Review - The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

It is often said that we are creatures of habit, in that many of our daily activities end up being a matter of routine rather than direct deliberation (just think of your morning run-through). While this is no doubt true, author Charles Duhigg insists that this is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact that habits have on our daily lives. Indeed, in his new book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business Duhigg argues that habits pervade not only our personal lives, but that they have an integral role to play in the businesses and other organizations of which we are a part, and that they are also at the heart of social movements and societies at large. The first part of the book focuses on the role that habits play in our personal lives. Here we learn about the habit loop consisting of cue, routine, and reward and how the elements in this loop can be manipulated to help modify our habits (say from crashing on the couch with a bag of chips, to heading out for a run). We also learn about the power of particular habits called keystone habits (which include exercise, as well as eating together as a family) that help initiate a domino effect that touches all of the other aspects of our lives. Also, we learn about the power of beliefand the importance of social groups in helping create this beliefthat stands behind successful habit transformation programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. The second part of the book concentrates on how habits help shape businesses and organizations. Here we learn that the formation of habits and routines within organizations is unavoidable; whats more, that it is always best for the leadership of a group to make a deliberate effort to shape the habits of their organizations, and in a way that ensures a high degree of equality and fairness for its various members, while nonetheless making it clear who is ultimately in charge of each particular aspect of the operation. Second, we learn that keystone habitswhich are at the center of our personal livesare also pivotal when it comes to larger organizations (and how a particular keystone habit was applied to resurrect the once great but flailing American aluminum company Alcoa). We also learn about the greatest keystone habit of all: willpower, and how this habit can best be cultivated (and how companies such as Starbucks are employing these lessons to help train employees successfully). Finally, we learn about how companies such as Proctor & Gamble and Target instill habits in their customers.

The third and final part of the book examines the importance of habits in social movements, such as the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Here we learn that movements tend to follow a three-part process. To start with, a movement tends to begin with a group of close acquaintances and friends. The movement tends to grow when these people spread it to the broader communities of which they are a part. Finally, in order to really take hold and spread, the movement must be guided forward by an effective leader who lays down new habits for the movements adherents in a way that allows them to gain a sense of identity. PART I: THE POWER OF HABITS IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES 1. The Importance of Habits When it comes to our habits, some of them are extremely simple, such as applying the toothpaste to the toothbrush before sticking it into our mouths. However, other habits are extremely complex, such as backing the car out of the driveway. There is a very good reason, of course, for our tendency to form habits around out daily activities, simple and complex alike. For any behaviour that can be reduced to a routine is one less behaviour that we must spend time and energy consciously thinking about and deciding upon. This frees up time and energy for other matters. Indeed, as Duhigg points out, once that habit starts unfolding, our gray matter is free to quiet itself or chase other thoughts, which is why we have enough mental capacity to realize that Jimmy forgot his lunchbox inside .

2. How Habits Are Formed So how does it work? How do our brains fall into habits? According to Duhigg, it comes down to a simple, three part loop: cue, routine and reward. In the authors own words, first, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future 3. Changing Your Habits Once habits set in they can, of course, be very difficult to change. In fact, studies indicate that once habits are formed in the brain, they become encoded in the structures therein, and can never truly be eradicated. This is particularly problematic given that at least some of the habits that we develop (if not most of them) are ones that we would prefer not to have. Thankfully though, it turns out that we can take control of the habit loop and develop new habits that come to overpower and override the old ones; and, as the author points out, once someone creates a new pattern, studies have demonstrated, going for a jog or ignoring the doughnuts becomes as automatic as any other habit

4. The Importance of Keystone Habits Keystone habits are habits that, when changed, set off a chain reaction that extends to all aspects of a persons life: some habits, in other words, matter more than others in remaking lives. These are keystone habits, and they can influence how people work, eat, play, live, spend and communicate. Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms everything Identifying keystone habits is not always easy, but there are tricks for it. For instance, research has revealed that keystone habits seem to operate on the principle of small wins, which are just what they sound like: tiny victories that give you an indication that you are progressing, and that you can in fact succeed. As one Cornell professor puts it: once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win . Duhigg adds that small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach. Though keystone habits may exist in a myriad of forms, and may be different for different people, certain habits tend to act as keystone habits across the board. Exercising is certainly one of these. And eating as a family , and doing things like making your bed every morning have also been shown to be highly correlated with other good habits. 5. The Importance of Belief and Communities of Support When you are trying to change your habits, small wins can provide an important sense of belief that this change is in fact possible. And the power of belief should not be underestimated, for it has been shown to be a particularly effective tool when it comes to making changeand specifically when the habits you are trying to change are especially stubborn, such as alcoholism. In the case of alcoholism (and those like it), times of deep stress can easily derail any progress that an individual may have made in replacing their old habit with a new one, and send them right back to their old ways. If, however, the individual has developed a strong sense of belief that they will be able to cope with their stress without the use of alcohol, then this seems to make all the difference. As the researcher Scott Tonigan of the University of New Mexico explains, Belief seems critical. You dont have to believe in God, but you do need the capacity to believe that things will get better. Even if you give people better habits, it doesnt repair why they started drinking in the first place. Eventually theyll have a bad day, and no new routine is going to make everything seem okay. What can make a difference is believing that they can cope with that stress without alcohol

The program Alcoholics Anonymous has always made excellent use of this fact. AA was once considered to be somewhat of a cult organization among scientists, due to its heavy reliance on spirituality in its approach. Recently, however, scientists have begun to take AA more seriously. Part of the reason why Alcoholics Anonymous has been so successful, it seems, is because the program makes the belief that things can change an important part of their meetings. Tonigan argues that by putting alcoholics in meetings where belief is a givenwhere, in fact, belief is an integral part of the twelve stepsAA trains people in how to believe in something until they believe in the program and themselves. It lets people practice believing that things will get better, until things actually do . PART II: THE POWER OF HABITS IN BUSINESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS 6. Institutional Routines & The Issue of Power Just as in our personal lives, habits have an important role to play in businesses and organizations as well. In fact, as it turns out, habits and routines are just as inevitable in the latter as they are in the former. This proves to be the case because without institutional habits organizations would quite simply never get any work done. Indeed, with regards to these habits, one study revealed that without them, policy formulation and implementation would be lost in a jungle of detail. To give a few examples, Duhigg points out that institutional routines are what allow workers to experiment with ideas without having to ask for permission at every step. They provide, he continues, a kind of organizational memory, so that managers dont have to reinvent the sales process every six months or panic each time a VP quits. 7. Keystone Habits in Businesses and Organizations Institutional habits are not only necessary in order to keep operations running, butperhaps even more importantlyto prevent an entire organization from falling apart in a mess of ambition and rivalry between its members. Indeed, as Duhigg reminds us, companies arent big happy families where everyone plays together nicely. Rather, most workplaces are made up of fiefdoms where executives compete for power and credit, often in hidden skirmishes that make their own performances appear superior and their rivals seem worse. Divisions compete for resources and sabotage each other to steal glory. Bosses pit their subordinates against one another so that no one can mount a coup. Companies arent families. Theyre battlefields in a civil war. And the only thing that stops these battles from being waged out in the open and bringing the company to ruin, Duhigg claims, is the fact that there are routines in place to ensure that truces are maintained between the major players to such a degree so as to allow business to more or less go on as usual: organizational habits offer a basic promise: if you follow the established patterns and abide by the truce, then rivalries wont destroy the company, the profits will roll in, and, eventually, everyone will get rich. 8. The Most Important Keystone Habit of All: Willpower The most important keystone habit of all: willpower. As Duhigg explains, numerous studies have now shown that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success . For instance, in one study of eight-grade students conducted in 2005 out of the University of

Pennsylvania, willpower (as measured by how the subjects performed on self-discipline tests) turned out to be the single biggest factor in predicting academic performance: Highly selfdisciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on every academicperformance variable, the researchers wrote. Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ . 9. How Companies Instill Habits in Their Customers The knowledge of how this is done is extremely important to companies, of course, because few things generate more sales than if a company can successfully create a habit out of buying their product or coming to their store. But the knowledge is perhaps even more important to individuals, who stand to save a great deal of money if they can resist forming the habit of buying a product that they really dont need. So take this how you will, the knowledge may be invaluable no matter what side of the fence you find yourself on. Perhaps the most interesting example of a company successfully instilling a habit in their customers is the story of Pepsodent toothpaste. In the early 1900s, when Pepsodent first got its start, almost nobody bought toothpaste, because almost nobody brushed their teeth. Peoples reluctance to buy toothpaste had nothing to do with the fact that they had stellar dental hygiene. On the contrary, as Duhigg explains, it was no secret that the health of Americans teeth was in steep decline. As the nation had become wealthier, people had started buying larger amounts of sugary, processed foods. When the government started drafting men for World War I, so many recruits had rotting teeth that officials said poor dental hygiene was a national security risk . Nor could the fact that nobody bought toothpaste be blamed on the fact that nobody had tried to sell toothpaste before. To be sure, there was already an army of door-to-door salesmen hawking dubious tooth powders and elixirs, most of them going broke. And yet, within a decade of Pepsodents introducing its toothpaste, almost half of all Americans brushed their teeth on a daily basis, and Pepsodent itself was one of the best-selling products on the planet. So, how did Pepsodent succeed in selling toothpaste when countless others had failed? To begin with, Pepsodents advertiser, Claude Hopkins, developed a clever little ad campaign that drew on the principle of the cue, routine and reward habit loop. Specifically, the cue that Hopkins targeted was that thin layer of film that you can feel on your teeth when you run your tongue over your gnashers first thing in the morning. The reward that Hopkins promised was a mouthful of beautiful teeth. PART III: THE POWER OF HABITS IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 10. Rosa Parks, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and The Civil Rights Movement On December 1st 1955, in Montgomery Alabama, Rosa Parks did a peculiar (and illegal) thing: Rosa, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white rider . The immediate effect of this action was that Parks was arrested, but the act would also set the stage for one of the biggest and most successful social movements of the 20th century: at that moment, though no one on that bus knew it, the civil rights movement pivoted. That small refusal was the first in a series of actions that shifted the battle over race relations from a

struggle fought by activists in courts and legislatures into a contest that would draw its strength form entire communities and mass protests 11. Conclusion So there you have it. Habits not only have a large role to play in our personal lives, but are also a major force in the businesses and organizations of which we are a part, and are a necessary ingredient in successful social movements, which themselves influence how our very communities function. In each of these cases, we can have an influence on which habits hold sway, and how they are expressed. It is simply a matter of understanding how habits work, and manipulating this process to our own advantage