your studies until late in the day. To change a habit, you’ll
need to change your underlying belief.

“I often find that when I cannot bring myself to start something, if I go for a quick run or do
something active first, when I come back to it, it is much easier to start.”

—Katherine Folk, freshman, industrial and systems engineering