A summary of Charles Duhigg’s book on how habits work and can be changed
Modern life is driven by habits — many of them cued by smartphones
Habits are important; they make up some 40% of our daily decisions. Charles Duhigg’s book aims to help readers understand these vital elements of our lives, and how to change them — within ourselves, our organisations and our society.
How habits work:
Habits operate where the basal ganglia, one of the most primitive parts of our brain, runs ‘chunked’ sequences of actions almost automatically. Meanwhile, the ‘higher functions’ of the brain largely shut down to conserve energy. The more developed the habit is, the less thinking we do.
Habits are triggered when the brain recognizes a cue it associates with starting to run that habit. A three step loop is followed— the cue, the routine, and the reward (which helps the brain figure out if the habit is worth remembering for future).
Habits become more and more automatic over time, unless you deliberately fight them. They never really disappear but become encoded into the structure of the brain.
A powerful habit creates neurological cravings for the routine and reward to follow the cue. The brain anticipates the reward in advance, as soon as it sees the cue, before even the loop is completed. When this anticipation happens, and no reward arrives, there is craving.
The habit loop
How habits are changed:
New habits are created with a cue, a routine, a reward, then cultivating a craving for that reward, thus driving the loop.
Conversely, changing a habit loop is easier if there’s something familiar at start and end; alter the routine, keeping the old cue and old reward. This requires identifying what cues and rewards are operating first (e.g. ‘what does it feel like before you do x habit’), then finding new behaviours to insert when the craving kicks in.
To ensure this replacement habit holds up under pressure or stress, belief that things can change for the better is key. Being embedded in a social groups that reinforces this belief is hugely beneficial in this regard.
How the habit loop can be changed
‘Keystone’ habits:
It’s impossible to change everything at once. However, focusing on changing a critical ‘keystone habit’ can set off a chain reaction influencing many other habits. These are often ‘small wins’, which create new structures, cultures and momentum for other changes.
Exercise is a classic example of a keystone habit, often leading to improved work, relationship, and eating habits. Using food journaling as a keystone habit can be a far more effective way to drive healthy living than attempting radical transformation of diet, fitness and sleep all at once.
Willpower is the single most important attribute for individual success. Rather than a skill, it is best understood as behaving like a muscle — it gets tired and depleted. The most effective way to develop willpower is to make it a keystone habit; strengthening it in one area of life will result in it spilling over into others. Success here is dependent on deliberately designing willpower habits against the times when we are most likely to give up (e.g. stress, uncertainty), setting goals well, and having a sense of control over our choices in relation to what we are doing.
Angela Duckworth on the importance of willpower as a habit
The implications of habits:
Organisations can design a few prioritised keystone habits to drive transformation. If organisations don’t design habits, they emerge anyway. A crisis is an opportunity for leaders to remake an organisation’s habits, by cultivating a sense that something must change, to force teams to overhaul the patterns they live by every day.
Movements are created, defined and sustained by their habits. They start because of social habits of friendship and strong ties between close acquaintances. They grow because of the habits of community, the weak ties that hold neighbourhoods and clans together. They endure because leaders give them new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a self-propelling feeling of ownership.
Weak ties (peer pressure, communal expectations) are more important than strong ties to the habits of movements, because they give us access to social networks to which we don’t belong, spreading the movement’s influence. Movements are underpinned by penalties associated with violating weak ties, such as the loss of social standing.
Habits of movements
What case studies are used to illustrate the author’s points? Part of Duhigg’s brilliance as a writer is his magpie-like ability to select and synthesise disparate, exquisite pieces of source material.
There’s something for everyone here, despite a distinctly American flavour, of which the picks are:
How strong ties, weak ties, and the leadership of Martin Luther King sparked the American civil rights movement in response to Rosa Parks’ protest in Montgomery, Alabama,
Target’s manipulation of shoppers’ buying habits to identify highly-profitable pregnant customers, with some unexpected consequences,
Iraqi peacekeeping tactics of the US army, banning street-food vendors in a public square to ensure people followed their eating habits home rather than staying around to riot,
Tony Dungy’s NFL teams, deploying a much smaller number of plays than the norm, delivered at much higher speed, using highly automatic habits, based on looking at only a few on-field cues, and
Michael Phelps’ keystone habit of visualising the perfect race, driving a complex series of other mental habits for relaxation.
The ‘supporting cast’ includes a real variety of others such as casinos exploiting compulsive gamblers, Alcoa’s company-wide safety habit, Rick Warren’s habitualisation of faith, the importance of Alcoholics Anonymous’ connections with belief, P&G’s Fabreze product re-positioning, the goal-setting of Scottish patients, how HeyYa became a radio hit through listening habit manipulation, the only successful US government-driven nutrition campaign, Starbucks’ coaching of emotional management habits to maintain customer service, and a sleepwalking murder. To name a few…
Is the Power of Habit worth reading?
Yes. It’s both entertaining, and deeply insightful. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the level of scrutiny I would mind myself subjecting all my daily habits to!
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