We now have one of the best-ever opportunities to change bad habits

“The skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.” That’s Virginia Woolf on fine form, zeroing in on the thought that we’re not just creatures of habit, but given shape, made who we are, by the habits we have. If you buy into that even a little, what do you do with the thought that the pandemic has thrown our everyday routines into disarray?

Maybe here is a bit of welcome news in the middle of all the doom and gloom: the virus gives us the chance to remake ourselves for the better. It has broken our habits for us. Do we have a unique chance, right now, to shape ourselves into the people we’d like to be?

Some of you may have had enough of self-help advice and think now is not the time to take aim at the comforts you’ve got left, and that is absolutely your right. But for those who want to persevere, there are reasons to be hopeful.

According to a raft of surveys emerging from all over the world, our habits really have been disrupted across the board. Some of the news is not inspiring when it comes to diet, at least during lockdown when many of us were variously sedentary, bored and anxious. Researchers found evidence of a 52 per cent increase in snacking in Poland. Almost half of Italians surveyed said they gained weight. Another Italian study put weight gain down to “comfort food” bingeing in response to anxiety—the consumption of chocolate, ice cream and desserts was up by 42.5 per cent.

There’s evidence for the unsurprising possibility that we stayed in bed a lot more too, although many reported getting less quality sleep than before the pandemic. Unhappily, this was not caused by having more sex, at least in southeast Asia, where research discerned no substantial difference in sexual activity during lockdown—apart from “autoeroticism,” which increased by 40 per cent for those stuck indoors.

It wasn’t all binge eating, naps and onanism. Some habits did change for the better, even in parts of our lives where many of us struggled the most: exercise and diet. A study involving participants from 139 countries found that people who normally exercise one or two times per week increased exercising by 88 per cent. In America, those who usually jog found themselves jogging more often and further. Dumbbells, resistance bands, and kettle bells sold out in online shops.

At the start of the pandemic in the UK, food researchers found a 34 per cent reduction in the waste of certain staples. The number of shopping trips per week dropped, with people buying more all at once, planning their big shops more carefully. With restaurants closed, we found ourselves cooking more often, and many paid more attention to what they were eating. No more fast food impulsively snagged on a lunch break; instead, a bit of reflection and choice figured into our meals.

The picture is clearly a complex one, with different groups responding in diverse ways. But some news is straightforwardly good. NASA spotted a drop in pollution in locked-down cities. Annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 might be down anywhere between 4 per cent and 7 per cent. For many of us, usually shoehorned into cities, the lockdown world smelled fresher, cleaner and generally better, and with air and road traffic reduced, it sounded better too. Even before travel restrictions eased, beauty spots were crammed with those not just testing their eyesight, but appreciating precious time outdoors.

There has also been an effort to be a bit more decent, marred here and there by the occasional headbutt over masks or toilet paper. There are now over 4,000 mutual aid groups listed by the Covid-19 Mutual Aid UK website, supporting people self-isolating and others needing help. At the start of the pandemic, the NHS Volunteer Responders initiative recruited 750,000 people in just a few days.

The question is, how much of this good stuff will stick? Can we keep the positive changes we’ve made and do something about the bad habits that have crept into our lives?

According to some in the behavioural change biz, the answer is a hearty yes. Habit, this story goes, has four parts: cues, cravings, routines and rewards. Whether it’s rats in a maze or college students in a cafeteria, a cue triggers a craving, which becomes associated with a reward, and the sequence of behaviour in between, the routine, gradually cements itself in our plastic neurons—"hardwiring” an unthinking habit into an otherwise blameless life. The trick is to remake this process, deliberately choosing the habits we want.

Enthusiasts claim you can just plug better routines into your life by attaching them to existing cues and comparable rewards; maybe you can find healthier rewards for existing routines, or you could just avoid the relevant cues that lead to behaviour you don’t like. The good news is that our routines are now disrupted, some cues are absent, new rewards tug us in better directions—a lot of the hard work has been done for us.

Well, kind of. This story is almost certainly too simple and too quick. As we tiptoe out of lockdown, find our way back to offices, public transport and pubs, we do have a chance to change the habits of a lifetime, but an element of realism is required—swapping routines, rewards and cues isn’t all there is to it, and it probably won’t be easy.

For a start, think about motivations. What led to your new lockdown habits in the first place? We might be walking and cycling more, but maybe that’s because we’re afraid of contagion in the close confines of a bus. Fear is a fine catalyst if you want to encourage a short-term freak out, but it’s a notoriously bad long-term motivator. A study of more than 100 behaviour change strategies found the least effective were those that encouraged fear and regret. So if a vaccine appears, motivations for change based on the fear of contagion might very quickly fade, and along with them the uptick in cycling.

But positivity works, and happily we can think about our motivations and talk ourselves into more permanent, positive ones. We can choose to think less about contagion and more about the good things cycling can bring us: better health; cheaper, more pleasant and often faster travel; and doing our bit for the environment. Reflect on that stack of positive motivations, and you’ll help the new, good habit sink in. Look around for similar positive reasons for the changes you want to make stick and bring those front of mind.

Much also depends on the kind of habits we’re talking about. “Habit” covers diverse phenomena, from a morning jog to smoking, and obviously some habits are harder to shift than others. Some changes which cost us little and have obvious, quickly spotted benefits might be the ones that stick easiest. Cycling fits this bill, as do tweaks to dietary choices. No surprise then that the government is investing in both cycling and reducing obesity. The nudge unit is on point.

If you do decide to take hold of your habits in this strange time, there is one huge thing on your side: the realisation that you most definitely can do things differently. It’s a bigger deal than might you think. Those who make significant changes to their lives sometimes talk about a barrier you and I no longer have: a difficulty even imagining living a different life. The alcoholic who can’t picture being without booze or the couch potato unable to take seriously the prospect of going to the gym—they’re stuck in mindsets which stop them from changing. We’re not. Breaking any habit requires the realisation that we might do otherwise, and it’s very hard for any of us to deny the possibility of real change now, across huge swathes of our lives. We’ve had that first difficult step taken for us, what we do now really is up to us.