Some bad habits slip into your life without you realizing. You do it once, maybe twice. It’s no big deal. The next thing you know, it’s become something you do regularly without thinking twice about it. Here are 13 surprisingly easy habits to form (and difficult to break).
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Measuring your day by how much you crossed off a list
You only make the list to keep yourself organized. But then you find yourself feeling like less of a person when you don’t meet your own expectations. A bad day? Not nearly enough boxes. Time to relax? The voice in your head starts scrambling for things to do just so you can check another one off.
Turning small routines into rituals you can’t skip
It starts innocently enough: lining up your skincare bottles, brewing coffee a certain way, folding clothes a certain way. Eventually it snowballs into something you feel you have to do or else your day will be off. What once was calming is now disguised pressure.
Snacking every time you’re bored
It’s not like you reach for a cookie when you’re hungry. You’re just sitting there, with your hands folded, or staring at the screen, or twiddling your thumbs. At some point, you look around, just because. The next moment, you’re wandering into the kitchen, just to give your hands something to do. After a while, food is the first thing you turn to when you’re not doing anything else. And undoing this habit is never easy.
Checking your phone the second you wake up
You start by checking the time or turning off the alarm. But then, before you know it, you’re scrolling even before your eyes are open. Before long, you’re checking email, news, or social media even without sitting up.
Filling every free moment with noise
Podcasts while you clean, music while you shower, TV while you eat. It’s cozy at first, then necessary. The quiet feels too loud after a while. Letting go of this one means relearning how to be alone with your thoughts.
Avoiding hard conversations to keep the peace
You convince yourself it’s not worth arguing, so you bite your tongue. Day after day, that silence becomes a tactic. But it’s simmering tension beneath the surface. And the more you get used to staying quiet, the tougher it is to break.
Leaving things “for later” that never get done
You’ll get to it after lunch, after work, tomorrow. You get so used to pushing things off, it almost becomes automatic, like you don’t even realize you’re doing it. At some point, it all piles up. And to reverse it, you just have to push through the discomfort of “right now.”
Judging your productivity based on how busy you feel
You make work a measure of productivity, even when you’re not actually being productive. Movement is a feeling of being useful. But then, rest starts to feel like punishment. Unlearning this means rewiring your internal definition of what being productive looks like.
Stalking people who don’t think about you
You check their stories, likes, updates. Just to check. But they’re not doing the same for you. The habit becomes its own quiet form of self-sabotage. Undoing it means finally admitting they’re no longer in your life, maybe never really were.
Letting digital clutter pile up until it numbs you
You bookmark links you’ll never click again. You hoard old screenshots, random PDFs, dozens of half-finished notes. You stop noticing just how full your phone is, but it weighs you down anyway. Clearing it feels like work, so you let it slide.
Refreshing apps for no reason at all
There’s no alert. You aren’t even expecting one. But you tap and swipe anyway. You’re on autopilot, a cycle that takes over all the empty spaces in your day. And it feels strange to break that loop. You start to feel like you’re missing something.
Waiting to rest until everything is done
You tell yourself you’ll rest after that one thing is done, but the list never ends. Rest is something to be earned, a luxury you never quite feel you deserve. It’s easy to fall into this cycle. It’s slow, gradual, but will sap you of energy and life.
Laughing things off so no one sees you struggling
You crack a joke, move the conversation along, pretend like nothing’s the matter. People chuckle with you and the moment passes. It becomes second nature to protect yourself this way. But underneath it all, you’re exhausted.
Disclaimer: This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.
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