Talking About Habits: Present, Past, and Getting Used to Things

1 Understanding Habits and Familiarity

When we talk about our lives, we often need to describe things we do regularly or things we did in the past.

When we describe present habits, we talk about actions or situations that happen regularly now. For example, you might say ‘I usually drink coffee in the morning’ or ‘I always walk to work’. These are things you do repeatedly as part of your routine. For past habits, we describe actions or situations that happened regularly in the past but don’t happen now. For example, ‘I used to play football every weekend’ or ‘When I was young, I would visit my grandmother every Sunday’. These habits are finished – they’re not part of your life anymore.

However, there’s another important way we talk about experiences, and this is where many learners get confused. The expressions ‘be used to’ and ‘get used to’ do NOT describe habits themselves. Instead, they describe your level of comfort or familiarity with a situation. They tell us whether something feels normal or strange to you. For example, ‘I’m used to the cold weather’ doesn’t describe a habit – it tells us that cold weather feels normal and comfortable to you now. This is a completely different meaning, and we’ll explore this important distinction carefully in this lesson.

Understanding these differences will help you express yourself more clearly and naturally when you talk about your routines, your past, and how you adapt to new situations.

2 Present Habits: ‘Usually’ and ‘Will’

When we want to describe our present habits, we have several ways to show that something happens regularly. The most common way is to use the present simple with frequency words like ‘usually’, but there’s also a more advanced form using ‘will’ that native speakers use in conversation.

‘Usually’ is the most natural way to talk about habits for B1 learners. It can appear in different positions in a sentence, and there are good alternatives you can use to add variety to your speaking and writing.

3 Past Habits: ‘Used to’ and ‘Would’

When we talk about past habits – things we did regularly in the past but don’t do now – we have two main structures: ‘used to’ and ‘would’. Both show that the habit is finished, but ‘used to’ is often clearer and more useful.

It’s important to understand why ‘used to’ is often better than past simple. If you say ‘I smoked when I was young’, this tells us about the past, but it doesn’t clearly show that you stopped. However, ‘I used to smoke’ always means the habit is finished – you don’t smoke now. This makes your meaning much clearer.

4 Be Used To and Get Used To: Familiarity, Not Habits

This is one of the most important points in this lesson, and it’s where many learners make mistakes. ‘Be used to’ and ‘get used to’ do NOT describe habits. They describe your level of familiarity or comfort with a situation.

Let’s look at an unnatural conversation to understand this:

Person A: ‘What do you have for breakfast?’
Person B: ❌ ‘I’m used to having coffee and biscuits.’

This sounds very strange to a native speaker! Person B is answering a question about their habit (what they usually eat), but they’re using a form that describes familiarity, not the habit itself. The natural answer is: ✓ ‘I usually have coffee and biscuits.’

So when DO we use ‘be used to’ and ‘get used to’? We use them when we want to talk about how normal or comfortable something feels to us. Look at this example: ‘I’ve been living in London for two years, but I’m still not used to the weather.’ This sentence doesn’t describe a habit – it describes the speaker’s level of adaptation. The weather still feels strange and uncomfortable to them. They haven’t adapted yet.

‘Be used to’ describes your current level of familiarity: ‘I’m used to spicy food’ means spicy food feels normal to you now – it doesn’t surprise or bother you. ‘Get used to’ describes the process of becoming familiar: ‘It took me months to get used to driving on the left’ means the process of adaptation took months – at first it felt strange, but slowly it became normal.

The structure is: be/get used to + -ing form (or + noun). For example: ‘I’m used to working late’ (familiarity with the situation of working late), ‘She’s getting used to her new job‘ (becoming familiar with it), ‘Are you used to the noise?’ (is the noise normal and comfortable for you now?).

Remember: these forms are about how something feels to you (normal or strange, comfortable or difficult), NOT about describing the habit itself.

5 Forms of ‘Be Used To’ and ‘Get Used To’

Now that you understand the meaning of these expressions, let’s look at how to use them in different tenses. Because ‘be used to’ and ‘get used to’ contain the verbs ‘be’ and ‘get’, we can use them in simple, perfect, and continuous forms to show different time periods and aspects.

6 Recap: Habits and Familiarity

Let’s bring everything together. You now understand that English has different ways to talk about habits and different ways to talk about familiarity.

For present habits, use present simple with ‘usually’, ‘normally’, ‘generally’, or similar words: ‘I usually exercise in the morning’. For past habits that are no longer true, use ‘used to’ or ‘would’: ‘I used to live in Spain’ or ‘We would go to the beach every summer’. Remember that ‘used to’ is often clearer than past simple because it always shows the habit is finished.

The most important point is this: ‘be used to’ and ‘get used to’ are NOT for describing habits. They describe your level of comfort or familiarity with a situation. ‘I’m used to spicy food’ means spicy food feels normal to you – it’s not describing what you eat regularly. ‘I’m getting used to my new job’ means you’re in the process of becoming comfortable with it.

When someone asks ‘What do you usually do?’, answer with habit language: ‘I usually…’. When you want to express how comfortable or familiar something feels, use ‘be/get used to + -ing/noun’. This distinction will make your English sound much more natural and accurate.