Subtitled “Why we do what we do in life and business,” the author of this 2012 book is an investigative reporter for the New York Times. He describes a habit as “a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking, but keep doing it, often every day.” A study by researchers at Duke University found that more than 40% of the actions that people took each day were not real decisions, but habits. An amazing figure!

Habits are not as simple as they seem. Although scientists have discovered how habits work, there is no recipe for quick change; no formula to change habits. Rather, habits, like individuals, are all different.

Quitting smoking is different from curbing overeating, which is different from changing the way you communicate with your spouse, which is different from how you prioritize tasks at work. But every habit, regardless of its complexity, is malleable. However, to change a habit, you must decide to change it. Duhigg offers a framework for understanding how habits work and a guide for experiencing how they might change. He writes that “change may not be quick and it is not always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be remodeled.”

THE FRAME

• Identify the routine

• Experiment with rewards

• Isolate the signal

• Have a plan

The MIT researchers discovered a simple neurological loop at the core of every habit, a loop consisting of three parts: a signal, a routine, and a reward. To understand your own habits, you need to identify the components of your loops. Once you’ve diagnosed the habit loop for a particular behavior, you can look for ways to supplant old vices with new routines. This is also how you create new habits: putting together a hint, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a desire that drives the cycle.

Step one: identify the routine

How do you start to diagnose and then change your behavior? Discovering the cycle of habit. And the first step is to identify the routine. The routine is the most obvious aspect: it is the behavior you want to change.

Step two: experiment with rewards

Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings. But we are often unaware of the cravings that drive our behaviors. To find out which cravings are driving particular habits, it helps to experiment with different rewards and test different hypotheses. As you try the different rewards, write down your thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc. and look for patterns. By experimenting with different rewards, you can isolate what you really want, which is essential for redesigning the habit.

Step three: isolate the signal

Once you’ve figured out the routine and the reward, what’s left is to identify the cue. However, it is often difficult to identify the signals that trigger our habits because there is too much information bombarding us as our behaviors develop. To identify the signal amid the noise, we can identify categories of behaviors in advance to scrutinize and see patterns. Fortunately, experiments have shown that almost all common cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, and immediately preceding action.

So, keep track of these five categories as you try to diagnose your habit. For example, track your behavior over time and record responses to questions like these: Where Was it you when you exhibited the behavior you want to change? What time Occurred? What emotions were you experimenting at the time? Who else was around and what were they doing? Y what had happened just before his behavior?

Step four: have a plan

Once you’ve discovered your cycle of habits, you can begin to change the behavior. You can switch to a better routine by planning the cue and choosing a behavior that gives you the reward you want. What you need is a plan. A habit is a formula that our brain automatically follows: When I see a SIGN, I will do a ROUTINE to get a REWARD. To redesign the formula, we must start making decisions again. And the easiest way to do this, according to study after study, is to have a plan. Developing a plan to break the current habit is in some way, so that you can make more conscious decisions about your behaviors. Over time, you can alter your routine and change your habit.

Final note: There are numerous relevant quotes and other ideas in the book which, if included, would make this book summary too long. However, if you would like a copy of the list I compiled, please send me a request and I will email it to you.