Knowingly or unknowingly, we have certain patterns that we’ve set for ourselves. It’s a cycle of repetitive actions that we’ve become accustomed to. We can segregate these into two kinds- Habits and Routines. Good routines and habits form the base of your personality and later on, you’re business. Training yourself to do a particular thing is never easy; but it pays off in the long run.

Habit works by generating an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. Habits are simply how the brain learns to do things without deliberation. We can put these impulses to good use but only certain behaviors can become habits.

Building a habit is relatively simple: Just harness the impulse. For new habits to take hold, provide a clear trigger, make the behavior easy to do, and ensure it occurs frequently.  However, if the behavior requires a high degree of intentionality, effort, or deliberation, it is not a habit. All sorts of tasks aren’t habits—and never will be. By definition, doing things that are effortful aren’t habits.

Unfortunately, this means behaviors that require hard work and deliberate practice aren’t good candidates for habit-formation.  So if these behaviors aren’t habits, what are they? They’re routines. A routine is a series of behaviors we practice regularly. Routines don’t care if you feel an urge or not; they just need to get done. When you detect you can’t succeed at making a habit, you can begin by looking for how to establish a routine instead.

Summing-up: Both habit and routine refer to regular and repeated actions in our lives. A habit is an action we do often in a regular and repeated way. Routine is a regular way of doing things in a particular order. The main difference between habit and routine is that habit is a recurrent with little or no conscious thought whereas routine require a high degree of intention and effort.