The Power of Habit

These are my notes for the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (2012). I thought this book provided a perfect amount of examples of illustrating how habits work. It wasn’t so much of a cookbook for building/changing habits as it was an intuition builder for how habits work. It could have got to the point a bit quicker at times, but it’s the perfect book for an audiobook on 2x speed.

Understanding habits

Habits can be extremely complex and can operate without conscious memory. Eugene Pauly lost his amygdala and hippocampus through a bout of viral encephalitis, and his declarative memory was almost gone… but he could learn new habits! He learned a new habit of going on a walk around the block with his wife. One day, he went on the walk by himself and returned home safely, but when asked for directions on his walk, he had no recollection that he even walked.

The habit loop consist of cue, routine, reward. A cue causes the brain to crave a reward, at which point the brain executes a routine to receive the reward. The brain creates autonomous habits to save mental resources in a process known as chunking.

How do you create a new habit?

To create a new habit, introduce a reward where there was none before. Febreze sales increased when a nice scent was added to the previously odorless spray. People didn’t buy it because it was useful; they bought it because it was rewarding. Pepsodent caused America to start brushing their teeth when mint + citric acid was added to the toothpaste, to give a reward that their teeth were clean. The cue of removing film on the teeth was not enough.

How do you change an existing habit?

To change a habit, only change the routine, and keep an existing cue and reward.

There is mounting evidence that belief in your capacity of change is needed to change a habit. For example, “I’m quitting drinking so I don’t kill my son in a car accident while drunk driving”.

Habits form around a keystone habit which causes a chain reaction of habit formation. Exercise is a common keystone habit; typically, this causes improved dieting habits, less stress, and higher productivity at work. The manufacturing firm Alcoa improved safety by introducing the keystone habit: the cue of observing an injury, the routine of reporting it and suggesting a way to improve, and the reward of being promoted. This caused the quality of products to increase, the revenue to increase 500%, and the market cap to increase to $27B.

How do you improve willpower?

Willpower is a finite resource. Resisting eating cookies, and then doing a boring puzzle is much harder than giving in to eating the cookies, and then doing a boring puzzle

Willpower can be increased by creating plans for action in trying times, and following through with it. Starbucks does this for rude customers: employees create plans for how they will react.

Habits in the workplace

All organizations have institutionalized habits, which are either created by design or accident. These habits determine who has power (and hopefully, with a balance of power). For example, in 2000, Rhode Island Hospital had many arrogant doctors who mistreated nurses, which led to operating room mistakes because nurses couldn’t speak up.

Companies have been better able to predict consumers’ buying habits. Target can deduce if a woman is pregnant from her purchases - even if it’s a secret. When people go through major life changes, they change their purchasing habits.

Sandwiching a new habit between existing routines is incredibly powerful. People don’t like being too targeted by ads, so companies like Target sandwich a highly targeted ad between irrelevant ads. Radio show hosts sandwich a song they want popular between two popular songs.

Habits in society

Weak ties create peer pressure, which is a powerful force for building habits. Close friends often are in the same circles as you and don’t provide that much value, but weak ties can offer you more jobs and opportunities. This is why Rosa Parks started the civil rights movement in 1955. Through a network of weak ties, the bus boycott exploded.

The neuroscience of habits

CT scans found that brains of those addicted to gambling experienced the reward of a “near miss” on a slot machine nearly as much as they experienced a win; on the other hand, those that were healthy, non-addicted gamblers experienced a “near miss” like a loss.

Habits are powerfully displayed during sleepwalking and sleep terrors. A man once killed his wife during a sleep terror, because he thought his wife was a man having an affair with his wife.

An interesting final question is: should people be held accountable for dangerous/unhealthy actions caused by unconscious habits? For example, gambling away the family’s money, or murdering someone during a sleep terror?