The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (Summary)
For the Happiness PhD Project paid supporters...
Hi friends,
I also did a reread this year of Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
It’s a gem — both entertaining and instructive. If you’re looking for personal change or to lead change in an organization, I recommend it. You’ll learn the neuroscience by and application of real change.
yrs
Jackson K.
Remember Charles Duhigg’s Lisa – focus on one transformational keystone habit. For Lisa she set an emotionally compelling future vision to hike through the desert. So, she felt she had to finally quit smoking. This led her to start eating a little healthier, then exercising sometimes. And after a couple years she had lost sixty pounds, run a marathon, and earned her first stable job. The one new habit replaced old ones creating a “keystone” — one habit that has a ripple effect on many other areas.
Eugene, the amnesia victim, could walk around the block and make himself breakfast because our habits are hard wired into the basal ganglia with no or minimal thinking required.
Pepsodent is the secret. Before the “tingling” sensation in toothpaste, no one brushed. You must create a craving to drive the cue, routine, reward loop of a habit. You have a simple, obvious cue then a well defined reward, sometimes delivered intermittently, that will code the routine into a habit.
The key is to preserve the old cue and reward, to the extent possible, but change the routine. For example, AA works by shifting routines for cues and rewards around feelings and drinking.
Try competing response theory. For example, take an index card and make a checkmark and a note every time you experience a certain craving. Then after that’s done for a few days, replace your current routine with some other stimulation (e.g. instead of checking social media, go for a 7 minute walk). Make a star each time you successfully override the old habit with a new one. This essentially works on building awareness and recognition first, so that you can then reshape your response.
