What is a habit and why it’s important. The habit loop. How companies used the power of habit to sell their products. How to create a new habit or change an existent habit.

1. The Power of HABIT
Why we do what we do and how to change
Ebram Tharwat

2. About the author
Charles Duhigg
 A reporter for The New York Times.
 Pulitzer Prize winning
 http://charlesduhigg.com/about/

3. Agenda
 What is a habit and why it’s important.
 The habit loop.
 How companies used the power of habit to sell their products.
 How to create a new habit or change an existent habit.

4. What is a habit?
 Habits are the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then
stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day.

5. How powerful/important are our habits?
“More than 40 percent of the actions people
transformed each day weren’t actual
decisions but habits.”
Duke University research, 2006

6. Early scientific experiments
 Eugene Pauley (E.P)
 Henry Molaison (H.M)
 Rat maze.

7. Rat Maze
 Initially, when a rat heard the click and saw the partition disappear, it would
wander up and down the maze, sniffing in corners and scratching at the walls.
 Each time a rat sniffed the air or scratched a wall, its brain exploded with activity
as if analyzing each new scent, sight and sound.

8. Creation of the habit loop
 At first the brain is working nonstop.
 After more trials, the mental activity decreases and the brain starts thinking less
and less as it knows what to do.
 After a week, not even part of the “memory” is working. Brain learned the task
so well that it nearly does not think at all.
 It didn’t need to choose which direction to turn, all it had to do was recall the
quickest path to the chocolate.

9. Creation of the habit loop

10. The habit loop

11. The craving brain
How to create a new habit
 As the habit becomes stronger and
stronger, the brain starts to anticipate
reward and becomes happy before it
comes.
 The happiness will come even if the
reward doesn’t come.
 A habit emerges once we begin to
crave the reward when we see the
cue.
 The brain stops fully participating in
decision making.

12. Power of habit in marketing
 McDonald's.
 Cinnabon.
 Febreze.
 Toothbrush.
Blaze boy

13. How to break a habit
To change an old habit, we must
address an old craving, keep the old
cue, deliver the old reward but feed
the craving by inserting a new
routine.

14. How to break a habit
 Charles Duhigg suggested a framework for understanding how habits work and a
guide to experimenting with how they might change:
1. Identify the routine.
2. Experiment with rewards.
3. Isolate the cue.
4. Have a plan.

15. STEP ONE: Identify the routine
 To understand your own habit you need to identify the components of your
loops.
 The first step is to identify the routine; the behavior you want to change.
 Next, What is the cue for this routine? And what is the reward. To figure this out,
you will need to do a little experiments.

16. STEP TWO: Experiment with rewards
 Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings. But we are often not
conscious of the cravings that drive our behaviors.
 To figure out which cravings are driving particular habits, it’s useful to experiment
with different rewards.
 After each activity, jot down on a piece of paper. The first three things that come
to mind when you get back to your desk. They can be emotions, random
thoughts, reflections on how you are feeling or just words.
 This forces a momentary awareness of what you are thinking or feelings.
 Then set an alarm for 15 minutes. When it goes off, ask yourself: Do you still feel
the urge for your behavior(e.g. that cookie)?

17. STEP THREE: Isolate the cue
 There are too much information bombarding us as our behaviors unfold.
 Habit cues fit into one of five categories:
 Location
 Time
 Emotional state
 Other people
 Immediately preceding action

18. STEP FOUR: Have a plan
 Once you have figured out your habit loop, you can begin to shift the behavior.
 You can change the routine by planning for he cue and choosing a behavior that
delivers the reward you are craving.

19. How to create a new habit

20. “We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit” Aristotle, 384 – 322 BCE