A habit is a behavioral pattern that is repeated so often that it becomes etched into the neural pathway, which then leads to automated behavior. Basically, you’re doing something without having to think about it. Almost half of our daily activities are habitual. Habits free up our mind to be able to concentrate on higher level activities that require more brainpower.
Unfortunately, not all habits do us good. Do you stare at your phone in the dark? Extended exposure to blue light from screens harms our vision. How many hours do you sleep each day? The sleep time duration for adults is recommended to be between seven and nine hours. What’s your first reaction upon receiving criticism? What do you feel when you see your friend showing off his or her luxurious vacation on Instagram? How often do you check your phone? And the list can go on.
Breaking bad habits can be extremely difficult and cultivating healthier habits may be just as difficult to achieve, but not impossible. According to Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author, we can take control of habits to leading a healthier, more productive life.
The Power of Habit
The key to a healthier, more productive life and achieving success in business and society is: understanding how habits work. In this book, Charles Duhigg explains why habits exist and how they can be changed. The book is divided into three parts:
(1) The habits of individuals: scientific discoveries by neuroscientists on how habits work. Duhigg explains how the right habits have led to the success of, for instance, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and NFL coach Tony Dungy.
(2) The habits of successful organizations: how habits can lead to successful businesses. Diving into case studies of successful organisations such as Starbucks, Target, and more.
(3) The habits of societies: how movements happen by discussing the impact of civil rights activists Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.
The Habit Loop
The brain works in a three-step loop (cue – routine – reward):
– Cue: a trigger that tells your brain which habit to use (e.g.: a snack or an ad)
– Routine: physical or mental action (e.g.: buying candy or feeling nostalgic)
– Reward: endorphins or sense of accomplishment (e.g.: a sugar rush or feeling happy)
Habit Formula: when I see [CUE], I will do [ROUTINE] in order to get [REWARD].
Example: When I see an older lady with a cane step in the train, I will stand up and offer her my seat in order to feel good about doing good for someone else and spreading positivity.
Over time, the habit loop becomes an automatic behavior so your brain doesn’t have to work so hard and can divert its attention to other activities. It just runs on auto-pilot even when the reward is changed or removed. When we determine our habit loop, we can begin to shift the behavior and change a habit. All you need is a plan: establish a better routine by planning for the cue and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward that satisfies the craving.
How to Create a New Habit: identify and spark the craving
Figuring out how to spark a craving is what makes the creation of a new habit easier. Neurological cravings power the habit loop and are what makes cues and rewards work. We associate certain cues with certain rewards, whereby a subconscious craving creeps in our brain that powers the habit loop.
Example: Pepsodent, a toothpaste brand, successfully launched a campaign (cue) depicting an individual brushing teeth with the product (routine). This individual then not only feels beautiful, but also feels a tingling sensation in the mouth after using the product and triggers the craving for this particular product (reward).
Golden Rule of Habit Change: new routines and a solid belief system
We can’t truly extinguish bad habits. To change a bad habit, the golden rule is: use the same cue and provide the same reward, but use a new routine. To sustain this habit change, belief is essential. Belief will keep you from relapsing. The odds for success go up dramatically when you believe that change is possible, especially when you commit to a habit change as part of a group. A communal experience, even if it is only as large as two people, this can be highly effective in the process of habit change.
Example: Tony Dungy, a renowned NFL coach, who turned a losing team ‘Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ into Super Bowl champions. He noticed that the NFL players would overthink their plays during tight situations, which cost them the game. He kept the cue (trigger: quarterback yelling “hut”) and the reward (desired outcome: getting a touchdown) the same, but changed the players’ routines (strategies, tactics, and formations drilled during practice).
“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”
– Tony Dungy (inspired by Chuck Noll) in ‘The Power of Habit’
Keystone Habits: small wins are the building blocks towards bigger wins
Keystone habits have the power to start a chain reaction that cultivates transformative change through small wins. Small wins are like stepping stones in the form of tiny advantages that convince people to accomplish bigger achievements that ultimately lead to a transformative change.
Example: Paul O’Neill, CEO of Alcoa, put worker safety before everything. Stakeholders weren’t happy with his approach, but profits and staff engagement rocketed the year after. He believed that if he could disrupt habits around one thing, it would spread through the entire company. By the time O’Neill retired, the company’s annual net income was five times larger than before he became CEO, and its market capital is worth $27 billion.
“If people can say: ‘I’m treated with dignity and respect’. A down payment on that is: nobody ever gets hurt here, because we care about our own commitment to our safety and we care about the people we work with. And it swells up into everything you do, so it creates a sense of pride about the organization you’re involved in.”
– Paul O’Neill in ‘Tough Decisions on CNN Business
How Willpower Becomes a Habit: training willpower like a muscle
Willpower, also referred to as “self-discipline”, is the keystone habit for individual success and is what helps us create lasting changes. It is the mental stamina, courage, and determination that enable change. Willpower has a greater influence on success that natural talent and it can be trained.
However, willpower is like a muscle that gets tired when it needs to work hard. When we need to do something that requires willpower, we need to conserve our willpower during the day. Willpower will deplete much faster when we’re mindlessly following orders. Therefore, it is wise to choose a certain healthier routine (a behavior that will benefit you or could help those you care about) that leads to a positive reward.
Example: Starbucks teaches its employees self-discipline to achieve an improved service quality. The company believes that willpower is learnable and it can be turned into a habit. It gives its employees routines to form a new habit around difficult situations, but also provides them situations with loads of blank routines. The employees were asked to think ahead and fill in the blanks.
“People want guidance, not rhetoric. They need to know what the plan of action is, and how it will be implemented. They want to be given responsibility to help solve the problem and authority to act on it.”
– Howard Schultz in ‘Pour Your Heart Into It’
The Power of Crisis: power the urgency for change and increase people’s willingness to change
Seek out moments of crisis or create the perception or crisis to cultivate the urgency of change. A crisis comes with uncertainty and routines reduce uncertainty. This sense of that something must change will require us to get creative and experiment with new routines.
Example: Rhode Island Hospital had so many bad habits that had led to wrong site surgeries and incidents. It escalated so much that nurses had to get creative and find ways to work around the tyranny. Things had to stoop so low that people became motivated to change the bad habits.
“Bad companies are destroyed by crisis.
Good companies survive them.
Great companies are improved by them.”
– Andy Grove (former Intel CEO) cited in ‘Creating the Digital Future’
Shaping Habits: shape consumer behavior with new habits through the use of familiar bits from old habits obtained from consumer data
You’ve probably seen it on Amazon: “Frequently bought together (shows products)” and “Customers who bought this item also bought (shows products)”. New habits can be shaped through familiarity: if you dress the new habit with familiar or existing routines, it’s easier for those who oppose change to accept it. Nowadays, companies use consumer data to sell products by taking advantage of our old habits. According to McKinsey, companies that leverage customer behavior to generate behavioral insights outperform industry peers by a whopping 85% in sales growth and over 25% in gross margin.
Example: Target, a large retailer, used data from loyalty programs to stratify customer groups based on buying patterns and targeted specific products offer similar to the products these customers bought before.
“A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
– Steve Jobs in Business Week
How Movements Happen: social ties through friendships and across communities along with a sprinkle of change leadership
According to historians and sociologists, a movement is a three-part process:
(1) Friendships: a movement starts with social habits that begin in friendships and strong ties. Social habits are behavioral patterns that occur through a large amount of people through peer pressure and are often hard to notice when they emerge, but has the power to change the world.
(2) Communities: the movement grows through communities that are brought together through weak ties. Weak ties are links that connect people who have mutual acquaintances or share something in common within the network, but don’t have strong ties of friendship themselves. Oftentimes, acquaintances with weak ties give us access to social networks where we don’t belong. Social habits can spill over to social networks through those weak ties. When weak and strong ties of peer pressure merge, widespread change can begin.
(3) Change leadership: the movement is sustained by change leaders, who provide new habits changing people’s sense of self (e.g.: sense of belonging and feeling of ownership).
“Each person must live their life as a model for others.”
– Rosa Parks
Example: Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a Caucasian on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks had strong ties within the church community, but also had weak ties through other communities. Word got out that she got arrested for breaching segregation rules. This led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and eventually the nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities. Martin Luther King Jr. brought the third part of the movement process: he presented a new set of principles to overwrite the habits that fuelled hatred within the black community.
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
– Martin Luther King Jr. in ‘Strength to Love’
The Real Power of Habit: the neurology of free will
The true power of habit lies in the insight that our habits are what we choose them to be. Once we understand that habits can change, we have the freedom to remake them. Even the strongest habits can be modified over time.
“If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real.”
– Charles Duhigg in ‘The Power of Habit’
Flowchart: How to Change a Habit
Thanks for reading!
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