The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

Conscious living is overrated. 

Charles Duhigg wants us to know that even those of us trying to guide our personal and professional affairs through informed decision-making are underestimating the iron fist of habit.

Do you eat when you are nervous?...reach for your phone when you feel that vibration in your pocket?...give a friend or family member a friendly verbal needling when they really need a hug?

Human habits seem intractable and inexplicable, as ingrained in our beings as the color of our hair. “They are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense,” Duhigg writes.

But it turns out our habits are quite malleable, that is if you understand how they work.

According to neurological studies all habits—no matter how large or small—have three components. There's a cue—a trigger for a particular behavior; a routine, which is the behavior itself; and a reward, which is how your brain decides whether to remember a habit for the future.

In this way a habit is essentially a computer program written on the blackboard of the brain’s basal ganglia. And, like many computer programs, they repeat themselves in a loop.

A habit loop awakes with a cue: A smartphone dings during a meeting. It starts a routine: The iPhone is discreetly examined. A Words with Friends opponent has made a move, and now it’s time to pounce. Then there is a reward: you crave the ding and the resulting rush of endorphins it promises when you vanquish your opponent

Duhigg notes how habit loops can explain how bad habits develop and introduces us to the concept of habit loop manipulation. By taking advantage of a quirk in the neurology of habits, we can create and change habits almost like flipping a switch.

Cue: feeling sad. You crave some relief from the loneliness. Routine: drink. Reward: forget the troubles. Duhigg writes about how effective Alcoholics Anonymous is at intervening in the mechanics of habit loops and battling addiction. Through habit loop manipulation, we can break the habits of the smoker, the nail-biter and the over eater.

Better yet, it can be used to create new routines of daily exercise, calling a loved one, paying the bills. If you can identify the right cue and reward—and if you can create a sense of craving—you can establish almost any habit.

Studies indicate that anyone can use this basic formula to create habits of her or his own. Want to exercise more? Choose a cue, such as going to the gym as soon as you wake up, and a reward, such as a smoothie after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the endorphin rush you’ll feel. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually, that craving will make it easier to push through the gym doors every day.

On a personal level that is as far as Charles Duhigg, the business reporter, takes us. How can I master these techniques as a tool for self-improvement? Alas, this is not a self-improvement book.

While his book left me wanting more, Duhigg's web site thankfully provides useful answers. He should have thrown a few of the diagrams on his web site into an appendix.

Habit loop manipulation has far-reaching utility, and this book diligently illustrates its use in organizational and societal levels. Companies and governments are getting ever more adept at identifying, co-opting, and shaping our behavior patterns to increase profits and maintain control.

Duhigg is value-neutral in his choice of examples of businesses and sports teams using these powerful techniques. Most are stories about turnarounds, such as the use of these techniques to benignly sell more stuff to consumers.

But Duhigg avoids the obvious more insidious side of habit loop manipulation, leaving it presumably for someone else to investigate the brands that profit by encouraging self-destructive habits like drinking, smoking, firearms or gambling.

His enthusiasm for corporate ingenuity seems to blind him at times to the sinister aspects of habit manipulation. While writing about all the successful application of habit loop manipulation by McDonald's, Proctor and Gamble, Alcoa and Target, what might be going on at Phillip Morris, Chase Manhattan and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp?