Hello guys, I am back with another review of nonfiction book :) Last time I wrote about book that I was critical about and did not recommend. Today on the other hand, I would like to write about work that I consider one of the most important books for everyone that would like to change his life, and I mean life generally, it applies to any part of our lives.
The author
Charles Duhigg is a journalist and nonfiction author. He wrote not only The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, but also second book - Smarter Faster Better. Today we are gonna focus on former, the one about habits. Charles was a reporter for The New York Times, and he is not a researcher himself, but in his book he covers what has been proved by research and he is great as a reporter that is presenting us in clear form what researches on habits have found out.
The book
The Power of Habit is offering us few key conclusions. I will try to present them to you, each one of them in a different section of this article. I believe that these conclusions are what is very important to changing our habits. Everyone have some kind of bad habits, or at least habits that he would like to change or get rid of. Earlier I wrote that this book is one of the most important works for everyone that wants to change his or her life. Because our lives consists in great part of habits, things that we do automatically, without thinking. Those are the things that got the most influence on our lives, since they are repeating, they happen often, and they happen even if we do not make an effort to do them. On the contrary, we would have to make an effort to stop them from happening!
Here I would also recommend you to read my previous blog post about Slight Edge. It will let you grasp how important in our lives are small, repeatable things - something that habits provides. Both in case of good and bad habits.
So, let's begin!
Vivisection of a habit
Before we will start working on our habits, we need to understand them. So here we will break our habits into smaller parts that they consist of. Those parts are The Cue, The Routine and The Reward. Altogether they are called "habit loop"
First, there is the cue, in other words a trigger, something that makes you wanna smoke, eat junk food or do anything that is your bad habit. The book describes five categories of cues - location, time, emotion, our last action, what others do.
Then, there is a routine, something that we do, the central part of a habit. This may be eating of fast food, smoking and other activity.
Then in the end we get the reward - something that makes us feel good, the reason why we wanna do what we are doing. We crave for the reward, it is satisfying some of our needs.
Now let's examine this cue-routine-reward chain (or "habit loop") on some examples. Let's say that you've gained some weight in last months and you've observed that it may be because everyday at work, at 11:00 you're going out to the dining room with coworkers and eating a cake. What is the cue here? It is a lunch break at work (time cue), maybe the feeling of being hungry, or you just want to socialize with others and you're doing what they're doing at lunch break ("what others do" cue). Then there is the routine - you're getting up from your desk, going to dining room, ordering a cake, sitting with friends and eating it. And now, the reward. This is the important part - what craving does this habit is fulfilling for you? Hunger? The fact that you wanted to take a walk and have a break from work? Socializing with your friends? It is important to identify what is the reward of the habit, if we want to deal with it, but you will see that below in the next section.
Here is a small illustration that presents situation in this example:
Could you even get rid of habit?
Now we know what is the habit, and how it looks like when we break it into smaller parts. Ok, so you wanna get rid of that habit of eating a cake everyday at work at 11:00, or getting a can of soda? Well, I have bad news and good news. Bad news is, that in many cases it is extremely hard to get rid of a habit. The good news is that instead we should change the habit, not get rid of it.
How to change a habit?
You need to disrupt cue-routine-reward chain. Identify the cue and the reward. Let's say that you already know that the cue is the lunch break. It is harder to identify the reward, but you could do that through experimenting. Everyday try to isolate one reward and change it. For example instead of cake, eat something that is healthy and will make you fed. Did it fulfill your craving, was it rewarding? If yes then maybe you're just hungry and lack nutritious food at work other than cake that will make you fed. Next time instead of going to the dining room take a walk outside the building. If it feels that it satisfy your craving for the habit, that it's the reward, then maybe you just need a break from work? Or try to have a chat with friends outside dining room - maybe you just want to chit-chat at lunch break?
You probably noticed that we've focused on cue and reward in cue-routine-reward chain, but we've omitted the middle, the routine. That is because now that you've know the cue and reward, you should change the routine, the "bad" thing in this habit, to something different. If your cue is the time, let's say 11:00, and your reward is break from work, then change the routine in the middle from "eating a cake at dinning room" to something that will also be triggered by cue and also fulfill the reward, but will be good for you. So take a walk instead when there will be lunch break for example.
So how the situation looks now, in our little example about a guy who is eating a cake everyday at work, after the change? Here is another great illustration by me ;):
This is the essential way to changing our habits for the better, so they will work for us in the long run, not harm us in the long run, as you could observe in the Slight Edge.
Keystone habits
Okay, so now you know how to change a habit. It is just a theory, you need to practice to do it, and it is not easy, although it should be much easier now, instead of the old way that you probably used to "get rid of habit", as most people do. But we want to change our lives for the better, not just one habit. And usually it is better to change one habit at the time, so we will stick with it. Don't try to chase the rainbow, to accomplish too much at once.
So taking that into the consideration, that we want to change habits step by step, but also be effective and changing our lives, what can we do?
We can start by changing the most important habits, not small ones. They are the habits that could trigger positive "chain of reaction" in our lives, on which other habits may rely, and they are called "keystone habits". What is the keystone? This is the stone at the top or arch-like constructions, the one that keep it all together. Here is an example, can you see that stone at the top of this arch, the one with the plate on it?
Imagine what would happen if you would take it out from the construction. It would fall apart. The similar analogy may be found in bridges, as you imagine. And it is similar with keystone habits, they are the most important things, other habits rely on it.
Typical example of such habit is waking up early. It is worth working on both going to sleep and waking up early because then we are more likely to be fresh at work, we will not be late, we will have time to prepare our meal to work so we will not eat that cake, we will have more time to exercise etc.
Other keystone habit is for example getting organized. It will help us save time, help with being concentrated, more productive at work etc. It makes easier to clean our rooms. Another one is regularly saving money after payday - this is quite obvious because money is a universal tool and saving could mean that we can afford things that we want to, we will feel safer financially, and so maybe less anxious, we will learn to budget things, which is another good habit which spawns another good habits etc.
The willpower muscle
Last, but not least - we are all just humans. Sometimes we will fail in our quest of changing our habits. That's why it is also important to take into consideration our willpower. It is not discussed in the book to great extent, but I would add that some of the keystone habits, as proper sleep, will improve our willpower. It is very well established psychological fact, that if you're tired, hungry and irritated, then your willpower will diminish. Maybe some of you observed it as I did - when you're angry, hungry and tired, that is the moment when you will head to the McDonald's to eat something unhealthy, that is the moment when you will fail and fall back on your old bad habits again.
According to some, the fact of being disciplined itself may strengthen our willpower. So the more you're keeping the regime of exercising, the more you're sticking to new good habits the less is the chance that you will fail. That's why it is so important to be reliable in our pursuit of good habits :)
The science behind willpower, and how to maintain it is another topic though. :)
Hope you enjoyed it, and what is more important I hope that this post will help you work on yourself! I really encourage you to read the book also, because it is an easy and pleasurable read and should let you better incorporate those rules in your life. I would be glad to see any comments on this topic if you have anything to add :)