New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg explains why habits exist and how they can be changed.

1. THE POWER OF HABIT
By Charles
Duhigg
WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO
IN LIFE AND BUSINESS
Jen Runkle, PhD
Runkle Consulting
www.runkle-
consulting.com

2. 40 TO 45% And that’s a
OF THE DECISIONS WE good
thing, becaus
e other wise
MAKE EACH DAY ARE we wouldn’t
be able to get
anything
ACTUALLY HABITS, done in a
day.
NOT REALLY DECISIONS.
Jen Runkle, PhD
Runkle Consulting
www.runkle-
consulting.com

3. THE HABIT LOOP
An easy (until you try and change it)
three part process:
1. There's a cue, which is kind of a
trigger for an automatic behavior to I’m hungry
start unfolding.
1. Then there's a routine, which is the
Open fridge door
behavior itself.
2. And then there's a reward, which
tells our brain whether we should
Yummy leftovers
store this habit for future use or not .
Jen Runkle, PhD
Runkle Consulting
www.runkle-
consulting.com

4. If you want
to change a
habit,
1 . Find a
dif ferent
REMEMBER: routine.
2. Find a
CUE  ROUTINE  REWARD friend/grou
p who is
working on
the same
habit.
Jen Runkle, PhD
Runkle Consulting
www.runkle-
consulting.com

5. DURING AN NPR INTERVIEW,
A TOOTHPASTE STORY:
About 100 years ago no one in America brushed his or her teeth.
Claude C. Hopkins, an advertising exec, changed that. "Claude C.
Hopkins had made his name creating habits around products and
making them famous," Duhigg says. " He had these two simple
rules: make a product into a daily habit — find some simple cue,
something that's going to trigger the consumer — and second of
all, you have to give them the reward. ... He intuited [the habit
loop] years before laboratories had proven that it exists."
The cue Hopkins used to sell his toothpaste was the filmy plaque
that forms naturally on teeth. "For years, people had felt a film on
their teeth and had never worried about it, and you don't need
toothpaste to get rid of it," Duhigg says. But the poster read: " Get
rid of that film. Pepsodent gives you a beautiful smile .” People got
into the habit.
The final step - a reward was needed: In this case, it was the
tingling, clean feeling you get after brushing your teeth.
Jen Runkle, PhD
Runkle Consulting
www.runkle-
consulting.com

6. DURING AN NPR INTERVIEW, THE AUTHOR
GIVES A CORPORATE EXAMPLE
In the book we tell the story of Paul O'Neill, the CEO of
Alcoa, the largest aluminum company in America and in the
world.
When he first got hired, everyone expected him to come in and
say, 'I'm going to concentrate on profits and ef ficiency and
making people work harder.' But instead what he said was, 'My
No. 1 priority is transforming worker safety habits within this
company, so that we have zero injuries' — which is a big deal in
a company where all of your employees handle molten metals.
“That's all I'm going to focus on is just transforming our worker
safety habits” because he knew that if he could do that, it
would set of f a chain reaction that would change the culture
throughout the company.
Jen Runkle, PhD
Runkle Consulting
www.runkle-
consulting.com

7. NEXT STEPS:
IDENTIFY YOUR ROUTINE
EXPERIMENT WITH REWARDS
ISOLATE THE CUE
HAVE A PLAN
Jen Runkle, PhD
Runkle Consulting
www.runkle-
consulting.com