11436 the power of habit
TRANSCRIPT
HSS 401A: Soft Skills and Personality Development
Submitted on: 22
HSS 401A: Soft Skills and Personality Development
Individual Project
Monica Kapoor
11436, B.Tech.
IIT Kanpur
Submitted on: 22nd June, 2016
HSS 401A: Soft Skills and Personality Development
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?
The Power Of Habit
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.
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 2
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
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 3
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
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 4
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
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 5
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
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 6
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).
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 7
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 .
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 8
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
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 9
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
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 10
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
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 11
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.
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 12
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.
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 13
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
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 14
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.
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 15
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.
The Power Of Habit
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 16
● 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
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 17
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
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 18
● 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
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 19
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
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 20
● 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
Monica Kapoor, IIT Kanpur 21