Power of Habit

Basis of all habits is chunking, a process that involves taking a sequence of actions and turning into automatic routine

Chunking allows brain to use less energy to perform common tasks in efficient manner

Habits can be broken down into 3 part loop

• Sense external que (alarm goes off)

• Follow routine (you go brush teeth )

• Be rewarded (clean mouth gives sense of success )

Habits stick because they create cravings for rewards.

To change the habit identify the cues and associated rewards and simply change associated routine.

Focus on changing keystone/crucial habits and achieving easy and small wins. This will lead to belief that change is possible and will trigger cascading change of bad habits to good ones.

People with strong will power

• Are less likely to develop addiction

• More likely to excel in career

Will power is like a muscle:

• if you use it, you will run out of it.

• The more you test it out the more it increases.

• People who do things on their own have stronger will power as opposed to those who do things because they are ordered to.

When Angry try Latte Method:

• Listen to complain

• Create list of actionable items

• Thank people for feedback

• Explain what caused the problem in the first place.

Good leaders often actively delay/prolong sense of crisis or even worsen it(to get necessary things done).

• For e.g. In investigating the King’s Cross station fire, special investigator Desmond Fennel found that many potentially lifesaving changes had been proposed years earlier, but none had been implemented.

• Fennel, on being encountered with resistance to his suggestions, he turned the whole investigation into a media circus – a crisis that enabled him to implement the changes.

We bear the responsibility to change our habits