Hello everyone and welcome to my another book review series. What I want to talk about today
is the book titled” The Power of Habit” why we do what we do and how to change
it, by Charles Duhigg.
This is actually one of
those books that has influenced my life massively and helped me to become the
person I am today. So I wanted to share with you some of the most important
things that I’ve learned from this book.
What
is Habit?
So first lets start with
how habits are created. Habits are part of our brains activity to help sustain
the energy and efficiency of our daily activities because when habits are
acquired a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking a routine task. The
process by which certain behaviours become automatic is what we call habit
formation.
Now we can roughly divide
habits into two types. Good habits and Bad habits. Some habits can help us
enjoy a more productive life such as reading a book a day, waking up early and
going to the gym while others may destroy our lives by damaging our
productivity and performance such as smoking, consuming fast food, alcohol
addiction and constant procrastination.
Habit
Loop
Three primary factors are
the reason for the Habit creation, what Duhigg calls the Habit Loop. They are
the Cue, The Routine and the Reward. The
cue is a trigger that tells your brain to go to automatic mode in which habit
to deploys. Next is the routine, which can be physical, or mental or emotional.
Lastly is reward, which helps your brain to figure out if this particular loop
is worth remembering for the future. Overtime as this habit loop cue routine
reward becomes more automatic and the connection between cue and the reward creates
a strong sense of anticipation, which is called craving.
Eventually a habit comes
force and your brain stops working so hard. Craving feeds the habit loop.
Habits create neurological cravings as we associate cues for rewards as
subconscious craving emerges that starts the loop. Craving follows a two-step
process. One, the brain identifies the simple and obvious cue and two the brain
anticipates to find rewards. The habit emerges when you see the cue as craving
emerges instantaneously. Once the craving exists you will act automatically
whether good habits or bad habits. The neurological process is the same. That’s
why breaking bad habits is difficult.
For example if you want to
develop the habit of exercising in the morning. It is a good idea to have your
exercise shoes near your bed that wherever you are going to see them right when
you get up and put them on and let that cue trigger the routine of you go out
the door and experience the reward of the endorphins or the feeling of
energized, celebrate that reward maybe give you a healthy treat to bootstrap
your brain that these rewards are real, the rewards that you genuinely enjoy.
So fro me personally, when
I get up in the morning I meditate I do my morning routine and then I’ve got
the most important thing that I have to do on that particular time right there
on my desk. It is the only thing on my desk. That’s a cue for me. That cue is
planned the night before so that the exposure to that cue may trigger the
emotion of taking action towards that particular goal.
How
to change bad Habits
The main thing I got from
the whole book was that if you are aware of the cue and reward and you just
change the routine, then you are more likely to create new habits and change
your old habits.
In order to change the old
habit, you have to notice what cues you have that trigger the particular
negative habit and try to avoid it. Or another effective way of getting rid of
bad habits is by simply changing or replacing the routine while keeping the cue
and reward the same, with a new one for a period of time just enough to
associate that cue and reward with the new habit that will help to make your
life better.
Now in order to
effectively change the old bad habits our brains require a belief that they can
make it. The replacement habits only become durable new behaviours by something
else, something powerful such as groups and shared experiences. A community
creates belief. Effective change happens when people come together to help one
another change. For habit to change people must belief it will change for that
help people must believe change is possible and that helps with the help of
groups.
Keystone
Habit
Duhigg explains in his
books how major companies such as Mc Donald’s, Procter and Gamble Starbucks and
many others used habit creation into their advantage in order to effectively
market their products and secure their top place in the highly competitive
market. So those of you who are interested in marketing or thinking of creating
your own company make sure you find this book and read it because it should be
very useful for you.
The successful companies apply
the keystone habit principle. For instance morning accountability check inns to
ensure your team members have what they need to overcome obstacles. That
keystone habit and regular conversation become embedded to your organisational
culture. This principle can be applied as to the companies and to the
individuals as well. The research has shown simply by initiating an exercise
routine people eating better, resting better, taking better care of themselves
simply by initiating an exercise routine. In the morning if you wake up and eat
healthy you will be more likely to eat healthy through the day.
Willpower
Willpower is identified in
studies as single most important factor in success. The best way to strengthen
the willpower is to make a habit of it. Willpower is both a learnable skill and
a muscle. It gets tired as it works harder so there is less power left over for
other things. That’s why productivity experts recommend tackling the hardest
tasks or the most creative ones first each day if you can or tidiest routine
tasks can follow.
According to the
research’s willpower has the single biggest correlate with success. Willpower out predicts almost everything for
what ever it is you wanna achieve in your life. The fact that will power out
predicts IQ by a factor of two for academic performance. You can take two kids
with one higher level of IQ and another higher willpower and try to predict
who’s academic performance is going to be higher, then the one with higher or
stronger willpower will be twice more likely to achieve better results in their
academic performance. Therefore If you want to succeed in the so called long
run you should work on and cultivate your willpower as well.
Conclusion
So make sure you follow
those three steps of building new habits by controlling the cue, routine and
ritual or by slightly changing the ritual while keeping the cue and reward the
same if you want to replace your old bad habit into a new one. Don’t forget about identifying your keystone
habit, which is the essential catalyst of your positive habits and successful
performance, which we mentioned in this case as exercising or going to the gym
as you call it. And lastly make sure you practise and strengthening your
willpower by constantly working on improving yourself and creating a better
version of yourself.
