Having been through our own zero waste journey we know how hard it can be to break free from old shopping habits and ditch the conveniently packaged food. Which is why we wanted to share some awesome habit building tips from habit expert James Clear and his book Atomic Habits.
James came to write Atomic Habits through his own life experiences and discovering the benefits of what he calls Atomic Habits. As James writes “I knew that if things were going to improve, I was the one responsible for making it happen….It was a gradual evolution, a long series of small wins and tiny breakthroughs.”
If we want to make a change, it’s on us but sometimes the change we want to make can seem overwhelming- like changing our often automatic food shopping habits - which is why its helpful to understand habits, what they are and how they’re formed so we can make our habits work for us.
What is a habit?
“A habit is a routine or behaviour that is performed regularity - and in many cases, automatically.”
“Habits are, simply, reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment.” (behavioural scientist Jason Hreha)
“Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience.”
“Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity [as whenever possible, the conscious mind likes to pawn off tasks to the non-conscious mind to do it automatically].”
“Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it…Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future.”
What is an atomic habit?
“A regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.”
Why small atomic habits?
“It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.”
“We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter very much in the moment…We make a few changes, but the results never seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routines. Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide…But when we repeat 1% errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalising little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results….Similarly, a slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very different destination. Making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you want to be. Success is the product of daily habits - not once in a lifetime transformation.”
We’ve all heard various versions of ‘Its only one coffee cup, said one million people’ which feeds into this same thinking. What can seem like small decisions can have a big impact over a period of time (sticking with the same theme, one takeaway coffee cup a week leads to 52 single use coffee cups being used and discarded over the year). As James explains; “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.”
Why do good habits often break and bad habits repeat themselves?
“Over time, the cues that spark our habits become so common that they are essentially invisible: the treats on the kitchen counter, the phone in our pocket. Our responses to these cues are so deeply encoded that it may feel like the urge to act comes from nowhere. For this reason, we must begin the process of behaviour change with awareness…If a habit remains mindless, you can’t expect to improve it.”
“Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons:
1- we try to change the wrong thing
2- we try to change our habits in the wrong way”
“Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach we start by focusing on who we wish to become.”
“Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.”
“Forget about goals, focus on systems instead….Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress….The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. Its not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”
“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity…The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it….Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits. True behaviour change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity….When your behaviour and your identity are fully aligned, you are no longer pursuing behaviour change, you are simply acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be.”
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become…This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity….You have a choice in every moment. You can choose the identity you want to reinforce today with the habits you choose today.”
Our identity is someone who actively looks to avoid single-use plastic, we wish to become someone who doesn’t create unnecessary harmful waste and we’re proud about that! With this identity in mind we can then make hundreds of votes for this person every day - do we avoid convenient takeaway food and drink? Do we invest in reusable options so we can avoid single-use packaging? Do we avoid over-packaged supermarkets and shop local instead where we can find unpackaged options? If we have a craving for something unexpected during the day that comes in single-use packaging, do we say no to that because it doesn’t align with our identity as this person we want to become or do we give in to old habits and our old identity? Its always a choice! Who do you want to be? What impact do you want to have?
How to build better habits
The basis of Atomic Habits is built around James’ “four-step model of habits - cue, craving, response and reward - and the four laws of behaviour change that evolve out of these steps.”
“ The 1st law : Cue / ‘Make it obvious’
The 2nd law : Craving / ‘ Make it attractive’
The 3rd law : Response / ‘Make it easy’
The 4th law ; Reward / ‘Make it satisfying’”
Cues / Make it obvious
“Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.”
“The two most common cues are time and location.”
“Hundreds of studies have shown that implementation intentions are effective for sticking to our goals, whether it’s writing down the exact time and date of when you will get a flu shot or recording the time of your colonoscopy appointment. They increase the odds that people will stick with habits like recycling, studying, going to sleep early and stopping smoking…The punch line is clear: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.”
We like this one and think that our regular schedule is a great cue for people trying to avoid single-use packaging and refill shop instead. If you are keen to change your habit of going to a supermarket and switch it with a refill shop instead, make a clear plan of when you are going to visit. Write it down and make it clear:
“I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”
e.g I will visit Incredible Bulk to refill shop at 9am on Saturday at Helston Farmers Market.
As well as using time and place as a cue for a new habit, you can also use existing habits and start “habit stacking”, this is based on the fact that “No behaviour happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behaviour….You can use the connectedness of behaviour to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behaviour on top.”
This could be helpful when thinking about containers to refill, for example:
When I empty a jar, I will clean it and put it in my bag ready for my refill shop.
or
When I read Incredible Bulks reminder email, I will get my bag of containers ready in the car.
“The secret to creating a successful habit stack is selecting the right cue to kick things of….When and where you choose to insert a habit into your daily routine can make a big difference….Consider when you are most likely to be successful.”
“One way to find the right trigger for your habit stack is by brainstorming a list of your current habits.”
“The 1st Law of Behaviour Change is to make it obvious. Strategies like implementation intentions and habit stacking are among the most practical ways to create obvious cues for your habits and design a clear plan for when and where to take action.”
Your environment also plays a role in creating cues for your habits and “visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behaviour. For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do….Creating obvious visual cues can draw your attention toward a desired habit.”
“If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment…you can alter the spaces where you live and work to increase your exposure to positive cues and reduce your exposure to negative ones.”
Here our containers can be a great visual cue. Updating pantry’s and cupboards to be filled with refillable containers so they are a daily reminder of the practice of refilling. They become the visual cue for when you need to do a shop and what you need to buy. The act of replacing a single-use item with a reusable one is making that vote for the new habit!
If looking to break a bad habit, we have to do the opposite of make it obvious. “You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. Once the mental grooves of habit have been carved into your brain, they are nearly impossible to remove entirely - even if they go unused for quite a while. And that means that simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy…A more reliable approach is to cut bad habits off at the source.”
One of the easiest ways to avoid single-use packaging is avoiding the places where it is most common. Now we understand that packaging is pretty ubiquitous so it can be a hard task, but by limiting your exposure to places where you find it frequently will help in the temptation of slipping into old habits. We rarely go to the supermarket now as we mainly refill from the van and buy our fruit and veg from local sellers and markets, this means we are rarely exposed to the temptation of picking up a conveniently packaged item! If we do go (loose mushrooms, alcohol, last min veg needs!) we go only to those aisles and don’t browse!
Craving / Make it Attractive
“If you want to increase the odds that a behaviour will occur, then you need to make it attractive.”
“Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop…When it comes to habits, the key takeaway is this: dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it….It is the anticipation of a reward - not the fulfilment of it - that gets us to take action.”
“Desire is the engine that drives behaviour. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response…it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place.”
When reading this we weren’t sure if simply the rewarding experience of shopping without waste was enough of a motivation, if the desire to be someone that doesn’t waste is enough to drive the behaviour?? We think that maybe it could be for some, but some may need to build in more tangible rewards to make the habit stick. For this James recommends “Temptation bundling…linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.”
Another way to look at it is to reframe the habit. We quite often hear (and of course experience it too) that refill shopping is more effort, but could you reframe it to highlight its benefits (less waste, better for the planet, helping the future generation/planet) rather than the drawbacks? This way you can “reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.”
A habit also becomes attractive when other people are doing it. “Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers…We soak up the qualities and practices of those around us.” James writes that “one of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour…Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together.”
We’ve seen this in action at the van, with friends introducing friends to the van and the process of refill shopping. If you’re already a refill shopper be proud and encourage friends and family to do the same. If you feel like you’re the only one head to plastic free events, beach cleans and social gatherings to meet like-minded people and share hints and tips!
Response / Make it Easy
“It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change..We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action…If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.”
“Both common sense and scientific evidence agree: repetition is a form of change. Each time you repeat an action, you are activating a particular neural circuit associated with that habit…habits form based on frequency, not time.”
“To build a habit, you need to practice it.”
“The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start…A new habit should not feel like a challenge…What you want is a ‘gateway habit’ that naturally leads you down a more productive path.”
For refill shopping we think this could be the action of getting your jars and containers ready, which then leads you to the refill shop and the action of shopping package free. We also think you can make it easy by starting small and building from there. As James writes “the point is to master the habit of showing up.” If you get into the habit of saving a few containers to refill, showing up and refilling them, then you can start to build on that habit and add extra items. We did this ourselves, starting with washing up liquid and laundry liquid and then gradually adding items as and when we started to run out.
“Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardise before you can optimise.”
Reward / Make it Satisfying
“Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behaviour and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.”
Here we see our containers doing this job for us, we often hear from customers how satisfying it is when they get home and put their filled containers away in their cupboards!
“A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit. The most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine..As time rolls by, the calendar becomes a record of your habit streak….Habit tracking is powerful because it leverages multiple Laws of Behaviour Change. It simultaneously makes a behaviour obvious, attractive and satisfying.”
Here you could track each day you avoided single-use packaging.
How to recover quickly when you habits break down
“Perfection is not possible.”
“A simple rule: never miss twice. If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible…Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”
“Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.”
We mention this often to our customers, we understand that not everyone can do all of their shopping with us, or they may miss us one time due to other commitments, that is totally understandable, what matters is all of the other times they are turning up, even if its to only refill their washing up liquid, or get some cereal - it all adds up to less single-use packaging being used and wasted.
“Laws and regulations are an example of how government can change our habits by creating a social contract…You can create a habit contract to hold yourself accountable. A habit contract is a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment will occur if you don’t follow through. Then you find one or two people to act as your accountability partners and sign off on the contract with you.”
Here we can go back to asking ourselves ‘who do we want to be?’ - the answer to this question becomes the basis of our contract with ourselves, the identity behind the habit. Writing it down and sharing with a trusted loved one makes us feel more accountable. You could do this as a group of friends or as a family.
As James concludes “The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements…That’s the power of atomic habits. Tiny changes. Remarkable results.”
We hope you’ve found this useful, we really enjoyed the book and think these key points can help make refill shopping a habit for us all - remember start small and don’t feel like you have to do it all!
All text in “ “ from Atomic Habits, James Clear
