Project Description

Subtitle: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Businessbook cover The Power of Habit

By: Charles Duhigg

Notes:

  • Making one big goal radiates out to infiltrate a person’s entire life.
    • Old patterns can get crowded out by new instructions.
  • A brain tries to change every action into a habit to make it more efficient and conserve effort.
  • How to form a habit (also works for advertising).
    1. Find a trigger.
    2. Make a simple and obvious reward.
    3. Must also trigger a craving for the reward to come.
  • When you have a routine, but it’s taken away, then it develops a craving.
  • Keys to forming a weight loss habit:
    • Eat breakfast
    • Vision a reward like a bikini they want.
  • Easier to adopt a new behavior is something familiar was at the beginning and end.
    • Same quo and reward must stay the same in order to find a new routine.
    • Stop smoking? Get another routine with quo comes up.
  • Stop having drinks when we come home. The craving for a beer will increase the chances of alcoholism, because we are creating a pattern. Alcoholics don’t drink to get drunk, they do it for an emotional release and the quo that we have will turn us into one’s.
  • Nail biting: I stopped b/c the quo was not there.
  • To stop a routine, use a competing routine every time you have that craving.
  • Try to solve the…
    • Small batter condition.
    • Positivity every day.
    • Create a habit of working hard in Izzy.
  • Can solve Kirra’s desire to take medicine. Quo is the inability to concentrate.
  • Replacement habits only work over the long term if used with spirituality or belief that things will get better.
  • When people join groups who want to change together will have more success.
  • One habit change in an organization can ripple through the organization and have many changes.
  • When changing and organization, try to find something that everyone can agree to.
  • Families that end together produce far better children.
  • Making a bed every morning is correlated with sticking with a budget.
  • Small wins organize them into patterns that produce big wins.
    • Start big changes with the smallest changes to gain momentum.
  • Must find the smallest tweak that can make a big change.
  • Willpower (self-discipline) is the single more important factor for individual success.
    • Predicts success better than IQ.
    • Best way to strength will power is to make it a habit.
    • It’s a learnable skill.
  • When people have to use their willpower to resist something bad, then they have less of it to resist the next thing:
    • Kirra’s difficult ability to study is probably a result of her difficulty resisting food.
    • Exercising can help increase will power with a spill over affect.
    • Soccer is so important for Izzy, because it teaches her long term self-control habits.
    • Important to have izzy finish her homework as soon as she gets home.
  • Ask izzy how she’s going to overcome each challenge… Helps establish willpower.
  • Must treat Izzy kindly in order for her to establish more will power. Sense of control they had over an experience helped to increase will power.
  • Giving employees a sense of control helps employees to preform better.
  • Organizations are guided by past routines and experiences. So, when investing in a stock, look for a history of smart decision making.
  • Use a crisis to make changes.
    • A wise leader could prolong a crisis to continue changes.
  • Peer pressure is the best way to get a job.
    • Casual acquaintances are the best means to get employment. So, go to networking events and talk to as many people as possible in order to network the way to the top.
  • To modify a habit a person must decide to work on it.