Familiarity Heuristic

Building new systems and habits to replace old ones is challenging. There are many reasons why this occurs.

One reason is based on the Familiarity Heuristic. This is a bias towards the familiar. When we judge something, if it is familiar, we rank it higher than if it is novel.

Sometimes we want something new and unique. Maybe we crave the unique new car. Or we want to visit the exotic location for vacation.

But often, we are biased towards what is familiar. When it comes to building new routines, we often crave our existing, comfortable routines.

This doesn’t mean we don’t want to change. We do. We want the rewards that come from changing our habits. But wanting it is different than aligning your behaviors to do it. Action is much more attached to the familiar.

This is the main reason that habits form. Instead of finding new roads to travel all the time, we stick to the ones we know. Then, we can traverse the world through unconscious action.

Familiarity bias is necessary to form these habits and routines in life. We need this to help us develop consistency which translates to automation in our thoughts and actions.

This is important to form a habit and important to keep a habit. It is the reason we aren’t constantly forming novel habits all the time. We likely drive a car in a similar fashion as we did 5 years ago. We likely wake up and get ready for work in a similar manner. We even brush our teeth the same as we did 10 years ago.

Once these patterns of action are formed, they stick. We can use familiarity bias to help us keep going with habits we desire.

We need to be able to get past it when we make a conscious effort to change. This is why the systems and habits approach to improvement shines. We start small to avoid the natural resistance that comes when something comfortable changes.

The small amount we do or the tiny change that is made doesn’t trigger our bias to start pushing against our efforts. It slides under the radar.

As we begin this new routine, we can slowly increase the amount. It allows the new routine to become the familiar. As we add more to it and continue it for the long-term, it becomes more and more stable.

Stability will reinforce the new routine as a familiar, comfortable pattern. The familiarity bias will start to protect the behavior instead of resisting it.

This forms the foundation on which to keep adding more. It gives us a template for effective change so we can use it whenever we need to correct something in our life. It will provide a blueprint to success through habit formation and continuation.