“Fully 43 percent of the time, our actions are habitual, performed without conscious thought.”

Why it was said

Wood reports this figure from diary studies she and her colleagues ran, in which participants recorded what they were doing and thinking at regular intervals through the day. She presents it as the first scientific estimate of how often people act out of habit, and it came out far higher than researchers had assumed.

What it actually means

If close to half of what we do runs on habit, a plan for change that relies only on intention is aimed at the smaller half. The figure does not mean we are mindless; it means the conscious mind is often elsewhere, thinking about something else while the routine carries on. That is good news as well as bad: the same mechanism that keeps an unhelpful routine going can carry a helpful one with little effort once it is established. The estimate comes from particular samples of students and adults, so it is best read as an order of magnitude, not a constant.

How to use it

1. 1Track one ordinary weekday and mark which actions you did without deciding to.
2. 2From that list, pick the habit that most affects a goal you care about and look at what cues it.
3. 3When you plan a change, plan the context, not just the intention: where, when and after what.