Mind the Gap: How Habits Might Just Be the Bridge from Knowing to Doing

Whatever we do in life, there’s always that tricky chasm between what we know we should be doing and what we’re actually doing. We all know we should eat more vegetables, go on walks that don’t end at the fridge, and sleep like serene woodland creatures. And yet, there we are, binge-watching crime dramas at 1am while spooning Nutella directly from the jar.

This chasm isn’t exclusive to personal life. It’s alive and well in the workplace too—particularly when it comes to training. Most of us have been through some form of professional development that felt both informative and inspiring… for roughly 72 hours. Then comes the fade. The knowing-doing gap is real, and depressingly well-documented. Estimates suggest that over 90% of training content is never applied on the job. That’s a lot of PowerPoint slides dying in vain.

Yet the corporate training industrial complex remains obsessed with content delivery. More information! More frameworks! More acronyms! The assumption being that if we just know more stuff, we’ll do better stuff. Unfortunately, our brains didn’t get that memo.

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So, what actually works?

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Enter a growing body of research with a much more pragmatic focus: how to turn good intentions into sustained action. One of the most illuminating voices in this space is psychologist Wendy Wood of USC, who found that about 40% of what we do each day is not the result of decision-making, but habit. These aren’t grand, carefully weighed actions. They’re automatic, repeated behaviours—many formed without conscious intent. In other words, your morning coffee routine is likely more hardwired than your company's innovation strategy.

This turn towards understanding habit isn’t a new preoccupation. The Greek philosopher Aristotle is often misquoted as saying, “Excellence is a habit.” The truth, as ever, is more nuanced. That line actually comes from Will Durant, who was summarising Aristotle’s ideas in his 1926 book The Story of Philosophy. The real quote goes: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Close enough, Will. The point stands.

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From Rats to Routines: The Behavioural Lineage

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Modern behavioural theorists have done the heavy lifting to unpack this further. B.F. Skinner, the godfather of operant conditioning, demonstrated how behaviours could be shaped through reinforcement—yes, the famous lever-pushing rats. His work laid the groundwork for understanding how environment and cues influence action.

Fast forward, and you get BJ Fogg, a behavioural scientist at Stanford, who added a more human (and less rodent-based) twist. Fogg introduced the concept of “Tiny Habits”—micro-behaviours that anchor new routines to existing ones. According to Fogg, the recipe for habit formation is not willpower or repetition for 21 days (a myth), but emotion. Feeling good in the moment helps a behaviour stick.

Popular writers like Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) and James Clear (Atomic Habits) have built on these academic foundations to bring habit science to the masses. Duhigg introduced the now-famous habit loop: cue → routine → reward. Clear simplified it further into four laws: make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.

This explosion of interest in habits isn’t just a self-help trend. It’s a hopeful, evidence-based answer to the knowing-doing gap. If we want to do what we know we should do, we need to make it easier, more automatic, and dare we say… a little joyful?

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So what does this mean for learning and change at work?

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It means we have to spend less time reciting corporate values and more time designing behaviours that might actually happen. And this is where BJ Fogg’s approach shines.

1. Anchor the new to the familiar; Don’t try to overhaul your calendar or reinvent your day. Start with something you already do and attach a tiny new habit to it. For example: “After I log into Slack, I’ll check in with my team using one open-ended question.”
   
   
2. Start small; Fogg suggests starting with habits so tiny they feel absurd. Want to read more leadership articles? Start with opening the app—and reading the summary. Want to create more psychological safety? Start with a thumbs-up reaction to helpful contributions in meetings. It’s not the grand gesture; it’s the consistency.
   
   
3. Celebrate every step; According to Fogg, emotion creates memory. A positive feeling in the moment of habit execution helps your brain take notice. So a little mental “nailed it” can go a long way.

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These principles allow for a practical conversation post-training: What habit will you try this week? Learning about psychological safety is lovely. But asking each team member to try a new check-in question or to notice one moment of courage in a meeting? That’s tangible.

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Individual Agency as a Starting Point

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No, habits aren’t the whole story. Organisational change still requires systems, rituals, and—let’s be honest—a certain amount of tolerated chaos. But starting with individual agency gives us a lever. And those individual levers add up to real change.  

If you’re looking to get fitter, maybe the answer isn’t signing up for a marathon, but putting on your trainers every morning. If your team wants to start operating differently, maybe it’s not about a strategic rebrand but committing to one five-minute ritual each day that reinforces a new behaviour.

Will this give you the workplace equivalent of a beach bod? Maybe not. But it might just mean you show up in a better place—more focused, more connected, and ever so slightly more capable of bridging that knowing-doing divide.

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