Why habits?

• Our brain tries to make every process more efficient. That's why habits are created, so tasks that are being done regularly become automatic. Spending a whole day doing new things is exhausting.
• Your interest is to make healthy habits.
• One cannot permanently remove a habit. Habits need to be changed.

Structure of a habit

Fig. 1: Mouse mental activity before and after the experiment has ran for a few times

Fig. 2: Structure of a habit - cue triggers routine that brings reward

A mouse is placed in a tunnel. He is separated from a small piece of chocolate by a gate. When the experiment starts, the mouse hears a CLICK, then the gate opens. The mouse takes its time to smell all the sections of the tunnel, exploring what the unknown environment has to offer. After he finds the chocolate in the left corner of the tunnel, there’s a dopamine spike in his brain signalling success. This experiment is repeated a few times.

• Figure 1 shows how the mental activity decreases as the mouse learns that the chocolate is always in the left corner. His brain learns to conserve energy by automating the routine of going for the chocolate.

• Every habit has a cue (the click), routine (walk to the chocolate), and reward (profit).

• The golden rule of habits is that the routine can be changed into a healthy one.

• There are "keystone" habits that trigger other habits. They work based on the "small wins" concept by giving you confidence and motivating you to keep your other habits on track.

Use willpower to create habits, let habits conserve willpower

• Willpower is a limited resource. You need the willpower to do things that don't come naturally like making a new habit of exercising. If you've spent your whole day making decisions, willpower decreases. The more tired you are, the less willpower you have.
• Willpower is more powerful when it comes from your own initiative, and it is not forced by external factors.
• Make new habits by dressing them in old habits. Radio stations are making songs famous by playing them between two familiar songs.
• A company with dysfunctional habits can't turn around just because a leader orders it. Wise executives seek out moments of crisis, or create the perception of crisis, and cultivate the sense that "something must change" until everyone is ready to overhaul the patterns they live with each day.
• Companies like Starbucks and Deloitte created habits for employees to follow when they encounter an angry customer.
• Professors at West Point found that grades, physical aptitudes, or self-discipline mattered less than grit which they defined as the tendency to work "strenuously toward challenges maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress". Attitude is what matters.