The Power Of Habit

The Power of Habit is a work of nonfiction. Nonetheless, some names and personal characteristics of individuals or events have been changed in order to

disguise identities. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Copyright © 2012 by Charles Duhigg All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of TheRandom House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Duhigg, Charles. The power of habit : why we do what we do in life and business / by Charles Duhigg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. eISBN: 978-0-679-60385-6 1. Habit.2. Habit—Social aspects. 3. Change (Psychology) I. Title. BF335.D76 2012 158.1—dc23 2011029545 Illustration on this page by Andrew Pole All other illustrations by Anton Ioukhnovets www.atrandom.com v3.1 CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright

Dedication PROLOGUE The Habit Cure PART ONE The Habits of Individuals 1. THE HABIT LOOP How Habits Work 2. THE CRAVING BRAIN How to Create New Habits 3. THE GOLDEN RULE OFHABIT CHANGE Why Transformation Occurs PART TWO The Habits of Successful Organizations 4. KEYSTONE HABITS, OR THE BALLAD OF PAUL O’NEILL Which Habits Matter Most 5. STARBUCKS AND THE HABIT OF SUCCESS When Willpower Becomes Automatic 6. THE POWER OF A CRISIS How Leaders Create Habits Through Accident and Design 7. HOW TARGET KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT BEFORE YOU DO When Companies Predict (and Manipulate)Habits PART THREE

The Habits of Societies 8. SADDLEBACK CHURCH AND THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT How Movements Happen 9. THE NEUROLOGY OF FREE WILL Are We Responsible for Our Habits? APPENDIX A Reader’s Guide to Using These Ideas Acknowledgments A Note on Sources Notes PROLOGUE The Habit Cure She was the scientists’ favorite participant. Lisa Allen, according to her file, was thirty-four years old,had started smoking and drinking when she was sixteen, and had struggled with obesity for most of her life. At one point, in her mid-twenties, collection agencies were hounding her to recover $10,000 in debts. An old résumé listed her longest job as lasting less than a year. The woman in front of the researchers today, however, was lean and vibrant, with the toned legs of a runner. She looked adecade younger than the photos in her chart and like she could out-exercise anyone in the room. According to the most recent report in her file, Lisa had no outstanding debts, didn’t drink, and was in her thirty-ninth month at a graphic design firm. “How long since your last cigarette?” one of the physicians asked, starting down the list of questions Lisa answered every time she came to thislaboratory outside Bethesda, Maryland. “Almost four years,” she said, “and I’ve lost sixty pounds and run a marathon since then.” She’d also started a master’s degree and bought a home. It had been an eventful stretch. The scientists in the room included neurologists, psychologists, geneticists, and a

sociologist. For the past three years, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, theyhad poked and prodded Lisa and more than two dozen other former smokers, chronic overeaters, problem drinkers, obsessive shoppers, and people with other destructive habits. All of the participants had one thing in common: They had remade their lives in relatively short periods of time. The researchers wanted to understand how. So they measured subjects’ vital signs, installed video cameras insidetheir homes to watch their daily routines, sequenced portions of their DNA, and, with technologies that allowed them to peer inside people’s skulls in real time, watched as blood and electrical impulses flowed through their brains while they were exposed to temptations such as cigarette smoke and lavish meals.prl.1 The researchers’ goal was to figure out how habits work on a neurological...