Breaking a bad habit is usually treated as a test of character. It is closer to a problem of furniture: at four o’clock the kettle goes on, the biscuit tin sits beside it, and your hand is in the tin before you have decided anything at all.

Most advice on how to break a bad habit aims at the wanting. Habit research points somewhere less flattering and more useful: the action is set off by the situation around it, and that is where the work is. In a 2016 Annual Review of Psychology article, Wendy Wood and Dennis Rünger argue that the difficulty of changing an established habit is not a failure of willpower but that the old behavior keeps being triggered automatically by the cues around it.¹ Four moves follow from that:

1. Write down when the habit happens
2. Take the cue out of reach
3. Write one if-then sentence that names the replacement
4. Plan for the slip, and for the return of old cues

Why willpower alone rarely breaks a bad habit

Willpower arrives too late. A habit is a link, learned by repetition, between a situation and an action, so by the time you are resisting, the situation has already brought the action to mind. Wood and Rünger’s review puts the difficulty there rather than in weak resolve or a fondness for the old behavior.¹

Deciding harder is not the answer, then. Their review summarizes Webb and Sheeran’s 2006 meta-analysis of 47 studies that changed what people intended to do: the new intentions moved behaviors people perform only now and then, such as enrolling on a course, and left behaviors that could be repeated into habits, such as seat belt use, roughly where they were. Even if-then plans, the best-tested planning tool here, fail to control many strong habits.¹

The biscuit tin makes the point every afternoon. Your intentions have not changed since breakfast, when you meant to stop; what changed is that you walked into the room where the habit lives. If the mechanics are new to you, start with how repetition turns an action into a habit.

One check before you start, because the two problems people call bad habits need opposite tactics. In diary studies run by Jeffrey Quinn and colleagues, only a small minority of what students were trying not to do were strong habits; far more were temptations, promising an immediate good feeling.²

The cheapest change is to the room, not to you

The strongest lever on an old habit is the setting that triggers it. Take the cue away and the habit has nothing to start it, which is why habits often fail to survive a move unless part of the old surroundings moves too.

Wendy Wood, Leona Tam and Melissa Guerrero Witt tested that on people who were moving anyway: 115 students transferring to Texas A&M University, surveyed a month before the move and a month after. Strong habits carried over only where a piece of the old context came too: students kept exercising where the kind of place stayed the same, at home or at a gym, and kept reading the newspaper where they still read it with others around. Where the context changed, behavior in some cases came back under intentional control and followed what people currently intended.³ Nobody was assigned to move and the behavior was self-reported, so this shows a pattern rather than a proven cause.

Researchers have tried to use that moment. In a field experiment by Bas Verplanken and Deborah Roy, a program encouraging greener household behaviors was more effective among participants who had recently moved house than among matched households that had stayed put, and the authors put the window of opportunity at three months after a move.⁴ Those behaviors were self-reported, and we read only the abstract of that paper.

You do not have to move house to use this. The everyday version is making the cue harder to meet: the tin goes in a cupboard in another room, the phone charges in the hall, the app comes off the home screen. That is not willpower, it is an afternoon of moving objects, and it works when you are tired.

There is a timing lesson too. If a move, a new job or a changed shift pattern is coming, that is the cheapest moment to drop a habit, because many of its cues disappear without any effort from you.

Name the replacement, because a refusal can rebound

If-then plans are the best-tested planning tool here, and the wording decides whether they help. A plan that names a replacement action at the moment of the cue has good evidence behind it; a plan phrased as a refusal can leave you worse off than no plan at all. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 independent tests of if-then plans in 2006 and found a medium-to-large benefit for reaching goals. They also report why the structure works: forming the plan made the named opportunity easier to notice and made the planned response more automatic.⁵

Marieke Adriaanse and colleagues at Utrecht University then asked what happens when the plan is a negation, as in: if I feel like a snack, then I will not eat one. Across their experiments, negation plans produced an ironic rebound in thought and in behavior, compared with both a replacement plan and the intention alone, and the rebound was likeliest when the negated habit was strong.⁶ We read only the abstract of that paper.

Myth

Breaking a habit starts with a firm rule: from now on, no biscuits at four.

Fact

In Utrecht University experiments, if-then plans phrased as a refusal rebounded, especially for strong habits. Plans naming a replacement action did not.

The same group’s meta-analysis of 23 studies of if-then plans and eating found the tool somewhat stronger at adding healthy foods to a diet than at cutting unhealthy ones, and cautioned that some of those adding effects may have been inflated by weak comparison conditions.⁷ So a replacement plan helps rather than guarantees, and it is weaker at subtraction than at addition. In practice it has to name something you will do at four o’clock, such as carrying the mug to the window, rather than a rule about the tin.

1. The cue: the moment the habit starts; Wood and Rünger list features of the physical setting, other people and the action just before
2. A plan that only says no: in Utrecht University experiments, plans phrased as a refusal produced an ironic rebound in thought and in behavior, most of all when the habit was strong
3. A plan that names a replacement: the same cue now has somewhere else to go; the old route is drawn faded, not gone, because old habit memories can persist

Clinical practice rests on the same principle. Habit reversal therapy, used for repetitive behaviors such as tics and nail biting, teaches what the UK’s NHS describes as intentional movements that compete with the tic, so the two cannot happen at the same time.⁸ A 2011 meta-analysis of 18 studies with 575 participants found a large average benefit against control conditions.⁹ The NHS lists it among the main therapies for more severe tics and says to see a GP about tics, so it is a treatment to arrange with a clinician, not a home routine.⁸

Further reading

• 

  Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick

  by Wendy Wood

  Wood's book on changing the settings that trigger a habit, the approach this guide builds on.

As an Amazon Associate WiserHours earns from qualifying purchases.

What to do once the cue has already fired

When the urge is already there, the best-supported move is the least appealing one: think do not do it, and watch yourself for slips. In two diary studies of US students, run by Jeffrey Quinn and colleagues, that was rated more successful against strong habits than stepping away from the situation, though stepping away was rated the better tool against strong temptations.

The study

Limited evidence

A week of pocket booklets: what students did about their own bad habits (Quinn and colleagues, 2010)

Students carried booklets for a week or two, noting within minutes each attempt not to do something and the strategy used. About one in ten of those unwanted acts were strong habits, done almost daily and mostly in one setting; a third or more were temptations promising an immediate good feeling. For the strong habits, vigilant monitoring, meaning thinking “don’t do it” and watching for slip-ups, was rated more successful than removing themselves from the situation; for strong temptations the order reversed. A follow-up word-pair experiment pinned down why: monitoring strengthened control over the response rather than reducing habit strength.²

Two things are worth keeping from that. The strategies swap places depending on what you are fighting, which is part of why generic self-control advice disappoints. And in the lab it was a holding action rather than a cure: control strengthened, habit strength did not shrink.²

The caveats are real: US students, self-chosen strategies, self-rated success, and word pairs standing in for real habits in the lab. So treat monitoring as what you do at four o’clock while the moved tin and the replacement plan do the slower work.

How to break a bad habit, move by move

Here is the whole thing as a fortnight of work. The record comes first, because everything after it is built on what it shows.

1. Write down when the habit happens

For one week, note each time it happens: the time, the place, who was there, what you were doing just before. Across 138 randomized studies pooled by Benjamin Harkin’s team in 2016, keeping track of progress toward a goal raised the chance of reaching it, more so where the record was written down.¹⁰ Those studies were about pursuing goals rather than about dropping habits, so the fit here is approximate.

2. Take the cue out of reach

Move the thing, not yourself: another room, behind a door, off the home screen, out of the drawer you open every morning. The aim is not to make the habit impossible but to make the old cue miss you. If the habit is phone-shaped, the same principle drives a practical reset of your phone and apps.

3. Write one if-then sentence that names the replacement

Give it a time, a place and an action you will actually do: if it is four o’clock and the kettle is on, then I will take the mug to the window and drink it there. Name the action, not the refusal.

4. Plan for the slip, and for the return of old cues

Slips are not a verdict, and old habits are not deleted. Wood and Rünger report that learning a new behavior does not necessarily replace the old memory traces, so the habit can come back when its old cues do.¹ Keep the record going for a few weeks after it seems gone, and expect the old room, the old company and the old hour to make a fresh bid.

WiserHours

A two-week plan

• Week one: write one line every time the habit fires
• Circle the two or three situations that appear most
• Move, hide or switch off whatever starts it
• Write one if-then sentence naming what you will do instead
• At the moment itself, think do not do it and watch for slips
• Keep the record for a few weeks after it seems gone

Find this checklist online:
https://wiserhours.com/habits/how-to-break-a-bad-habit/#checklist-how-to-break-a-bad-habit-plan

How strong the evidence is behind each move

The four moves do not rest on equally solid ground, and the move most guides recommend rests on none. Each row pairs a move with the strongest evidence we found for it.

When a habit needs more than a plan

Some habits are not a self-help problem. Where smoking, alcohol or other drugs, gambling, or eating that feels out of control are involved, the route is a doctor or a specialist service rather than a cue-and-replacement plan, and this guide does not cover them. The US National Institute of Mental Health points people to a primary care provider first, and to federal treatment locators and professional directories from there.¹¹ The three levels of urgency are our grouping.

• Now: for thoughts of suicide or self-harm, NIMH points to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which takes calls, texts and online chat, and to 911 or the nearest emergency room where life is in danger.¹¹ For the UK, the NHS gives 999 or A&E where a life is at risk; short of an emergency, an urgent GP appointment, or 111 online or by phone, choosing the mental health option; plus the free Samaritans listening line on 116 123.¹² Anywhere else, your local emergency number.
• Soon, in the next days or weeks: a habit that is harming your health, or one you have tried and failed to change several times and that is getting worse, is worth a doctor’s appointment rather than another plan.
• Routine: mention it at your next appointment if the habit is costing you money, sleep or relationships, or damaging skin, nails or teeth.

The bottom line

Breaking a habit is closer to rearranging a room than to passing a test of character. Find the situation that starts it, make it harder to meet, settle beforehand on what you will do at that moment instead, and expect to watch for slips a while after it seems finished. If a habit involves substance use, gambling, or eating that feels out of control, or is causing real distress, the next step is a doctor, not a better plan.