The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg deals with habits according to the individual, the organisation, and society at large.

(By Tsem Rinpoche and Pastor Niral Patel)

Self-help books are a dime a dozen these days. As soon as you walk into a bookstore or want to buy an eBook online, you are bound to come across the self-help section, also known as ‘popular psychology’ or ‘general psychology’. It is something unavoidable in this day and age. Given the plethora of titles available, it is easy to get overwhelmed and not know which book or resource is the right one for you. But unknown to most, the self-help genre is as old as writing itself. Even the ancient Egyptians, with their complex hieroglyphic language, had their own versions of self-help literature, as did the Greeks and Romans.

As a genre of literature in Western culture, self-help books can be traced back to a text published in 1859 by Samuel Smiles titled: Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct. The book was a manual of sorts aimed to instruct readers on solving personal problems and uplifting oneself from poverty to wealth through frugality and eradicating irresponsible behaviour. However, the book also attacked the principles of materialism and governments that did not regulate economic affairs or implement both taxation and subsidies. This book is commonly referred to as the “bible of mid-Victorian liberalism.”

Over the last half century or so, the genre has taken cultural prominence all over the world and has evolved to cover a wider range of topics than written about in Smiles’ Self-Help book. These days, the self-help genre seeks economic, intellectual, and emotional improvement driven by one’s own determination and often includes a significant psychological basis. A major section of the genre deals with the formation of habit, a recurring pattern of behaviour acquired through frequent repetition until one engages in it almost unconsciously. These habits lead us to failure and misery, or propel us to succeed and provide us with a deep sense of happiness. It is this topic that Charles Duhigg explains and investigates in his book: The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do and how to change. The Pulitzer Prize winner writes about habit in three distinct, yet obviously interrelated, spheres: that of the individual, that of organisations, and that of societies. The truths and techniques he lists in these sections provide readers with a truly powerful transformational ability.

The Habits of Individuals

Samuel Smiles published a book titled ‘Self-Help’ in 1859. It was to be the first book in the modern self-help genre.

Chapter 1, titled: The Habit Loop: How Habits Work discusses how many people mistakenly believe the formation of habit is linked to one’s psychical memory. The story of 71-year-old Eugene Pauly shatters this misconception. Due to viral encephalitis, Eugene lost the medial temporal lobe of his brain. Though the rest of his brain remained intact, he suffered complete short-term memory loss, and he could only remember events that occurred before 1960. His short-term memory loss was so bad he could not remember any new event for more than a minute. He could not tell you where the kitchen or bathroom was located in his own house, even if he was sitting there, and he had no memory of his grandchildren.

His wife took Eugene for a walk every day around the neighbourhood to ensure he had enough exercise. However, one day, she could not find him in the house. After 15 minutes of frantic worrying, Eugene showed up having gone for his daily walk by himself. His memory was so bad, he could not tell you where his house was or even describe the route he took every day, but he could actually take the walk every day. His example broke the conception that habits are formed and operated from the part of the brain that regulates memory. Later, scientific tests confirmed we actually learn and make unconscious choices without having to remember anything about the lesson or decision-making process.

It seems this is due to the fact that the brain converts sequences of actions into automatic routines, known as ‘chunking’, and this is the cause of habit formation. For example, using a fork includes several actions and awarenesses, including knowing how to hold the fork, how much pressure to apply to pierce the food, how to bring it up to the mouth, when to open the mouth, and when to close the mouth, and how to remove the fork from the mouth ensuring the food does not spill out. This simple use of a fork involves many separate actions in unison, but most of us do this every time we eat without a second thought.

The Habit Loop

Duhigg continues chapter 1 by outlining a principle that is central to understanding habit formation and subsequently how to change our habits. He calls this principle the habit loop. It consists of three steps:

1. Cue – a trigger that signals your brain to execute an automatic mode.
2. Routine – the emotional, mental, or physical behaviour that follows the cue.
3. Reward – the positive stimuli affirming the routine works well, and is something to remember. This leads the brain to use the same routine again in similar situations.

Once we understand and are familiar with how our habits are formed, it makes them much easier to control. By observing the cues and rewards we use in certain situations, we can change the routines to effect the desired change in our lives.

In chapter 2, The Craving Brain: How to Create New Habits, Duhigg examines the importance of the cue and reward to create a new routine. He gives many examples, one of which is the story of Proctor and Gamble’s then-revolutionary product Febreze. Though it was a breakthrough in modern science because it eliminated odours rather than masked them, like regular air-fresheners, it was not originally popular. Due to the way our body’s sense of smell works, we become used to smells over time. If a lady with nine cats and house odour lived in the situation long enough, she would become used to the smell, therefore would not think of buying the product.

She would have no cue to induce her to do anything about the smell. The company was about to discontinue the product when their management team found out what scientists then already knew; once a cue is introduced, the brain begins to anticipate and crave the associated reward. In this case, they could not sell a product without a scent, because there was no cue for the brain to anticipate. After adding fragrant scents to Febreze and marketing the product as the final touch to a household cleaning routine, sales increased dramatically. Later, the company revealed the real scientific and chemical breakthrough that Febreze utilised, eliminating odour rather than temporarily covering it.

Duhigg’s third chapter, The Golden Rule of Habit Change: Why Transformation Occurs seeks to analyse transformation. Of the many systems and examples of transformation he writes about, the 12-Step Alcoholics Anonymous is particularly important. In this system, an actual physical addiction with both genetic and psychological roots is overcome in a largely arbitrary and unscientific method. It does not address the biochemical factors present in alcoholism, nor the psychiatric factors involved. Rather, it introduces a new routine in the habit loop, first by identifying what alcoholism is supposedly fulfilling, which is relaxation, companionship, relief from anxiety, or escape, and substituting this through the medium of Alcoholics Anonymous groups. Although powerful but scientifically perplexing, one other key factor is involved and that is faith or belief. Though the scientific examination of faith and its mechanism to inspire change is almost non-existent, it remains a potent tool in personal transformation. For example, most people attending Alcoholics Anonymous have faith or belief in a higher power. Likewise, faith and belief not only in a higher power, but in anything, can lead to change and transformation.

The Habits of Successful Organisations

Keystone Habits, or the Ballard of Paul O’Neil: Which Habits Matter Most, Chapter 4, talks about the need to use what is termed as a ‘keystone’ habit, something that creates a chain reaction disrupting other habits. Citing the example of Paul O’Neill, CEO of the manufacturer Alcoa, he stresses the importance of keystone habits in effecting transformation within organisations. Giving his first speech to investors in 1987, O’Neill talked about worker safety, rather than following the usual script about profit and losses, and promised to implement better business acumen. He even pointed out fire exits to members of the audience, who questioned his sanity.

Fast-forward 11 years, and Alcoa had become a company with an accident rate 1/20^th of the national average. O’Neill succeeded in his implementation of new safety guidelines, and this paid off with a 500% rise in income and a market value increase of $27,000,000. He knew transformation of the work force was necessary and realised concentration on one thing would disrupt other habits hindering the growth of the company in all areas of management. Worker safety was his keystone, and realising this, he instituted a better habit loop – whenever there was an injury (cue), the unit president would provide O’Neill with an injury report and action plan to prevent such accidents again within 24 hours (routine). Promotion depended on compliance with this requirement (reward).

For the unit president to meet the 24-hour deadline, he needed to be in close communication with his VP to hear about it. The VP had to be in constant communication with the floor managers; the floor managers relied on workers for safety suggestions, which they would need to answer the VP when he asked for a plan. As new patterns of communication were created because of this, other areas of the business changed, and better safety ultimately became better quality and efficiency.

Keystone habits can affect all areas of our lives, leading to wider shifts and behaviours. For example, those with a habit of exercise find they start eating healthier, are more productive at work, and feel less stressed. Though the principle may be easy to understand, implementing it can be a challenge and can only be done through a trial and error approach with the goal of a ‘small win’, a minor advantage that sets into motion a transformation of habit patterns on a larger scale.

Duhigg gave an example of a ‘small win’ by detailing a 2009 weight loss study. Simply by asking participants to keep a daily log of the foods they ate and nothing more, participants naturally began identifying eating patterns. This led to them taking more proactive approaches to planning meals, which led to healthier meals. Those who kept the food diary lost twice as much weight as any other participant.

In chapter 5, Starbucks and the Habit of Success: When Willpower Becomes Automatic, Duhigg presents one of the most important keystone habits – our own willpower. Highlighting the story of the international coffee chain Starbucks, he showcases that increasing willpower in one area of your life increases willpower in other areas of life too. This was integral to the success of Starbucks, which included the implementation of methodical planning of routine to deal with cues where pain and temptation were the strongest.

This was implemented through a rigorous training system and guides. Staff were made aware of certain cues that would necessitate a response, normally emotional, such as an angry customer yelling because his or her order was incorrect. This was matched with one of the dozens of routines in the company’s repertoire. By choosing a specific behaviour, or routing as Duhigg labels it, willpower became a habit. This led to employees maintaining a high level of service, which propelled Starbucks to become one of the world’s leading coffee companies.

In The Power of a Crisis: How Leaders Create Habits Through Accident and Design, chapter 6 of his impactful work, Duhigg states each organisation has their own instituted habits. These are mostly unspoken routines that make the company work, as even the most skilled leaders could never deal with the small decisions faced by front-line workers. While it may seem a company spends time in research and development, coming up with often-complex systems, most of the actual routines are based on individual and collective behaviours. For example, if you asked someone how to succeed in the company at which you work, it is unlikely they would refer you to the policy handbook, but rather tell you about the informal rules of working there. If working in a successful organisation, it is probably because its leaders have developed these unspoken habits that provide a sense of power and keep the peace, while making it clear who is in charge.

Chapter 7, How Target Knows What You Want Before You Do: When Companies Predict (and Manipulate) Habits, outlines how companies utilise cues, habits, and rewards to become successful. Companies these days rely on large amounts of data to predict consumer habits, but have realised that most purchasing decisions are made the moment a consumer actually sees a product. Despite a customer’s intention to buy a product, habit is much more influential in their decision-making process. These habits, however, are much more individualised than information provided by large amounts of data.

To counter this, companies like Target collect individualised shopping data based on customer spending through the use of credit, loyalty programmes, rewards, and frequent shopper cards. Combined with information such as age, marital status, location and ethnicity, which are provided when customers sign up, they can create an extremely detailed picture of a customer’s life. Using this, they can then tailor products which fall in line with the customer’s habits, thereby increasing sales dramatically. For example, if you suddenly start buying pre-natal vitamins, Target will send you coupons for pregnancy items and even coupons for diapers, cleverly delivered between more generic adverts, such as for lawnmowers or food. What Duhigg shares in this chapter is that one should not be suspicious of the manipulation of your habits by large companies, but realise habits are an extremely powerful tool, and you can create your own new habits between your existing routines.

The Habits of Societies

Duhigg spends a large part of chapter 8, Saddleback Church and the Montgomery Bus Boycott: How Movements Happen, analysing how the American hero Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, sparking a movement that spearheaded civil rights in the United States. This incident was not the first; at least two similar recorded incidents had occurred in the previous months before Rosa Parks’ most famous defiance on December 1, 1955. Habits were responsible for the civil rights crusade.

Deeply involved in her community, she was part of many groups and organisations that rarely communicated or crossed paths with each other. When two of her friends, unknown to each other — a former head of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, and a white lawyer — both tried to post her bail and mount legal challenges against segregation laws, links were made that did not previously exist. By the end of the day, news of her arrest had spread throughout the community like wildfire, and the beginnings of the civil rights movement took root.

In this case, it was not that Rosa Parks had many close friends; in fact, she had what sociologists call “weak ties.” These are in many ways more important than close friends, connecting us with a wider network of people, groups, and information. Close friends usually run in the same groups we do; therefore, they are unlikely to connect us to much outside our own sphere. Through these weak ties, there was enough peer pressure for a movement to take root. A smaller amount of pressure, but over a considerably larger number of people was necessary. In fact, those who didn’t participate in the movement risked losing social standing within the community. When this was picked up by the media, they took it to mean everyone was participating. The resulting boycott against the city of Montgomery became a new social habit that spilled over into larger habits, such as peaceful protests, a move that jumpstarted the civil rights movement, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Duhigg’s last chapter, The Neurology of Free Will: Are We Responsible for our Habits? discusses more scientific approaches to understanding habits through MRI scans and clinical research. Using this, he seeks to prove the validity of his habit loop theory and does so convincingly through examples of differences between pathological and social gamblers. He concludes that, no matter how strong a habit is, as long as you are aware of it, you can change it. In the end, he recounts a story by David Foster Wallance.

“There are these two, young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ The young fish swim on for a bit before one finally asks the other what “water” is.”

Like the fish, many of us live our lives swimming through a world permeated with habits without even realising it.

The Guide to Transformation

The best part of the book is the appendix, titled: A Reader’s Guide to Using These Ideas, in which Duhigg quite simply summarises his book into steps we can utilise in our quest for real change in our lives. While reading the book, readers are made aware of the literal power of habits and how they shape our lives, and the appendix gives us the guide to affecting real transformation. These points are:

1. The identification of a routine – to know what sort of behaviours you want to change.
2. Experimentation with rewards – once you have figured out the behaviour you want to change, you must experiment with rewards to find the best one to match your new or modified behaviour.
3. The identification of the cue – once you have an appropriate reward that works, you can identify the real cue of the habit. Usually, habitual cues fall into five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, and an immediately preceding action. If you are serious about changing, keep a diary of location, timing, emotional state, people around you, and the action you took immediately prior to your habit. After writing these down a couple of times, you will probably see a pattern emerge and identify your cue.
4. Create a plan – since you have recognised your habit loop, it should be easier to design a new one that changes your routine and reward but has the same cue. If you have correctly determined the right cue and reward, the habit will be easy to change.

The Verdict

The Power of Habit is one of the best books about personal transformation I have come across. It hit home that everything we do and how we live our lives, to how large companies organise and market themselves is due to habit. But more than that, how successful we are in any of life’s endeavours depends on our ability to identify and reshape or build new habits, as Will Durant summed up Aristotle’s views:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

The more we understand our habits, the less importance we assign to achieving our ‘goals’ or any number of facets of life that we obsess over. Achieving these facets is something your average self-help book obsesses over. Although having goals is important, focusing your attention on changing habits will naturally lead to a more successful life. That makes this book special. It not only proves this to you through individual, organisational, and societal examples, but it also provides you with a framework and guide to effecting a profound change within your life.

About Charles Duhigg

Charles Duhigg is a reporter for the New York Times and has won many awards for his work, including the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Having studied History at Yale University, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School. He first worked in private equity before beginning his career in journalism.

He became interested in productivity when he was writing a book in his spare time on neurology and the psychology of how habits are formed. Feeling that he was falling behind in his work, given that he was a full-time reporter at the New York Times chasing stories and the recent father of a second child, he wanted advice. Contacting the friend of a friend, who was a renowned surgeon, author, an associate professor at Harvard University, advisor to the World Health Organisation, and the founder of a non-profit organisation, he reached out for a fresh opinion on productivity. The reply he received was that the surgeon was unavailable because he was too busy.

Later, he found out the surgeon was actually heading out on a short holiday with his wife, and that he should email later in the month, when the surgeon would have more time to reply. Charles Duhigg learnt from this incident that productivity means different things to different people in different settings. It is the name we label our endeavours to make the best use of our time and intelligence, according to our priorities. It is about getting the best possible results with the least energy wasted. From another angle, it is about getting tasks accomplished without sacrificing everything we care about.

About the Book

“In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us into the thrilling and surprising world of the scientific study of habits.

He examines why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. He visits laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. And he uncovers how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr.

The result is a compelling argument and an empowering discovery: the key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive or even building revolutionary companies is understanding how habits work. By harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.”

Books by Charles Duhigg

• The Power of Habit
• Smarter, Faster, Better

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Smiles
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-help_book
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-help
4. https://deanyeong.com/reading-note/the-power-of-habit/
5. https://fourminutebooks.com/the-power-of-habit-summary/
6. https://deanyeong.com/reading-note/the-power-of-habit/
7. http://blogs.umb.edu/quoteunquote/2012/05/08/its-a-much-more-effective-quotation-to-attribute-it-to-aristotle-rather-than-to-will-durant/

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