When it comes to ice cream or our favorite TV show, the reward is immediate, which prompts us to repeat this action, whereas the rewards of eating healthier or getting more sleep take longer to be noticed.
We wake up in the morning, which triggers our habit of making coffee; we get home from work, which triggers our habit of making dinner.
As Wood writes, “A habit happens when a context clue is sufficiently associated with a rewarded response to become automatic, to fade into that hardworking, quiet second self.Watching an episode of my favorite shows, when I barely had the time to do anything for myself, was the reward that softened the pain of waking up at a ridiculously early hour.