11436 the power of habit

HSS 401A: Soft Skills and Personality Development

Submitted on: 22


Individual Project

Monica Kapoor

11436, B.Tech.

IIT Kanpur

Submitted on: 22nd June, 2016


The Power Of Habit

Understanding

Guided by: Dr. T. Ravichandran

Based on the Best

Written by: Charles Duhigg

Published in February, 2012

The Power Of Habit

Understanding Habits to Achieve our Best in L

Guided by: Dr. T. Ravichandran

Based on the Best-Selling Book: The Power Of Habit

Written by: Charles Duhigg

Published in February, 2012

By Random House

our Best in Life

Power Of Habit

The Power Of Habit

● ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where

we began and to know the place for the first time.

These precious words from T. S. Eliot have inspired me in ways more than one and are a key

motivation behind the selection of Duhigg’s book as the basis for my project.

This project made me surprisingly aware of the unlimited potential that resides in every one

of us and the subtlety of our day to day activities and other ways of self-expression.

I am dearly thankful to our course instructor Prof. T. Ravichandran for believing in me and

providing me with this wonderful opportunity that has benefited me immensely. Thanks to

him, I have a newfound respect for writers, researchers and the inspiring spirit with which

they attempt and create such pieces of knowledge and wisdom.

I would also like to thank the tutors, my course mates and friends and family for their support

and active participation in knowledge building, throughout this process of project writing.

The Power Of Habit

● TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Acknowledgement

Synopsis

What’s the catch?

1. The Habits of Individuals

1.1. How Habits Work…………………………………………………………………….1

1.2. How to Create New Habits…………………………………………………………...2

1.3. Why Transformation Occurs………………………………………………………….3

2. The Habits of Successful Organizations

2.1. Which Habits Matter Most……………………………………………………………5

2.2. When Willpower Becomes Automatic………………………………………………..6

2.3. How Leaders Create Habits…………………………………………………………...7

2.4. How Companies Manipulate Habits…………………………………………………..8

3. The Habits of Societies

3.1. How Movements Happen……………………………………………………………11

3.2. Are We Responsible For Our Habits………………………………………………...12

Appendix

Conclusion

Personal musings

References

The Power Of Habit

● SYNOPSIS

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg

takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how

they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of

information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of

human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of

trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where

neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We

discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael

Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go

inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, NFL locker

rooms, and the nation's largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits

can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising

regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building

revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how

habits work.

Habits aren't destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can

transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

The Power Of Habit

● WHAT’S THE CATCH?

An undoubtedly bright student made her way through JEE to one of the most coveted

institutes of our country, IIT Kanpur. She was just what an 18 year old ought to be. Fun,

happening, energetic and malleable. The institute welcomed her with open arms and

pampered her with a wide range of activities and opportunities and she embraced them all.

Two years down, she experienced drastic changes in her life. Several small glitches that

seemed harmless at first agglomerated into a problem that felt undefeatable.

She was in the ICU of an Army hospital, battling for her life while the college enjoyed

Antaragni, the annual cultural festival. The doctors told the parents that they should primarily

focus on getting her in a working human condition and that the idea of pursuing B.Tech. after

this was really not perceptible

.

Why did this happen? Did that girl ever got back to the institute to complete her studies? And

even if she did, how did she manage everything?

The answer to all these questions lies in this project ahead.

Before you go any further, I would like to clear certain assumptions you might have

developed so far. This project is not going to give you some “magical formula” to turn your

life upside-down. It will not be teaching you the right or ethical way of living. You won’t be

able to answer everything after this. You won’t turn into an intelligent high-dimensional

being and neither will you feel like the king/queen of the world.

So why bother? Why waste time on reading this project? What’s the catch?

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The answer lies in the lines of one of my favorite poems:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Our choices define us. But what if I tell you that most of the times you don’t even think while

making those choices. They just happen out of “habit”. Does that mean that our habits have

an upper hand to all our decisions? Is it the simple things like habits that we should be

focusing on rather than the other tactics we employ to make the ends meet?

Let’s find out together!

The Power Of Habit

Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 1

1. THE HABITS OF INDIVIDUALS

1.1 HOW HABITS WORK

Eugene Pauly, a 71-year-old man lost the medial temporal lobe of his brain to viral

encephalitis. The rest of Eugene’s brain remained perfectly intact, and he had no problem

remembering anything that occurred prior to 1960 – but suffered from total short-term

memory loss, unable to retain knowledge of any new event for more than a minute and

constantly repeating his words and actions from a minute before. Eugene had no memory of

his grandchildren, and couldn’t even tell you where his kitchen or bedroom was located, even

when he was sitting in his own home.

However, in an effort to make sure Eugene got some exercise, his wife had begun taking him

on a walk around the block each day. She became frantic one day when he disappeared, only

to show up 15 minutes later after taking the walk by himself. He couldn’t draw a simple map

of his block or even tell you where his house was, but he began taking that same walk around

the block every day. How was he doing that?

A team of MIT researchers started working on habits in the 1990s and observed something

remarkable. According to their study, deeper inside the brain and closer to the brain stem,

where the brain meets the spinal column, are older, more primitive structures stored. They

control our automatic behaviors, such as breathing and swallowing. Toward the center of the

skull is a golf ball–sized lump of tissue that is similar to what you might find inside the head

of a fish, reptile, or mammal. This is the basal ganglia.

They noticed that animals with injured basal ganglia suddenly developed problems with

tasks such as learning how to run through mazes or remembering how to open food

containers. Images of Eugene’s brain showed that his basal ganglia had escaped injury from

the viral encephalitis. He had demonstrated what scientists had suspected but never before

proved: that habits are formed and operate entirely separately from the part of the brain

responsible for memory. Later tests confirmed that we learn and make unconscious choices

without having to remember anything about the lesson or decision making.

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Your brain is constantly seeking new ways to save effort, and is always “chunking”

sequences of actions into automatic routines. Backing out of the driveway, for example,

requires over a dozen separate actions, but many of us do it daily without a second thought.

The habit process consists of a three-step loop:

1. Cue-A trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode, and which routine to use.

2. Routine-Physical, mental, or emotional behavior that follows the cue.

3. Reward-A positive stimulus that tells your brain that the routine works well, and is worth

remembering.

Simply understanding how habits work makes them much easier to control. By learning to

observe the cues and rewards, we can change the routines.

1.2. HOW TO CREATE NEW HABITS

It might surprise you to learn that in early 20th America, hardly anyone brushed their teeth; in

fact, so many recruits during World War I had rotting teeth that government officials declared

poor dental hygiene a national security risk. That all changed, however, when a marketing

genius by the name of Claude Hopkins was convinced by an old friend to apply his skills to

hawking toothpaste.

Claude was the man responsible for taking unknown products like Goodyear and Quaker

Oats and turning them into household names. His signature tactic was to tap into the habit

loop by anchoring the product to a specific trigger, regardless of how preposterous the

connection. Quaker Oats, for example, owes its success to Claude being able to convince

America that it provided 24-hour energy – but only if you ate a bowl every morning.

Claude chose a similar cue to turn toothpaste into a national habit. His ads read, “Just run

your tongue across your teeth. You’ll feel a film – that’s what makes your teeth look ‘off

color’ and invites decay.” After giving people the cue, he continued with images of beautiful

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white smiles and the statement, “Note how many pretty teeth are seen everywhere. Millions

are using a new method of teeth cleaning. Why should any woman have dingy film on her

teeth? Pepsodent removes the film!”

The claim was downright false; the “film” is a naturally occurring membrane, and toothpaste

doesn’t do anything to remove it. However, the cue was universal and easily apparent, and

people bought the connection to the reward (beautiful teeth). Within a decade, toothpaste

usage had expanded from 7% of the population to 65%.

So what, exactly, did Hopkins do?

He created a craving. And that craving, it turns out, is what makes cues and rewards work.

That craving is what powers the habit loop.

But Claude Hopkins’ techniques really had little impact on the sales of Pepsodent toothpaste.

Plenty of other toothpaste companies were using similar techniques long before Pepsodent

came along. In reality, that particular toothpaste’s success was completely accidental.

Without foreseeing the impact of the choice, Pepsodent had included citric acid, mint oil, and

other ingredients that created that now-familiar cool, tingling effect. That feeling created a

cue – people missed the feeling when they forgot to brush their teeth. The tingling serves

absolutely no purpose other than to let people know the product is working.

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. But as we associate cues with certain rewards, a subconscious

craving emerges in our brains that starts the habit loop spinning.

1.3. WHY TRANSFORMATION OCCURS

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Tony Dungy changed the game of American football with a counterintuitive coaching

approach: instead of trying to outmatch his opponents with thicker playbooks and complex

schemes, Tony drilled his team on only a few key plays. He did everything he could to get his

team to stop thinking, and react based on habit instead.

Tony knew that habits can’t usually be overcome; instead, a habit can only be changed if a

new routine is successfully inserted into the process with the same cue and the same reward.

He trained his team to automatically link the cues they already knew to different on-field

routines – ones that involved less complexity, fewer choices, and more subconscious

reactions. In succession, with this approach Tony turned two abysmal teams into

championship contenders.

That’s the Golden rule of habit change: If you use the same cue, and provide the same

reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behavior can be

transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.

For some habits, however, there’s one other ingredient that’s necessary: belief. While current

scientific knowledge of the mechanisms of belief is severely limited, the fact nevertheless

remains. Belief is an ingredient and a skill that makes habit change possible, and even begins

to spill into other areas of life.

For Alcoholics, belief proves to be a very crucial step in fighting their addictions. Even if you

give alcoholics or addicts better habits, it doesn’t repair why they started drinking in the first

place. Eventually they’ll have a bad day, and no new routine is going to make everything

seem okay. What can make a difference is believing that they can cope with that stress

without alcohol.

When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur

becomes more real. For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments

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or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities, sometimes of just one other person,

who make change believable.

Changes are accomplished because people examine the cues, cravings, and rewards that drive

their behaviors and then find ways to replace their self-destructive routines with healthier

alternatives, even if they aren’t fully aware of what they are doing at the time. Understanding

the cues and cravings driving your habits won’t make them suddenly disappear—but it will

give you a way to plan how to change the pattern.

The Power Of Habit


2. THE HABITS OF SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATIONS

2.1. WHICH HABITS MATTER MOST

In October 1987, Paul O’Neill stepped on stage to deliver his first speech to investors as the

new CEO of Fortune 500 manufacturer Alcoa. New CEO’s usually followed a fairly standard

script about costs and profits, the evils of government interference, and promises to

implement various business buzzwords. Instead, to his audience’s great perplexity, Paul

opened with, “I want to talk to you about worker safety.” He expounded on his goal of

making Alcoa a zero-injury workplace before proceeding to point out the fire exits in the

room and instruct his audience on their use in case of emergency. More than one audience

member questioned his sanity.

Paul was immensely successful in his stated safety goals; by his retirement eleven years

later, Alcoa went from having about an accident a week at each plant to boasting a worker

injury rate that was one-twentieth the national average. More interestingly, however, Alcoa’s

income had risen 500%, and its market capitalization had increased by $27 billion.

When O’Neill took the job, Alcoa was criticized for poor quality and a slow workforce. His

predecessor tried to mandate quality improvements, and the result was a 15,000-employee

strike. Looking back, O’Neill explained, “I knew I had to transform Alcoa, but you can’t

order people to change. That’s not how the brain works. So I decided I was going to start by

focusing on one thing. If I could start disrupting the habits around one thing, it would spread

throughout the entire company.” He used what the authors call a “keystone habit” – a habit

that causes a chain reaction of habit disruption.

Paul instituted a better habit loop at Alcoa. Whenever there was an injury (cue), the unit

president was required to provide Paul with an injury report, as well as an action plan to

ensure that type of injury never happened again, within 24 hours (routine). Promotion was

dependent on compliance with this requirement (reward).

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For a unit president to meet the 24-hour deadline, he needed to hear about the injury from his

VP as soon as it happened. The VP had to be in constant communication with the floor

managers, and the floor managers had to rely on the workers for safety suggestions so they

would have an answer for the VP when he asked for a plan. As these patterns shifted to meet

the safety requirements, other aspects of the company also began to change. Better safety

quickly translated into increased quality and efficiency.

There are many other keystone habits in various areas of life that lead to wider shifts in

behavior. For example, people who begin an exercise habit typically find that they start

naturally eating better, being more productive at work, and feeling less stressed. There is a

vast chasm, however, between understanding this principle and actually applying it.

Identification of a relevant keystone habit requires a trial-and-error approach, with the goal of

finding a “small win”: a minor advantage that sets into motion patterns that have a much

larger impact. For example, a 2009 weight loss study found one such “small win” when the

researchers instructed one group of participants to make no lifestyle changes other than

keeping a daily food log about what they ate. The participants naturally began to identify

patterns, which made them want to do a better job of planning ahead for their meals, which in

turn led to healthier food. The group that kept the food log lost twice as much weight as the

other study participants.

2.2. WHEN WILLPOWER BECOMES AUTOMATIC

Scientists have known for many years that willpower is an essential ingredient for success,

even more so than intelligence. In one famous Stanford study from the 1960s, researchers sat

down four-year-olds at a table with a single marshmallow, and told them that they could

either eat it immediately, or wait until the researcher came back 15 minutes later and earn an

extra marshmallow. The researchers later tracked down the kids when they were in high

school, and found that the ones who could maintain their self-control long enough to earn two

marshmallows as four-year-olds now had better grades, SAT scores, and social success .

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We also know that we all have a limited supply of willpower. In a Case Western study from

the 1990s, researchers instructed a group of undergraduate students to skip a meal, then sat

them down together, each one in front of two bowls. One bowl contained fresh, delicious

chocolate chip cookies, while the other held somewhat less appetizing radishes. Half were

told to eat only the cookies, and the others were told to only eat the radishes. The researchers

then gave the students an impossible puzzle to complete.

None of the students knew that the puzzle was impossible, but the students who had just

consumed the radishes gave up far sooner than the students who had just eaten the cookies –

an average of eight minutes, as compared to 19 minutes of perseverance for the cookie eaters.

This 60% disparity was caused by the depletion of the radish eaters’ willpower when they

had to resist the cookies. (This is why you don’t want to waste your willpower in the morning

on tedious, unimportant tasks like writing emails.)

In addition, numerous studies have shown that by exercising willpower in one area, like

exercise or academics, you will increase your reserve of willpower and be able to apply it to

other areas of life. However, none of these things are enough to consistently exercise

sufficient willpower. The key is something that has been integral to the success of coffee

chain Starbucks: methodical planning of a routine for those inflection points (cues) where

pain and temptation are the strongest.

Starbucks’ training systems guide employees through the identification of inflection points

(such as when an angry customer is yelling because they got the wrong drink), and matching

of the inflection point to one of the company’s dozens of routines. By choosing a certain

behavior ahead of time, willpower becomes a habit, and employees are able to provide the

high level of service that makes customers keep coming back for expensive lattes.

Another key to Starbucks’ success is the way the company encourages employees to use

their own intellect and creativity. In a study at the University of Albany, students were put in

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front of a tray of cookies. The researchers nicely asked half the students not to eat the

cookies, explained to them the purpose of the experiment, and thanked them for contributing

their time. The researchers told the other half not to eat the cookies without explaining the

experiment’s purpose or thanking them. In an unrelated standard computerized focus test

afterward, the first group significantly outperformed the second.

While scientists may not completely understand the mechanisms of the process yet, it is

clear that people perform far better, and have much greater willpower, when they feel like

what they are doing is a personal choice, and when they understand the purpose. When

people are just following orders, willpower becomes much more difficult.

2.3. HOW LEADERS CREATE HABITS

Duhigg says that, “There are no organizations without institutional habits. There are only

places where they are deliberately designed, and places where they are created without

forethought.” All companies have unspoken routines that make it possible to operate;

otherwise, firm leaders would never be able to keep up with all the new permutations of

decision-making that front-line workers deal with every day. While an organization may

think it is making deliberate decisions via formal research and development processes, in

reality dozens of convergent habits, processes, and behaviors are responsible.

If some new colleagues asked you how to succeed at your company, it’s unlikely that you

would refer them to the policy handbook. You might educate them instead on the informal

rules, truces between company divisions, and lines that should not be crossed. If you work at

a successful organization, it is probably because company leaders have cultivated

organizational habits that provide a balance of power and keep the peace, but also make it

clear who is in charge.

In the early 2000s, Rhode Island Hospital was considered to be one of the nation’s leading

medical institutions. However, a toxic culture created by arrogant doctors who mistreated

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nurses and rejected their input led to a series of tragic operating room mistakes, fines, and

negative publicity. The hospital became the poster child for medical mistakes, targeted by

both local and national media. It was a genuine crisis, and the new Chief Quality Officer used

the situation as an opportunity to implement changes that had previously been proposed, but

blocked.

Video cameras were installed in operating rooms, checklists were mandated for every

surgery, and an anonymous reporting system was implemented. Changes like these, in

addition to new training systems that emphasized better teamwork, empowered the nurses to

prevent operating mistakes. As a result, the hospital has since earned several prestigious

awards for the quality of its care.

Leaders seize the possibilities created by a crisis. 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.

2.4. HOW COMPANIES MANIPULATE HABITS

As companies have begun to rely more heavily on big data over the past twenty years in order

to better predict consumers’ buying habits, they have realized that most purchasing decisions

are made the moment a customer sees a product. Despite a shopper’s intentions, habits are

often stronger than pre-written grocery lists. From a retailer’s perspective, however, there is

a difficult problem: these habits are unique to each person. If you want to take advantage of

this knowledge about how people buy products, you can’t use one-size-fits-all sales or

marketing techniques.

As a solution, companies like Target have been collecting individualized shopping data for

the past decade or so, using credit, loyalty, rewards, and frequent shopper cards. Combined

with data that can be easily purchased about your age, marital status, location, ethnicity, and

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so on, retailers have an incredibly detailed picture of who you are and what is going on in

your life.

If you purchase a box of popsicles about once a week around 6:30 on a weekday, as well as

mega sized trash bags each July and October, Target knows that you probably have kids, stop

for groceries on your way home from work, and have a lawn that you need to mow in the

summer and rake for leaves in the fall. The algorithms will see that you buy cereal but not

milk, and calculate that you must be purchasing your milk somewhere else. You’ll then get

coupons for milk, school supplies, lawn furniture, and so on, while your single neighbor in an

apartment across the street will receive completely different coupons.

Companies that use these advanced data mining techniques also found something else that is

absolutely crucial to their marketing success: when people go through major life events, they

often change their purchasing habits. As a result, these corporations are extremely interested

in identifying when you experience a job change, move, relationship change, or birth of a

child – and they are very good at it.

It didn’t take long, though, for these companies to realize that people don’t always take it

well when they receive a coupon booklet filled with baby products, sometimes before they’ve

even told their families they’re pregnant. Now, when Target deduces that you’re pregnant,

you’ll get coupons for diapers and maternity clothes intentionally sandwiched between

unrelated ads for lawn mowers and beer.

Radio stations today use a similar technique to introduce and popularize new songs. Back

when OutKast’s tune “Hey Ya!” first aired, it was a complete flop. Music executives loved

the song, and their algorithms confirmed their intuition – the data gave the song one of the

highest scores ever. When the song was aired, however, nearly a third of listeners would

change the station within 30 seconds.

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At the time, the music industry was beginning to realize a fundamental truth about how

people relate to songs. While most people will tell you something different, they care more

about the familiarity of a song than its quality. In the early 2000s, male listeners told industry

researchers they hated Celine Dion, but whenever radio stations played Celine Dion songs,

they stayed tuned. The areas of the brain that process music naturally hone in on patterns and

familiarity. In other words, our musical preferences don’t dictate what we listen to; our

subconscious habits do.

With the industry beginning to realize this fact as “Hey Ya!” was released, radio stations

recognized that the song was probably failing simply because it was unlike other tunes played

in the Top 40. They began to sandwich the song between two other familiar, popular songs –

the more bland and unoriginal, the better – cementing OutKast’s track as part of the already

existing habit loop in listeners’ minds. “Hey Ya!” went on to win a Grammy, drive 5.5

million album sales, and earn radio stations millions.

The lesson here is not simply to be suspicious of industry’s manipulation of your habits;

instead, realize that it is a supremely powerful tool to sandwich a new habit you wish to

nurture between your already existing routines.

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3. THE HABITS OF SOCIETIES

3.1. HOW MOVEMENTS HAPPEN

At 6:00 on Thursday, December 1, 1955, American hero Rosa Parks uttered her now-famous

refusal to give up her seat on the bus. (Contrary to the commonly held belief, she wasn’t even

in the “white section,” and there were already three open seats for the white man to choose.)

Mrs. Parks wasn’t the pioneer of this act of defiance; in fact, within the past few months two

similar incidents had already occurred. It was Rosa Parks, however, who sparked the civil

rights crusade, and as you might have guessed, it was habits that were responsible.

Rosa was deeply involved in her community, belonging to dozens of religious, social,

charity, and hobbyist groups that usually didn’t come into contact with each other. It all

started when the former head of the Montgomery NAACP and a white lawyer, both friends of

Mrs. Parks through her various activities, posted her bail and asked her permission to use the

incident to mount a legal challenge to the city’s segregation laws. By the end of the day, news

of her arrest had already spread throughout the community (a much more unusual

phenomenon in those pre-Twitter days), and an influential schoolteacher’s group had already

suggested a boycott on the day of Rosa’s appearance in court four days later.

These various groups immediately printed and began distributing flyers, and within 24 hours,

word had spread even further. It wasn’t just the leaders who knew Rosa; hundreds of

individual group members considered her a friend. People who only months before patiently

endured the gross indignities of a hideously racist legal system, and largely ignored similar

injustices heaped upon strangers, now responded to the call in Mrs. Park’s defense.

It wasn’t that the civil rights hero had thousands of close friends; she simply had what

sociologists call “weak ties.” As Malcolm Gladwell discusses in The Tipping Point, weak

ties are more important, in many ways, than close friends. For example, they tend to be more

valuable in connecting us to jobs, because they connect us to groups and information that we

http://geni.us/TheTippingPoint

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otherwise wouldn’t know. Our close friends usually run in the same groups we do, so they’re

unlikely to be able to connect us to much outside of our own sphere.

In the case of the Montgomery bus boycott, weak ties were powerful because they created

peer pressure. Most people won’t jump to seriously inconvenience themselves for a loose

acquaintance, but Mrs. Park’s web of connections created peer pressure. You risked losing

face and social standing in the community if you didn’t participate, just like you or I would

lose standing in our social circles if you refused to help out a friend of a friend with a résumé

referral. When the town newspaper printed an article about how the black community was

planning to boycott the buses, the city took it as social proof that everyone was doing it. The

boycott became a new social habit that spilled into larger social habits of peaceful protest,

jumpstarting the civil rights movement and eventually leading to the Civil Rights Act of

1964.

3.2. ARE WE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR HABITS

In 2010, a cognitive neuroscience researcher discovered something fascinating when he used

an MRI machine to compare the brains of pathological gamblers against merely social

gamblers. When they watched slots roll on a video screen, there was some difference in how

excited the pathological gamblers’ brains were when a winning match displayed. More

interestingly, however, the social gamblers correctly registered the near misses as losses,

while pathological gamblers registered them as wins.

This is a crucial difference in the habit loop. After the cue of the near miss, the pathological

gambler’s mind provides a reward, creating a habit loop that leads to more gambling. The

same cue in a social gambler’s mind only leads to a reward when he or she stops gambling,

and escapes the loss of money. This subtle difference in habit loop is responsible for the

gambling industry’s profitability, and the ruining of countless lives.

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Duhigg questions the morality of holding pathological gamblers responsible for their actions,

but comes to the conclusion that no matter how strong a habit is, as long as you are aware the

habit exists you have the ability to decide to change it. He recounts a story told by author

David Foster Wallance. “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to

meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys.

How’s the water?’” The young fish swim on for a bit before one finally asks the other what

“water” is.

The water is habits, the unthinking choices and invisible decisions that surround us every

day—and which, just by looking at them, become visible again. Throughout his life, William

James wrote about habits and their central role in creating happiness and success. He

eventually devoted an entire chapter in his masterpiece The Principles of Psychology to the

topic. Water, he said, is the most apt analogy for how a habit works. Water “hollows out for

itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after having ceased to flow, it

resumes, when it flows again, the path traced by itself before.” You now know how to

redirect that path. You now have the power to swim.

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● APPENDIX

Now that you realize you’ve been immersed in habits your whole life, you can begin to shape

them to your will. There are infinite habits and thousands of formulas for changing them, but

you can find what you need by following this formula:

1) Identify the routine. Though it’s not always obvious, the easiest part is usually

identifying the behavior you want to change.

2) Experiment with rewards. You can then fill in the “routine” part of the habit loop, but to

pinpoint the cue you first have to experiment with rewards. Try out a new reward each time

you feel the urge to complete the routine. For example, if you find yourself eating junk food

every afternoon, try eating an apple instead, or drinking some coffee, or chatting with a friend

for a few minutes. Then set a 15 minute timer, and when it goes off ask yourself if you are

still feeling the same urge. If you are, you haven’t yet identified the cue. Keep experimenting,

and you’ll eventually figure out if you were actually hungry (in which case the apple would

work), if you were tired (in which case the coffee should help), or if you just needed a break

(which your friend should provide).

3) Isolate the cue. Once you’ve determined the reward that satisfies the cue, there is still

work to be done to understand exactly what the cue is. Most habitual cues will fall into five

categories:

Location

Time

Emotional state

Other people

An immediately preceding action

The Power Of Habit


If you have a habit you’re serious about changing, keep a log of your location, the time, your

emotional state, the people around you, and the action you take immediately prior to your

habit. After a few repetitions, you’ll probably be able to see the pattern.

4) Have a plan. Once you’ve recognized the precise routine, reward, and cue, it should be

easy to design a different routine that provides the same reward after the same cue. Stay alert

for the cue (or set an automatic alert if it’s time-based), and act out your pre-planned routine.

If it works, you’ve confirmed that you found the right cue and reward, and your habit will

then be easily moldable.

The Power Of Habit


● CONCLUSION

It was a revelation to me that habits dictate nearly everything I do, and after reading The

Power of Habit I realized that success in personal growth and in most endeavors of life is

completely dependent on my ability to identify, reshape, and build my habits. Aristotle is

credited with the quote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a

habit.”

The more you understand habits, the less importance you will assign to willpower, goals, and

any number of other facets of life over which much of the “self-improvement” crowd

obsesses. Willpower can and should certainly be increased through exercise, and goals are

indeed useful in focusing your efforts and judging your progress; however, it is much more

efficient to automate willpower, and much more effective to focus on a habit of doing

pushups for 10 minutes every day at 7:00 a.m. than it is to establish a goal of losing 5 pounds

of body fat by next month.

This book contains the key to shedding the things that hold you back and jumpstarting your

potential.

● PERSONAL MUSINGS

There is a lot of fault associated with our kind. To list a few:

We are always looking for approval to quench our illogical thirsts.

We are ‘experts’ at justifying our acts, no matter what!

Despite being the masters of our own destiny and mind, we refuse to use it to our full

potential.

Gifting others the responsibility of our misgivings is our favorite habit.

We know that there is only one ultimate truth and still we act in a completely opposite

manner.

Thinking is the exercise we hate the most.

The Power Of Habit


Quite often I find myself pondering over the current state of our society and our planet. We

are the only ones to blame. This book reminded me of the sobering fact that, to be

exceptional, to be successful, we do not need to be extraordinary. The only pre-requisites for

a happy and successful state of living are honesty, benevolence, gratitude and hard work.

The creator has provided us with the best of his help. The only thing we need to do is open

our eyes.

A simple attribute like habit can do wonders for us; maybe even open our third eye!!

The author has taught us that when we give up our very own essence (i.e. our ability to

think), a habit is formed. And more often, it comes with a non-favorable outcome. To mould

it and transform it into something good should be our top priority.

There are certain things, I feel, can prove quite worthy of your time:

Nourishing the habit of reading and writing.

Allotting just five seconds of our time to analyze our thoughts before expressing them

out loud.

Developing the habit of listening to fellow humans, fauna and the mother earth.

Appreciating this wonderful opportunity, the almighty has bestowed upon us, and

thanking him by spending every second of our lives by serving others.

The student we talked about earlier had to face those situations due to selection of unhealthy

habits during her initial years at the college. She realized her mistakes, learnt from them and

came back to the college with new enhanced habit routines with realization of cues and less

need of rewards. No matter how much time ‘change’ takes, she is on the right path now and

the path she choose will ultimately bestow her with surreal beauty of the wild as well as the

confidence to abide by.

The Power Of Habit


● REFERENCES

1. Charles Duhigg, T he Power Of Habit: Why we do what we do in Life and Business,

Random House, New York, 2012.

2. William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s

Ideals, 1899.

3. Ann M. Graybiel, “The Basal Ganglia and Chunking of Action

Repertoires,” Neurobiology of Learning and Memory,1998.

4. Alyssa Picard, Making of the American Mouth: Dentists and Public Health in the

Twentieth Century, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J, 2009.

5. Michael Smith, “‘Simple’ Scheme Nets Big Gains for Trio of Defenses,” ESPN.com,

December 26, 2005.

6. ‘History Sniffing,’ ” Forbes.com January 3, 2011.

7. Outkast, Andre’ 3000, Hey Ya! The Love Below, 2003.

8. John A. Kirk, Martin Luther King, Jr.: Profiles in Power, New York: Longman, 2004.

9. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big

Difference, Little Brown, USA, 2000.

The Power Of Habit


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