The Power of Habit – By Charles Duhigg

Read this book recently after hearing rave reviews ‘bout it and ended up liking it quite much. The author talks ‘bout what a habit is, presents interesting real-life habits of individuals, organisations and communities, analyses how they have been formed or changed and finally provides a framework for habit change. It’s an engrossing read given almost all of the content is real-life case-studies. As an added bonus, you find several pearls of wisdom jump out from the book as you read through, though simple ones.

Here are some of the interesting tidbits and pearls of wisdom from the book.

More than 40% of actions we perform daily are not decisions, but habits. A habit is essentially, a routine that we perform upon a trigger – a cue, and at the end of the routine is a reward. To change a habit, we need to identify what cues trigger the routine and what reward we are craving for at the end of the routine, then substitute it with a new routine. Have a plan for substituting with a new routine and follow it through.

Habits such as nail biting, snacking at work/ weight loss, yelling at kids, depression, smoking, gambling, anxiety and other behavioural problems are apparently commonly treated through such habit reversal therapy.

Interesting Real-life Case-Studies:

• Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the de-addiction organization has changed lives of multitude of alcoholics by substituting their drinking routine with companionship. The trigger to drink for alcoholics predominantly is depression, stress and pressure and the reward they crave for through alcohol is relief from these and an emotional high. AA has volunteering sponsors for each member who he can meet and talk to or attend a group gathering when there is an urge to drink. Companionship offers the stress/pressure/depression-relief that alcohol creates.   
• A middle aged woman – a chain-smoker and a prolific drinker who has been obese for most of her life, going through divorce and subsequent depression,  transforms into a physically fit woman running & winning in multiple marathons periodically, treks up the Egyptian pyramid, turns out highly productive at work and gets re-engaged. She achieves all of this by focusing on a single ‘key-stone habit’ of hers, i.e. smoking. She replaces that with jogging, and many other positive habits automatically follow, resulting in her all new elevated life.
• Claude Hopkins, a prominent ad-man of America in the 1900s, launches an ad-campaign for an all-new toothpaste product - Pepsodent and ends up propelling the % of brushing population there from a mere 7% to a whopping 65% within a decade of the launch of his campaign. His campaign says, the paste would get rid of the thin off-white film lining the teeth and promises a beautiful-bright-white smile as the reward. Additionally the toothpaste has ingredients ( citric acid, mint oil etc) that leave a soft-tingling sensation in the gums and the tongue – both of which ( smile & tingling sensation) the consumers naturally crave for and the product becomes a hit.
• P&G lands up with a chance invention in its labs – a de-odorizing spray that takes away all bad-odour when sprayed. Company tries to sell it to smokers and pet-owners and ends up realizing, people who stink seldom realize they stink and hence the product remains a dud. There is no cue for such people to buy the product. With further investigation P&G realizes anyone ( not just those who stink, even normal people) would rather crave a pleasant-smell than scentlessness. They add more fragrance to their spray and re-launch the campaign and the rest is history. P&G ends up creating a billion $ revenue making product-line with that product.
• A new CEO (Paul O Neil) of the largest Aluminium Company in the world, Alcoa ( Aluminium Company of America) in mid-80s, when the company was in rough waters with declining profits and employee satisfaction, takes over and regains the coveted position for the company by focusing on and changing a singly ‘key-stone habit’ in the organization. He sets ‘zero employee injuries’ at work as the goal for the entire organization, and ferociously follows-through on this seeking his team to report any injury in their groups within 24-hours from the incident to him, along with associated details on what went wrong, what could’ve been done to avoid this, what corrective actions are in-place to prevent such incident in future and so on. This meant the entire hierarchy under him had to be in close touch, right up to the shop floor. They had to constantly listen to ideas from the employees, leading to open communication channels. Any unit president running into a repeat injury in his group that he could have avoided was fired. Such focus and drive to achieve ‘zero-injuries’, apart from improving worker safety, brought about better sense of belonging, employee satisfaction, better productivity and quality products.
• Starbucks’ training program teaches its employees how to live, how to focus, how to master their emotions, how to be on time and most importantly builds their will power. With such training even children of drug addicts and high-school drop-outs who couldn’t hold on to any job for reasonable period, grow to be successful multi-store managers at Starbucks. Employees are given a clearly written down instruction manual on how to deal with situations that otherwise pull down their willpower – say a yelling customer, long line at cash register and many more that counter staff need to deal with. Employees are trained rigorously on these routines until these routines get automatic and hence Starbucks is able to offer coffee to its customers with a constant smile at the counter which happens to be the prime reason for the phenomenal growth of the company.

Simple pearls of wisdom:

• When people start exercising habitually, even as infrequently as once a week, they start eating better, be more productive at work, smoke less and show more patience with family and colleagues, feel less stressed. Exercise triggers widespread positive change.
• Families eating dinner together, raise children with better homework skills, higher grades, greater emotional control and more confidence.
• Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, greater sense of well-being, stronger skills at sticking to a budget. These initial shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits to kick-in.
• Schultz (Starbucks owner) who rose from a government housing community with humble beginnings to owning up Starbucks, the global coffee-chain – recollects what kept him driven – his mom always asked told him – ‘never quit, you’re going to make us all proud’, and asked him Questions – ‘how are you going to study tonight, what are you going to do tomorrow, how do you know you’re ready for your test’ and so on. This trained him to set goals in life. If you tell people that they have what it takes to success, they would always prove you right.
• When people are asked to do something, that needs a lot of willpower – if they know the background to why they need to do it and are given the autonomy to do it, it is much less taxing for them to do it, as against being ordered to do – in which case it drains their willpower muscles. Similarly in organizations – simply giving employees – a feeling that they’re in control and have genuine decision-making authority can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs.
• Retention in any organization is driven by emotional factors – Say in a gym, club or any membership organization, factors such as whether employees knew members’ names and said hello when they walked in go a long way in retaining the members.
• Socially connected people, with friends cutting across multiple strata, who give more back to the community and the society possess the power to trigger societal movements. An ill-treatment extended to one such person in the US in the 1960s triggered the widespread anti-racial movement.  People hate to see ill-treatment extended to a selfless friend than to a stranger.

And here goes the best of the takeaways from the book:

When one of the Starbucks employees starts crying after a customer screamed at her, the store manager takes her aside and says, “Your apron is a shield. Nothing anyone says will ever hurt you. You’ll always be as strong as you want to be”. Manager has picked up the lecture from Starbucks’ training program that continues through-out the career of an employee.

Overall a refreshing read.