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You can change your ad preferences anytime. Upcoming SlideShare. You are reading a preview. Create your free account to continue reading. Sign Up. Like this document? Why not share! Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to computer science, programming lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Reward: You satisfy your craving to feel relieved. Checking social media becomes associated with feeling stalled at work. Cue: You walk into a dark room.
Craving: You want to be able to see. Response: You flip the light switch. Reward: You satisfy your craving to see. Turning on the light switch becomes associated with being in a dark room. By the time we become adults, we rarely notice the habits that are running our lives.
Most of us never give a second thought to the fact that we tie the same shoe first each morning, or unplug the toaster after each use, or always change into comfortable clothes after getting home from work. After decades of mental programming, we automatically slip into these patterns of thinking and acting.
I refer to this framework as the Four Laws of Behavior Change, and it provides a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones. You can think of each law as a lever that influences human behavior.
When the levers are in the right positions, creating good habits is effortless. When they are in the wrong positions, it is nearly impossible. The 2nd law Craving : Make it attractive. The 3rd law Response : Make it easy. The 4th law Reward : Make it satisfying. We can invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit. Inversion of the 2nd law Craving : Make it unattractive. Inversion of the 3rd law Response : Make it difficult.
Inversion of the 4th law Reward : Make it unsatisfying. As you will soon see, the Four Laws of Behavior Change apply to nearly every field, from sports to politics, art to medicine, comedy to management. These laws can be used no matter what challenge you are facing. There is no need for completely different strategies for each habit. Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself: 1. How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive?
How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying? Why do I say something is important but never seem to make time for it?
The key to creating good habits and breaking bad ones is to understand these fundamental laws and how to alter them to your specifications. Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature. Your habits are shaped by the systems in your life. In the chapters that follow, we will discuss these laws one by one and show how you can use them to create a system in which good habits emerge naturally and bad habits wither away.
Chapter Summary A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.
The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are 1 make it obvious, 2 make it attractive, 3 make it easy, and 4 make it satisfying. She had spent years working as a paramedic and, upon arriving at the event, took one look at her father- in-law and got very concerned. What did the paramedic see?
How did she predict his impending heart attack? When major arteries are obstructed, the body focuses on sending blood to critical organs and away from peripheral locations near the surface of the skin. The result is a change in the pattern of distribution of blood in the face. After many years of working with people with heart failure, the woman had unknowingly developed the ability to recognize this pattern on sight. Similar stories exist in other fields.
Experienced radiologists can look at a brain scan and predict the area where a stroke will develop before any obvious signs are visible to the untrained eye.
The human brain is a prediction machine. It is continuously taking in your surroundings and analyzing the information it comes across. Whenever you experience something repeatedly—like a paramedic seeing the face of a heart attack patient or a military analyst seeing a missile on a radar screen—your brain begins noticing what is important, sorting through the details and highlighting the relevant cues, and cataloging that information for future use.
With enough practice, you can pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it. Automatically, your brain encodes the lessons learned through experience.
We underestimate how much our brains and bodies can do without thinking. You do not tell your hair to grow, your heart to pump, your lungs to breathe, or your stomach to digest.
And yet your body handles all this and more on autopilot. You are much more than your conscious self. Consider hunger. Appetite and hunger are governed nonconsciously. Your body has a variety of feedback loops that gradually alert you when it is time to eat again and that track what is going on around you and within you.
You can notice an opportunity and take action without dedicating conscious attention to it. This is what makes habits useful. As habits form, your actions come under the direction of your automatic and nonconscious mind. I once heard of a retail clerk who was instructed to cut up empty gift cards after customers had used up the balance on the card.
One day, the clerk cashed out a few customers in a row who purchased with gift cards. Another woman I came across in my research was a former preschool teacher who had switched to a corporate job.
Even though she was now working with adults, her old habits would kick in and she kept asking coworkers if they had washed their hands after going to the bathroom. Over time, the cues that spark our habits become so common that they are essentially invisible: the treats on the kitchen counter, the remote control next to the couch, the phone in our pocket.
Our responses to these cues are so deeply encoded that it may feel like the urge to act comes from nowhere. For this reason, we must begin the process of behavior change with awareness.
Before we can effectively build new habits, we need to get a handle on our current ones. As each operator runs the train, they proceed through a ritual of pointing at different objects and calling out commands. Out on the platform, other employees are performing similar actions. It seems silly, but it works incredibly well. Pointing-and-Calling reduces errors by up to 85 percent and cuts accidents by 30 percent. Because the train operators must use their eyes, hands, mouth, and ears, they are more likely to notice problems before something goes wrong.
My wife does something similar. Whenever we are preparing to walk out the door for a trip, she verbally calls out the most essential items in her packing list. We assume that the next time will be just like the last. Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness.
One of our greatest challenges in changing habits is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing. This helps explain why the consequences of bad habits can sneak up on us. To create your own, make a list of your daily habits. For someone who is trying to lose weight, eating a bagel with peanut butter every morning might be a bad habit. For someone who is trying to bulk up and add muscle, the same behavior might be a good habit. There are no good habits or bad habits.
There are only effective habits. That is, effective at solving problems. All habits serve you in some way —even the bad ones—which is why you repeat them. For this exercise, categorize your habits by how they will benefit you in the long run. Generally speaking, good habits will have net positive outcomes. Bad habits have net negative outcomes. Habits that conflict with your desired identity are usually bad. As you create your Habits Scorecard, there is no need to change anything at first.
The goal is to simply notice what is actually going on. Observe your thoughts and actions without judgment or internal criticism.
If you eat a chocolate bar every morning, acknowledge it, almost as if you were watching someone else. Oh, how interesting that they would do such a thing. If you binge-eat, simply notice that you are eating more calories than you should. If you waste time online, notice that you are spending your life in a way that you do not want to.
The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them. If you feel like you need extra help, then you can try Pointing- and-Calling in your own life. Say out loud the action that you are thinking of taking and what the outcome will be. Eating it will cause me to gain weight and hurt my health.
It adds weight to the action rather than letting yourself mindlessly slip into an old routine. The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. Strategies like Pointing-and-Calling and the Habits Scorecard are focused on getting you to recognize your habits and acknowledge the cues that trigger them, which makes it possible to respond in a way that benefits you.
Chapter Summary With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it. Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions. The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior. The subjects were divided into three groups.
The first group was the control group. They were simply asked to track how often they exercised. They were asked not only to track their workouts but also to read some material on the benefits of exercise.
The researchers also explained to the group how exercise could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and improve heart health. Finally, there was the third group. These subjects received the same presentation as the second group, which ensured that they had equal levels of motivation.
However, they were also asked to formulate a plan for when and where they would exercise over the following week. Interestingly, the motivational presentation given to the second group seemed to have no meaningful impact on behavior. But 91 percent of the third group exercised at least once per week—more than double the normal rate.
That is, how you intend to implement a particular habit. The cues that can trigger a habit come in a wide range of forms—the feel of your phone buzzing in your pocket, the smell of chocolate chip cookies, the sound of ambulance sirens—but the two most common cues are time and location. Implementation intentions leverage both of these cues. They increase the odds that people will stick with habits like recycling, studying, going to sleep early, and stopping smoking. At what time are you planning to go?
What bus will get you there? The punch line is clear: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. Too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out. Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action.
Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement. Do I write a chapter today or not? Do I meditate this morning or at lunch? When the moment of action occurs, there is no need to make a decision.
Simply follow your predetermined plan. I will meditate for one minute at 7 a. I will study Spanish for twenty minutes at 6 p. I will exercise for one hour at 5 p. I will make my partner a cup of tea at 8 a. People are more likely to take action at those times because hope is usually higher. If we have hope, we have a reason to take action. A fresh start feels motivating. There is another benefit to implementation intentions.
Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course. We often say yes to little requests because we are not clear enough about what we need to be doing instead.
Give your habits a time and a space to live in the world. But like a dog salivating at a bell, maybe you start to get antsy around the time of day you normally work out. My favorite approach is one I learned from Stanford professor BJ Fogg and it is a strategy I refer to as habit stacking. She was a book lover and greatly enjoyed his encyclopedia. With his new wealth, he not only paid for the wedding but also acquired a scarlet robe for himself. So beautiful, in fact, that he immediately noticed how out of place it seemed when surrounded by his more common possessions.
Diderot soon felt the urge to upgrade his possessions. He replaced his rug with one from Damascus. He decorated his home with expensive sculptures. He bought a mirror to place above the mantel, and a better kitchen table.
He tossed aside his old straw chair for a leather one. Like falling dominoes, one purchase led to the next. In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.
You can spot this pattern everywhere. You buy a dress and have to get new shoes and earrings to match. You buy a couch and suddenly question the layout of your entire living room. You buy a toy for your child and soon find yourself purchasing all of the accessories that go with it.
Many human behaviors follow this cycle. You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing. No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior. Why is this important? When it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top.
This is called habit stacking. Habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention. Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit. This method, which was created by BJ Fogg as part of his Tiny Habits program, can be used to design an obvious cue for nearly any habit. After I pour my cup of coffee each morning, I will meditate for one minute.
After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes. After I get into bed at night, I will give my partner a kiss. After I put on my running shoes, I will text a friend or family member where I am running and how long it will take.
The key is to tie your desired behavior into something you already do each day. Once you have mastered this basic structure, you can begin to create larger stacks by chaining small habits together. This allows you to take advantage of the natural momentum that comes from one behavior leading into the next—a positive version of the Diderot Effect.
This process can be repeated to chain numerous habits together, each one acting as the cue for the next. Your morning routine habit stack might look like this: 1. After I pour my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for sixty seconds. After I meditate for sixty seconds, I will write my to-do list for the day. After I write my to-do list for the day, I will immediately begin my first task. After I finish eating dinner, I will put my plate directly into the dishwasher. After I put my dishes away, I will immediately wipe down the counter.
After I wipe down the counter, I will set out my coffee mug for tomorrow morning. You can also insert new behaviors into the middle of your current routines. Now, when you climb into bed each night, a book will be sitting there waiting for you to enjoy. Overall, habit stacking allows you to create a set of simple rules that guide your future behavior.
Once you get comfortable with this approach, you can develop general habit stacks to guide you whenever the situation is appropriate: Exercise. When I see a set of stairs, I will take them instead of using the elevator. Social skills. Healthy eating. When I serve myself a meal, I will always put veggies on my plate first. When I buy a new item, I will give something away. When the phone rings, I will take one deep breath and smile before answering. No matter how you use this strategy, the secret to creating a successful habit stack is selecting the right cue to kick things off.
Unlike an implementation intention, which specifically states the time and location for a given behavior, habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it. When and where you choose to insert a habit into your daily routine can make a big difference. Consider when you are most likely to be successful. Your cue should also have the same frequency as your desired habit. One way to find the right trigger for your habit stack is by brainstorming a list of your current habits.
You can use your Habits Scorecard from the last chapter as a starting point. Alternatively, you can create a list with two columns. In the first column, write down the habits you do each day without fail.
Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Brew a cup of coffee. Eat breakfast. Take the kids to school. Start the work day. Eat lunch. End the work day. Change out of work clothes. Sit down for dinner. Turn off the lights. Get into bed. Your list can be much longer, but you get the idea. In the second column, write down all of the things that happen to you each day without fail.
For example: The sun rises. You get a text message. The song you are listening to ends. The sun sets. Armed with these two lists, you can begin searching for the best place to layer your new habit into your lifestyle. Habit stacking works best when the cue is highly specific and immediately actionable. Many people select cues that are too vague. I made this mistake myself. But soon, I realized the trigger was unclear.
Would I do my push-ups before I ate lunch? After I ate lunch? Where would I do them? Be specific and clear: After I close the door. After I brush my teeth. After I sit down at the table. The specificity is important. The more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue, the better the odds are that you will notice when the time comes to act. The 1st Law of Behavior Change is to make it obvious. Strategies like implementation intentions and habit stacking are among the most practical ways to create obvious cues for your habits and design a clear plan for when and where to take action.
The two most common cues are time and location. Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location. Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.
She believed she could improve the eating habits of thousands of hospital staff and visitors without changing their willpower or motivation in the slightest way. They started by changing how drinks were arranged in the room. Originally, the refrigerators located next to the cash registers in the cafeteria were filled with only soda.
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