Take Control of Your Habits, Or Marketers Will For You

By now, Pop Psychology has made us all aware that habits can make or break our lives.

Experientially, however, we all know how difficult it is to break bad ones and start good ones. Fortunately, there is a science-based approach that can increase our odds of success. If you’re in the market to break bad habits, or desire to learn about a major aspect of how humans function, I recommend The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

This book has been out since 2012, but I have avoided it because the title seems generic and self-help-esque. I finally got over that bias and was pleasantly surprised by it. Duhigg does an excellent job using narrative to convey the scientific studies that uncover how habits work.

Duhigg also describes the social implications of habit formations of individuals and corporations. In fact, he also describes how marketers can use habit psychology to advertise more effectively. I would dare say that if one doesn’t take control of their habits, marketers will control them instead.

The following are some of the key insights I took from the book:

1. Why do we form habits in the first place?

Do you remember how difficult it was the first time getting behind the wheel of a car, or the handlebars of a bicycle?

It likely took all your focus and cognitive ability not to crash or commit a moving violation. But now, perhaps after driving for many years, does it still require as much attention? Probably not.

When we try to do a complex task for the first time, our frontal cortex in our brain is active. If you haven’t noticed, this level of thinking is exhausting. If we had to use this level of cognition for every single task, we would never have enough energy!

What our nervous system does instead is miraculous. Our cognition goes form our frontal cortex to our basil ganglia as we repeat the task over and over. In the basil ganglia, the action becomes unconscious, and we can complete the action “without thinking”. Because little to no thought goes into it, we don’t need as much energy. This process is in fact habituation. Our habits are how our bodies efficiently allocate more energy to difficult/novel situations, and less energy to frequent ones.

Habit formation is so powerful, that it can happen without even being aware of it. Duhigg recounts the case study of Eugene Pauly. Eugene lost his ability to form memories and was confined to about 30 seconds of remembrance. His memory was limited to a maximum of thirty seconds.

What astonished researchers studying him was that he was able to form new habits. Over a month of training every day, Eugene was able to learn a card game with simple rules. After a couple months, they asked him how he was able to perform the game. He told the researchers, “I have no idea, I just can.” Simply by seeing the cards was all he needed to initiate his basil ganglia to perform a routine it had memorized.

2. Habits broken into three parts.

Researchers divide habits into three parts. The cue, the routine, and the reward. The Cue is anything that initiates the unconscious memory of the basil ganglia, triggering us to begin a routine. The reward is whatever was the incentive for learning the habit in the first place.

For Eugene Pauly, seeing the cards before him was the cue, and his muscle memory would automatically perform the routine of playing the game. His reward was perhaps making the researchers happy or simply the fun of playing the game. This three-part pattern can be generalized to practically all our habits.

However, I sometimes think the word “reward” might be too strong. I think “result” works better in some scenarios. For instance, I don’t think arriving at work is much of a “reward” after performing the habitual routine of driving. However, as we’ll see in the next section, real rewards are powerful in habit formation.

3. How marketers create habits for us.

Duhigg explains how the company Proctor and Gamble made Febreze a household name and product. After some trial and error, their marketing team found a way to make Febreze a part of an everyday routine. Test consumers claimed that the scent of the spray became a reward that they craved. People would reward themselves by spraying Febreze in a room that they just cleaned. “A room just doesn’t seem clean until I spritz the room with some Febreze,” the test consumers would tell the P&G researchers.

As Marketing Psychology has grown as a field, more companies are finding new ways to make their product a part of your life through habits. The formula for this is simple. Find an everyday routine or universal need, (like cleaning the house) then finding a product that serves as part of a reward for completing that routine (Like the Fresh Linen scent by Febreze).

Another example that Duhigg gives is Pepsodent toothpaste. They were the first to add minty flavors that leave a tingly sensation in your mouth after brushing your teeth. People would claim that their teeth wouldn’t feel clean unless they felt minty fresh. In fact, Pepsodent’s innovation led to a nationwide increase in dental hygiene, as people craved the feeling they’d have after brushing their teeth.

As you can see, companies are savvy when it comes to wedging their product into your daily routine. However, once you understand how habits are formed, some marketing schemes become transparent.

4. Relacing a bad habit with a good one.

Duhigg doesn’t leave his reader hanging after explaining how corporations manipulate you into craving their products. He lays out a general formula for creating good habits. By way of example, I’ll use a habit I’ve been trying to form since reading this book.

For many years, my morning routine was to wake up, make a coffee, and then watch random YouTube videos for an hour or so. Then I’d eat, shower, probably watch more YouTube, and go to work in the afternoon (lifelong second shifter). Sometimes I’d have the motivation to be productive, but most days, I wouldn’t be.

Three things I’ve always wanted are: To learn a language, understand statistics and probability, and be fit. So, I have applied the cue, routine, and reward process to my morning routine.

My first cue and routine is waking up and making coffee with the reward of sitting and enjoying the coffee for an hour (I am a very slow coffee drinker). However, the YouTube had to go, and so I replaced that part of the routine with Duolingo and some statistic tutorials on Udemy.

My next cue is simply finishing the coffee. I’d finish whatever statistics problem I was on, and immediately go work out in the home gym. At the end of that routine, my reward would be a delicious protein shake and some avocado toast!

In the first couple weeks of this routine, I’d be lying and say that it was easy. it required a lot of willpower. Fortunately, Duhigg cites some studies of how willpower is analogous to a muscle, and that exerting willpower regularly, increases it over time. So, after a couple weeks of trusting the process, the routine became second nature, and just like that, the first two hours of my day, became much more productive.

Charles Duhigg has a talent for using narrative to explain concepts. Many of the principles he lays out are told through the stories of individuals, with citations of scientific research peppered throughout. In writing this article, I only summarized a few of the ideas in his book. He also explains how companies can form good or bad habits that can make or break them. The same goes for social justice movements. Movements that cater to the habit psychology of individuals are more successful. I definitely believe reading The Power of Habit will add value to tour life, especially if you implement the principles.