Charles Duhigg
EPISODE 86
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and the author of The Power of Habit (Buy on Amazon), about the science of habit formation in our lives, companies and societies.
A graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Business School and a reporter at the New York Times for over a decade, Duhigg was one of a team of New York Times reporters who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series of 10 articles about the business practices of Apple and other technology companies.
He has no less than 13 different literary awards throughout his journalism and writing career. Today, he writes books and magazine articles for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
In his Book The Power of Habit, he believes: “There's never been a better time to set new habits”
SHOW OUTLINE
INTRO
To break a bad habit, you first need to understand what causes them
How to break habits (3m15)
How Charles got interested in habits; army major
Open your eyes to habits (1m07)
HABIT TRAINING
When life changes, you need to know how to change your habits
Recognising the Lag and how to exit it (1m49)
How to Re-Find your motivation
Stop and remind yourself why (1m09)
STUDIES AND EXPERIMENTS
An exercise in keeping control through planning ahead
Set the intention to make a change (2m39)
What’s drives the results in business, goals or the system?
Create systems rather than goals (2m27)
THE HABIT LOOP
In order to create a new habit, you need to change your behaviour first
How to create a habit (2m56)
When we are in the grip of a habit, you’re in autodrive
Shutting off when you’re in the grip of a habit (1m08)
An exception to ‘shutting off’: explaining the habit loop, and how to hack it
Rewiring your rewarding habits (1m55)
OUTRO
A story of how supermarkets (TARGET) identify habits of their customers, and what they reveal about us
Why habits matter (2m49)Charles Duhigg
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 86. I'm your cohost Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by the man is full of positive cues and rewards. It's none other than Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning. Good morning, Mike, this is a good habit of ours. Isn't it. Every week we get up early, we get into our recording, uh, clothes and get out on microphones.
This feels like a positive habit, right? I absolutely feel like we are in the zone. We are in the world of positive habits and Mark we're in the second part of our habits series, who. Who are we delving into the thoughts to the concepts, the mindsets, perhaps even the behaviors of who are we diving into [00:01:00] today, diving into the award winning Pulitzer prize, winning journalist, Charles Duhigg.
He is the author of the power of habit, which is the focus of our show today, episode 86, who really delves into the scientific, I suppose, uncoverings and discovering specifically around. Why some habits exist and also how they can be changed. And it's a fascinating book. Isn't it? Mike? It is, it was, um, when it was published a few years back, it was a landmark piece of work, which really framed the thinking and the related behaviors or the behaviors and the related thinking, depending on how you want to play it.
And, um, What I think is so important about the work of Charles Duhigg in this book (Buy on Amazon), the power of habit is for me, it's very much a wake up call and it is really the perfect companion to our previous episode, where we [00:02:00] jumped into Jame's clears book, atomic habits, which was really about tiny changes and remarkable results.
And he was really framing habit in terms of. A really positive lifestyle, which is so up my alley. So a big thumbs up from me there with Charles do here. He provides an important, additional view into the world of habits. He, one of the things I love about him is he, he is giving us a bit of a slap in the face, a bit of a cold shower.
Calling us out on some of the behaviors we don't even realize we do. And I think the power of understanding that is so important. If you want to be the very best version of yourself, I think the power of habit, isn't an essential book, full of essential ideas that will help us be better. How have you found getting to know the [00:03:00] world of Charles do here?
It's been pretty powerful. Actually. It's been quite an awakening for me because not only I believe our habits physical and we'll get into exercise, we'll get into ways of working. You know, this is all about, you know, making that positive change. I also think that habits. Can be a mental mindset as well.
So when you are thinking for me, if I'm thinking of maybe I've lacked a little bit of confidence here, or maybe I'm, uh, delving into why I've reacted in a certain way too much, that in itself is a habit. And I think what it was to Charles, his book is having that awakening, that awareness of where habits begin and end.
Allows me to now turn around tomorrow or even today actually. Well, what's the today. And is that positive change that reinforced that rethinking or restructuring of how I consider my habits? So for me it was, it was a big awakening actually. [00:04:00] Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think when we, when we break down what's ahead of the next hour together where we sort of unpack the world of Charles Duhigg, I think Alison is our in, for a real treat because we're going to understand from a very personal point of view, how, um, du HIG really uncovered, uh, this world of habit, then.
Um, he really he's so articulate. He takes us to an incredibly relatable way, how he kind of recognized where he was at and how to almost do a self intervention on some bad habits. And then, uh, in addition to that, we've got a really, um, Really fresh, uh, clear, well thought through breakdown of how habits are made, how they're created and how they're sustained and what I really hope for all of you listening today is that you can walk away with at least one tip suggestion, one little [00:05:00] piece of insight, inspiration about forming a positive habits, and maybe even calling yourself to it.
Now for some of those habits that we want to. Get rid of, and maybe you didn't even know that you did without no further ado. Let's go to the source. Let's go to Charles. Duhigg the author of the power of habit. And let's listen to him in his own words, how he discovered the power of habit. Imagine for a moment that you have a habit that you really want to change.
Let's say for instance, you go up to the cafeteria every afternoon and you need a chocolate chip cookie. This habit has caused you to gain a little bit of weight. In fact, this habit has caused you to gain exactly eight pounds and your wife has started making some pointed comments. And when I say you, what I really mean is me because this is a habit, but that I had that I just couldn't kick to understand it.
Why that had, it [00:06:00] was so powerful and what it would take to change it. I had to learn how happens every habit functions the same way. At first, there's a cue, some type of trigger that makes the behavior unfold. Automatically. Studies tell us that a cue can be a location the time of day, a certain emotional state, other people, or just a pattern of behaviors that consistently triggers a certain routine.
Thank you for my craving. I spent a few days tracking exactly when the urge to eat a cookie hits. And what I noticed pretty soon was something interesting. The cookie craving always hit about between three o'clock and three 30 in the afternoon. That was my cue. It was a certain time of day. The next part in the habit loop is the routine, the behavior itself.
And for me, that was pretty easy to figure out every day, between three and three 30, I'd get this craving for a cookie. I'd get up out of my chair. Walk over to the elevator. I [00:07:00] take the elevator up to the 14th floor. I'd get out, I'd buy a cookie. And then I would feed it while talking to my colleagues in the cafeteria.
The last part of the habit loop is the reward. And in some respects, the reward is the most important part because that's why habits exist so that we can get the rewards that we want. But figuring out a reward is kind of tricky to figure out what reward was driving my habits. I did a little bit of an experiment.
One day when the cookie urge struck, instead of going up to the cafeteria, I went outside and I took a walk around the block. Then the next day I went up to the cafeteria, but instead of finding a cookie, I got a candy bar and then ate it at my desk. And then the day after that, I went into the cafeteria again, but I didn't buy anything.
Instead. I just talked to friends for about 10 minutes. You get the idea. What I was trying to do was test different hypothesis. To figure out [00:08:00] what reward I was actually craving. And what I figured out pretty quickly was it had nothing to do with cookies. It had to do with socializing. Nowadays, what happens is at about three 30 in the afternoon, I add some mindedly stand up.
I look around the office, I see a friend I'll walk over and we'll gossip for 10 minutes. And then I'll go back to my desk. The urge to go get a cookie has completely disappeared. The new behavior has become a habit. I've lost about 12 pounds. As a result, studies have shown that if you can diagnose your habits, you can change them in whichever way you want.
So what are the cues, routines, and rewards in new Orleans? What happened to you? Want to change? Hmm. Cues, routines, and rewards. Good scientific, deep dive. Isn't it, Mike. And it's really the crux of power of habit. Do Higgs book, as well as a number of the other clips that will come into this show. And [00:09:00] for me, it's, it's a great mantra almost where I can challenge any of my bad habits, perhaps.
Um, And start to recognize them. You know, like Charles says, you can diagnose and recognize you can see how to change or alter that behavior and therefore change that reward. You know, I, I think that's, that's a really nice little equation. Isn't it? Yeah. And it's it's for me, it's two parts. It's trying to catch yourself out when, you know, when you have those moments where you're like, Oh, I'm doing something, I'm having this feeling.
I'm not sure if I'm really doing the right thing. Maybe this is a bad habit and you have this internal wrestling match inside of your mind. Like, am I doing something wrong here? It doesn't feel quite right. And then it's the choice of either. Do you just kind of. Pause and, and capture that and try and then go and reflect on it [00:10:00] or what I think a lot of us do, you know, when you have that, uh, something's, don't quite right about how I'm behaving, but you just keep going and you just.
Skip over it. Do you ever have those moments? Yeah, totally. Where you sort of know that something isn't quite right, but you're quite happy to force yourself to do it. And actually that's, that's you, I think, or that's us missing out on that recognition piece? That awareness piece that du HIG is really focusing on here and instead of, you know, being oblivious to it, instead, what we should do is focus on that.
That bad habit, that bad feeling and actually make that change because the result will be so much better, so much more positive. Yeah. It's, it's a total. Write it down moment, take a breath, try and go. Why does it feel? Not quite right. Um, and trying to grab that because I think if we grab those moments and reflect on them, I think as individuals, we can do great things and.
Beyond that [00:11:00] I think as teams, we can do great things. And this next clip from Charles Duhigg is really reflecting on what happens. And when you see a team that has got the right habits and the things that they can get done, the cohesion, the direction, the velocity that they enjoy from a set of positive, uh, Behaviors a positive set of ways of being working together.
So he actually reflected, um, when he had the chance to spend some time abroad with the U S army. And this is what happens when you open your eyes to the power of habits. I started becoming interested in habits about nine years ago. Now I was a reporter at the New York times. Um, and I had been sent to Iraq to be a war correspondent.
And when I got to Iraq, I met this [00:12:00] army major. Who seem to be doing this fantastic job of kind of making everything work. And I went over to this guy and I asked him, you're in the middle of nowhere. Everything is hard. You've got all these 18 year olds and they all wake up and they do exactly what I tell me what to do.
Right. Even though we're talking about having kids and I was like, please tell me what to do to keep, to keep a bunch of people listening to you. And he said, well, look, you know, When you joined the army, one of the things that you learn is that the army is this giant habit change machine, right? They teach you how to recognize habits.
They teach you how to change your habits, how to change the habits of your troops, how to think in terms of habits. And he said this line that I'll never forget. He said, when you learn to see the world in terms of habits, it's like people have given you these Rose colored glasses. And when you put them on everything that seemed complicated before suddenly all makes ups.
Oh, what an awakening moment. This was when I understood this clip and started getting into do [00:13:00] HIG it's. So I believe it's so true. Whether our listeners have, uh, been working all night long while people are, uh, being isolated, whether they have blue Mondays or stressed out Sundays, you know, these are all.
Habits that we are necessarily aware our habits is feeling this bad motivation of feeling rough. These are all habits on there, Mike. And what Charles is awakening us to here is recognizing those. And for me, this was, this was quite a powerful clip. Actually, this Rose tinted speck, uh, answers so real. And to build on that.
What happens when you can put people in all of this adversity in the middle of the desert, in a faraway country, but you can have this incredible cohesion and performance if you have the, the right habits. And I think that's what sets up, uh, the rest of the show. We're going to get into habit, training the habit [00:14:00] loop, um, and.
Pulling it all together with the wisdom and the inspiration from Charles do here. But before we go there, I think Mike, we have to remind folks. They're probably thinking, well, this, this whole habit forming series sounds great. I Ms. James clear, where do they go? If they want to get into the very famous, I might say back catalog of the moonshots podcast, the back catalog archive.
Everything can be found at www dot moonshots dot. I O we have 85 shows up there already. We've got some incredible authors. We've got innovators from around the world. We've got transcriptions, show notes, links to all sorts of interesting stuff. I highly suggest if you're interested in what you're listening to in the habits series.
Please go and check us out and find all of the other shows that we've got in the repository on [00:15:00] moonshots.io. And we're always quite partial to, to an email and you can email us at hello at shirts IO. We love when, uh, our listeners from all over the world, uh, suggest to us who we might consider for our next shows.
Uh, we get, um, We've got Adam Grant's series, which was incredibly powerful pillar to think, uh, to you Allison's it was suggested by you. So you got him on our radar. So thanks cute for that. And don't forget to head over to moonshots.io, where you can get so many. Moonshot podcast goodies. But I think one of the biggest goodies we can give you right now is to get into some serious habit wisdom.
Mark, where should we start on this journey of habit training? Well, we've just heard Charles tell us a little bit about recognizing habits. We've heard how he really, really got into this awakening towards Rose tinted world understanding and recognizing habits [00:16:00] and all of our daily lives. But especially now, When the world seems a little bit sideways, everything's sort of changed.
What we've got is that a habits are consistent habits all around us all the time. So what we're about to listen to, uh, in this next clip is Charles telling us when things do change, just recognize how to change yourself in order to reflect that balance. So this next clip that we're going to hear is Charles telling us, recognizing the lag and how to exit the lag.
The English poet, John Dryden, once wrote, we first make our habits and then our habits make us. And that's great news. When you have a habit that helps you succeed, our habits can propel us to incredible accomplishments, but when life changes, when our goals or values or job or family shifts or habits can hold us back, especially if we don't understand how to change them, think of a time when your [00:17:00] values or aspirations changed.
You failed to change your behavior to match them or your roles, possibilities that were shifted, but despite your best efforts, your performance didn't keep up. How did it affect your life in the power of habit training this delay between wanting or needing to change and actually changing
glad can affect our personal relationships, our social life, our jobs, our health, even our families. Most of us try to exit the lag through. If we just try hard enough, we think this time will change. And sometimes that works, but often it doesn't studies tell us that willpower is like a muscle. It gets tired and often fails us when we need it the most.
And then we get discouraged or, or even worse. We start to feel guilty or frustrated or stressed, making it even harder to change next time. And once you've identified your lags and the habits that might be holding you back or, or [00:18:00] helping you get forward and. Learn how habits work. That's when you have this insight to start fiddling with the gears inside your head to start changing the patterns in your life each day begins to feel less like a mountain of obstacles and more like a game of chess where you apply your skill instead of your willpower to succeed a game of chess.
I love that. That to me is perhaps one of the most important ways to think about. Calling yourself to account calling yourself out for these bad behaviors. Don't try and, uh, achieve success through brute force. Don't do that, make it a matter of we'll play the smart game too. And what I love about this is.
I can, I really do try and reflect on my own behaviors, um, in exactly the same way. Like I take the Charles and do HIG prescription right here. [00:19:00] I try and look at black, for example, when, um, when COVID and work from home and quarantine stuff. Um, I deliberately and meaningfully institutes, we instituted a habit of running regularly and it went from.
Two days a week, three days a week. And right now it's crazy. I run six out of seven days. Not necessarily the longest runs, but it's become this morning ritual of awakening. And I used this great desire, this, um, um, willpower to be as healthy as I can be. But then I thought to myself, there's nothing better if I'm going to be working at home a lot more.
I played it a bit like a chess game and said, well, I don't want to use the exercise bike at home. I want to get out and about. So there is nothing better in my life than a sunrise run in the morning, even if it's a bit chilly in the Sydney winter. [00:20:00] And that was where I saw the leg and played a game of chess.
I love this. This is. The ability to see the gap or the lag between the behaviors you have and the behaviors you want. And this is where Charles do. He offers us so much counsel and advice and help. Mark, I'm going to, I'm going to cost the light towards you. Where have you recently seen the lag or the gap and where have you instituted a little bit of Charles Duhigg?
Well, for me again, using isolation and remote, working as a bit of a stepping stone here for me, I think there. Was an anxiety that came from not collaborating face to face with my teammates during the days. And I think the remedy for that, again, thinking as a chess game and trying to avoid a bad habit of being totally unaligned [00:21:00] with the way that we work would be through communication, setting up, uh, Invites and sessions in the diaries for, you know, morning scrums and of day sinks for me.
And again, I'm a little bit like you, Mike. I love my exercise, so I'm not disregarding that. Um, because I certainly try to get into regular workouts too, but this idea of working out and staying disciplined with regards to work and the career aspect, for me, that felt like a pretty significant. You know, change recognizing that there was an opportunity for activity to go down and instead cut that off of the past and make sure we stayed highly aligned for me, that was us recognizing this change and totally different making that.
That fiddling with the pattern as do Hicks says. Yeah. And so, so I would, I would take this moment to, to challenge all of our [00:22:00] listeners and say, um, to you, what have you noticed? I mean, the world has changed for everyone a lot. So, you know, your home life, your work life, your neighborhood, your community, uh, the city in which you live, um, Where are the moments that you feel, Hmm.
Maybe I'm still acting in the old way, but I'm living in a new world. And so I challenge you to go and find those moments where it's a bit uncomfortable or it doesn't quite feel right. And I'd ask you to think about where is the lag there? Do some great Charles do HIG thinking. And China identify and you know what, it's a chess game experiment with a couple of different approaches.
Um, see how you can mix it up a little bit to create a set of habits and behaviors that just feel. Better because I think if we can capture those moments of discomfort and then [00:23:00] optimize our life for the better, I think we're really on the right path, but this is not the only thing where Charles do, he can inspire us and help us.
I think what he can do is he can actually reframe some of the conventional thinking about motivation. So let's now jump into Charles Duhigg and listen to him. Talking about motivation when people feel like they're, they lose motivation. It's often not that they've lost motivation. It's often that they have failed to recognize how, what they're working on corresponds to their deepest goals.
One of my favorite examples of this is I was talking to this one professor and he said he hated grading students papers. He has to grade students' papers all the time, and it's the least favorite part of his job. And so he has this mantra whenever he sits down and started reading students' papers, he says to himself, okay, I'm going to grade these student's papers because by doing so the unit.
You can collect tuition dollars. And if the university collects tuition dollars, they can fund my research. And if they can fund my research, I can find a cure to cancer. And if I finally get her [00:24:00] cancer, I'm going to save people's lives. So by grading students' papers, I am saving people's lives. Our brain can very easily forget why we're doing things.
It just gets focused on the task. That's right in front of us. And the fact that it's boring and hard, but by style, I think asking ourselves, why am I doing this? Reminding ourselves that this small task is related to this big goal that we have. Care about. That's how we generate the motivation to keep going.
That's how we get out of this cycle, where if you're in the doldrums and it's hard to pull out, you find the motivation to get excited again. Those two clips is so intrinsically linked to this idea of fiddling with the patterns, experimenting, finding out what works, changing your mindset. It's so, so, uh, practical, it's very, very, uh, something that we can all try and action straight away.
Isn't it, Mike, but I think I know where you're going to go with this. It's all about starting with why it's neck. Isn't it. [00:25:00] It totally is. And you know, this is, um, it's a really special moment when you see that all of the innovators that we choose, you can start to see the underlying patterns of, um, what success looks like and what, um, you know, achieving your wildest dreams looks like and how it relates to the things you do today.
And for me, what. Do Higgins talking about is if you know your purpose, what you're here to do, what your, you know, your superhuman superpower is. And you spend time working on that directly each day. Even if the gain of the day doesn't feel like much or anything at all the fact. That you know, you're working on something that is a contribution to your purpose.
Like why you're here. It becomes easy. [00:26:00] As he told us as a professor marking some boring papers. He can extrapolate that all the way to helping others, right. Curing cancer now, yes, it's a dramatic story, but it illustrates the point that when we are not feeling motivation, it's often because what we do today does not relate, or we have lost connection with our purpose.
So, you know, when people have been in a job for a while and they're like, I'm over it. Right now that could be because the things they do today don't relate to their purpose, or they have forgotten that. The things they are doing are in fact contributing and they've lost sight of that. And so both on a macro level, a powerful reminder, go back to your purpose.
And it's also on a micro level, make sure the things that you are doing, even if they're hard, even if they might [00:27:00] feel a long way away from your purpose, remind yourself of the connective tissue between them. Because when you make that connection, boom. Energy tenacity, resilience, fire, power, excitement, energy, all STEM from this.
And it's often the disconnection that creates this sense of. Being a drift, uh, losing your, your mojo for awhile. Did you, were you able to relate to this, uh, reminding yourself of, of why mot when he was telling that story, were you like, ah, I hear you, Charles. I know what you talking about. Oh, that that clip for me is, and everything we were just talking about.
That totally rings true for me. You know, losing sight of your, why is an absolute guaranteed, uh, step in feeling dissatisfied or feeling anxious or unhappy, um, or, you know, you could go so far as to say, you know, totally the [00:28:00] motivated or depressed, you know, when you don't have that solid foundation, that informs why you're doing something you feel totally adrift.
And I must admit, especially in the last. Well, I dunno, six months now, four months, it does feel more important than ever that it, all of us have a good understand standing of what we're trying to achieve because that professor is the example, marking papers. Sure. We all do work that sometimes seems a little bit.
Boring or unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, you know, you can't go climbing mountains every day, but each of those little steps are, or should be steps that help you climb up that mountain and achieve that goal. So for me, that whole, all of Duhigg's work, this whole habit series in fact just helps me realign myself and work towards creating what my world.
Should be and how I can [00:29:00] be the best version of myself. It's so powerful. I think you mentioned creating Mark and, uh, we got to give some props, uh, to our, uh, trans continental audience because they had been doing some creating too. And if it's not the coolest of usernames and, uh, ham, uh, it's also, uh, in.
Writing reviews of, of the show. And, um, it's so important, um, that if you are listening to the show and you're enjoying it, we really encourage you to give us a re a rating. But most simply, if you can. Pan us some great words of wisdom. Leave us a review because this is at the heart of how we find new listeners around the world who really want to learn the lessons from other innovators and really joined Mark and I on this journey of decoding and learning out loud from the very best [00:30:00] innovators on the planet.
And my boy, did we get, did we just get a crack of this morning? We did so to our new innovation brother, uh, Jason T X five one two from the United States of America. We just want to extend a huge cross, uh, international five to you. Thanks for leaving us a great review. Your comments have totally kept us inspired to record and just reminds us of the value of.
Putting out this podcast, and we're glad that you found value in listening. So please listeners, if you feel similarly inspired as Jason, TX five 12 from the USA, leave us a little review because we love to hear from all of our listeners. Yeah. And, and whilst Jason, um, uh, Has gone for are pretty straightforward.
Username, TX five on two. It's not quite dragon wheels. It's not quite beef Billy on, but I tell you what he made [00:31:00] up for it in spades with his review. So thanks for taking the time to do that because. Here's the crazy thing. When, when you add listeners, right? Uh, I review, that's all we ask. Uh, we don't have any adverts on the, on the podcast.
Uh, it's totally free. Um, it means that new people all around the world discover us and Mark. Um, we welcome Slovenia and Indonesia to our ever-growing listenership. Uh, welcome to the podcast. Welcome to this community of people. Uh, learning from innovators and we got some serious mojo and momentum in the charts this week as well.
Where, where are we at Mark? What's the latest from the podcasting shots? Well, we're going up in an incredible selection of Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, as well as Bulgaria, but also for me. Coming across the world. Hey, great Britain. Thanks for listening. I'm [00:32:00] glad to see the show going up in the charts out of there.
So thank you for listening. Awesome. So this listening sounds like a positive habit loop. Everybody keeps coming back time and time again, when we really thank you for that, very grateful for that. And the way we pay it back to you is decoding amazing people like Charles do here who have really got to the heart of what we can do to call ourselves out.
When we might not be doing things totally. Right. And how we might do the right thing, how we create positive behavior and habits. And to do this, he has created a little system called the habit loop. And so this next clip, he's gonna talk to us about the habit loop and where it all needs to start. There's been a lot of experiments that have looked at how unrelated the reward has to be from the activity or should be one of the interesting things about eating chocolate is that it's [00:33:00] actually a similar type of reward to working out because they're both these very physical sensations, the same areas of your brain, essentially light up when you're exercising as when you're eating chocolate.
Although it seems like. Similar reward. It's actually very similar from a neurological perspective. Now what happens over time is that chocolate is this extrinsic reward, right? You're eating it and it tastes good over time. Your brain will learn that there's intrinsic rewards from exercise. There's endorphins, there's endocannabinoid.
These neurotransmitters that are released by physical activity and your brain will begin to learn that you don't need the chocolate. In fact, what this German study found is that about half the people who use this started exercising habitually three months late. And about a month later, almost 60% of them had stopped eating the chocolate just on their own.
And that's because their brain has, we learned there's an intrinsic reward from physical activity. That makes me feel good. But to jumpstart that process. Sometimes you need an extrinsic reward, like [00:34:00] chocolate, so many things to unpack in what you just said. Um, we typically think that attitude first, then behavior.
In other words, I need to really let me, let me, okay. I know that this is important. Now I'm going to do it this mile. Then we need to get our attitudes sort of marshal those resources and in the behavioral followup, what you're saying is actually think of it as a system cue rewards and a routine and behavior first, and then the attitude will follow.
Absolutely. Absolutely. We know that that's true, like this fake it until it becomes real. Right. For some reason it's almost seems like a little off putting, like there's no way that could work, but I love the system that you're describing, which is in whatever it takes to get you to the gym and to do it consistently do that.
And your attitude will fall. In fact, you may not even need that chocolate a month down the line. That's exactly right. And we know that in psychology, as you know, there's this whole field of called essentially self-fulfilling mental image, right? If I, if. If I behave that I am a good person. Eventually I actually started thinking like a good person.
[00:35:00] Similarly, if I, if I can convince you to smile more each day, even if you're not happy, you're going to end up actually being happier. We look to ourselves for clues as to who we are. And if you can create the habit, one of the things that's interesting about habit is that we know from studies that habits themselves tend to inform our self image.
Very little. You take a shower every morning. You don't even think about what that really means. Right? Come on. You don't walk around thinking I'm the cleanest guy in here. That's so proud of that, right? Because we tend to discount habits in terms of what they say to ourselves about ourselves. And yet the cumulative net effect of the behavior spills over into everything else in our lives.
It changes our self image and that's when the habit becomes self fulfilling. That's when it creates chain reaction that causes other habits to start to chase self-fulfilling habits. I mean, I just want to take a moment to say, uh, you know, Charles comparing eating chocolate. As the same as working out. I think that's great.
If we had ended the clip,
[00:36:00] I'm quite partial to the old chocolate. So both, I think maybe we'll do a spin off for moonshots where we only listen to what we want to hear and clips
for me. This, this is why I do here is such a powerful. Author and professional. The hat on the habit sector is all about science. He's talking about the endorphins. He's talking about the reward and for me, this is it's great awakening. I've certainly been in this position where, uh, if I haven't worked out, I'm looking for those little wins.
I'm looking for that bit of chocolate to give me that bit of maybe it's energy or maybe it's just happiness, whatever it might be. But if I've worked out. I definitely notice that there is a drop off in my desire to, to pick up a little bit of chocolate. And we extrapolate that a little bit. I think too.
What do he really saying here is it's changing that [00:37:00] attitude, uh, once you've changed the behavior. So if I've. Got into exercise every day, or if I've got into a positive way of thinking about work or life, whatever it is, then naturally I'm going to step away from negative moments like eating chocolate or negative moments like thinking negatively.
Yes. I think what he's really challenging us here is to understand is if, if you create the habit, you become the habit and that habit. Can change you in a very positive way. So, I mean, this works very nicely with the thinking that let's, let's take health. Cause it's a very good, um, a good example, um, that if you want to get fit and healthy, just start with walking once a week.
Then twice a week, then every day, then maybe you might start it. Jug. Same thing is a Seinfeld claims. One of the [00:38:00] key habits that built his success was to write a joke every single day. Another great one is riders will tell you whatever you do write one page a day. And you become a writer. If you write one page a day, you become a comedian.
If you tell a joke, write a joke every single day, you become a healthy person. If you exercise every single day and it's. For me, the empowerment here is no longer. Do you have to think about your ambition to be a great writer and just think, Oh my gosh, that's so fire away. I mean, I want it so bad. The power of Duhigg's model is focused.
Like he was just saying whatever it takes. Get to the gym, whatever it takes, write one page a day, whatever it takes. Walk for 30 minutes a day. Like if you can just take all that willpower and devote it to [00:39:00] every day, do that thing. That is the positive behavior, positive routine. And. Really hold on to that.
To me, that makes life so simple. Like, yes, you might want to build a great house. Okay. Every day, lay one foundation, lay 10 bricks. And over time you will be a builder. To me, the habit loop is built out of this. This is if you, if you have sort of tuned into the awakening that he talked about in the earlier clips, then.
Whatever it takes, make these daily routines, just a fundamental part of your lifestyle and you will become that person over time. Isn't it powerful thinking. So, so powerful again, it's really reiterating these, this three step loop of cue. Routine [00:40:00] reward. If you building that routine, like you were just saying that reward, you're going to achieve every time, because whether it's writing joke every day, which by the way, I think that's a great, that's a great fact.
I didn't know that about him. Yeah. The reward comes when that's a brand new habit. You know what an amazing habit to have created yourself. You're in complete control. You've this idea of intention, self ownership of the way that you behave, you are taking ownership of the habits and the routines that you've got.
And when you achieve it, when you get that reward, it's even better than it was before you've been in complete control of it. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you know, the, the, there's this, this idea that. Um, what I like is like Obama had, um, the same. He had like about half a dozen versions of the same suit [00:41:00] and shirts so that he didn't have to spend time thinking, what should I wear?
So we see this thinking, uh, in a lot of places, whatever you do create the habit so that it just becomes a default way of operating. And actually in this next clip. This default way of, um, of behaving, uh, these default routines have some really interesting, positive and negative sides to them. And, um, we're going to have a listen now to chat talking about when we kind of get, you know, into this, uh, this sense of.
Auto-drive when we've kind of, when we're not thinking King about it, so let's have a listen to it and then we can break it down. Yeah. What it means when we're shutting off, when you're in the grip of a habit. Now there's a woman named dr. Wendy wood. Who's a researcher today at USC. She wasn't Duke who followed around hundreds of people for an entire year, trying to figure out how much of our daily activities, our habits, and how much our [00:42:00] decisions and what she found out is that about 40 to 45% of what all of us do every day is not a choice.
It's a habit. When you're backing your car out of the driveway and you're, you're kind of on autopilot when you, when you remember leaving home and now you're at your desk and you are certain that you did drive from home to your desk, but you can't really remember how that's because a habit took over.
When you told, tell your spouse in the morning, I'm going to go have a salad for lunch today. Cause I'm trying to lose a couple pounds and then you walk into the cafeteria and get the same hamburger that you had every single day without thinking about it. Or pretend that you're not thinking that that's because your brain is actually turned off.
When we are in the grip of a habit, we actually stop thinking. In fact, this is an amazing part of evolution. Every single animal has neurological structure known as the basal ganglia that exists simply to make habits because without them, we would have to think about everything all the time. We'd be exhausted.
He's so interesting [00:43:00] animals with the basal ganglia to create new habits, just to save mental energy. I mean, I had no idea that this was a thing until getting into Charles. Duhigg the idea of 40% of my day, 45% of my day being totally habit, habitual habitual behavior for me. Yes. I had no idea. That would be the case.
No, no, nor I, but what's so powerful is one. It presents opportunity to do a little self intervention. You know, lean into the discomfort. And on the other side, taking both, do you get, and James clears advice, we can create positive habits. And if I zoom out again, Mark, isn't this exciting that at least if we wake the hell up, we can change.
Our environment, our mindset, the outcomes that happen [00:44:00] in our lives by developing this understanding of habit and calling ourselves out on the bad ones and encouraging the good ones. To me, that's just exciting that, well, at least it's not all baked in and say larvae, you know what will be will be no, we have the chance through the power of thought and awareness.
To define the outcomes through these positive behaviors and reducing the negative ones. To me that is, feels like a world of opportunity and empowerment. And I, when I hear that, I just get excited about thinking about what I can do for myself and how I might encourage others around me to adopt positive behaviors.
When you think about. This, this, this empowerment, this permission that Charles Duhigg is giving us, how do you kind of process that into an action? Like what do you want to do Mark, when you hear that? Yeah. Well, similar to you, [00:45:00] I'm totally inspired by it. And it really it's a relief in a weird sort of way, because I feel as though I've now got, as you say, the permission.
To be empowered to make that change. So for me, what I'm going to try and remember going forward is my natural reaction. My natural response to moments during my day are very likely in a 45% likely to be habitual. And the important thing is just like you were saying, Mike is, I can change those. So rather than me thinking, Oh, this is just the way that I feel.
No, no, no. I can change how I feel. I can. Through positive reinforcement and by creation and new habits, I can read a stressful situation and en twos not to respond in the way that I've done it before. And instead take a moment to, to readdress and almost practice. New responses that will therefore [00:46:00] create a new habit around that stressful moment.
So let's say it's a very, very challenging bit of work. Maybe it's a really discomfort, uncomfortable moment in working with, uh, you know, a client or a team or whatever it might be instead of focusing on the negative and allowing my mind to focus too much on the difficulty instead, what I'm going to do is think, okay, well, How can I use this as a moment to create a new habit, whether it's patients or whether it's thinking about things more critically, or maybe it's being more original in my thinking.
I think recognizing these as moments to experiment feels very, very empowering to me. Exactly. And as we think about the, his experiments, as we think about different ways to operate, once again, Charles Duhigg comes to the party, he's got some very powerful, awful thinking. So let's take. The [00:47:00] this idea of change.
Let's take this idea of positive developments in our own behaviors, habits, routines, and rituals. And let's have a listen now to Charles, Duhigg talking about rewiring your rewarding habits, but there's this interesting exception to this turning off and shutting down role, which is at the beginning of amaz.
When a rat hears that click, that means that the partitions about Tobin, there's this burst of neurological activity right there. And then brain activity tapers down. Is there a scurry through the maze? And then it finds the chocolate at the end. And it's as if the rat's brain shakes itself awake, again, starts paying attention to what's going on.
Very close attention. Now, as dr. Graybiel found this, this neurological signature of a habit. And she published it. It's transformed everything about how we think about automatic behaviors, because what it told us is what's known today as the habit loop, what the habit loop says in both [00:48:00] neurology, neuro, excuse me, in neurology and psychology.
Is that habit. Isn't actually one thing. It's three things. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to start. And then there's the routine, the behavior itself, what we think of as a habit and then finally a reward. And that reward is why your brain takes that pattern and makes it automatic.
There is a reward, even if you're not aware of it, when you back your car out of the driveway, there's a reward. Maybe it doesn't feel like it. When you drive from your home to your office and get to your desk, somehow your brain is celebrate. That you just completed a chunk of it behavior that had expected.
And what's important about this is that for years, everyone from Aristotle to Oprah has talked about changing habits, right? And most of the time they focus on the routine, they focus on the behavior. But what we now know is that if you can diagnose those cues and those rewards, if you can figure out what in your environment is causing the habits, [00:49:00] then you have these new tools, tools to fiddle with the gears and to change how you and your coworkers.
And your kids and your spouse, most importantly, your suppose, how they automatically unthinkingly behave. I mean, this is exactly what we've just been saying. Isn't it? How to rewire, how to look at, uh, moments of negativity or bad habits as an opportunity just to, to learn to grow, but also to take that ownership and change it yourself.
I think this is, you know, obviously we've, we've talked about the cue routine, the rewards in the show, and again, Charles, just continually. Shows us why he is such a powerful author and a change thinker. You know, this, this rewiring for me is I feel, I feel I've got total ownership over my own habits now.
Yes. Now I know that a lot of people are going to be listening to the show right now thinking, okay. Um, don't go too fast here. So I'm going [00:50:00] to, um, You know, uh, just deliberately unpack this a little bit so we can make sure that we're delivering the right learning out loud. So first of all, uh, what we are talking about is referred to as the habit loop, okay.
This was created by Charles Duhigg. It's made of three things. There's a cue, there's a routine. And lastly, there's a reward. And if all goes well, the reward encourages you. So that next time you see the cue, you start the behavior, you get the reward again, enhance. We have a loop. So let's just break this down because inside of this is the, the magic of travel.
So a queue kind of keeps the brain into an automatic mode and, um, tells us which habit to go for. So, you know, you might hear a bell in the school yard and all the kids go to class and [00:51:00] then, you know, they're rewarded because they're there with their friends, they teach it to them. And so the process continues.
The routine part is a physical, mental, or emotional response to the cue. Um, so you know, the talking about Bell's full time whistle, one team cheers. One team, uh, is a bit, uh, dejected at the end of the, of the, uh, the episode, but it was rewarding. Nonetheless, they saw a sports game, cue routine, and lastly, the reward, this is the prize telling your brain that this whole loop was worth remembering in the future cue routine reward.
The habit loop. If you can then apply and here's the magic. If you can apply this to your life, this to the teams that you're part of, what are the cues, what are the routines and rewards? You can do two things. The first thing is you can identify a cue where you have a negative response or a negative behavior.
[00:52:00] And what you can start to do is to reengineer how you want to respond to cues or. To take it to a high level, give yourself new cues in order to create much more positive routines. And what's essential here is to call out the reward. It could be tangible or intangible, make sure that the reward is crystal clear because that is the embedding inside of your brain.
So that the next time the cue occurs. That little trigger occurs. You will continue with the positive behaviors. My, this is the path, right? This is absolutely. And most importantly, from a Charles Duhigg perspective where you can go hang on a sec, I've got a negative behavior to this queue. I'm going to change the habit loop.
So I have a queue with positive behaviors and positive. Rewards thing, what [00:53:00] you've just given us there. Mike, perfect breakdown of Charles Duhigg's a secret, you know, this is, is the essence of the power of habit. You have this roadmap, this journey in mind of the cue, the routine and the rules. It kind of feels like.
You can change or at least recognize any moment in your day when a habit or behavior might be, might be taking place. So for me, that was a perfect little summation of exactly what Charles is really saying here. It's very empowering again, I think. Hmm. Well, Mike, we have taken a rip roaring rollercoaster ride through both the positive and the negative side of our habits.
Cause let's be honest. Yeah. There's some negative, uh, habits as well as positive, right? Oh, absolutely. I think, I mean, I'm sure Y from those around me might even claim that I have more bad [00:54:00] habits than I did when we were, when we were digging into James Clair. I think we tried to challenge ourselves thinking about those bad habits.
Um, And, you know, it's, it's true. Although as uncomfortable as it might seem, those bad habits can be mental as well as physical. And I think, you know, the power of habit and Charles, his work really comes in is, is in the awareness of recognizing them and how they exist in many, many different forms and functions and mediums.
So I really, it really stood out to me, um, as. That moment of awakening. You know, kind of Wim, Hoff, cold shower, uh, that surge of electricity and energy. I see that you feel when you're doing morning, that for me or this, this whole series for me is that cold shower is sending that awakening. My [00:55:00] Capella worries, and my brain making me feel, yeah, I can, I can go and, you know, hack my habitual behavior.
I can be the best version of it. It feels very, very good to me. So Matt, we have one last, very timely reminder, uh, from Charles do here. Um, why don't you kind of set up this last and most important piece of our story today? We're also building on our cues, our routines, our rewards, as well as this concept of awakening and noticing habits in your daily lives.
The next clip that we've got is Charles telling us a little bit about a house supermarkets, as well as our businesses and how all of us with our own businesses and customers and clients can apply this level of knowledge and identification of habits into our day to day lives. And what's lovely about this next clip is [00:56:00] not only from a business perspective of how.
Peoples and customers' habits can be recognized, but it's reminding us on how we can recognize them ourselves. So here's a final clip from mr. Charles. Duhigg telling us why habits matter. Did you know that by studying shopper's habits, companies can predict what you want to buy. And sometimes that's a problem.
A few years ago, for instance, a father walked into a target store in Minnesota, clutching an advertisement. He started yelling at the manager. Did you send this to my daughter? He asked the ad contained all these coupons for baby clothes and bottles and formula and cribs. She's still in high school and you're sending her ads for babies.
Close. He screamed at the manager. Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant? The store manager apologized and a few days later called the guy to apologize again, the father was somewhat abashed. It turns out there's been some activities in my house that I wasn't aware of. He [00:57:00] told the manager, I had a long conversation with my daughter.
She's doing August. It turns out IOU and apology. Target had created a computer model that could fit you're out, which shoppers just by studying their shopping habits. Identifying pregnant women is the Holy grail. People with new babies are so tired that if you can get them inside your doors to buy bottles and formula, they'll end up buying everything else they need as well.
And if a new parents start shopping at target, they'll keep coming back. So how did target start marketing to parents before the baby arrived? Lots of people buy lotion, but a target data analysts noticed that the women on Target's baby registry. Certainly buying very large quantities of lotion in about their second trimester.
Someone else noticed that in about the 20th week pregnant women started loading up on vitamins by crawling through the data target was able to identify [00:58:00] about 25 different items that when analyzed together would allow them to predict if someone was pregnant Target's program was so accurate that it could assign almost any regular shopper, a pregnancy prediction score.
But the problem with all this data as the father in Minnesota demonstrated is that target couldn't let on how much they knew after all shoppers might get a little bit upset. If they received an advertisement, making it clear that target was studying their reproductive plans. So how did target solve this problem?
They started mixing in ads for bottles and formula with other products that had nothing to do with pregnancy like a lawn mowers and wineglasses things that they knew a pregnant woman wouldn't necessarily be interested in. As a result, the baby ads look random and it worked. Women started using the coupons and targets and mom and baby sales exploded the lesson habits matter, and we can either choose to shape our habits ourselves, [00:59:00] or we can wait until someone else shapes it before us.
Well, so let's just deal with the functional piece there. Like if you are a entrepreneur, if you are working in a store or a scaler, or even if you're working in a large organization, the more you can understand the habits and routines of your customers, of your users, the better you are able to serve them.
As we saw in that very niche now, famous target. Anecdote, but I think there was a bigger message in this. Um, and it's really a question of, are you going to take control of your habits or are you just going to kind of. Be on the sideline, be a passenger. And I think this is the greatest to action that Charles can give because he gives us the habit loop in which to [01:00:00] apply this taking of control.
And it's for me, this is so related to this. Core central theme that has come back time and time again, that we truly are what we think. And if you can be present and aware in your thoughts, you have the power to change how you think, how you feel and how you act. And Mark, I've got to say that has just got a little bit easier with the thinking of Charles boogie.
It really has. And actually it's building even on what Wim Hoff was saying to us, taking ownership of, of these habits and making that positive mindset change, you know, although Charles hasn't gone into. Science and chemical balances and so on. Well, actually, no, he did. He did a little bit, you know, Wim was telling us, right.
If you create that new positive habit, you can change your chemical structure and be stronger. And so on. Again, you know, Charles is, is reiterating that isn't, he [01:01:00] he's laying it down again. And again, saying you can change your habits once you take control, recognize them, understand what your cues are. And therefore influence your routine and ultimately change that reward chart that Charles do here.
A power of habit. Whew. What a, what a big one. Yeah, complete package. I might say Mark, it's been so great to share with you and with all our listeners, this journey into sort of an awakening of. You know, questioning how we act and realizing that we have so much more control than we might imagine. So we can sort of recognize that, that lag those little moments where we go, it doesn't feel quite right, and we can stop and remind ourselves of why we here on this planet and how do our behaviors connect relate.
Actually help us realize our wildest. And I think we got the ultimate tool, um, and we'll make sure that [01:02:00] we have this in the show notes. It's the habit loop, uh, this interconnection between cue routine and reward and how we can use that to be the very best version of ourselves. Mark, do you feel that a little bit closer to realizing some of your dreams, some of your hopes now that you've got the habit loop.
I definitely feel like I've been given the tools and now it's up to me to set my intention and go out and use them. I'm absolutely. That is great here. And I hope that you've enjoyed it as much as I have Mark. And thank you to you helping. The two of us learn out loud, uh, to learn from innovators like Charles Duhigg and most importantly of all, thank you to you, our listener.
Um, we would dearly love to hear from you. We love your suggestions, but most importantly, we are very grateful for this opportunity to learn out loud. So here we are welcoming Slovenia in Indonesia into our [01:03:00] ever-growing family. And as our listeners give us feedback from all over the world. I hope that all of you have had the chance to reflect on some of the things you do and how you might use the habit loop to become the best version of ourselves.
So stay tuned to the moonshots podcast. We've got one more part in the habits series. It's been an absolute ripper with James clear and Charles duty. We will be sailing one might say into the world of Navy seals and William H McRaven. So stay tuned for that. Moonshots podcasts as we go out there to be the very best version of ourselves and to learn from innovators.