{"id":636,"date":"2013-03-25T18:57:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T18:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/?p=636"},"modified":"2013-03-28T19:56:03","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T19:56:03","slug":"what-were-reading-the-power-of-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/what-were-reading-the-power-of-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"What We’re Reading: The Power of Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cExcellence is not a singular act, but a habit.\r\nYou are what you repeatedly do.\u201d\r\n - Shaquille O\u2019Neal, or Aristotle (origin unclear)<\/pre>\n
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\"The<\/a><\/p>\n
The Power of Habit<\/em> is a life-changing book.<\/p>\n
This is because our habits determine the quality of our lives<\/strong>. Over time, it is not the big events, but the thousands of small daily habits<\/em> that determine our destiny, our success, and our happiness in life.<\/p>\n
Getting control of our habits \u2014 cultivating good habits to replace the bad \u2014 means changing the course of our life. But getting control of habits, as we all know, is much easier said than done. The Power of Habit<\/em> gives you a formula for changing your life, one habit at a time.<\/p>\n
The Habit Loop: A Handy 3-Part Formula<\/h2>\n
Author Charles Duhigg had a successful career as a journalist for The New York Times<\/em>, a successful marriage, and plenty of friends, but couldn\u2019t get around one fact: every day around 3:00 pm, he had a habit of eating cookies. As he began gaining weight, he asked himself, Why is this cookie habit so hard to kick?<\/p>\n
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Central to understanding habits is the habit loop<\/strong>, which consists of three parts.<\/p>\n
1) A cue<\/strong>, which can be either external or internal. When the cue is external, there\u2019s some identifiable interruption, like an IM window luring us into a chat, or a news feed popup, beckoning us to scan the headlines. More often the cue is internal; it happens inside us, seemingly out of the blue. It feels like a nagging feeling, a compulsion, or an \u201citch.\u201d For example, \u201cI need a drink\u201d or \u201cI haven\u2019t checked email in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
2) A routine<\/strong> is the habit itself: we spend the next half hour on Reddit, or exercising, or drinking. (Or all three simultaneously.)<\/p>\n
3) The reward<\/strong> is the feeling we get from scratching the itch. Maybe we feel a sense of satisfaction from scanning all the latest news headlines, or a small feeling of completeness from biting a nail clean. Exercisers have the reward of an endorphin rush; alcoholics have the reward of being comfortably numb.<\/p>\n
If you habitually check and answer email, for example (one of the most prevalent bad habits, because it interrupts your flow of concentration and reduces productivity), you\u2019re probably only dimly aware of that \u201ccue\u201d even happening. It\u2019s almost unconscious. You may be bored, or putting off a difficult task, but before you know it, the cue<\/strong> has started, and you\u2019re refreshing your email (routine<\/strong>) and caught up in your fantasy football newsletter (reward<\/strong>).<\/p>\n
One study<\/a> shows that over 40% of the actions we perform each day are unconscious<\/em> \u2014 they\u2019re habits. At one time, they were conscious, but our brains are wired to pick up patterns that produce rewards, then repeat them again and again, until they become an unconscious habit.<\/p>\n
\"The<\/a>
\nThe habit loop: much more obvious if you’re a mouse.<\/em><\/p>\n
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By and large, habits are a blessing. Think of habits like speaking, writing, typing, driving, or brushing our teeth — they enable us not just to stay alive, but to master the world. But occasionally, habits can become a curse. When they’re no longer working for you, here’s how to change them.<\/p>\n
How to Change Your Habits<\/strong><\/h2>\n
As we all know, the habit loop, once established, can be very difficult to break. Fortunately, there\u2019s a way out. It requires taking three conscious steps:<\/p>\n
1) Observe<\/strong> how the process above works with your particular habits;
\n2) Replace<\/strong> the old routine with a new one, trying to keep the cue and reward the same.
\n3) Repeat,<\/strong> consistently keeping the cue and reward, until it becomes a habit.<\/p>\n
In Duhigg\u2019s example above, he realized that his cookie-habit cue<\/strong> was the time of day (3:30 pm), the\u00a0routine\u00a0<\/strong>was to go to the cafeteria and eat cookies, and his reward<\/strong> was not as much the cookies as it was taking a break and socializing with friends. So he began consciously changing the routine<\/strong> to simply get up from his desk at 3:30, spend a few minutes gossiping with colleagues, then return to work.<\/p>\n
The cue and reward stayed the same, but the routine changed.<\/em><\/p>\n
You need to “bookend” a new habit with both a strong cue and a positive reward — which will encourage the routine to happen on its own.<\/p>\n
Let’s say you have a habit of procrastinating certain tasks on your to-do list.<\/p>\n