4 Steps to building a revision habit (6 min read)
Want a consistent revision plan? Integrate it into your habits!
Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations
-James Clear, Atomic Habits
Introduction
You know that habit where you make a coffee before you start a theatre list?
Let’s break it down into a habit cycle.
Cue: you get into work
Routine: you go to the coffee machine in the anaesthetic office, have a coffee and then start the list
Reward: you get to enjoy coffee, chat with colleagues and are mentally prepared for the day
This is a classic habit cycle.
Cue – what triggers the habit
Routine – the habit
Reward – the craving that the habit satisfies
Whilst this may be a simplified version of what happens on a day, it is a good place to start.
What this means for you
Identifying your personal habit cycles helps you build new habits.
This is exciting! We can apply it to the no. 1 habit we care about – revision!
Building the habit of revision
I will take you through a 4 step plan created by Charles Duhigg to understand and shape your habits to suit your goal.
My goal is to enhance revision time
1. Identify the routine
2. Experiment with rewards
3. Isolate the cue
4. Have a plan
1. Identify the Routine
Ask yourself some questions about the routine.
What happens when you get home from work?
I change out of work clothes, make a cup of tea, sit down and watch tv for a few hours.
There’s a window here where I could revise but that doesn’t happen.
Add it to your habit cycle
Routine: come home from work, change out of work clothes, make tea, sit and watch tv
The routine is the easiest bit to figure out. Now we need to experiment with the reward
2. Experimenting with Rewards
Rewards satisfy cravings.
Understanding cravings helps determine how to change routine.
This takes time.
Which craving is driving your routine?
i.e. are you tired and craving a mental break, are you hungry and craving food, do you feel restricted and craving comfortable surroundings?
When experimenting with rewards, try to do anything but the activity you want to replace
i.e. in my case no TV.
(cliff notes version – there was a lot of trial and error) Staying late at work to revise, not making tea, socialising instead of tv, not changing clothes, sitting on a chair instead of a sofa etc.
15 minutes into the new routine, ask yourself if you crave the old part of your routine?
My craving was feeling like I was mentally “checked out” of work. This could be achieved in many ways, including drinking tea and changing out of work clothes.
Add it to your habit cycle
I was craving mental space
3. Isolate the cue
One of the hardest things to do is to figure out what drives your habit.
Research has shown that cues are normally in one of the following 5 categories.
Every time you test a new routine, ask yourself the questions below
Where are you?
What time is it?
What’s your emotional state?
Who else is around?
What action preceded the urge?
After doing this for each change, you will notice a pattern. This is your cue.
My cue was the immediate preceding action – travelling from work to home.
Add it to your habit cycle
The habit cycle is complete!
4. Make a plan
Remember habit is a choice that we deliberately made at one point in time and continued to do so frequently that eventually we stopped thinking and the choice became automatic.
To make a new habit, we need to be deliberate about our new choice, and eventually it will be something we do on “auto-pilot”.
Planning helps us get there.
For me, this involved making an active timed reminder on my phone, getting a prompt from my flatmates and putting things all over the sofa so I wouldn’t sit down (!).
6 months later, a new habit emerged. I came home from work, made my tea, changed into relaxed clothes and started revision at my desk.
You are lucky if you see me watching more than 1 hour of TV a week!
Conclusion
Habit building takes patience and experimentation.
I failed consistently – but that didn’t stop me from trying again. Experimentation and failure is a part of life.
“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits
Let us know in the comments below how you have reshaped your own habit cycle!
References
Charles Duhigg, The power of habit. https://charlesduhigg.com/how-habits-work/
James Clear, Atomic Habits, https://jamesclear.com/
Disclaimer: I enjoy and appreciate TV – it was a sacrifice I chose to make for the examination!
