The Power of Habit: Why We do What We do in Life and Business

  • Page 20When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit--unless you find new routines--the pattern will unfold automatically.
  • Page 26When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop.
  • Page 27The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards--the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25
  • Page 27Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don't recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them.
  • Page 27By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.
  • Page 33And that craving, it turns out, is what makes cues and rewards work. That craving is what powers the habit loop.
  • Page 33Even without memory habits can form
  • Page 36First, find a simple and obvious cue. Second, clearly define the rewards.
  • Page 36Studies of people who have successfully started new exercise routines, for instance, show they are more likely to stick with a workout plan if they choose a specific cue, such as running as soon as they get home from work, and a clear reward, such as a beer or an evening of guilt-free television.2.13 Research on dieting says creating new food habits requires a predetermined cue--such as planning menus in advance--and simple rewards for dieters when they stick to their intentions.2.14
  • Page 43People couldn't detect most of the bad smells in their lives. If you live with nine cats, you become desensitized to their scent. If you smoke cigarettes, it damages your olfactory capacities so much that you can't smell smoke anymore. Scents are strange; even the strongest fade with constant exposure. That's why no one was using Febreze, Stimson realized. The product's cue--the thing that was supposed to trigger daily use--was hidden from the people who needed it most. Bad scents simply weren't noticed frequently enough to trigger a regular habit. As a result, Febreze ended up in the back of a closet.
  • Page 43How do you build a new habit when there's no cue to trigger usage, and when the consumers who most need it don't appreciate the reward?
  • Page 47This explains why habits are so powerful: They create neurological cravings.
  • Page 48"There is nothing programmed into our brains that makes us see a box of doughnuts and automatically want a sugary treat," Schultz told me. "But once our brain learns that a doughnut box contains yummy sugar and other carbohydrates, it will start anticipating the sugar high. Our brains will push us toward the box. Then, if we don't eat the doughnut, we'll feel disappointed."
  • Page 50to overpower the habit, we must recognize which craving is driving the behavior. If we're not conscious of the anticipation, then we're like the shoppers who wander, as if drawn by an unseen force, into Cinnabon.
  • Page 51But countless studies have shown that a cue and a reward, on their own, aren't enough for a new habit to last. Only when your brain starts expecting the reward--craving the endorphins or sense of accomplishment--will it become automatic to lace up your jogging shoes each morning. The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, must also trigger a craving for the reward to come.2.29
  • Page 58"Consumers need some kind of signal that a product is working,"
  • Page 58Choose a cue, such as going to the gym as soon as you wake up, and a reward, such as a smoothie after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the endorphin rush you'll feel. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually, that craving will make it easier to push through the gym doors every day.
  • Page 62To change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.
  • Page 62That's the rule: If you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same....(Attempts to give up snacking, for instance, will often fail unless there's a new routine to satisfy old cues and reward urges.
  • Page 70Researchers say that AA works because the program forces people to identify the cues and rewards that encourage their alcoholic habits, and then helps them find new behaviors.
  • Page 74Asking patients to describe what triggers their habitual behavior is called awareness training, and like AA's insistence on forcing alcoholics to recognize their cues, it's the first step in habit reversal training. The tension that Mandy felt in her nails cued her nail biting habit.
  • Page 78More than three dozen studies of former smokers have found that identifying the cues and rewards they associate with cigarettes, and then choosing new routines that provide similar payoffs--a piece of Nicorette, a quick series of push-ups, or simply taking a few minutes to stretch and relax--makes it more likely they will quit.3.28
  • Page 85It wasn't God that mattered, the researchers figured out. It was belief itself that made a difference. Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior.
  • Page 85"There's something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they're by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief."
  • Page 89But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible.
  • Page 89Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.
  • Page 100Keystone habits say that success doesn't depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers. This book's first section explained how habits work, how they can be created and changed. However, where should a would-be habit master start? Understanding keystone habits holds the answer to that question: The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.
  • Page 109initial shifts start chain reactions that help
  • Page 109Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as "small wins." They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious.
  • Page 112A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves.
  • Page 112Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.4.15
  • Page 113"Small wins do not combine in a neat, linear, serial form, with each step being a demonstrable step closer to some predetermined goal,"
  • Page 113"More common is the circumstance where small wins are scattered… like miniature experiments that test implicit theories about resistance and opportunity and uncover both resources and barriers that were invisible before the situation was stirred up."
  • Page 131Dozens of studies show that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success. 5.1
  • Page 131the University of Pennsylvania analyzed 164 eighth-grade students, measuring their IQs and other factors, including how much willpower the students demonstrated, as measured by tests of their self-discipline. Students who exerted high levels of willpower were more likely to earn higher grades in their classes and gain admission into more selective schools.
  • Page 133Scientists began conducting related experiments, trying to figure out how to help kids increase their self-regulatory skills. They learned that teaching them simple tricks--such as distracting themselves by drawing a picture, or imagining a frame around the marshmallow, so it seemed more like a photo and less like a real temptation--helped them learn self-control.
  • Page 134Willpower is a learnable skill, something that can be taught the same way kids learn to do math and say "thank you."
  • Page 139As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives-- in the gym, or a money management program-- that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything.
  • Page 139They learn how to distract themselves from temptations. And once you've gotten into that willpower groove, your brain is practiced at helping you focus on a goal."
  • Page 146This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives.
  • Page 187Starting a little over a decade ago, Target began building a vast data warehouse that assigned every shopper an identification code--known internally as the "Guest ID number"--that kept tabs on how each person shopped. When a customer used a Target-issued credit card, handed over a frequent-buyer tag at the register, redeemed a coupon that was mailed to their house, filled out a survey, mailed in a refund, phoned the customer help line, opened an email from Target, visited Target.com, or purchased anything online, the company's computers took note. A record of each purchase was linked to that shopper's Guest ID number along with information on everything else they'd ever bought.
  • Page 188There are data peddlers such as InfiniGraph that "listen" to shoppers' online conversations on message boards and Internet forums, and track which products people mention favorably. A firm named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers' political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes.7.5 Other companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds of products they might want to buy as a result. (Target, in a statement, declined to indicate what demographic companies it does business with and what kinds of information it studies.)
  • Page 202There is evidence that a preference for things that sound "familiar" is a product of our neurology. Scientists have examined people's brains as they listen to music, and have tracked which neural regions are involved in comprehending aural stimuli. Listening to music activates numerous areas of the brain, including the auditory cortex, the thalamus, and the superior parietal cortex.
  • Page 202These same areas are also associated with pattern recognition and helping the brain decide which inputs to pay attention to and which to ignore.
  • Page 205The secret to changing the American diet, the Committee on Food Habits concluded, was familiarity. Soon, housewives were receiving mailers from the government telling them "every husband will cheer for steak and kidney pie."7.24 Butchers started handing out recipes that explained how to slip liver into meatloaf.
  • Page 210If you dress a new something in old habits, it's easier for the public to accept it.
  • Page 224When sociologists have examined how opinions move through communities, how gossip spreads or political movements start, they've discovered a common pattern: Our weak-tie acquaintances are often as influential--if not more--than our close-tie friends.
  • Page 234"We've thought long and hard about habitualizing faith, breaking it down into pieces," Warren told me. "If you try to scare people into following Christ's example, it's not going to work for too long. The only way you get people to take responsibility for their spiritual maturity is to teach them habits of faith.
  • Page 235"Once that happens, they become self-feeders. People follow Christ not because you've led them there, but because it's who they are."
  • Page 239For an idea to grow beyond a community, it must become self-propelling. And the surest way to achieve that is to give people new habits that help them figure out where to go on their own.
  • Page 242"You start to see yourself as part of a vast social enterprise, and after a while, you really believe you are."
  • Page 252"Sleepwalking is a reminder that wake and sleep are not mutually exclusive," Mark Mahowald, a professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota and a pioneer in understanding sleep behaviors, told me. "The part of your brain that monitors your behavior is asleep, but the parts capable of very complex activities are awake. The problem is that there's nothing guiding the brain except for basic patterns, your most basic habits. You follow what exists in your head, because you're not capable of making a choice."
  • Page 274Individuals and habits are all different, and so the specifics of diagnosing and changing the patterns in our lives differ from person to person and behavior to behavior. Giving up cigarettes is different from curbing overeating, which is different from changing how you communicate with your spouse, which is different from how you prioritize tasks at work. What's more, each person's habits are driven by different cravings.
  • Page 274THE FRAMEWORK: • Identify the routine • Experiment with rewards • Isolate the cue • Have a plan
  • Page 274A habit is a formula our brain automatically follows: When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD