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The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (Part 2 : The Habits of Successful…
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Part 1 : The Habits of Individuals
Chapter 2 : The Craving Brain // How to Create New Habits
The Febreeze Strategy
Rather than removing odor, they changed the formula so that odor would be replaced with a stronger perfume scent that provides a reward of relief and happiness by the change in smell
"Law of Scientific Advertising"
Cue : Odor; Reward : No odor // Why didn't Febreeze sales go down instead of up like Pepsodent?
The cue was hidden from the people who needed it the most
Julio, the Monkey, Strategy
The cue : The shapes on the levers that Julio had to hit; The reward : Blackberry juice
Julio fell into so much of a routine that he expected blackberry juice the moment he saw the shapes. As a result, he got an "I got a reward!" signal before he had even gotten the juice.
Julio anticipated the reward before he received it, releasing a pleasure response before the blackberry juice had been received
If the juice didn't arrive or was late or diluted, Julio would get angry
Watching a new pattern emerge caused a craving
For monkeys who hadn't developed a habit, distractions like food or friends worked. They would abandon their experiment
For monkeys who had developed a habit and the brain anticipated a reward, no distraction could allure them. This signifies the creation of a neurological craving
The Cinnabon Strategy
Cinnabon stores are located outside of food courts/ away from other food stalls
Provide rolls the ability to waft smell down hallways uninterrupted creating a subconscious craving, so that by the time the consumer turns the corner and sees the store, they will complete the habit loop and be more inclined to buy a cinnabon
The smell causes the body to anticipate a sugar high that without consumers will feel disappointed
Unsatisfied craving = anger or depression
Creation of a craving
powers the habit loop
For businesses to better sell products : Use psychology
Find a simple and obvious cue
Clearly define the rewards
The Pepsodent Strategy
Cue - Teeth film
Because the cool tingling was associated to cleanliness, that craving for that feeling created a habit
To create a new habit, find a distinct cue and visualize a specific reward to check for every time the habit is practiced (i.e. checking the scale after every workout to see a change in weight)
Reward : Beautiful Teeth
How to get from cue to reward? The product they were trying to sell, whether or not it worked it was marked alongside the cue. The cue remained at the front of people's minds, triggering the routine of buying toothpaste and brushing teeth repetitively in order to get the reward of beautiful teeth. In reality, the reduction of the film came from the habit of the repeated motion of brushing. Because the cue was related to the toothpaste, the public was lead to believe that the reduction of the film was due to the toothpaste, encouraging them to continue to buy toothpaste.
Chapter 3 : The Golden Rule of Habit // Why Transformation Occurs
Replace a "bad" craving (i.e. alcohol) with a "good" craving(i.e. religion) to get the same reward
Step 1 : Recognize Cue. Find your triggers
Step 2 : Recognize why you the action that is triggered
Step 3 : Learn a "competing response" to replace the action
There's a line between habits and addiction but it is difficult to determine at times
Important to note that it is easier to describe changes in habit than physically do it
THE GOLDEN RULE
You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it
In addition, you need to
believe
that you can do it
The mechanism of belief are little understood
Golden Rule is malleable
Buccaneers Strategy
The key to winning is
changing
players' habits
Keep the same cue
keep the same reward
Change the routine
Instead of needing to think about different plays to do, the players did the same play for every game; only look for cues and went to the playoffs for ten consecutive years
Never needs to think
Ch 1 : How Habits Work
A Habit is the brain's way of looking for ways to save effort
How to drill a habit
Cue ( A reminder to signal a routine)
Routine ( The habit itself, could be good or bad)
Reward (The positive feedback that closes the loop)
Habits are necessary for efficient brains, which allow for :
make child birth easier
allow limited thinking about basic behaviors
need for less space
The Habit Loop
The experiment
Probes put into rats skull and they were placed in a T shaped maze. Rats wondered to find chocolate and scientists monitored activity
After the sound of a click, mice were released from behind a partition and allowed to wander up and down the center aisle following the smell of the chocolate
Although no physical pattern was seen, the probes detected extreme activity in the basal ganglia analyzing every new sense
The results
Speed increased, mental activity decreased
Internalization due to the Basal Ganglia = central to recalling patterns
stored habits allowing the rest of the brain to sleep
Chunking = Brain converts a sequence into an automatic routine
Complex = Making Lunch or Getting Dressed
Complicated = Driving
Simple = Daily Tasks (i.e. putting toothbrush into the mouth)
As info increased, mice sniffs and wrong turns decreased
Picture the brain as an onion
Inside Layers (within the brain, close to the stem, meets at the spinal column) = controls automatic behaviors
Center ( basal ganglia) = when injured there is a problem with doing daily tasks
Outside layer (closest to scalp) = creates new ideas
Injury to the Basal Ganglia
Induce Mental Paralysis
i.e. inability to recognize face or know which shoe goes on which foot
BUT
Habit can still develop without memory or outside of consciousness
doing a task over and over again by repetition allows for muscle memory// the creation of a habit loop without the knowledge of the person
A change in cue can produce a change in habit
Part 2 : The Habits of Successful Organizations
Chapter 6: The Power of a Crisis// How Leaders Create Habits Through Accident and Design
Routines reduce uncertainty
in times of crisis, implementation wouldn't get lost in detail because policy and procedure was clearly laid out
Routines create truces that allow work to get done
Companies aren't families; rather, they are a civil war battlefield
to create an environment that allows for the company to succeed without any of the tensions blowing up, organizational habits are created so every person is able to benefit at some point
During a crisis, routines have to become malleable because a truce can create dangers greater than peace.
Firms are guided by long-held organizational habits, patterns that often emerge from thousands of employees' independent decisions
Chapter 5 : Starbucks and the Habit of Success// When Willpower Becomes Automatic
If one writes down their goals, no matter how small, they are more likely to follow through and accomplish them
By having the ability to cross off even the most mundane tasks, it encouraged the person to move onto larger and larger tasks that they now believed they had the ability to cross off and get said reward.
Patients designed willpower habits to help them overcome painful inflection points
Receiving Criticism : What What Why System ; Taking Orders When Things Get Hectic : Connect, Discover, and Respond
Provide employees with more authority over the activities do a daily basis (i.e. redesign espresso machines, cash register layout, how merchandise should be displayed, how customers should be treated) allowed turnover to go down and customer satisfaction to go up, in turn, boosting sales
The Starbucks Strategy : Willpower
When kids learn habits for delaying their cravings, those habits spill over to other parts of their life
Willpower isn't a skill but a muscle and it gets tired as it works harder. There more willpower you use, the harder it is to upkeep
Starbucks attempted to boost the willpower of their workers through gym memberships and diet workshops but they didn't work
Their workers were failing when they ran up against inflection points and the only way to solve this problem was the development of institutional habits that made it easier to muster self-discipline
To help encourage employees to get through rough patches in their job without yelling at customers or breaking down, Starbucks created willpower habit loops to help handle moments
the single most important keystone habit to success
Chapter 7 : How Target Knows What You Want Before You Want It // When Companies Predict
(and Manipulate)
Habits
Each shopper had their own personal habits and they didn't overlap with anyone else's personal habits resulting in hundreds of thousands of shopping patterns
Target created a vast data warehouse that assigned every shopper an identification code and used their purchase history to map out what kind of person they are. From there, they would notice the things that the consumer did not buy from their store but based on the kind of person they are should buy and send them coupons accordingly.
People's buying habits are more likely to change when they go through a major life event
The biggest and most vulnerable people for companies : pregnant women/ new sleep-deprived parents
Based on what people were buying at one time, target was able to create a pregnancy model and send coupons for what they would possibly buy in that timespan.
There's a fine line between using the data they have to help soon-to-be parents and look like they're spying on their customers.
This is done by using the familiarity loop
To become a part of a habit, it had to be slightly camouflaged at first
Sandwich whatever you're trying to sell in between stuff that already sells. Associate the two together and make people look forward to associate with whatever they were wary of at first=
Chapter 4 : Keystone Habits, or the Ballad of Paul O'Neil// What Habits Matter Most
Keystone Habits "small wins"
When you focus on changing or cultivating a keystone habit, you can have widespread shifts
Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach
To encourage widespread shifts, it is important to create cultures where new values become ingrained. If the most important and tenured employee goes against that culture, they are fired
The difficulty with keystone habits is the ability to identify them
They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures and establish cultures where change becomes contagious
The Alcoa Strategy
O'Neil (The New CEO of Alcoa) skipped the stereotypical introduction and went straight to what he wanted to see changed in the way the company runs. The abruptness, interest in the safety of his workers, and lack of interest in profit caused unease. Surprisingly, in contrast to assumptions, profit increased instead of decreased over the next month and became the safest company in the world. How?
He attacked one habit an then watched the changes ripple through the organization
O'Neil created a safety plan that modeled a habit loop
CUE
: an employee injury //
ROUTINE
: an injury occurred, the unit president had to report it to O'Neil within 24 hours and present a plan for making sure the injury never happened again //
REWARD
: the only people who got promoted were those who embraced the system
There was a series of people under the presidents who would have to communicate with the president to make sure that he got the information within 24 hours. To make this happen, each unit built a whole new system of communication and rebuilt the rigid hierarchy for the better. This changed not only the safety of the workers but the entire way that the company worked
Can't order people to change. Therefore, start with a focus on one thing. Once one habit was disrupted, it would spread throughout the entire company
The habits that can cause a chain reaction are known as
KEYSTONE HABITS
Start with a keystone habit that is has a common view by everyone involved and that work from there
truly understand the whys and the hows
The best governmental agencies knew the importance of routine, while the worst did not
Some habits have the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits as they move through an organization
Part 3 : The Habits of Societies
Chapter 8 : Saddleback Church and the Montgomery Bus Boycott// How Movements Happen
For a movement to spread it is absolutely key for the leader to have
strong ties with dozens of groups
throughout the community within which the movement originates and as widespread. Studies show that in contrast to a stranger, when a
friend
is insulted, our sense of outrage is enough to overcome the inertia that usually makes protests difficult to organize.
The reason the Saddleback Church is one of the largest ministries in the world is because they chose to convert people in groups rather than individually. By creating a place where people would come not only to worship but see their close friends, it provided incentive for people to join.
By relying on a group of strong and weak ties, they church was able to grow an idea beyond a community and set a new set of habits of prayer unique to every individual
In contrast, when landing a job,
weak-tie friendships
are often
more important
than
strong-tie friendships
. Weak-ties give us more access to social networks where we don't otherwise belong. It also allows movements go beyond a given
clique
Weak-tie friendships can also encourage peer pressure to conform to the popular ideal because you are seeking the benefits of a community that you are not completely familiar in. It provides a platform for intense momentum that can encourage social movements that are both good and bad
With the Freedom Summer specifically, despite the prospect of getting arrested, college students were still compelled to participate due to the expectations of their friends and the peer pressure of their acquaintances
The breakdown of a movement
grows
b/c of the habits of a community, and the weak ties that hold neighborhoods and clans together
endures
b/c a movement's leaders give participants new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership
starts
b/c social habits of friendship and the strong ties between close acquaintances
Chapter 9 : The Neurology of Free Will// Are We Responsible for Our Habits?
Can you blame a pathological gambler?
People that didn't gamble saw a near miss as a reason to maybe quit before the game got worse
The gambler was held accountable as opposed to the sleepwalked because she was aware of her habits and their patterns and had she tried harder could have reined them in
People with gambling problems are got more neurologically excited about near misses than they did about actually winning because near misses trigger habits that prompt them to put on another bet
Casinos have become aware of this and have reprogrammed slot machines to deliver a more constant supply of near wins
The advice from a man who almost committed suicide
He gave himself a year where he would free himself to believe that he had complete control over himself, that he had control over himself and his destiny, and that he had the free will to change
Over the course of the next year, he became a professor at harvard, got married, and instilled new habits
"The will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change" If you make this mindset a habit, the change becomes not only real but inevitable. The way we habitually think of our surroundings and ourselves create the worlds that each of us inhabit
Should we be held accountable for the habits we have out of our consciousness?
Sleepwalking
: people might leave their beds and start acting our their dreams and mild impulses
allows choice
Sleep Terrors :
Activity inside people's brains is markedly different from when they are awake, semi-conscious, or even sleepwalking. Grip to terrible anxieties . Their brains shuts down except for the primitive neurological regions.
Known as a primal habit
sleep
deactivates
the prefrontal cortex and other high cognition areas, so when a sleep terror happens, there is
no possibility for conscious intervention
If a
fight-or-flight habit is cued
by a sleep terror, there is
no chance for logic or reason
Cue
: strong emotion (feeling threatened or sexually aroused);
Routine
: they react by following the habits associated with the stimuli;
Reward
: the completion of the necessary action