“Life is mass of Habits” William Johnson wrote in 1892 and 40% of our actions/decisions are habits – Duke University study from 2006. Most of us don’t realize we are doing them, know how to change them, or know how to create new ones. And this is because; like me, I had no idea of the science behind them. Charles Duhigg, explains it in his book, “The Power of Habit – Why we do what we do in life and business”. Charles defines a habit as a Loop: When I see a CUE, I will do a ROUTINE, In order to get a REWARD. The QUE and REWARD become intertwined and creates a sense of anticipation and Craving: “I see this, I want this REWARD”. Examples include: seeing a Starbucks (cue) and wanting a coffee (reward) or smelling Cinnamon Buns at the airport and wanting to eat one (reward). And the problem is that our brains can’t tell the difference between good and bad habits, so they happen without our permission. We do them without thinking. Charles Duhigg make the case that in order to change a habit, we need to keep the cue and reward (craving), but change the routine to still feed the craving. So, let’s look at the some “bad” habits, we may have picked this past year.
In hiking, we get into the habit of doing the same route all the time. We see the trail head, know the reward of doing it, then start the routine of the same trail. This can be changed by intentionally changing the routine by determining to never do the same trail two days in a row. The reward is still the same, but the routine changes. Then there is the habit of not hiking in the winter because we see the cue of cold and darkness, so we want the reward of staying warm, thus the routine is to roll over, pull up the covers, and go back to bed. We can change this by acknowledging there is a reward of being warm after the hike starts along with the euphoria (reward) that comes from getting out and doing it.
In our personal life, habits of checking our phone every five minutes, snacking too much, staying up to watch the late news, buying stuff we don’t need; are “bad” habits I struggle with at times. I think many of these “rewards” are related to the problem of FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out. Black Friday store ads for “Door Busters”, TV shows with “stay tuned for previews of next week”; news programs that say “coming up next…”, all are specifically designed to feed a craving (reward) and get us to do something -even if it’s bad for us. Thus. I often end up watching useless news for 45 minutes and losing that sleep time. And I do it without even thinking about it.
In our professional life, it can be that afternoon slump. We start to yawn (cue), desire a sugar fix to wake us up (reward), so we go for the candy bar(s) or soda (routine). But we can get that same reward by going for a brisk five-minute walk. The cue and reward stay the same, but we change the routine to get the same outcome. Checking email every ten minutes can also be a “bad” habit we can get into. It’s that same FOMO or thinking we have to be available immediately to everyone that drives us to want this reward/craving. And in this process, we lose valuable productivity because we have to spend time rewinding to get back into the mindset of what we were working on. Think about watching the season finale of your favorite TV show, but you accept interruptions every few minutes, so you keep rewinding the DVR to get back into the mindset of where you were in the program. And so an hour-long show takes you about two hours to actually watch.
We all have allowed habits to creep into our lives this past year that we would like to change going into 2018. It starts with: Identifying the options for changing the ROUTINES, Experimenting with REWARDS to identify the craving, Isolating and identifying the CUE (a location, time, emotional state, after another action, etc.), and Having a plan to implement when you see that next CUE.
Al Andersen 