system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
eli5: If good habits are rewarding and healthy, why is it easier to keep falling into bad habits?

I’ve been trying to sleep earlier lately because i genuinely feel great in the morning, and have a productive day. But I keep falling into the habit of staying up too late and feeling tired in the morning. This feels like a trend across the board. 

Why the self sabotage? Anyone got an explanation?
gpt
The example you're talking about is a type of procrastination; staying up late pays off \*now\* while the negative effects don't show up until later. Going to bed early "hurts" us \*now\* but doesn't pay off until later. We're wired up pretty strongly to prioritize near-term benefits over longer-term ones because of the heavy evolutionary survival pressure for a sure thing now against a more risky thing later. Successfully fighting this tendency is one of the major differences between children and adults, but it's always there.

Good habits that pay off now area easy and don't backslide. It's the ones that you have to invest some "pain" for now in return for a (presumably) more worthwhile gain later that have problems. This is why exercising is so hard for so many people.