Brian Johnson (Philosopher's Notes TV) summarizes five key ideas from Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit: (1) habits exist because the brain optimizes for efficiency; (2) habits follow a loop of cue → routine → reward and can be built by arranging cues and rewards; (3) keystone habits (like exercise) produce outsized positive ripple effects across other behaviors; (4) exercise is a particularly powerful keystone habit; and (5) willpower predicts outcomes strongly and habits are malleable — belief in the ability to change is essential. The episode emphasizes practical steps (set cues, enact routines, celebrate rewards) and choosing one keystone habit to focus on.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV Today, an ebook Kindle book, the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Power of Habit, awesome book. Philosopher's Note, bunch of big ideas. We're going to cover five of my favorites now, and I'll put a link to our Willpower series, our kind of Willpower habit series. We've got a bunch of great books from Willpower by Roy Baumeister, the Willpower instinct by Kelly McGonigal. Guy named Tynan wrote a great book called Superhuman by Habit. Miracle morning, we've got a bunch of those books focusing on different themes and aspects of using our willpower to build habits that then go on autopilot. For now, these five big ideas, the first thing to think about with habits is, well, why do we have habits in the first place? Duhigg tells us it's because our brain is committed to being extraordinarily efficient. If we had to think about every single thing we were going to do every single day, our brains would have to be monstrously huge. As it is, there's a natural birth process which requires a smaller brain, which requires an efficient brain. And as a result, our brain naturally wants to create habits of what we do on a consistent basis. Now, of course, our brain doesn't differentiate between habits that are good for us and habits that aren't. So that's where we come in to create great habits. But we want to remember our brains are always looking to be super efficient and put a lot of stuff on autopilot. But we want to become more conscious of the different behaviors that we do routinely. And as we do that, we can shape new ones. So the book is really centered around three primary components to creating effective habits. One, cue, two, routine and three, reward. Duhigg tells us that every habit goes through that process of automatic becoming automatic. So, for example, if you want to develop the habit of exercising, it's a good idea. And say you want to exercise in the morning. It's a good idea to have your exercise clothes on your bed or wherever you're going to see them right when you get up and put them on. Lace your tennis shoes before breakfast and let that cue trigger the routine of you going out the door to do your workout or driving to the gym or whatever it is, and then experience the reward of the endorphins that you feel or just the feeling energized throughout your day. Celebrate that reward or maybe give yourself a little healthy treat or whatever it is you want to connect a cue with your Routine with your reward. Do that consistently. So when I'm creating notes in the morning and I get up, I meditate, I do my little movement for a few minutes, and then I've got my book that I'm going to work on that morning right there on my desk. It's the only thing on my desk that's a cue. For me, that cue is planted the night before so this version of myself can get the future version of me queued up, ready to go, so we can go through the routine of creating a note. And then I know how I feel when I execute that routine and I put that habit into place. I feel great celebrating that, feasting on that success is what the Bashams would say, right? When you do something that's consistent with who you want to be, you say, that's like me. You feast on it, right? We have that reward. So we can obviously talk a lot more about this, but we want to think about our cues, our routines, and our rewards. If you want to create a new habit and get rid of an old one, the best way to do it is to create a new one. So notice what, what cues you have that lead to negative routines. Maybe you get tired in the afternoons, that leads you to eat certain foods you're not proud of eating or you don't want to eat, or maybe you go surf the Internet for however long. Well, look, there's a cue right there. You've got a cue of fatigue in a certain time of the day, which then triggers a routine, which then triggers a lack of a reward, right? The negative addictive behavior. And then you want to insert. You see that cue, you can you create a new, better one that triggers a new routine, et cetera, et cetera? There you go. Third big idea, keystone habits. So when you think of an arch, that's some fine art right there. You have a stone right there that's called a keystone, that locks the arch together. It strengthens the arch, right? So in life, we want to identify, and the research shows that we want to identify the keystone habits that, that strengthen all of our other habits. There are certain things, and in fact, one thing right now that you could probably do that would most positively benefit your life. This is why I often come back to the question, what's the one thing that you know you could do that, if you did it consistently, would have the most positive benefit in your life? Well, what is it? Think about that. Is it exercising more consistently? Is it. Is it meditating? Is it eating a certain style? Is it getting more rest? What is it for you? Think about what might be a keystone habit and know that the research says that when you move in that direction, maybe it's quitting smoking or something like that. Right. No longer drinking. When you do that keystone habit, it affects your entire life. We've talked about this in nearly all of the willpower episodes, where when you build willpower and build new habits in one area of your life, it ripples into the rest of your life. And when you identify a keystone have it, it strengthens the arch that is your life that you are optimizing. That's our third big idea. Fourth big idea. When we think about keystone habits that we want to master, Duhigg tells us that exercise, for some mysterious reason. Exercise, the researchers tell us, is a huge catalyst and is a great potential keystone habit if you're not exercising at all. Even exercising once a week has been shown to drive positive behaviors. And people eating better, resting better, taking better care of themselves simply by initiating an exercise routine. That's a cool idea, something to think about. If you aren't exercising, get on that in whatever way makes sense for you, given your current fitness. And if you are, can you dial it up a little bit? Or is there another habit that you can add to the mix? And then they come back and stress the fact that willpower ultimately is. Is the key. It's both the keystone habit and kind of the engine that drives the whole show. So we talked about this a lot in our Habits 101 class. But willpower out predicts almost everything, basically everything, for whatever it is you want to achieve in your life. And the specific example we come back to often that Duhigg talks about is the fact that willpower out predicts IQ by a factor of two for academic performance. You can take kids in and you can measure their iq. You can measure their willpower, and then if you wanted to predict what their GPA would be, their academic performance, you'd be twice as effective at predicting it with their willpower than you would be with their iq. That's nuts. And it's crazy that we don't teach kids how to cultivate their willpower, because that's our fifth big idea. You can change your willpower, and you can change any habit. Duhigg makes the point unequivocally. All habits are malleable. All habits are malleable. If you have a story that you just can't change this particular habit politely break it to you, you're wrong. You can. You need to believe that you can. That's the first, most important step to believe that self efficacy, belief in your ability to change whatever aspect of your life is the engine that drives the whole show. Believe. But every single habit is malleable. So whatever it is that you may have in your life that you're not particularly proud of, it is what it is. You can change that. So there you go. Power of habit. Super quick. Look believe. Get your exercise on for sure. Build your willpower. Check out habits101 for more on that. Keystone habits are huge. What are yours? What's the one habit? If you had to say right now, the one habit that if you integrate it into your life, would have the most positive impact in your life. What is it? Don't make it complicated. One thing that you're fired up to do, it's not a should, whatever. But you see, wow, this would be really cool if I could change this particular dynamic. Think about that and go focus on that. Not 20 habits or 10 or even three, that one keystone habit and it will ripple out into your life. Remember the cue, the routine and the reward. Make it easy for yourself to start this new habit. Create a cue right. Put on your workout clothes. It's really hard not to work out, whether it's in the morning or the midday or evening. I love doing this when I'm going to work out and I know I want to work out and I know that I might find a reason not to work out. I put on my exercise shorts and my shoes. I can't remember ever not exercising when I did that. It's a cool cue. So think about your cues. Rock the routine and then remember to focus on the reward and then give it enough time so you become positively addicted to that reward such that this whole thing just becomes automatic. And then remember, your brain's efficient. It's going to create habits for you either way. We want to create habits that are rewarding, optimal, that help you actualize, etc. There you go. I hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.
