Articles About Bad Habits: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Bad habits are negative patterns of behavior leading to adverse issues. See our top picks of articles about bad habits, plus prompts to help spread awareness.

Everyone has a bad habit or two. My bad habits include binge eating and impulse buying, which I attribute to having scarce food and necessities when I was a kid. So, when I started working and earning money, I got this sense of alarm that I should buy what I wanted now because it would run out if I didn’t. 

It’s not a good thing, and I’ve already made significant changes to control these urges. I found that gratitude journaling helps. But there are still times when I desperately want to eat or buy more than I need. 

Bad habits often lead to damaging results. It can be as simple as watching too much TV or as severe as alcoholism. Thus, writing articles tackling this topic is as crucial as trying to remove bad habits from our systems.

5 Example Articles

1. 5 Science-approved Ways to Break a Bad Habit by Cassie Shortsleeve

“Having habits can often be a good thing… But sometimes, habits can lead us astray – whether it’s turning to comfort food when we’re sad, or taking a cigarette break when stressed.”

Shortsleeve starts her article with advice from an expert explaining what constitutes a habit. Then, she delves into how habits are formed and controlled. The whole piece is littered with professionals’ comments and critical information, such as how the brain works with triggers like stress that push individuals to turn to bad habits. The author also shares how these bad habits can be curbed and solved, including knowing one’s cues and setting better goals.

2. Breaking ‘Bad Habits’: A Dynamical Perspective on Habit Formation and Change by Wander Jager

“Not only is it possible to make the ‘bad habit’ less rewarding, it is also possible to make the ‘good habit’ more rewarding… Therefore, often the outcomes of a ‘bad habit’ may be changed on a more indirect level by setting rules and punishment for breaking the rules.”

Jager refers to habits as automatized behaviors that are hard to change. When these habits disrupt their reasoned behavior, they become bad habits. He dedicates his research to finding out how different stages of habit formation affect individuals’ perspectives and how they can be altered. At the end of his study, Jager recommends recognizing the short and long-term outcomes linked to habits and how they are connected to human needs.

3. How to Break up With Your Bad Habits by Jud Brewer

“Self-control theories have missed something critical: reward-based learning is based on rewards, not behaviors. How rewarding a behavior is drives how likely we are to repeat that behavior in the future, and this is why self-control as an approach to breaking habits often fails.”

Brewer explains what bad habits are in detail and why they are hard to overcome. He discusses neuroscience studies clarifying how habits are developed and the surprising way to break them: through mindfulness training. He also shares strategies to stop these bad habits, like replacing rewards with curiosity and linking action and outcome. At the end of his article, he encourages readers to change their behaviors gradually.

4. New Research Tells Us How To Take Back Control of Our Bad Habits by Mark Travers

“Because of this, deconstructing the causes behind the habituation of our actions and searching for new ways to integrate intention and self-control into our lives has taken center stage in the field of psychology.”

Travers attempts to explain why habits are unremovable and offers research-based knowledge to “override default behaviors.” These include designing friction-free surroundings, applying an “If-Then” strategy, and aligning values and actions. In his conclusion, Travers says that we should review and revise our impulses to live life in the right direction.

5. How Your Bad Habits Affect Your Health by Carol DerSarkissian, M.D.

“Sound is measured in decibels — normal conversation is about 60 decibels. It’s best to keep the volume in your headphones below 75 (about as loud as a vacuum cleaner) to be safe.”

DerSarkissian reviews a list of 14 bad habits and talks about their actual effects on one’s health. She also considers myths connected to these destructive behaviors and disapproves or approves of them. An example is turning headphones at a high volume and listening to them for hours, leading to hearing loss and brain tissue damage. The article is succinct and straightforward and gives its readers the information they need quickly.

 7 Prompt for Articles About Bad Habits

1. What Is a Bad Habit?

Thoroughly explain what constitutes a bad habit so your audience can confirm if they have any. Include situations that demonstrate what bad habits are all about. A college student cramming for one exam can be attributed to scheduling mistakes. But when they cram every exam, it can become a bad behavior pattern.

2. Top Bad Habits

Top bad habits
To give you an idea, Americans deal with gambling addiction caused by the availability of casinos

Identify the top bad habits worldwide and their common reasons. Ensure to pick the latest data to make your article relevant to current events. Then, share your experience if you have the same bad habits. To give you an idea, Americans deal with gambling addiction caused by the availability of casinos. Compare this to a nation where gambling addiction is seen as “sinful”, such as in Asian countries that put integrity and reputation in high regard.

3. My Bad Habits

List down and analyze your bad habits. Look back if these negative behaviors were influenced by your relatives’ or friends’ actions. Your father may be a chain smoker, and you learned how to smoke to get closer to him, for example.

Share what you’re doing to control your bad habits and why you want to rid yourself of these routines. You can also advise your readers on what they can do to curb, control, or eliminate their negative behavior patterns by sharing what you learned through your encounters.

4. Bad Habits Worth Keeping

Some bad habits can be helpful as long as you can control them. In your article, delve into the bad habits an individual can keep because it helps them in their work or personal lives. For example, double-checking everything in order can be irritating and time-consuming, especially if you need more energy to run through everything you want. However, if you need to remember something, it will save you from incurring more expenses and wasted time.

5. How To Stop a Bad Habit

How to stop a bad habit?
In this prompt, discuss the effective methods to stop a bad habit

Dedicate your article to discussing the effective methods to stop a bad habit. These methods should consider factors that affect a person’s reaction, such as their workplace and support systems. Remember that your article should have a strong foundation of studies, research, and experts’ opinion on the best ways to handle bad habits. 

6. Celebrities and Their Bad Habits

Create a fun and engaging article discussing well-known people’s bad habits. The article aims to inform your readers that many suffer the same things they do, so they should not feel ashamed to ask for professional help. Do thorough research to avoid spreading misinformation. Only get your details from official interviews, official social networking accounts, or other official platforms you may find. Then, remember to include the next steps an individual should take to work on bad habits.

7. Here’s the Future of Your Bad Habits

Focus your piece on helping the audience control their negative behavior. Include cases where people ignored their bad habits and the bad ending they faced to encourage your audience not to take this subject lightly. For instance, eating junk food leads to chronic diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and some cancers.

For help editing your articles, we recommend using the best grammar checker. Our round-up profiles these tools and offers discounts.

Author

  • Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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