The power of habit Why we do what we do in life and in business

Review by New York Times Review

HUMAN consciousness, that wonderful ability to reflect, ponder and choose, is our greatest evolutionary achievement. But it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and fortunately we also have the ability to operate on automatic pilot, performing complex behaviors without any conscious thought at all. One way this happens is with lots of practice. Tasks that seem impossibly complex at first, like learning how to play the guitar, speak a foreign language or operate a new DVD player, become second nature after we perform those actions many times (well, maybe not the DVD player). "If practice did not make perfect," William James said, "nor habit economize the expense of nervous and muscular energy, he" (we, that is) "would therefore be in a sorry plight." But of course there is a dark side to habits, namely that we acquire bad ones, like smoking or overeating. I imagine that most people - save, perhaps, for a friend of mine who said, in reaction to a news story about the dangers of hypertension, "I've given up all of my vices; please don't take away my salt!" - would love to find an easy way of breaking a bad habit or two. Charles Duhigg, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, has written an entertaining book to help us do just that, "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business." Duhigg has read hundreds of scientific papers and interviewed many of the scientists who wrote them, and relays interesting findings on habit formation and change from the fields of social psychology, clinical psychology and neuroscience. This is not a self-help book conveying one author's homespun remedies, but a serious look at the science of habit formation and change. Duhigg is optimistic about how we can put the science to use. "Once you understand that habits can change," he concludes, "you have the freedom - and the responsibility - to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power becomes easier to grasp, and the only option left is to get to work." He also suggests that by understanding the nature of habits we can influence group behavior, turning companies into profit makers and ensuring the success of social movements. He makes his case by presenting fascinating stories and case histories. Readers will learn how and why Target can tell which of its female customers are pregnant, even before they have told their friends and family; how Rick Warren went from a depressed minister of a small congregation to the leader of one of the biggest megachurches in the world; why Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat started a movement when similar refusals by others had not; and why a 1987 fire in a London Underground station failed to be contained, leading to the deaths of 31 people. Unfortunately, it's not always clear from Duhigg's book how we should boil down these examples into a prescription for change, because he combines markedly different behaviors, at the individual and societal levels, into the rubric of habits. In the first chapter he presents a simple scheme called "the habit loop," whereby an environmental cue automatically leads to a behavioral routine that results in a reward. He sticks to this scheme throughout, using it as a framework to understand such diverse behaviors as why people buy a certain brand of toothpaste, become addicted to cigarettes and alcohol, and prefer particular songs on the radio. The danger of trying to explain so much with one framework is that it sidesteps crucial distinctions about why people behave "mindlessly," distinctions we need to understand if we want to change those behaviors. One way behavior can become habitual, as noted, is through repetition. If we acquire a bad habit this way it is very hard to change, because its grooves are so well worn in our minds. We have to painstakingly practice a better response that wears a new groove. Duhigg gives the example of the success of the former N.F.L. coach Tony Dungy, who, with lots and lots of practice, taught his players a small number of important moves they could perform without thinking, even at the most crucial point in a game. Bad habits are overcome by learning new routines and practicing them over and over again. But then there are compulsions and addictions, behaviors that involve dependence on a chemical substance, like nicotine or alcohol, or behaviors that have become so rewarding that they're nearly impossible to resist (e.g., gambling). As many wrecked families can attest, these habits are the hardest to change. Unfortunately there is no magic bullet, though intensive treatments and social support can work. Other behaviors are habitual because they obey social norms - norms that we rarely question or think about. We shake hands when we greet people, wear socks of the same color and eat with a fork because these are the customs we have learned. Such behaviors are not well-worn grooves in our minds, but actions we could easily alter if the laws or customs that governed them should change. In the not-so-distant past, for example, Americans habitually failed to wear their seat belts - in 1984, 86 percent failed to buckle up. By 2010 this "habit" had flipped, such that 85 percent of people now wore seat belts. This change did not involve learning a new routine, as happens when people spend hundreds of hours learning a musical instrument. After all, people already knew how to grab the belt and insert the buckle into the receptacle. Rather, it happened because of changing norms in our society (spurred on by legislation in some states). In fact, social psychologists have shown that an effective way of changing many habitual behaviors is to change people's perceptions of the norms that govern them, resulting in reduced drinking on college campuses, for instance, and lowered energy use in the home. There is another type of habitual behavior that involves more cognitive activity, namely people's interpretation of a situation according to what it means for them and how it fits into the narratives they tell themselves. These behaviors are habitual in the sense that people have chronic ways of interpreting the world. A black college student's "story," for example, may be that she doesn't belong at the majority-white university she attends, which causes her to fall into a pattern of disengagement and academic failure. Research shows that changing black students' stories about their sense of belonging improves their academic performance and health throughout college. The point is that habitual behaviors come in many different forms, and squeezing them into one framework misses some of the nuances of how to change behavior effectively. In recent years social psychologists have developed many effective interventions to help people improve their lives, only some of which involve breaking bad habits in the way Duhigg describes. Nonetheless, "The Power of Habit" is an enjoyable book, and readers will find useful advice about how to change at least some of their bad habits - even if they want to keep their salt. The better we understand how habits form, Charles Duhigg writes, the easier they are to change. Timothy D. Wilson is Sherrell J. Aston professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of "Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 11, 2012]

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Review by Booklist Review

We all have our habits (even if we're not aware of some of them). Most of our daily decisions even the ones that don't seem like they're part of a routine could be habits. Habits are ingrained in us, the author says, because they're evolutionary: the brain is always looking for a way to be more efficient, and so it creates routines whenever it can. There's a word for this: chunking, converting a sequence of events into a routine. But other habits are the result of a feedback loop: a cue, a routine, and a reward. Advertisers rely heavily on establishing a habit loop: they create a need (the cue, the craving), explain how to incorporate a product into our daily lives (the routine), and show us how happy we'll be with the reward. Large corporations use habit to motivate their employees (Starbucks, for example, teaches its people how to turn willpower into a habit). Broad in scope and always interesting, the book should surprise and educate readers, not to mention telling them perhaps a bit more than they're comfortable knowing about the way their minds work.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Duhigg explores how habits influence individual, societal, and organizational experience and describes the social and psychological factors that create, maintain, and break habits, using a series of reinforcing anecdotes to bring his point home. Mike Chamberlain narrates this audio edition in a congenial, welcoming voice. This judgment-free approach is effective as Duhigg's findings will likely cause listeners to reflect on their own habits-both good and bad. Most important, Chamberlain's tone captures the mood of the book as it shifts from engaging and curious anecdotes to more academic studies, and his pacing maintains listener interest throughout. The only aspect of Chamberlain's performance that could be improved is his rendering of quotations: sometimes his reading of quotes misses the mark and sounds inauthentic or overly dramatic. However, this is only a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent performance. Random House hardcover. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

According to Duhigg (investigative reporter, New York Times), if people can understand how behaviors became habits, they can restructure those patterns in more constructive ways. He presents information on habit formation and change from academic studies, interviews with scientists and executives, and research conducted in dozens of companies. Three sections deal with the neurology of habit formation in individuals, the habits of successful companies and organizations, and the habits of societies and tough ethical issues. Duhigg offers a fascinating analysis for the college-educated reader. [See Prepub Alert, 9/11/11.] (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

New York Times investigative reporter Duhigg demonstrates how automatic behavior, good or bad, can grow from a repeated decision that gets lodged in the basal ganglia. The result is a fixed loop of cue, routine and reward. Animal trainers are already familiar with this information. For improvement, the trick is to keep the cue and reward, but change the routine. The belief that acquiring a new "keystone habit" can really be achieved is necessary, and that's why support groups, like AA, are valuable. To clarify his points, Duhigg offers some simplistic diagrams with many cautionary stories of surgeons, baristas, gamblers, sex addicts and football coaches, as well as the selling of toothpaste, aluminum and room deodorizers. Along with tales of paragons of corporate management, we learn how supermarkets are arranged, how Target stores target consumers, how Marin Luther King Jr. managed the Montgomery bus boycott and how Rick Warren organized his monumental Saddleback Church. Even with such varied exemplars, the skilled narrative remains accessible. Unlike other exhortations with titles that promise empowerment, this admonitory entry is supported by interviews, neurological studies and empirical histories. Copious notes and a "Reader's Guide to Using These Ideas" are appended. For self-help seekers, a more convincing book than most.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 THE HABIT LOOP How Habits Work I. In the fall of 1993, a man who would upend much of what we know about habits walked into a laboratory in San Diego for a scheduled appointment. He was elderly, a shade over six feet tall, and neatly dressed in a blue button-down shirt. His thick white hair would have inspired envy at any fiftieth high school reunion. Arthritis caused him to limp slightly as he paced the laboratory's hallways, and he held his wife's hand, walking slowly, as if unsure about what each new step would bring. About a year earlier, Eugene Pauly, or "E.P." as he would come to be known in medical literature, had been at home in Playa del Rey, preparing for dinner, when his wife mentioned that their son, Michael, was coming over. "Who's Michael?" Eugene asked. "Your child," said his wife, Beverly. "You know, the one we raised?" Eugene looked at her blankly. "Who is that?" he asked. The next day, Eugene started vomiting and writhing with stomach cramps. Within twenty-four hours, his dehydration was so pronounced that a panicked Beverly took him to the emergency room. His temperature started rising, hitting 105 degrees as he sweated a yellow halo of perspiration onto the hospital's sheets. He became delirious, then violent, yelling and pushing when nurses tried to insert an IV into his arm. Only after sedation was a physician able to slide a long needle between two vertebra in the small of his back and extract a few drops of cerebrospinal fluid. The doctor performing the procedure sensed trouble immediately. The fluid surrounding the brain and spinal nerves is a barrier against infection and injury. In healthy individuals, it is clear and quick flowing, moving with an almost silky rush through a needle. The sample from Eugene's spine was cloudy and dripped out sluggishly, as if filled with microscopic grit. When the results came back from the laboratory, Eugene's physicians learned why he was ill: He was suffering from viral encephalitis, a relatively common disease that produces cold sores, fever blisters, and mild infections on the skin. In rare cases, however, the virus can make its way into the brain, inflicting catastrophic damage as it chews through the delicate folds of tissue where our thoughts, dreams-and according to some, souls- reside. Eugene's doctors told Beverly there was nothing they could do to counter the damage already done, but a large dose of antiviral drugs might prevent it from spreading. Eugene slipped into a coma and for ten days was close to death. Gradually, as the drugs fought the disease, his fever receded and the virus disappeared. When he finally awoke, he was weak and disoriented and couldn't swallow properly. He couldn't form sentences and would sometimes gasp, as if he had momentarily forgotten how to breathe. But he was alive. Eventually, Eugene was well enough for a battery of tests. The doctors were amazed to find that his body-including his nervous system- appeared largely unscathed. He could move his limbs and was responsive to noise and light. Scans of his head, though, revealed ominous shadows near the center of his brain. The virus had destroyed an oval of tissue close to where his cranium and spinal column met. "He might not be the person you remember," one doctor warned Beverly. "You need to be ready if your husband is gone." Eugene was moved to a different wing of the hospital. Within a week, he was swallowing easily. Another week, and he started talking normally, asking for Jell-O and salt, flipping through television channels and complaining about boring soap operas. By the time he was discharged to a rehabilitation center five weeks later, Eugene was walking down hallways and offering nurses unsolicited advice about their weekend plans. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone come back like this," a doctor told Beverly. "I don't want to raise your hopes, but this is amazing." Beverly, however, remained concerned. In the rehab hospital it became clear that the disease had changed her husband in unsettling ways. Eugene couldn't remember which day of the week it was, for instance, or the names of his doctors and nurses, no matter how many times they introduced themselves. "Why do they keep asking me all these questions?" he asked Beverly one day after a physician left his room. When he finally returned home, things got even stranger. Eugene didn't seem to remember their friends. He had trouble following conversations. Some mornings, he would get out of bed, walk into the kitchen, cook himself bacon and eggs, then climb back under the covers and turn on the radio. Forty minutes later, he would do the same thing: get up, cook bacon and eggs, climb back into bed, and fiddle with the radio. Then he would do it again. Alarmed, Beverly reached out to specialists, including a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who specialized in memory loss. Which is how, on a sunny fall day, Beverly and Eugene found themselves in a nondescript building on the university's campus, holding hands as they walked slowly down a hallway. They were shown into a small exam room. Eugene began chatting with a young woman who was using a computer. "Having been in electronics over the years, I'm amazed at all this," he said, gesturing at the machine she was typing on. "When I was younger, that thing would have been in a couple of six-foot racks and taken up this whole room." The woman continued pecking at the keyboard. Eugene chuckled. "That is incredible," he said. "All those printed circuits and diodes and triodes. When I was in electronics, there would have been a couple of six-foot racks holding that thing." A scientist entered the room and introduced himself. He asked Eugene how old he was. "Oh, let's see, fifty-nine or sixty?" Eugene replied. He was seventy- one years old. The scientist started typing on the computer. Eugene smiled and pointed at it. "That is really something," he said. "You know, when I was in electronics there would have been a couple of six-foot racks holding that thing!" The scientist was fifty-two-year-old Larry Squire, a professor who had spent the past three decades studying the neuroanatomy of memory. His specialty was exploring how the brain stores events. His work with Eugene, however, would soon open a new world to him and hundreds of other researchers who have reshaped our understanding of how habits function. Squire's studies would show that even someone who can't remember his own age or almost anything else can develop habits that seem inconceivably complex-until you realize that everyone relies on similar neurological processes every day. His and others' research would help reveal the subconscious mechanisms that impact the countless choices that seem as if they're the products of well- reasoned thought, but actually are influenced by urges most of us barely recognize or understand. By the time Squire met Eugene, he had already been studying images of his brain for weeks. The scans indicated that almost all the damage within Eugene's skull was limited to a five-centimeter area near the center of his head. The virus had almost entirely destroyed his medial temporal lobe, a sliver of cells which scientists suspected was responsible for all sorts of cognitive tasks such as recall of the past and the regulation of some emotions. The completeness of the destruction didn't surprise Squire-viral encephalitis consumes tissue with a ruthless, almost surgical, precision. What shocked him was how familiar the images seemed. Thirty years earlier, as a PhD student at MIT, Squire had worked alongside a group studying a man known as "H.M.," one of the most famous patients in medical history. When H.M.-his real name was Henry Molaison, but scientists shrouded his identity throughout his life-was seven years old, he was hit by a bicycle and landed hard on his head. Soon afterward, he developed seizures and started blacking out. At sixteen, he had his first grand mal seizure, the kind that affects the entire brain; soon, he was losing consciousness up to ten times a day. By the time he turned twenty-seven, H.M. was desperate. Anticonvulsive drugs hadn't helped. He was smart, but couldn't hold a job. He still lived with his parents. H.M. wanted a normal existence. So he sought help from a physician whose tolerance for experimentation outweighed his fear of malpractice. Studies had suggested that an area of the brain called the hippocampus might play a role in seizures. When the doctor proposed cutting into H.M.'s head, lifting up the front portion of his brain, and, with a small straw, sucking out the hippocampus and some surrounding tissue from the interior of his skull, H.M. gave his consent. The surgery occurred in 1953, and as H.M. healed, his seizures slowed. Almost immediately, however, it became clear that his brain had been radically altered. H.M. knew his name and that his mother was from Ireland. He could remember the 1929 stock market crash and news reports about the invasion of Normandy. But almost everything that came afterward-all the memories, experiences, and struggles from most of the decade before his surgery-had been erased. When a doctor began testing H.M.'s memory by showing him playing cards and lists of numbers, he discovered that H.M. couldn't retain any new information for more than twenty seconds or so. From the day of his surgery until his death in 2008, every person H.M. met, every song he heard, every room he entered, was a completely fresh experience. His brain was frozen in time. Each day, he was befuddled by the fact that someone could change the television channel by pointing a black rectangle of plastic at the screen. He introduced himself to his doctors and nurses over and over, dozens of times each day. "I loved learning about H.M., because memory seemed like such a tangible, exciting way to study the brain," Squire told me. "I grew up in Ohio, and I can remember, in first grade, my teacher handing everyone crayons, and I started mixing all the colors together to see if it would make black. Why have I kept that memory, but I can't remember what my teacher looked like? Why does my brain decide that one memory is more important than another?" When Squire received the images of Eugene's brain, he marveled at how similar it seemed to H.M.'s. There were empty, walnut-sized chunks in the middle of both their heads. Eugene's memory-just like H.M.'s-had been removed. As Squire began examining Eugene, though, he saw that this patient was different from H.M. in some profound ways. Whereas almost everyone knew within minutes of meeting H.M. that something was amiss, Eugene could carry on conversations and perform tasks that wouldn't alert a casual observer that anything was wrong. The effects of H.M.'s surgery had been so debilitating that he was institutionalized for the remainder of his life. Eugene, on the other hand, lived at home with his wife. H.M. couldn't really carry on conversations. Eugene, in contrast, had an amazing knack for guiding almost any discussion to a topic he was comfortable talking about at length, such as satellites- he had worked as a technician for an aerospace company-or the weather. Squire started his exam of Eugene by asking him about his youth. Eugene talked about the town where he had grown up in central California, his time in the merchant marines, a trip he had taken to Australia as a young man. He could remember most of the events in his life that had occurred prior to about 1960. When Squire asked about later decades, Eugene politely changed the topic and said he had trouble recollecting some recent events. Squire conducted a few intelligence tests and found that Eugene's intellect was still sharp for a man who couldn't remember the last three decades. What's more, Eugene still had all the habits he had formed in his youth, so whenever Squire gave him a cup of water or complimented him on a particularly detailed answer, Eugene would thank him and offer a compliment in return. Whenever someone entered the room, Eugene would introduce himself and ask about their day. But when Squire asked Eugene to memorize a string of numbers or describe the hallway outside the laboratory's door, the doctor found his patient couldn't retain any new information for more than a minute or so. When someone showed Eugene photos of his grandchildren, he had no idea who they were. When Squire asked if he remembered getting sick, Eugene said he had no recollection of his illness or the hospital stay. In fact, Eugene almost never recalled that he was suffering from amnesia. His mental image of himself didn't include memory loss, and since he couldn't remember the injury, he couldn't conceive of anything being wrong. In the months after meeting Eugene, Squire conducted experiments that tested the limits of his memory. By then, Eugene and Beverly had moved from Playa del Rey to San Diego to be closer to their daughter, and Squire often visited their home for his exams. One day, Squire asked Eugene to sketch a layout of his house. Eugene couldn't draw a rudimentary map showing where the kitchen or bedroom was located. "When you get out of bed in the morning, how do you leave your room?" Squire asked. "You know," Eugene said, "I'm not really sure." Squire took notes on his laptop, and as the scientist typed, Eugene became distracted. He glanced across the room and then stood up, walked into a hallway, and opened the door to the bathroom. A few minutes later, the toilet flushed, the faucet ran, and Eugene, wiping his hands on his pants, walked back into the living room and sat down again in his chair next to Squire. He waited patiently for the next question. At the time, no one wondered how a man who couldn't draw a map of his home was able to find the bathroom without hesitation. But that question, and others like it, would eventually lead to a trail of discoveries that has transformed our understanding of habits' power. It would help spark a scientific revolution that today involves hundreds of researchers who are learning, for the first time, to understand all the habits that influence our lives. As Eugene sat at the table, he looked at Squire's laptop. "That's amazing," he said, gesturing at the computer. "You know, when I was in electronics, there would have been a couple of six-foot racks holding that thing." Excerpted from The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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