In this solo episode of The Daily Dot (Connect the Dots) recorded on January 9, 2022, Matt Ragland walks listeners through the classic habit loop—cue, routine, reward—drawing on concepts from three seminal habit books: Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, James Clear’s Atomic Habits, and BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits. He recommends starting with Atomic Habits and references his own YouTube review and a prior “Healthy Habits” episode. Ragland illustrates the loop with Duhigg’s anecdote of using a cookie to combat boredom, then shows how to rewire the habit by substituting almonds and preserving the social reward of cafeteria conversation. He hints at future topics such as “hiding a habit inside an existing routine,” promotes his upcoming longer episode on 22 books for 2022, and urges listeners to sign up for his Productivity Power‑Up before the January 10 deadline, linking to a supplemental email outlining common concerns. The episode blends instructional advice, personal storytelling, and promotional calls‑to‑action.
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition, another episode of The Daily Dot, the daily version of the Connect the Dots podcast. Today is Sunday, January 9th, and what I want to talk to you about on this rainy Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee is the process of a habit, a very common habit loop. There are 3 great books that are worth reading about habits. Number 1 is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Number 2 is Atomic Habits by James Clear. And then number 3 is Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. There are very powerful lessons in each of them. I would say that if you had to choose just one to start with, definitely start with Atomic Habits, which I've talked about. I have a review about it on my YouTube channel. I talked about it in last year's habit episode and It's the best-selling book on Amazon in 2021. So there's a good chance that you've heard of Atomic Habits by James Clear. The simple habit loop that I want you to think about today is— the simple habit loop that I want you to think about today actually comes from the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. And the 3 steps of this habit loop simply consist of the cue, the routine, and then the reward. And basically you can think of the cue as the trigger that starts either the process of the good habit or the bad habit that you might be stuck in. The interesting part to consider is this second step of the routine. Now routine is like the thing that we would call the habit, but what's interesting is Duhigg, Clear, and Fogg all talk about how you can rewire your bad habits into good habits by simply changing the routine. Now, of course, simply is easier said than done, but it is possible. Like, for example, Duhigg tells a story of how he was beginning to get bored at a particular time during the day at his work. To curb his boredom, he would walk to the cafeteria and he would get a cookie. And so the cue was that he was bored. The routine is that he would go get a cookie, and then the reward was he would get that happy, short-lived, but happy boost of being able to eat a delicious cookie. But the downside of what was actually a bad habit was that he was gaining weight and he actually felt a little sluggish once the sugar high wore off. Now here's where you can rewire a bad habit into a good habit, because the only thing that really happened that was quote unquote bad is Duhigg had a cookie. So instead, when he had that kind of mid-afternoon boredom strike, what he did instead is he had some almonds. That he would eat that were in his desk instead. But if that didn't quite kick the boredom, because the other thing that he realized was he really enjoyed talking to his colleagues on the way to the cafeteria. So he would still go over there. He would curb his hunger with the almonds. He would still have the community boost of talking to his coworkers. And he had that reward still going off in his head. And so he still kept the same habit loop, but he just swapped out cookie with almonds and realized that one of the other big rewards that he was getting was the community interaction of going to the cafeteria and being able to see his coworkers. There are a lot of things I can talk about with habits, and I encourage you to check out the Healthy Habits episode that I did last year, and I'll probably do a couple more daily episodes about this, like for example, how you can hide a habit inside of an existing habit routine. There are a lot of things about that I find really fascinating and useful when it comes to deconstructing and building good habits and breaking down the bad ones. Okay. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Daily Dot. Don't forget that tomorrow, January 10th, is the last day to sign up for the Productivity Power-Up. So if you're interested in that, time is running out. I just sent out an email this morning that I will link to in the show notes about the 5 common concerns or challenges that people think they might be facing when it comes to joining something like the Power-Up. Okay. So check that out, sign up, join, would love to have you. And I will see you tomorrow for a longer episode of Connect the Dots, my 22 books for 2022. So I think you're going to enjoy that. Make sure you check it out in your podcast player of choice. Thanks so much. And I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.