You see a cue, categorize it based on past experience, and determine the appropriate response.
This all happens in an instant, but it plays a crucial role in your
habits because every action is preceded by a prediction. Life feels
reactive, but it is actually predictive. All day long, you are making your
best guess of how to act given what you’ve just seen and what has
worked for you in the past. You are endlessly predicting what will
happen in the next moment.
Our behavior is heavily dependent on these predictions. Put
another way, our behavior is heavily dependent on how we interpret
the events that happen to us, not necessarily the objective reality of the
events themselves. Two people can look at the same cigarette, and one
feels the urge to smoke while the other is repulsed by the smell. The
same cue can spark a good habit or a bad habit depending on your
prediction. The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that
precedes them.