Lesson 1: Habits work in 3-step loops: cue, routine, reward.
- Habits are your brain’s way of saving energy, so given you spend around 6 of your 16 waking hours doing things you’re not aware of, it might be worth understanding what happens here.
- Duhigg discovered that at the root of all habits, like drinking your coffee every morning, lies a simple 3-part loop.
- The cue is what triggers you to do the habit, for example sitting down at your kitchen table to have breakfast every morning at 7 AM.
- The routine is the behavior you then automatically engage in, which, for drinking coffee, might be to go over to your coffeemaker, turn it on, and press the “large cup” button.
Lesson 2: You can change your habits by substituting just one part of the loop, the routine.
Naturally, the more often you reinforce a habit, the more embedded in your brain it gets. In case of the coffee, you might crave it the second you sit down at your kitchen table, and when you can’t have it that day, because the machine broke, you’ll probably get very grumpy and buy one later at work.
Lesson 3: Your most important habit is willpower, and you can strengthen it over time in 3 ways.
- Do something that requires a lot of discipline. For example a tough wake-up regimen or strict diet will make you constantly practice delaying gratification and thus give you more willpower to exert throughout your day.
- Plan ahead for worst-case scenarios. Even just thinking about your boss yelling at you before it ever happens will help you not loose your cool when it does.
- Preserve your autonomy. Yesterday I learned that autonomy was a major part of living a passionate life. Today I learned that if you take it away, your willpower also goes down the drain. When you’re assigned tasks by someone else, which you must do, your willpower muscle tires much quicker.
