The Power of Habit

Key Concepts

Cue, Routine, Reward

“This process within our brains is a three-step loop. 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….” (p. 19)

“Researchers have learned that cues can be almost anything, from a visual trigger such as a candy bar or a television commercial to a certain place, a time of day, an emotion, a sequence of thoughts, or the company of particular people. Routines can be incredibly complex or fantastically simple (some habits, such as those related to emotions, are measured in milliseconds). Rewards can range from food or drugs that cause physical sensations, to emotional payoffs, such as the feelings of pride that accompany praise or self-congratulation.” (p. 25)

“Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.” (p. 62)

Belief is prerequisite to behavior change

“It wasn’t God that mattered, the researchers figured out. It was belief itself that made a difference. Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior.” (p. 85)

“But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effective—the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe—happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.” (p. 89)

Keystone habits are those that affect other habits. So changing them can lead to wider improvements

“Some habits, in other words, matter more than others in remaking businesses and 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.” (p. 100)

“Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as ‘small wins.’ They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious.” (p. 109)

Willpower is important, but it ebbs and flows

“Dozens of studies show that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success.” (p. 131)

“This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives” (p. 146)

Organizations routines are habits, and crises provide an opportunity to re-wire them

“Nelson and Winter had spent more than a decade examining how companies work, trudging through swamps of data before arriving at their central conclusion: ‘Much of firm behavior,’ they wrote, is best ‘understood as a reflection of general habits and strategic orientations coming from the firm’s past,’ rather than “the result of a detailed survey of the remote twigs of the decision tree.” (p. 160)

“For an organization to work, leaders must cultivate habits that both create a real and balanced peace and, paradoxically, make it absolutely clear who’s in charge.” (p. 166)

“During turmoil, organizational habits become malleable enough to both assign responsibility and create a more equitable balance of power. Crises are so valuable, in fact, that sometimes it’s worth stirring up a sense of looming catastrophe rather than letting it die down.” (p. 175)

Quotables

“Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.” (p. 17)

“This explains why habits are so powerful: They create neurological cravings. Most of the time, these cravings emerge so gradually that we’re not really aware they exist, so we’re often blind to their influence.” (p. 47)

“Researchers have found institutional habits in almost every organization or company they’ve scrutinized. ‘Individuals have habits; groups have routines,’ wrote the academic Geoffrey Hodgson, who spent a career examining organizational patterns. ‘Routines are the organizational analogue of habits.’” (p. 103)

“Whether selling a new song, a new food, or a new crib, the lesson is the same: If you dress a new something in old habits, it’s easier for the public to accept it.” (p. 210)

“Movements don’t emerge because everyone suddenly decides to face the same direction at once. They rely on social patterns that begin as the habits of friendship, grow through the habits of communities, and are sustained by new habits that change participants’ sense of self.” (p. 244)