The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business

Charles Duhigg “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business,” Random House, 2012, 274 pp. plus 79 pgs of notes

Here’s a book I read some time ago, probably 2014 or thereabouts.  Anyway, I am just getting around to cleaning up my notes and posting my review.

In 1910 William James correctly wrote “All our life so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits—practical, emotional, and intellectual—systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.”

Human consciousness, that ability to reflect, ponder and choose, is our greatest evolutionary achievement, some call this deliberative thinking, but we also have the ability to operate on automatic pilot, performing complex behaviors without any conscious thought at all--intuitive thinking.  Tasks like learning how to play a guitar become second nature after we perform those actions many times.  Of course there is a dark side like smoking or overeating.

Author Charles Duhigg is an investigative reporter for The New York Times.  In writing this book he has read hundreds of scientific papers and interviewed many of the scientists who wrote them, and relays interesting findings on habit formation and change from the fields of social psychology, clinical psychology and neuroscience. This a serious look at the science of habit formation and change.

My Notes:

Pg. xv:  William James recognized in 1892 that “our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.”  Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not.  They’re habits.  And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time, the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night, whether we save or spend, how often we exercise and the way we organize our thoughts and work routines have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, financial security, and happiness.  A study by Duke University in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.

Pg. 17: Chunking is a process in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine—it is how habits form.  These hundreds of sequences we perform each day range from brushing our teeth a certain way, backing the car out of the driveway, etc., which we seemingly do without thought or decision after many repetitions.  Habits, scientists say emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.    

Pg. 59:  Cravings are what drive habits.  And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier.  For instance, every morning millions put on their jogging shoes to capture an endorphin rush they’ve learned to crave.

Pg. 62:  Habits are constructed by a cue, routine, and reward.  To change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.  Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.  This rule has influenced treatments for alcoholism, obesity, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and hundreds of other destructive behaviors.  For instance, a smoker usually can’t quit unless some activity to replace cigarettes is adopted when nicotine craving is triggered.  Also, AA in essence is a giant machine for changing habit loops. 

Pg. 69:  A physical addiction to nicotine lasts only as long as the chemical is in a smoker’s bloodstream—about one hundred hours after the last cigarette.  Many of the lingering urges that we think of a nicotine’s addictive twinges are really behavioral habits asserting themselves—we crave a cigarette at breakfast a month later not because we physically need it, but because we remember so fondly the rush it once provided each morning.  (I have a hard time believing this statement).

Pg. 92:  How do habits change?  We know that a habit cannot be eradicated—it must, instead, be replaced.  And we know that habits are most malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applies: If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted.  But for a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible.  And most often, that belief only emerges with the help of a group. 

Pg. 112:  The origin of the Gay Rights Movement.  In the early 1970s, the American Library Association’s Task Force on Gay Liberation decided to focus on one modest goal: convincing the Library of Congress to reclassify books about the gay liberation movement from HQ 71-471 (“Abnormal Sexual Relations, Including Sexual Crimes”) to another, less pejorative category.  In 1972 the Library of Congress agreed to make the shift, reclassifying books into a newly created category, HQ 76.5 (“Homosexuality, Lesbianism—Gay Liberation Movement, Homophile Movement”).  News of the new policy spread across the nation.  Within a few years openly gay politicians were running for political office, many of them citing the Library of Congress’s decision as inspiration.  In 1973, the APA, after years of internal debate, rewrote the definition of homosexuality so it was no longer a mental illness.

Pg. 120:  Food Journalism as a weight-losing technique:  In 2009 researchers assembled a group of sixteen hundred obese people and asked them to concentrate on writing down everything they ate at least one day per week.  Six months into the study, people who kept daily food records had lost twice as much weight as everyone else.  Journaling forced them to start thinking about meals differently without becoming depressed.  (For instance: I now examine each time I eat and determine if half of my normal helping would suffice—it usually does.)

Pg. 147:  Willpower.  Willpower becomes a habit by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. 

Pg. 178:  A runway error on the Spanish island of Tenerife in 1977 killed 583 people when two 747s collided on the runway.