Habits shape your life & work. Habits define organizations. So build better habits.

Number 167

Our lives are so complicated that it’s amazing we manage as well as we do. Just getting up, getting ready, and commuting to the office offers numerous decision points. It’s enough to wear us out before we reach our desks.

The reason we aren’t exhausted by our normal routine is that we glide through much of it on automatic pilot. Our conscious minds don’t have to struggle with daily decisions about how to dress and find our way to work because our habits take over.

According to New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg, “Without habit loops, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed by the minutiae of daily life.” Duhigg draws on substantial research and provides an entertaining explanation of habit formation and management in his book, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.”

Whether we are talking about individuals or groups, Duhigg argues that, “Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.”

As an example of managing habits on a large scale, Duhigg describes how Starbucks teaches its workers to deal with many types of customer interactions. He says “Starbucks has dozens of routines that employees are taught to use during stressful inflection points...There are learned habits to help baristas tell the difference between patrons who just want their coffee...and those who need a bit more coddling.”

Duhigg says that what most people want to know when they hear about the science of habits is a secret formula for quickly changing any habit. Although he says there is no single prescription that always works, Duhigg does offer a four-part framework for changing habits.

To illustrate his approach, Duhigg tells us how he shook his unhealthy routine of going to the cafeteria every afternoon and buying a chocolate chip cookie. That cookie habit had resulted in an eight-pound weight gain, as well as some pointed comments from his wife. Here is the framework that helped Duhigg to break the habit:

• Step one: Identify the routine. Every habit has three parts: a cue, a routine and a reward. Begin the process of changing your habit by precisely observing the routine – the behaviors -- on which it is based. Duhigg’s routine was to get up from his desk, walk to the cafeteria, buy a cookie, and eat it while chatting with friends.
• Step two: Experiment with rewards. Duhigg says that rewards satisfy cravings, but it might not be obvious exactly what cravings are driving our behavior. In his case, after noticing how he felt before and after indulging in his cookie habit, Duhigg realized that, more than food, he was craving the opportunity to hang out for a while with friends.
• Step three: Isolate the cue. Habits are typically triggered by some kind of cue. For Duhigg, it was simply the time of day. When he looked at the clock and saw it was 3:30, he felt an urge to go to the cafeteria for his cookie. Rather than the time, habitual cues might be related to your location, your emotional state, other people, or an immediately preceding action. So if you are trying to identify the likely cue to your habit ask questions like, “Where are you when it occurs?” “What time is it?” and “Who else is around?”
• Step four: Have a plan. The first three steps should help you figure out your habit loop: the reward driving your behavior, the cue triggering it, and the routine itself. So what you need now is a plan for making a different choice, once you are faced with the cue. You can change to a better routine if you find a behavior that delivers a reward you are craving. For example, once Duhigg realized that he wanted company more than food, he wrote a simple plan: “At 3:30 every day, I will walk to a friend’s desk and talk for 10 minutes.”