Chapter 2: Cues: The Hidden Triggers Around You

Three O'Clock and the Biscuit Tin

Matilde is forty-one and works as an administrator at a large college. Her days are busy but predictable. She arrives at half past eight, answers emails, attends meetings, organizes timetables and helps students with problems. Every afternoon, at about three o'clock, she gets up from her desk, walks to the small kitchen at the end of the corridor, makes a cup of tea and takes three biscuits from the tin that her team keeps there. She eats them at her desk while she finishes the afternoon's work.

Matilde has been trying to stop eating the biscuits. She has no serious health worries, but she would like to eat a little more healthily, and she has noticed that the biscuits make her feel sluggish afterwards. Every morning, she decides that today she will not have them. And almost every afternoon, at about three o'clock, she finds herself in the kitchen with a biscuit in her hand, often before she has even remembered her decision.

Matilde is puzzled and a little annoyed with herself. She is not particularly hungry at three o'clock. She does not even especially like the biscuits, which are rather plain. And she is a disciplined person in other areas of her life. Why does this small habit seem to have a life of its own?

One afternoon, Matilde's colleague, who sits at the next desk, made a joke. "You are like a clock," she said. "At three, you stand up, stretch, look out of the window, sigh and walk to the kitchen. I could tell the time by watching you." Matilde laughed. But later, she thought about what her colleague had said. She had never noticed the stretch, the window or the sigh. She had never noticed that it was always three o'clock. She had only noticed the biscuits.

Matilde's colleague had spotted something that scientists consider central to every habit: the cue, the situation that triggers the behaviour. This chapter looks at what cues are, how they work in the brain and why understanding them is one of the most powerful tools for changing habits.

What Is a Cue?

In the last chapter, we saw that a habit is a learned link between a situation and a response. The situation part of this link is called the cue. A cue is anything in your environment, or in your inner state, that has become associated with a behaviour through repetition, so that encountering it tends to trigger the behaviour automatically.

Writers on habits often describe several common kinds of cues. There are cues of place: a particular room, chair, shop or street. There are cues of time: a particular hour, day or season. There are cues of preceding action: something you just did, such as finishing a meal or arriving home. There are cues of people: being with a certain person or group. And there are cues of feeling: being tired, bored, stressed, lonely or happy. These categories are a useful simplification, not a scientific law, and most real habits are triggered by a combination of several cues at once.

For Matilde, the cues were multiple. There was the time, about three o'clock, when the afternoon begins to drag. There was the place, her desk and the corridor to the kitchen. There was a preceding action, finishing a task or a meeting. There was a feeling, a mild tiredness or boredom, which showed itself in her stretch and her sigh. And there was the sight of the biscuit tin itself, sitting on the kitchen counter. Together, these cues had become linked with walking to the kitchen and eating biscuits, through hundreds of repetitions over several years.

An important feature of cues is that we often do not notice them. Matilde had never noticed the time, the stretch or the sigh. She only noticed the biscuit in her hand. This is typical. Because habits run automatically, the cues that trigger them often pass beneath our awareness. We notice the behaviour, sometimes, but not what started it. This is one reason why habits can feel so mysterious and so stubborn.

Once a cue has been linked with a behaviour, encountering the cue can produce a kind of pull toward the behaviour, sometimes felt as an urge or a craving, and sometimes not felt at all, simply acted on. Studies of this kind suggest that, in people with strong habits, simply seeing cues associated with a habit can increase the urge to perform it. This is why the sight of a biscuit tin, a phone or a familiar shop can be enough to start a habit running.

The Power of Context

One of the most striking findings about habits is how strongly they depend on context, the particular situation in which they were learned. In one well-known study, researchers gave people popcorn while they watched film clips. Some of the popcorn was fresh, and some was a week old, stale and unpleasant. People who did not usually eat popcorn at the cinema ate less of the stale popcorn, as you would expect. But people who had a strong habit of eating popcorn at the cinema ate almost as much stale popcorn as fresh, when they were in a cinema. When the same people watched clips in a meeting room, their habit no longer took over, and they ate less of the stale popcorn.

This study shows two things clearly. First, a strong habit can run even when the reward is poor, as with the rats in Chapter 1 who kept pressing the lever after the food was no longer wanted. The habitual popcorn eaters did not stop because the popcorn was stale. Second, the habit depended on the context. In the cinema, with all its familiar cues, the habit ran. In a different room, it weakened. The habit was not simply inside the person. It lived in the link between the person and the place.

Other research has looked at what happens when people's contexts change in larger ways. Studies of people who move house or change jobs have suggested that these changes can disrupt established habits, such as the way they travel to work, because the old cues are no longer there. During such changes, people seem more likely to adopt new behaviours, at least for a while. Researchers sometimes call this habit discontinuity: a break in the usual context that opens a window for change. The evidence for this is encouraging, though the size of the effect varies.

Valentina's drive to her old office, in Chapter 1, is an example of this in reverse. Her new job was a change of context, but the morning cue of getting into her car was the same, so the old habit fired. If she had changed something about the cue, for example by putting a note on the steering wheel or taking a different car, the habit might not have taken over.

Context also works in our favour. Many students find that they concentrate better in a library than at home, not because the library is magically better for thinking, but because, over time, it has become linked with studying. The quiet, the desks and the rows of books all act as cues for focused work. At home, the same student may be surrounded by cues for rest, food and entertainment. Choosing a consistent place for a particular activity is one of the simplest ways of building a helpful habit.

The practical meaning of all this is important. If habits depend so heavily on context, then one of the most effective ways of changing a habit is to change the context: to remove or alter the cues that trigger the old habit, and to create new cues for the new habit. This is often much more effective than relying on willpower alone, because it works with the automatic system rather than against it. We will explore this idea in detail in Chapter 6, on designing your surroundings.

Matilde Becomes a Cue Detective

After her colleague's joke, Matilde decided to study her own biscuit habit, as if she were a scientist observing someone else. For a week, whenever she found herself heading to the kitchen in the afternoon, she made a small note: the time, what she had just finished doing, how she felt and what she noticed around her. She did not try to stop the habit during that week. She only watched.

The notes were revealing. The habit almost always happened between quarter to three and quarter past three. It almost always came after she had finished a task or a meeting. She almost always felt slightly tired and restless, with heavy eyes and a feeling that the afternoon was dragging. On two days when she had been out of the office in the afternoon, the habit did not happen at all. And on the one day when someone had moved the biscuit tin into a cupboard, she made tea but did not eat biscuits, because she did not see them.

Matilde realized that her habit was not really about biscuits. It was about the afternoon slump: a need for a break, a change and a small lift in energy. The biscuits had become linked with that need through repetition, but the need was what drove the habit. With this understanding, she could look for ways to change the cues and to meet the need differently.

Matilde tried a few changes. She asked her team if they would mind keeping the biscuit tin in a cupboard rather than on the counter, so that it was not the first thing she saw. She kept the habit of getting up at three o'clock and walking to the kitchen, because she realized that the movement and the break were good for her. But instead of biscuits, she made tea and took it outside to the small garden behind the building, where she drank it in the fresh air for five minutes. On rainy days, she walked to the window at the other end of the corridor and looked out.

After a month, the new routine had begun to feel natural. At three o'clock, Matilde still felt the afternoon slump, and she still got up and walked to the kitchen. But the routine now ended with fresh air and tea rather than biscuits. "I was trying to fight the biscuits," she says. "But the biscuits were not the problem. Three o'clock was the problem. Once I understood that, I could change what three o'clock led to."

Arnav and the Queue

Arnav is thirty and works as a pharmacist in a busy shop. He has noticed that he checks his phone far more often than he would like, especially in small moments: waiting for the kettle to boil, standing in a queue, sitting on the bus, waiting for a colleague to finish speaking. He has tried to check it less, but the habit seems to take over whenever there is a gap in his day.

When Arnav thought about the cues, he saw that the main one was not a place or a time, but a feeling: a small moment of boredom or emptiness. Whenever there was nothing to occupy his attention, even for a few seconds, his hand reached for his phone. The feeling of an empty moment had become linked with the behaviour of checking, through thousands of repetitions. And the phone itself, always in his pocket, was a constant secondary cue.

Feeling cues are among the hardest to change, because we carry our feelings with us everywhere. Arnav could not avoid moments of boredom. But he could change his response to them, and he could reduce the secondary cue of the phone being always within reach. He began by keeping his phone in his bag rather than his pocket during work, so that reaching for it took more effort. He also tried, in small empty moments, to do something else with his attention: noticing his breathing, looking around at the people and places nearby or simply standing still.

At first, the empty moments felt uncomfortable, almost itchy. Arnav realized how used he had become to filling every gap. But after a few weeks, he noticed that he was checking his phone much less often, and that he felt a little calmer. He also noticed things he had missed before: a regular customer who always hummed while waiting, a tree outside the shop window that was beginning to flower.

"I thought my habit was about the phone," Arnav says. "Actually, it was about not being able to bear an empty moment. The phone was just the easiest way to fill it." Arnav's story shows that feeling cues are powerful and often invisible, and that recognizing them can open the way to change. It also connects with an idea we will explore in Chapter 3: that some habits are kept going by small, unpredictable rewards, such as the chance of a new message.

Gisela and the Evening Sofa

Gisela is fifty-seven and works as a bookkeeper. Every evening, when she gets home from work, she follows the same routine. She takes off her shoes, puts on comfortable clothes, sits on the sofa, turns on the television and eats a bowl of crisps or chocolate. She often stays there until bedtime. She enjoys the relaxation, but she has started to feel that her evenings are passing without her doing anything she really cares about, such as reading, phoning her sister or working on the quilts she used to make.

Gisela's habit has strong cues of place and preceding action: arriving home, changing clothes and sitting on the sofa. The sofa itself, facing the television, with the remote control on the arm and a snack bowl on the side table, has become a powerful cue. Once she sits down, the rest of the evening follows almost automatically, like one of the chunks of behaviour described in Chapter 1.

Gisela decided to experiment with the cues rather than with willpower. She did not try to stop sitting on the sofa, which she enjoyed. But she changed some of the things around it. She moved her quilting basket from a cupboard to the side table next to the sofa, where the snack bowl used to be. She put the remote control in a drawer. She kept a book on the arm of the sofa. And she decided that, on two evenings a week, she would phone her sister before turning on the television.

The changes worked better than she expected. When she sat down on the sofa, the first thing she saw was her quilting basket, not the remote control. On many evenings, she picked up her quilting and worked on it while listening to music or the radio. She still watched television some evenings, but less, and more by choice than by habit. Her phone calls with her sister became something they both looked forward to.

"I did not need to fight the sofa," Gisela says. "I just needed to change what was waiting for me there." Gisela's story shows how powerful small changes to the cues in a familiar place can be. The same place, the same time and the same comfortable clothes now led to a different evening, because the objects that triggered the old habit had been replaced by objects that invited a new one.

Practical Steps: Working With Cues

The first step is to become a cue detective. For the habit you want to change or build, observe it for a week without trying to change it. Each time it happens, note the time, the place, what you had just done, who was around and how you felt. Look for patterns. Most habits have several cues working together.

The second step is to find the need behind the cue. Ask what the habit is doing for you. Is it giving you a break, a lift in energy, comfort, distraction, company or a sense of reward? Like Matilde's biscuits and the afternoon slump, the habit may be meeting a real need in an unhelpful way. Understanding the need helps you find better ways to meet it.

The third step is to remove or hide cues for habits you want to weaken. If the cue is something you see, such as a biscuit tin, a phone or a remote control, move it out of sight or out of easy reach. Small changes in what you see can make a large difference to what you do.

The fourth step is to create cues for habits you want to build. Place visible reminders where the new habit should happen: a book on the sofa, running shoes by the door, a water bottle on your desk. Link the new habit to a time or a preceding action that already happens every day.

The fifth step is to keep the cue and change the routine. Sometimes, as with Matilde's three o'clock walk and Rufus's early waking in Chapter 1, it is easier to keep the cue and give it a new routine than to remove the cue entirely. The cue still fires, but it now leads somewhere better.

The sixth step is to use changes in your life. If you are moving house, starting a new job or going through another big change in your routines, remember that old cues may be weakened. This can be a good time to start a new habit or to drop an old one, while the old context is not there to trigger it.

Cues Are Not Commands

It is important not to take this chapter to mean that we are simply at the mercy of our cues. Cues create a pull toward a behaviour, sometimes a strong one. But they are not commands. People can and do notice cues and choose differently, especially when they are rested, aware and prepared. The aim of understanding cues is not to feel powerless, but to see more clearly where our power lies.

It is also worth saying that becoming aware of a cue does not, on its own, always change a habit. Awareness is a helpful first step, but many studies of habit change suggest that changing the situation, repeating new behaviours and planning ahead are usually needed as well. Matilde did not simply notice her cues. She moved the biscuit tin and changed her routine. Gisela did not simply notice the sofa. She changed what was on the side table.

There is also a practical reason why noticing is not enough. Cues act quickly, often faster than conscious thought. By the time we notice that a cue has fired, the habit may already be under way. Changing the situation in advance, before the cue appears, does not depend on catching ourselves in the moment. It works even when we are tired or distracted, which is exactly when old habits are most likely to take over.

Finally, some cues are hard to see, and some are deeply connected with feelings that need care. If a habit is triggered mainly by strong feelings, such as sadness, loneliness or stress, it may help to pay attention to those feelings as well as to the habit. Sometimes the most useful change is not to the cue or the routine, but to the underlying difficulty. If difficult feelings are frequent and heavy, talking with someone you trust, or with a doctor or another qualified professional, can help.

And if a habit is very strong, causes harm and feels impossible to control, it may be more than an ordinary habit. In that case, professional support is the right step, not simply rearranging the cues.

A Short Exercise: The Cue Detective's Notebook

This exercise helps you discover the cues behind one of your habits. It runs over one week and takes less than a minute each time.

Choose one habit you would like to understand better: something you do often, without much thought, that you would like to change. Take a small notebook or use a page that you can carry with you. At the top, write the habit in a few words.

For one week, each time the habit happens, or each time you notice the urge to do it, write a short line with five pieces of information: the time; the place; what you had just been doing; who was around; and how you felt. Do not try to stop the habit during this week. The aim is only to observe.

At the end of the week, read through your notes and look for patterns. Is there a time that appears again and again? A place? A preceding action? A person? A feeling? Underline the cues that appear most often. Then ask what need the habit might be meeting, and write it down.

Finally, write one change you could make to a cue, and one change you could make to the routine that follows it. Try them the following week. When Matilde did this exercise, her notes showed "3 pm, after a task, tired and restless" again and again. Her cue change was "biscuit tin in the cupboard". Her routine change was "tea in the garden". She says that the week of watching was the most useful part, because it showed her what she had been fighting.

Chapter Summary

A cue is the situation that triggers a habit: a place, a time, a preceding action, the presence of certain people or a feeling, usually several at once. Cues often pass beneath our awareness, and encountering them can create a pull toward the habit. Habits depend strongly on context: in one well-known study, people with a cinema popcorn habit ate stale popcorn almost as readily as fresh in a cinema, but not in a different room. Big changes in life can disrupt cues and open a window for new habits, an effect sometimes called habit discontinuity.

Matilde and her three o'clock biscuits, Arnav and his empty moments, and Gisela and her evening sofa all found that understanding and changing cues, and sometimes keeping the cue but changing the routine, worked far better than fighting the habit with willpower alone. Cues are not commands, awareness is a first step rather than a cure and habits driven by strong feelings or beyond our control deserve deeper care.

In the next chapter, we will look at the other end of the habit: the reward, and the role of the brain chemical dopamine in making some habits so sticky.