The Power of Habit Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business Charles
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 OF HABIT 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?
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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 midtwenties,
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 a decade
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 thirtyninth
month at a graphic design firm.
At boot camp, he had absorbed habits for loading his weapon,
falling asleep in a war zone, maintaining focus amid the chaos of
battle, and making decisions while exhausted and overwhelmed. He
had attended classes that taught him habits for saving money,
exercising each day, and communicating with bunkmates. As he
moved up the ranks, he learned the importance of organizational
habits in ensuring that subordinates could make decisions without
constantly asking permission, and how the right routines made it
easier to work alongside people he normally couldn’t stand. And
now, as an impromptu nation builder, he was seeing how crowds
and cultures abided by many of the same rules. In some sense, he
said, a community was a giant collection of habits occurring among
thousands of people that, depending on how they’re influenced,
could result in violence or peace.
THE HABIT LOOP
How Habits Work
I.
In the fall of 1993, a man who would upend much of what we know
about habits walked into a laboratory in San Diego for a scheduled
appointment. He was elderly, a shade over six feet tall, and neatly
dressed in a blue button-down shirt.1.1 His thick white hair would
have inspired envy at any fiftieth high school reunion. Arthritis
caused him to limp slightly as he paced the laboratory’s hallways,
and he held his wife’s hand, walking slowly, as if unsure about what
each new step would bring.
About a year earlier, Eugene Pauly, or “E.P.” as he would come to
be known in medical literature, had been at home in Playa del Rey,
preparing for dinner, when his wife mentioned that their son,
Michael, was coming over.
“Who’s Michael?” Eugene asked.1.2
“Your child,” said his wife, Beverly. “You know, the one we
raised?”
