If I am building a habit tracker, it is logical to start by figuring out what habits are!

So habits are actions that we do every day, or at least very often. But I think it goes deeper than that. I think it's the actions that we take by default. It's the behavior that we fall back into when life gets in the way. When we don't have time, or mental energy, to consciously decide what we're going to do.

This can be as simple as brushing your teeth, going for a run or more negative and self-destructive behaviors like smoking a cigarette or perhaps, to the extreme, taking fentanyl.

I think another characteristic of habits is that they are relatively small actions that have a compounding effect that over time, typically weeks, months or even years, can create very powerful change.

This can be positive change. We get fitter or more knowledgeable or better at our work. But it also can be negative where we spiral into addiction, into depression, into sleepless nights.

The science of habits is well understood. Charles Duhigg, in his book "The Power of Habit", describes the three components of a habit:

• Cue — the trigger that starts the habit (e.g., waking up in the morning)
• Routine — the behavior that we do (e.g., making coffee and smoking a cigarette)
• Rewards — the benefit that we get from the behavior (e.g., the alertness from caffeine and the nicotine rush)

This simple example shows how habits can form - the morning grogginess becomes associated with coffee and cigarettes because of the rewarding feelings they provide. Over time, this becomes an automatic response to waking up.

We can understand, create, and manipulate habits by understanding these components. When we understand the underlying mechanism, we can start to create habits that are more aligned with our life goals. This means that we rely less on willpower, and more on planning and design. And this is, in some ways, quite a radical idea. The fact that we can design and shape our behavioural patterns instead of just being at the mercy of our impulses.

So the name "habit tracker" is actually quite ironic. We are not really tracking habits at all - we are tracking actions that we hope will become habits. True habits are so deeply ingrained that they don't need tracking.

Think about it: you don't need to track brushing your teeth (I hope!), and a smoker doesn't need to track their cigarettes — they just do it when they feel like it.

A vegetarian doesn't track avoiding meat; it's simply who they are and they do it effortlessly.

This gets to the core of what a habit really is.

It's not just a repeated action, but something that has become part of your identity. It's a behavior that is so natural and automatic that tracking it would be redundant. Whether positive habits like daily hygiene or negative ones like addictive behaviors, once they are truly habits, they define who you are rather than being something you need to consciously monitor.

So when we change our habits, we're doing something profound: We're reshaping our identity.

So then to answer the original question: What are habits?

They are the daily actions that make up our identity.