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This is a short blog/my notes on one of my favorite books “The Power of Habit – Why we do what we do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg.
The book is packed with a lot of interesting facts and research on how habits work and real life examples of how its impacted individuals, businesses and even communities.
Three key areas highlighted in the book:
1) Why habits are important
2) How we can create new habits
3) How we can overcome bad habits
Why are habits important?
The book describes an experiment that was conducted by scientists to see how the brain activity changes while a habit is being created:
The experiment consisted of a T shaped maze with a piece of cheese on the left part of the maze. And our favorite mammal to experiment on, a rat. The start of the experiment was the opening of the door to the maze with the sound of a click. As expected, the rat would enter the maze and go back and forth sniffing for the cheese. At this point, the scientists noticed that its brain exploded with activity analyzing every scent, sight and sound, processing information the entire time.
After repeating this experiment over and over again, of course, the rat figured that it has to take a left turn to get to the cheese. But scientists also saw that the activity in the brain reduced to a great extent too. And after a week or so of running this experiment, even the brain structures related to memory was quieter.
When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It can stop working hard and divert this focus to other tasks. So the more habits you cultivate for mundane tasks like waking up, exercising, choosing what to eat, the more you can devote your mental energy to other tasks that help you achieve your goals.
How can we create new habits?
Habits are formed via a loop consisting of 3 things 1) a cue -> 2) a routine -> 3) a reward.
If i were to explain this with the experiment, opening the door of the maze was the cue for the rat, searching for the cheese was the routine, getting to eat the cheese was the reward.
Basically the cue is something that triggers a routine, a routine is something that causes you to crave for a reward. The reward is something that you like a lot which makes you wanna repeat the loop over and over again.
So to create a new habit, you must first identify or create the craving. The craving is what makes the habit loop work.
An example cue could be going to the gym as soon as you wake up.The routine is your work out. The reward is something that you crave for say a smoothie or even tracking the number of miles you ran and the sense of accomplishment that comes from it.
How can we overcome bad habits?
There’s a lot of research that shows that its v hard for habits to be completely erased. The reasons are on the same lines as to why you can remember how to ride a bike even after 10+ years of not riding a bike.
So what’s the easiest way to change a habit? The golden rule for habit change according the Charles Duhigg is to keep the old cue, deliver the old reward but insert a new routine.
It seems very simple, but once you recognize the cues and rewards, you are halfway through changing your bad habit.
Infact this principle is also used by one of the most successful habit changing organizations, Alcoholics Anonymous. AA forces people to identify the cues and rewards that encourage their alcoholic habits and helps them find new behaviors or routines to replace it.
To summarize,
Habits are very important. Cultivating good habits can help us be more productive and focus on our goals.
To create a new habit, build a habit loop. A habit loop consists of a cue that triggers a routine and triggers a craving for the reward.
Old habits die hard. The best way to change a habit is by keeping the old cue and reward and just inserting a new routine.
This 5 minute summary definitely doesn’t do any justice for how good this book is! I encourage you to read the book if this is the kind of topic that interests you!
