The miracle of habit

Roy Baumeister has some ideas about the importance of developing virtuous habits.

Doing what is right requires strenuous effort to resist the alluring temptations of vice.

Or is it? Could virtue become a habit — that is, a relatively effortless, automatic tendency to do what is morally right, with a minimum of inner struggle?

A recent study in which two hundred German citizens wore beepers for a week, and at random intervals reported on their desires at that moment, found that that people with good self-control avoid temptations and problem situations, rather than battling with them. Other research confirmed that self-control works most effectively by means of controlling habits, rather than by using willpower for direct control of one’s actions in the heat of the moment.

Willpower fluctuates, and you can’t count on always having enough.

Instead, if you use willpower to establish virtuous habits, the danger of succumbing to impulse or temptation is reduced.

Can you remember your initial struggles with a bicycle, a surfboard, a computer keyboard and mouse, a tennis racquet? Yet after enough repetitions, one uses those same items efficiently and effectively, with hardly a thought or error. The human mind’s ability to convert difficult action into easy deft habit is remarkable.

People with virtuous habits conserve their willpower for when they really need it.

Indeed, it is questionable whether resisting a strong temptation or impulse can ever become entirely habitual. Virtuous habits are much more successful at avoiding those temptations and impulses than trying to stifle them once they are felt.

It takes both a suitably inclined person and the compromising situation to create the maximum temptation. In such situations, habits may help some, but willpower will almost certainly be required. At that point it may be too late for habits to help much.

One can prevent inner inclinations and weaknesses from blossoming into full-blown cravings and desires by avoiding the external circumstances that trigger them.

By pulling together many small habits, especially for avoiding temptations and problems, one can live a more virtuous life.