Habits are routines of
behavior that are repeated regularly and tend to occur
subconsciously, without directly thinking
consciously about them.
[1][2][3] Habitual behavior sometimes goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting them, because it is often unnecessary to engage in self-analysis when undertaking in routine tasks. Habituation is an extremely simple form of
learning, in which an organism, after a period of exposure to a stimulus, stops responding to that stimulus in varied manners. Habits are sometimes compulsory.
[3][4]Habit formation is modelled as an increase in automaticity with number of repetitions up to an asymptote.[7][8][9]
Author John Tesh advises that it takes about 21 days to establish or break a habit.[10]
The habit–goal interface is constrained by the particular manner in which habits are learned and represented in memory. Specifically, the associative learning underlying habits is characterized by the slow, incremental accrual of information over time in procedural memory[11] Habits can either benefit or hurt the goals a person set for themselves.
