For human beings, settling down long enough to form habits is comforting. It gives us the feeling of stability, like we'll always live in that particular Toronto waterfront condo. Habits also help streamline our lives by removing the thinking and planning stages from our necessary daily chores. But sometimes habits can interfere with our lives too. Sometimes we develop habits that are comforting but are also damaging rather than useful. If that happens, we may have to think about consciously trying to break the habit. To do that, we have to know how habits form.

The first time you perform a new behavior, you usually have no idea whether or not it will grow up to become a habit. We try new things all the time and if they work we keep them and if they don't work we discard them. So how can you tell whether checking up on the latest Toronto blogs before your morning coffee will become a habit? There are some clues that you might notice. First, does performing this new behavior make you feel good? Better or calmer? Does it take the place of another behavior you dislike? Do you find yourself looking forward to doing it again? If so, the new behavior might become a habit.

Often we don't even notice when we're forming habits. Perhaps one day you phoned a Toronto airport taxi to drop you off at work because you were too late to catch the bus and you discovered that it was much faster and more comfortable to ride in a cab, even if it was more expensive and worse for the environment. Once you've discovered it, you find yourself missing the bus more and more often so you'll have to call a cab. And then finally one day you give up on even the pretense of intending to catch the bus. At that point, your habit is fully formed.

The trick to stopping bad habits like the taxi one before they become set routines is to notice that you're forming them. To do that, you need to keep your brain engaged. Think to yourself: what am I doing right now? How is it different or similar to what I did yesterday? What are the benefits and drawbacks of what I'm doing? If you do that, you can stop yourself before you end up having to put up your houses for sale in Toronto to afford your cab habit.

Not all habits are bad, however, at least not all the time. If you notice that every day after work you're coming home and wiping down the counters of your luxury condos in downtown Toronto, that's good hygiene. But if your habit gradually expands to cleaning the entire condo, that's obsessive and it's probably interfering with your life.