Book Notes — The Power Of Habit

Hey everyone! I listen to audiobooks pretty regularly so I figured I’d share my book notes, hopefully this helps anyone looking for some brief notes of The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I’ll also be sharing my notes from other books I’ve read.

The Power Of Habit gives you the toolset to create any habit. The basis behind the method is understanding the cue’s that trigger a set of actions, that lead to a perceived reward — also known as: cue, routine, and reward. By recognizing the process, it gives you the power to tweak it to your advantage, ultimately leading to healthier habits. The Power of Habit has helped me build a habit of reading, meditating, exercising, and many more. I highly recommended it, below are quick sound bites (in text form!) from each chapter.

Note: I don’t take notes on every single chapter. Only the ones that I feel resonate with me or are important.

Chapter 1

• As your habits change your brain changes
• By focusing on one habit she learned to change any habit
• Basic training in the army is based on sets of habits
• Habits are based on urges/triggers
• Towards the spine the brain holds primitive responses
• Once you form a habit, less decision making happens
• Behavioral chunks, putting toothpaste on a toothbrush before you brush your teeth
• Habits are made to save the brain effort
• First there is a cue, then there is a routine, finally there is a reward.
• Cue, routine, reward.
• Unless you fight a habit it will automatically go
• Your brain can’t tell the difference between a bad and good one
• Taking hold of the habit loop will put the old habits in the background
• Habits are extremely fragile it can through off actions
• Habits can be very ingrained
• Every McDonald’s look the same, engineered to trigger cues
• When an McDonald’s shuts down most people will just eat at home because of removal of cue

Chapter 2

• Claude Hopkins made rules for creating routines
• Hopkins turned pepsident toothpaste huge
• Craving powers the habit loop
• Telling someone to run their tongue across their tongue cued them to use pepsident because they could feel the film
• Learn the psychology, find an obvious cue and clearly define the reward
• In order to sell febreeze they needed a cue
• First commercial showed a woman smelling like cigarettes and friend tells her febreeze will help
• Cue cigarette smoke, reward doesn’t smell like smoke
• Failed experiment
• Bad scents weren’t smelled enough to develop a cue
• The brain needs to crave the reward
• They changed the ad to represent that febreeze was the reward after common household chores like cleaning a bed, laundry, etc
• Hopkins wasn’t the originator of the model for toothpaste
• Other companies did talk about films but they failed
• Pepsident created a craving by using their ingredients to have a cooling sensation
• The tingle became the craving because it convinced you that your clean
• Visualize a result to develop a craving
• Cravings overcome temptations l, they drive habits
• Chapter 3 why transformation occurs
• You can never truly extinguish a habit l, changing the routine and keeping the cue and reward the same
• Dungee, milauwakee bucks. He need his players to change their habits
• Wilson founded alcoholics anonoymous in 1934 using habits because he used to be an addict
• When you do a self inventory you think of all the things that drive you to do something
• Learning alternative routines for certain feelings to make a better habit

Chapter 4

• Habit awareness, knowing what cues your habits
• Whenever you find a cue do an alternative routine
• These are called competing routines
• You have to be deliberate about changing your routines
• Belief is critical to changing routines
• Social groups makes change easier

Chapter 5

• Some habits the ability to start a chain reaction
• Keystone habits
• Institutions have routines and individuals have habits
• Alcoa aluminum used habit loops
• One of the cues to improve safety was the line getting too overwhelming, instead of the old routine of keep going, they were welcomed to pause, reward was less injury
• For many people exercise is a keystone habit, something about it makes it easier to do other habits
• Making up your bed is a keystone habit
• All elite performers are obsessive
• Small wins fuel bigger achievements
• Chapter 6 will power becoming automatic
• Self discipline has a bigger effect on success than intelligence
• Make willpower a habit
• Self-regulation gives you an advantage
• Will power isn’t just a skill it’s a muscle
• Exercise is a good way to increase will power
• Detailing a plan showed results to increase will power in even the worst procrastinator
• “Willpower habit loops”
• Paying attention to flashing numbers is a standard way to measure willpower
• Travis from Starbucks parents died within a week of each other, they were drug addicts
• Conflicts within companies usually follows similar routines
• Leaders must cultivate routines that are real and make it clear who is in charge
• People fear over-stepping their bounds

Chapter 7

• Companies try to guess what you habitually buy
• Personalized deals/emails
• The guest portrait is a way to figure out buying patterns
• Data doesn’t mean anything on its own
• Major life events changes your habits
• Babies are the biggest change in habits
• Wedding registries in target gave them tons of insight
• We crave listening habits, sounds we’ve already heard
• To introduce something new make it familiar as possible to something old
• Targeted ads can look obvious and upset some people
• People want to go places that satisfy their needs

Chapter 8

• People are most likely more likely not to care watching strangers with injustice unless they’re friends
• Job hunters often received help from friends of friends, also called weak ties, not directly connected
• Peer pressure drives communities to move in the same direction
• Habits form who you are

Chapter 9

• The brain activity of a sleep terror is very similar to habits in the brain
• People with a gambling problem have a stronger reaction to a near miss
• People who lose neurons lose choice
• Any habit can be changed once we understand the cues

Chapter 11

• Experiment with different rewards
• It is hard to understand the cues because there is too much information
• Location, time, other people, emotional state, immediately preceding action
• Where are you?
• What time is it?
• What is your emotional state?
• Who else is around?
• What action preceded the urge?
• Write down these notes to become aware of your actions
• Plan for the cue to change it
• A habit starts as a deliberate choice
• Thanks for reading, there is many more updates to come.

You can get the audiobook here: The Power Of Habit

Visit my personal website: www.rodneygainous.com

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