Habit
Steps to forming habits to support your 2025 goals
Here we go with the Neuroscience
I speak to so many actors during business strategy sessions who tell me that they have fabulous goals—-and almost ALL of them, have no idea how to set habits that help them achieve those goals.
Despite clear objectives, their business strategies falter. A critical factor in this disconnect is the failure to establish effective habits that drive consistent progress toward these goals. Understanding the neuroscience behind habit formation can illuminate why this happens and how to foster lasting change. Buckle up, this one is a doozy.
The “Habit Loop”: Cue, Routine, Reward
At the core of habit formation lies the habit loop, comprising three elements: cue, routine, and reward. A cue triggers a routine, which is followed by a reward. This loop becomes ingrained in the brain through repetition, making behaviors automatic over time. Habits are stored in the basal ganglia, a brain region associated with emotion, pattern recognition, and memory. Once a behavior becomes habitual, it requires less cognitive effort, allowing you to execute tasks more efficiently.
Dopamine is that good shit
Dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure and reward, plays a pivotal role in habit formation. The anticipation of a reward releases dopamine, reinforcing the behavior and increasing the likelihood of its repetition. (When you give a dog a treat, they are more likely to obey.)
This mechanism explains why enjoyable activities become habitual more readily. In the context of voiceover business strategies, if the processes leading to success are not inherently rewarding or do not trigger a dopamine response, forming habits around these activities becomes challenging. So giving yourself a little reward every time you do something is gonna make the “something” something you wanna do more often.
This is why so many “strategies” fail
Many voiceover artists craft detailed business strategies, focusing on goals such as expanding their client base or enhancing their skills. However, without embedding these goals within habitual behaviors, the strategies often remain unexecuted. For instance, setting a goal to network more effectively is insufficient without developing the habit of reaching out to potential clients regularly. And I do mean regularly. You have to literally schedule these things out on a routine: “Every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I am going to do X”. The absence of a structured habit loop means that these actions require continuous conscious effort, which can lead to inconsistency and eventual neglect.
Build EFFECTIVE habits
Identify clear cues: Determine specific triggers that will initiate the desired behavior. Like, designate a particular time each day to practice or send marketing emails.
Establish rewarding routines: Ensure that the routine itself or its outcome is rewarding. This could involve tracking progress to visualize growth or incorporating enjoyable elements into the task. I’m a huge fan of those yearly calendars.
Consistent reinforcement: Repetition is crucial. Regularly engaging in the behavior strengthens neural pathways, making the habit more ingrained and automatic over time.
Leverage dopamine: We are not that complex of creatures—-if you pair tasks with activities that naturally boost dopamine levels, you’re more likely to do ‘em. Listening to motivating music while working or celebrating small achievements can enhance the habit-forming process.
Integrating habits with goals
Here’s the missing piece.
Aligning habits with overarching goals creates a synergistic effect. By breaking down large objectives into smaller, manageable actions that can become habitual, voiceover actors can make steady progress without overwhelming themselves. Overwhelm is probably the most common objective I hear.
For a deeper dive into common pitfalls in the voiceover industry and strategies to overcome them, you might find the following video by my buddy Paul Schmidt insightful:
As always, lemme know how I can help or if you’d like to set up a 1:1 time to work with me!