I found Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit a useful and enjoyable read on habit building, although it is a little Malcolm Gladwell-esque. Anyone here read it, and if so, what did you think of it?
I skimmed it at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, while travelling in New York. My recollection is that the book was serious and well-written, but that most of the actionable advice was summarized in the Appendix, so the rest could be safely ignored.
Thanks to scientific research, we now not only know that habits are powerful actors, but also understand how they are created. This process is called the “Habit Loop,”
In basic terms, a Cue is a trigger that sends your brain into automatic mode and tells it which habit to use. A simple example is the act of smelling freshly baked cookies. This aroma may trigger a Routine, which can be physical, emotional, mental, or a combination of the three. In the case of smelling cookies, the routine may be to go buy one.
This results in a Reward, which helps your brain figure out if a loop is worth following. In the cookie scenario, the reward is the satisfaction of hunger, whether real or perceived. Of course, this routine can result in weight gain over time and the formation of a “bad” habit. Duhigg points out that there is a golden rule of habit change: You can’t extinguish a bad habit; you can only change it! This explains why bad habits are sometimes very difficult to change, no matter how good our intentions are.
The basil ganglia portion of the brain is older and more primitive than the brain’s outer layers.
the basil ganglia can’t distinguish between good and bad habits.
some habits are so strong that they can cause our brains to hang on to them to the exclusion of common sense (e.g., the gambling addict’s belief that he has a “big win” right around the corner, etc.).
Cravings power the Habit Loop and are what make cues and rewards work. In other words, habits derive their strength from cravings.
there are mechanisms to help us ignore temptations. However, in order to do this, we must recognize which craving is driving our behavior. Once we identify the craving, we can more easily create a new habit.
The premise that it is possible to transform a habit, but not get rid of it completely, is what Duhigg calls the golden rule of habit change.
you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward while inserting a new routine. (e-cigarettes are a poster child for this process)
keystone habits were leveraged to create small wins in order to transform organizations and individuals.
willpower is an essential keystone habit. willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success. He also points out that the common belief that willpower is something you either have or don’t have is false. Instead, willpower is a learnable skill. Once a person learns good willpower habits in one area, these habits spill over into other areas. (practice setting alarms and doing what they tell you when they go off over and over again.)
Duhigg concludes that we must take responsibility for the habits that we can control. By identifying and understanding these habits, we have the freedom (and in some cases, the obligation) to change and remake them.
Example in actual use:
The Habit Loop
The first step is to identify the routine in the loop. He uses a personal example — his routine was to eat a chocolate chip cookie every afternoon, which caused him to gain weight. In order to change the behavior, he needed to identify what was driving it.
The second step is to experiment and find an alternative reward. The goal is to identify which craving is driving your routine, and find something to do instead. To continue the author’s example, this step would require finding a substitution for eating a cookie. If the author found that his craving was for the energy derived from the cookie, then walking around the block may be a suitable alternative. If the author’s craving was hunger, then eating an apple may be an effective substitute.
Duhigg suggests you look for patterns and take notes. For his own purposes, after replacing his afternoon cookie with a walk, upon returning to his desk he would write down the first three things that came to his mind, such as, relaxed, saw flowers and not hungry. The act of writing forces a momentary awareness of what you’re thinking about or feeling. It also helps you remember what you were thinking at that moment.
Once you’ve identified the routine and determined the right reward substitute, it’s time for the third step: go back and identify the cue. In the case of the cookie, the author determined that the cue wasn’t hunger, but the need for a temporary distraction from his work.
After following these steps, you can come up with a written plan. In Duhigg’s case, it was simple: at 3:30 p.m., he would walk to a friend’s desk and talk for 10 minutes rather than buying a cookie. As he points out, the change didn’t take effect immediately, but, in the long run, it worked because he understood how a habit operates. Once he had that understanding, he gained power over it.
From reading reviews it seems the interesting claim of the book is that choosing which habits to build is a lot trickier and more important (due to subtle wide ranging effects) than building a habit, which is asserted as fairly straightforward.
I found Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit a useful and enjoyable read on habit building, although it is a little Malcolm Gladwell-esque. Anyone here read it, and if so, what did you think of it?
I skimmed it at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, while travelling in New York. My recollection is that the book was serious and well-written, but that most of the actionable advice was summarized in the Appendix, so the rest could be safely ignored.
Free copies of the book may be found here.
I think that’s a fair summary, but reading the rest is still helpful as a way to mentally anchor the actionable advice.
Awesome, summary of summary:
Thanks to scientific research, we now not only know that habits are powerful actors, but also understand how they are created. This process is called the “Habit Loop,”
In basic terms, a Cue is a trigger that sends your brain into automatic mode and tells it which habit to use. A simple example is the act of smelling freshly baked cookies. This aroma may trigger a Routine, which can be physical, emotional, mental, or a combination of the three. In the case of smelling cookies, the routine may be to go buy one. This results in a Reward, which helps your brain figure out if a loop is worth following. In the cookie scenario, the reward is the satisfaction of hunger, whether real or perceived. Of course, this routine can result in weight gain over time and the formation of a “bad” habit. Duhigg points out that there is a golden rule of habit change: You can’t extinguish a bad habit; you can only change it! This explains why bad habits are sometimes very difficult to change, no matter how good our intentions are.
The basil ganglia portion of the brain is older and more primitive than the brain’s outer layers.
the basil ganglia can’t distinguish between good and bad habits.
some habits are so strong that they can cause our brains to hang on to them to the exclusion of common sense (e.g., the gambling addict’s belief that he has a “big win” right around the corner, etc.).
Cravings power the Habit Loop and are what make cues and rewards work. In other words, habits derive their strength from cravings.
there are mechanisms to help us ignore temptations. However, in order to do this, we must recognize which craving is driving our behavior. Once we identify the craving, we can more easily create a new habit.
The premise that it is possible to transform a habit, but not get rid of it completely, is what Duhigg calls the golden rule of habit change.
you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward while inserting a new routine. (e-cigarettes are a poster child for this process)
keystone habits were leveraged to create small wins in order to transform organizations and individuals.
willpower is an essential keystone habit. willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success. He also points out that the common belief that willpower is something you either have or don’t have is false. Instead, willpower is a learnable skill. Once a person learns good willpower habits in one area, these habits spill over into other areas. (practice setting alarms and doing what they tell you when they go off over and over again.)
Duhigg concludes that we must take responsibility for the habits that we can control. By identifying and understanding these habits, we have the freedom (and in some cases, the obligation) to change and remake them.
Example in actual use: The Habit Loop The first step is to identify the routine in the loop. He uses a personal example — his routine was to eat a chocolate chip cookie every afternoon, which caused him to gain weight. In order to change the behavior, he needed to identify what was driving it.
The second step is to experiment and find an alternative reward. The goal is to identify which craving is driving your routine, and find something to do instead. To continue the author’s example, this step would require finding a substitution for eating a cookie. If the author found that his craving was for the energy derived from the cookie, then walking around the block may be a suitable alternative. If the author’s craving was hunger, then eating an apple may be an effective substitute.
Duhigg suggests you look for patterns and take notes. For his own purposes, after replacing his afternoon cookie with a walk, upon returning to his desk he would write down the first three things that came to his mind, such as, relaxed, saw flowers and not hungry. The act of writing forces a momentary awareness of what you’re thinking about or feeling. It also helps you remember what you were thinking at that moment.
Once you’ve identified the routine and determined the right reward substitute, it’s time for the third step: go back and identify the cue. In the case of the cookie, the author determined that the cue wasn’t hunger, but the need for a temporary distraction from his work.
After following these steps, you can come up with a written plan. In Duhigg’s case, it was simple: at 3:30 p.m., he would walk to a friend’s desk and talk for 10 minutes rather than buying a cookie. As he points out, the change didn’t take effect immediately, but, in the long run, it worked because he understood how a habit operates. Once he had that understanding, he gained power over it.
From reading reviews it seems the interesting claim of the book is that choosing which habits to build is a lot trickier and more important (due to subtle wide ranging effects) than building a habit, which is asserted as fairly straightforward.