Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Charles Duhigg: Creating Powerful Habits | E146

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Ever wonder how our brain creates habits? Today, we are talking with the Habit master, Charles Duhigg! Charles is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, a best-selling author, a former New York Times Reporter, and current a writer for the New Yorker Magazine. His book The Power of Habit, was on the NYT Bestseller list for over 3 years and has inspired a generation to create stronger habits in their lives. He is also the host of the How To! Podcast. His other book, Smarter Better Faster is also a NYT bestseller. He is the founding host of the How To! podcast with Slate and the recipient of the George Polk award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and other honors. Charles speaks to a wide variety of audiences on topics ranging from how habits emerge and change within lives and companies to how idea brokers generate creativity. In this episode, we hear about Charles’s childhood and his journey to becoming a writer. We’ll discuss Charles’ time as a reporter in Iraq and how his time there put him on the path to studying habits. We’ll also hear break down the key components to creating habits, and how a place like McDonalds can unknowingly affect our habits! If you want to learn critical skills to create meaningful habits, keep listening! Sponsored by -  Jordan Harbinger - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Prose - Go to Prose.com/yap for your FREE in-depth hair consultation and 15% off. AthleticGreens - Visit athleticgreens.com/YAP and get FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. Shopify - Go to shopify.com/profiting, for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features Social Media: Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Timestamps: 00:47- Charles’ Childhood and Journey Into Writing 01:26 - The Power of Habit Origin 01:57 - Working in Iraq 5:39 - Habits in the Military 6:05 - What is A Habit 7:05 - Anatomy of the Brain 9:00 - Difference Between Memory and Habit 9:30 - Components of A Habit 16:30 - Cravings and How They Relate to Habits 18:00 - Mcdonalds And Cravings 21:20 - Supermarkets and Habits 24:24 - Social Media and Habit Loops 27:51 - How To Change A Habit 32:03 - Keystone Habits 35:51 - Charles’ Secret to Profiting in Life Mentioned In The Episode:   The Power of Habit- https://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests

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This week on YAP, we're chatting with the Habit Master Charles DuHic. Charles is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and the author of the books Smarter Faster Better and the Power of Habit, which was on the New York Times bestsellers list for three years. Charles is an expert on the signs of productivity and habit formation. He currently writes for the New Yorker magazine and is the founding host of the wildly popular How To Podcast. In this episode, we hear about the journey Charles took to become a world famous writer and how his time as a reporter in Iraq first put him on the path to studying habits. We'll then hear him break down the three key components to creating habits,

Q, routine, and reward, and how establishments like McDonald's use these methods to keep us hooked. We'll then discover what a Keystone habit is, and why these types of habits have a domino effect, helping us to build many positive habits at once. If you want to learn how to create meaningful habits, keep on listening. Hey, Charles, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thanks for having me. I am very excited for this interview. I've actually been trying to get you on the show since I started YAP back in 2018. The power of habit was one of my all-time favorite books.

It was actually the first book that I read to get me kick-started on my self-improvement journey. You were one of the first people that I tried to get me kick started on my self-improvement journey. And you were one of the first people that I tried to get on the podcast. Now, three and a half years later, you're finally here. Thank you so much for taking the time out to speak with us today. Sure. Thanks for having me. So, let's start back to your childhood. I know you don't speak about your childhood very often, but from my understanding, you

grew up in New Mexico. And I didn't find too much research about what it was like growing up for you. So let's start there. What was your childhood like and how did you first get into writing? I mean, my childhood was pretty normal. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I got started in writing because, I guess when I was in middle school,

I didn't know what to do during the summer. And so my mom signed me up for an internship. And the internship that was available was at the Albuquerque Tribune, which is a newspaper that doesn't exist anymore. And so I went there and spent the summer working on the sports desk. And I didn't know anything about sports, but I just found I really enjoyed writing. So it was fun. That's awesome.

And I know it's going to be the 10-year anniversary of the power of Habit in 2022. So I thought we could really just spend time on that book specifically in Dive. Super deep. That's what we do at YAP. And let's start with the genesis of the book. From my understanding, you were journalists in Iraq. And that's where you first had the idea to study habits.

So talk to us about that experience and how that kind of kicked you off on this journey to really understand the power of habit. Yeah, so I got an MBA at Harvard Business School and I decided to be a major journalist midway through Harvard Business School. And so I went to the LA Times. And at the LA Times, they sent me to Iraq to cover the war.

And when I got there, I was trying to figure out what to write about. And part of being a journalist in Iraq is that you tend to get embedded with the military. And so they sent me down to this town named Kufo, which is about an hour south of Baghdad in order to embed with the army that was there. And I got there and there was this army major who was really, really interesting. I started talking to, he was a really smart guy and I asked him, you know, why are you here?

What's going on? Can you help me get oriented? And he said, well, I was sent here really to stop the riots from happening. And they had been having all throughout Iraq at this point. They had been having a lot of riots that were killing people. And so the Army Major arrived in Kufa and he met with the mayor and he asked the mayor, I had a whole list of requests. Can you stop the gun runners?

Can you stop the suicide bombers? The mayor was like, look man, if I could do any of that, I would have already done it. I can't do any of that stuff. And so the last thing on the major's list was can you remove the food vendors from the plazas? And the mayor was like, okay, that one I can do, I can get rid of all the kabob sellers that are from the plazas? And the mayor was like, okay, that one I can do, I can get rid of all the kabab sellers

that are in the plazas. And so about a week later, a bunch of people arrive into Kufa. And there's a, in Kufa, there's a mosque named the Grand Mosque of Kufa, which is a very important site in Shia Islam. And so there's a lot of pilgrims who show up to worship there. And so,

and this had been the site of some previous riots because there were so many people. And so, the way that a riot normally develops is that there will be a bunch of troublemakers who show up, and then spectators will come to watch the troublemakers. And it usually takes six or seven hours for a riot to really develop. And more people will come to watch the people who came to watch the troublemakers and the crowd will get larger and larger until finally it's large enough that someone throws a bottle and a riot breaks out. So a couple of weeks after the major arrives, there's some trouble makers who show up near the grandmask of kufa in the plaza that's out in front of the mosque and then some spectators show up and then more spectators, you know, time keeps going by. And finally at about five or five,

30 in the evening, the crowd has gotten large enough that it's at the conditions where a riot is likely to happen. And as the major is telling me the stories, he has drone footage, and he's showing me the drone footage from overhead. And he says, now watch the people at the periphery of the crowd. And the people who are at the very periphery of this large, large crowd around the grandmask,

they start looking over their shoulders. And he says, look at them. What they're doing is it's 5.30, it's dinner time. They're looking for the kabobs sellers who are normally in the plaza. But of course, we had removed the kabobs sellers. All the food vendors had been removed. So these people at the periphery of the crowd,

they just kind of wander off, assuming we'd walk home and have dinner. And then there's another ring of people who see these people wandering crowd, they just kind of wander off, assuming we'd walk home and have dinner. And then there's another ring of people who see these people wandering away and I guess think to themselves, oh, there must be a better riot going on somewhere else. I'm gonna follow them and see where they're going. And so they kind of wander off.

And over the next 45 minutes, the plaza essentially kind of clears out except for the troublemakers. But because the troublemakers don't have an audience anymore, they go home too. And in the months that this major had been there, there hadn't been one riot. But because the trouble makers don't have an audience anymore, they go home too. And in the months that this major had been there, there hadn't been one riot. And I asked him, like, how did you know that this would work?

They were removing the food vendors would stop the riots. And he said, look, I didn't really. But when I joined the military, it was kind of this education in how habits function. The military, US military, and all militaries are some of the biggest habit change experiments on Earth. You know, your instinct when someone's shooting at you is to run away and they teach you the habit to shoot back. And he said, once the military had taught him to see the world in terms of habits, it really changed how we saw everything.

And that's how he was able to figure out that removing the food vendors might influence how this crowd behaves. That is so cool. I feel like people don't realize how powerful habits really are. So can you talk to us about how often habits make up our day as humans? Yeah, there was an experiment,

or a series of experiments done by a researcher named Wendy Wood, who's now at USC. And what she found is that about 40 to 45% of what we do every day is a habit. So about half of your behaviors each day is our habitual, and it happened as a decision that we made at some point, but we stopped making the decision

and continue acting on it, right? So at some point, you decided to have, you know, an unhealthy sandwich for lunch, rather than a healthy salad. And now when you walk into the cafeteria, you get that same sandwich, decided to have an unhealthy sandwich for lunch, rather than a healthy salad. And now when you walk into the cafeteria, you get that same sandwich, but it's not as if you're really making that choice, right?

It just happens automatically. It happens on autopilot. That's because the habit has taken over. So let's break down the anatomy of the brain, because I think it's really great context for my listeners. I know that you describe it as an onion where the outer layers are more complex. That's where you're more complex thinking happens. That's the most recent structures of your brain and the inner parts are more primitive and

automatic. So can you explain all of this to us so that we can understand really how our brain functions and where habits live in the brain? Yeah. So one of the oldest structures in our brain is named the basal ganglia. And every animal on earth has a basal ganglia. The basal ganglia, it's kind of almost at the center of the brain near the brain stem where you're, where you're spinal column meets your brain. And the basal ganglia basically exists to create habits. And the reason why the basal ganglia

exists and why every animal has one is because without this ability to create habits. And the reason why the basal ganglia exists, and why every animal has one, is because without the ability to create habits, we would never have evolved, right? The capacity to take a behavior and make it automatic is essential for the development of higher thought. So if when you walked down a path, you saw a rock in an apple, and you had to think really hard to decide which one to put in your mouth. Well, then you would spend your entire day trying to evaluate rocks and apples, but because it becomes a habit, oh, the red one is the one that I can second my mouth, the gray one

is the one that I should kick to the side. That's how you can get the free space within your brain to think up fire and building homes and then aircraft carriers and video games, right? This ability to take behaviors and make them automatic, make them into habits, that is how every species excels. And so it's a really important and really valuable skill and it's amazing that humans can take the most complex behaviors and make them habitual. But it also means that because we essentially stop thinking in

the middle of a habit that unless we're deliberate about which habits we let into our lives, that things might go astray. Yeah, totally. All right, so let's talk about the components of a habit. So there's three main steps that you talk about in your book, Q routine and reward. Could you talk about that to us because I know you'll explain it very eloquently, and then I will ask you some follow-ups about each step. Sure, sure. So yeah, so as you mentioned, we tend to think of a habit as one thing, right?

But it's actually these three separate things. There's a Q, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to start. And then the routine, which is the behavior itself, what we think of as the habit. And then there's the reward. And every habit in your life has a reward, whether you're aware of it or not. It's that reward that the basal ganglia latches on to in order to make that behavior automatic. It's because you anticipate that reward. So when you back your car out of the driveway, the first time you back your car out of the driveway, you

really have to concentrate on it very hard. But, you know, by the fifth or sixth or ninth time, you can kind of almost do it on autopilot, right? You don't have to pay that much attention. That's because it's become a habit. And what's important is that if we could see inside your brain, when you back the car out of the driveway, your brain is anticipating a reward. And it's sure enough, when you safely make it into the street out of the driveway, your brain is anticipating a reward. I'm sure enough, when you safely make it into the street and start driving away,

there's a little, little squirt of neuro-trained, reward neurotransmitters, dopamine, and other chemicals to make yourself feel good in a sense of reward. You're not aware of that reward sensation, but your brain is aware of it. And our brain pays attention to rewards and punishments, and it makes the things that happen that give us a reward more automatic, easier to access. And so that's really important

because what we know is, you know, when most people think about changing their habits, they focus on the behavior on the routine. But what we now know from a lot of studies is that it's the cues and the rewards that are really the tools that give us an ability to change the behavior. And so if you diagnose the cue and the reward driving a particular habit, that's how you can change it. So let's dive deep a little bit on these three steps. Let's start with cues.

What are some examples of a cue or something that triggers a routine that you have? Yeah, so almost all Qs fall into one of five categories. It's usually a time of day, a particular place, the presence of certain other people, particular emotion, or a proceeding behavior that's become ritualized. So like what's a habit that you have? Exercise it. Okay, so tell me about when do you normally exercise tell me about when you exercise?

After work once I'm done with my last meeting. Okay, and so what do you do? What happens before you exercise? It makes you say like okay, I'm ready to exercise now is exercise time. I put on my on demand workout and as it's How's exercise time? I put on my on-demand workout, and as it's starting up, I'm getting my weights ready, I'm putting on my shoes, and getting my water, and getting ready to work out. And is it a consistent time of day? Like, is it usually at five o'clock or six o'clock? Like seven o'clock every day.

Seven o'clock. Okay, okay. So for you, for your exercise habit, it sounds like there's probably a handful of cues. One of them is a time of day that it's when you're sort of at seven o'clock in the evening. It sounds like there's probably a handful of cues. One of them is a time of day that it's when you're sort of at seven o'clock in the evening. It sounds like there's a preceding behavior that's become the ritualized, which is you put on your workout tape and you sort of set up your weights.

My guess is that there's probably some emotional cues that you sort of have a calmness or an anticipation. You're looking forward to a certain reward that you know working out gives you. So that's how we find those cues, right? And if somebody wants to figure out what the cue is for a habit, literally you can just have a piece of paper next to your desk or, you know, wherever you are. And just write down those five things whenever you feel a craving for a certain habit. If I, if you feel a craving, have a donut or a craving to exercise, just write down, you

know, what time is it? Who else is around? How do you feel emotionally? What behavior did you just do? Where are you? And you'll figure out really, really quickly what the cues are. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break

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That's trinam-n-o-m-dot-com-shap for 50% off trinam-dot-com-shap. So let's talk about rewards a little bit, because when I think of a reward, I think of money or food, but it can also be emotional. So talk to us about what a reward can be and what are the qualities of a good reward. Well, a reward can be anything that you find rewarding, right? So anything that you find to be satisfying or to provide you with something. So let's take exercise. When you exercise, how do you feel afterwards? Healthy, accomplished, energized.

Okay. So you just mentioned three potential rewards, right? So one reward that you mentioned is kind of a, is a sense of pride and emotional, an emotional reward that you have yourself, which is accomplished. You also feel energized, like you have more energy. So that's probably like,

there's actually a neurochemical reaction going on there. You said that you feel healthy. So that's different from feeling accomplished because oftentimes when we feel healthy, that could be a physical sensation that you have, it could be an emotional sensation that you have. So if you could only have one of those, what do you think, if you could only get one thing from exercise, which thing do you think would be most rewarding for you? The energizing part, most likely.

The energizing part, okay. The energizing part. Okay. And how do you know that you feel energized? What do you do that proves to yourself that you feel energized? I go do some more work honestly. I have a big company. So I go and work on my agency and get a new burst of energy for a couple hours. Okay.

So I think that for you, it sounds like exercise provides probably energy that it gives, that you've come to associate the active exercise with giving you something that's rewarding, some more energy that you can then direct to what you want. And I think, you know, recognizing what that reward is, now you could have easily said,

well, actually after I exercise, I take a nice long shower, right? And it just feels so good to be able to relax or like that soreness in my muscles feels kind of good. Or you could say, I keep track of the exercise I do every single day and I have this journal that I put it in and it makes me feel really accomplished to like check off each day that I've gotten

the exercises done. So there's different kinds of rewards that the same behavior can provide to different people. And one of the things that's important about creating habits is recognizing what that reward is and figuring out what really drives you because at the core of that habit is a craving. Your brain is craving that reward. And then the more you kind of understand what that craving is, the more you can you can direct your behavior in ways that make exercise more and more automatic.

Yeah, I would love to stick on cravings a bit because I think this is a really important point that a lot of people miss. Can you explain why a Q&A reward is just learning by itself, but once you add on a craving, that's when it can actually become a habit. Could you help us understand that a bit more? Well, yeah, so this Q routine reward that we talked about is referred to as the habit loop, right? And so the question is, how does that loop start spinning? Like what's the driver that gets you to a place

where when you see the Q, you want the reward enough to do the behavior that you know, we'll deliver that reward. And that's craving, right? Our brain has this ability to anticipate a reward and begin craving the reward. Everyone who's listening has felt this, right? There's at your office and you're not hungry at all.

And then suddenly you see like a donut. And at that moment, when you see the donut, though, in that queue, you have a visual queue, you begin craving a donut. And at that moment, when you see the donut, though, in that queue is a, you have a visual queue, you begin craving the donut. You're like, like, start thinking like, I really want to donate. Now, 10 seconds ago, you weren't hungry. But now, now you're craving having a donut. And that's because your brain begins anticipating and then looking forward to receiving this dose of carbohydrates and sugar and tastiness and that anticipation is what

creates craving. So, I'd love to get a real example of how the habit loop works and how cravings work. So, why don't we take McDonald's for an example? Can you talk to us about how people can get addicted to McDonald's? Yeah. So, one of the things that McDonald's has done really, really well is it has a... So, every McDonald's location looks basically the same, right? I mean, in fact, so much so that oftentimes the McDonald's will mandate how you design

the actual store itself so that it looks very similar to other stores. And of course, the packaging is the same. They uses these bright colors. This is all cue creation. What they want to do is they want it to make it as easy as possible. That when you see a McDonald's or you walk into a McDonald's, that the cues suddenly make you begin anticipating what McDonald's can deliver to you. This reward that you've become accustomed to receiving from McDonald's.

And the food itself is very similarly designed. You know, one of the things that McDonald's does, for instance, is its french fries are designed to basically begin kind of falling apart in your mouth as soon as you put them in your mouth. And the reason why is because they want to spread the oil in the fries as fast as possible because our body likes oil. It likes that salience, feeling of fullness that we get from consuming a fatty and carbohydrates. And so the reason why they make the fries that way is because if you deliver that reward right away,

then as soon as people see the golden arches, as soon as they start thinking about those french fries, they begin anticipating eating those fries and the reward that the fries will deliver. And that's what makes it much easier to pull the car over and go through the drive in and say, like, give me an order of fries. Even though we know French fries is like literally like the worst thing you can possibly eat. It's very, very unhealthy. But they're able to use cues and rewards to make it almost automatic for us to want them.

Yeah. And then how fragile are these habits? So if the McDonald's that you go to in town shuts down, are you going to go drive to the next McDonald's to get your meal? Well, so one of the things that's interesting is that when cues are disrupted, very often people's behavior will change very easily, right? So the pandemic is a great example of this. If people think about the habits that they had during their work day, there might have been some unhealthy habits that they were trying to change, right? That they tried to, you know, drink less coffee. They tried not to have that donut from the break room. They tried

to get themselves to spend less time on social media. And at work, it was really hard to do that, right? Because all these cues were around us that we had become habituated to. We had all these habits in place. And then suddenly, we stopped going to work. We're working from home now. And people will find it very easy to change their behaviors when the cues are disrupted. So yeah, if McDonald's shuts down,

then suddenly people stop craving fries because they're not driving past McDonald's anymore. So habits have this real hold on our brains and our behavior, but they're also very flimsy that when the cues and the rewards are destabilized, it can often be very easy to break a habit that otherwise felt very, very hard to change. Yeah, and I wanna go into how to change a habit,

but I do wanna dive into some more examples here. Let's talk about supermarkets, because supermarkets also play tricks on our psychology and get us to do some cool habits. Can you explain that to us as well? Sure. So one of the things that supermarkets do is that they try and take, they do two things in particular. They try and take the types of foods that they know will trigger Craving and put them in places where they're very easy to see So when you walk into a supermarket one of the first things that you'll see is you'll see a very high-carbohydrate

Foods whether those are like apples right because apples are crunchy and they have lots of sugar in them Sometimes they'll have like these like pallets of chips or other things that deliver a really fast taste sensation. And they put them there because they know that if they put those things there, people will start thinking to themselves, oh man, I love those chips, those chips are so good. And even if they don't grab a bag of chips, right at that moment when they walk in, as they're walking through the supermarket,

part of their brain will be thinking about those chips. And so now maybe they pass some cookies and they're more primed to grab those cookies. Or they walk past the chip aisle and they're more primed to say like, you know, I really should get some chips and bring them home. So supermarkets will take advantage of that. The second thing that the supermarkets know is that willpower is like a muscle, right? And it gets tired with use. And so one of the other things that they do is that they put a lot of the healthy things up front

as you first walk in. And then they'll create the way that you walk through the supermarket, that you're going to be passing some of the really tasty things that you don't really want, that you know are bad for you, but you really like, like cookies or sweets or things like that. And then when you get to the checkout counter, they put a bunch of candy by the checkout counter,

right? High margin items that are really sweet and really, really tasty are like those cheesy magazines, celebrity magazines. And the reason they do that is for twofold. First of all, they know that you've been using your willpower throughout this entire time you're in the supermarket to basically say no to the cookies and say no. And so your will power muscle is tired. And so now that your will power muscle is tired, now when you're on the checkout line, now is when they give you the last final temptation and they know that you're more likely to grab the thing and throw it into your cart because you've

been using your will power muscle so much that it's all tired out. The second thing is that they know that if you're waiting in line, it's kind of boring. And boredom is a form of tension. And in order to relieve that tension, oftentimes what we do, is we look for something that delivers a fast reward. So simply putting someone in a line where they're kind of bored makes them more likely to reach over and grab that candy bar, those cookies, or that dumb magazine magazine and throw it into their cart.

I feel like people don't really realize how much these companies and marketing departments and how much money people are putting into creating these habits for consumers and that this is actually things that people research and spend a lot of time on. So I'd love to bring it to the future because what comes to mind is all these social media platforms and Netflix and all these things that were addicted to. Can you talk just about how these kind of platforms form a habit loop today? Sure. Well, I, so let me ask you, how much time do you spend on social media each day? Well, this is my, my job. So I run a marketing agency and for many clients. And so I'm always on social media, but it's more like my work. So I run a marketing agency and for many clients. And so I'm always on

social media, but it's more like my work. So I don't know if that's a great example. Well, I mean, do you ever go on to like, do you enjoy your time on social media? Yeah. Yeah. So what do you enjoy about it? I like talking to my fans and seeing what they're writing in my comments and things like that. And my DMs. And so, and what do you think, what kind of reward does that provide for you? I feel like my work is meaningful when somebody comments or DMs me and says they love listening to the show

or whatever it is or that I've helped their lives. So I think one of the things that social media does is it makes it easy for us to access those rewards, right? I mean, if you were to post something and you go on any go and you look at it and you see that there's no comments associated with the people having seemed to interact with that content very much, I'm sure that there's a part

of you that feels a little bit disappointed, right? You say, like, you know, what happened? Why don't people like this? So you have a craving for an anticipated reward, the types of content we'll deliver to you. And social media platforms are very good at doing this. Netflix is different, so Netflix is in the social media platform. But for the platforms themselves that allow this kind of back and forth, creating a like button, creating the ability for people to comment easily,

there's this anticipation of feedback. And when the feedback's not there, there's a little bit of disappointment, right? And the feedback oftentimes feels very interactive. It feels very, very real. So someone hitting the like button, you know, if two people hit the like button, that doesn't mean very much.

If a hundred people hit the like button, it tells you something. But in comments, if two people leave comments, and those comments are really interesting and they say something, then that on its own can be enough. And so that's one of the things that social media platforms do is they understand what kinds of rewards we want and they help facilitate them. Yeah, and I could imagine not all those push notifications and things like that become our cues to check out our social media

or the rings and the things that these platforms do whenever somebody's messaging you. Yeah, absolutely. I turn off all the notifications because, and I don't spend much time on social media platforms, but turning off the notifications means that there's fewer cues there, and so it's less distracting. As as a result, there's less of a need to turn to these platforms. But certainly, if you're sitting there working on something, and you hear the ding that means that someone's commented on your posts, or you've

gotten the notification of some other kind, there's this part of your brain that says, oh, go check that. Go see what that says. Maybe that's going to deliver this reward. And sometimes the reward is simply novelty that it delivers like some type of like momentary burst of new experience, which when you're in the middle of writing a hard memo is always kind of nice, right?

Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about how to change a habit. So for my understanding, you can change the routine part of the habit if you want to actually change the habit. I think a great example to take my listeners through is alcoholics anonymous. Talk to us about alcoholics anonymous and what they do to actually get people to change their habit of being an alcoholic. Yeah.

A lot of times when people talk about habits, they talk about breaking a habit, trying to extinguish a bad habit. And what we know from the research is this is the wrong way to think about habit formation, because once you have those neural pathways associated with that queue that routinely, that reward, the neural pathways going to stay there. So through willpower, you can ignore a habit, you can try and repress it. But that means that when you're stressed or when you're tired, that habit might just

erupt out again. So what psychologists refer to is they refer to the golden rule of habit change, which says, rather than trying to extinguish a habit, you should try and change a habit. And that means diagnosing what the Q and the routine and the reward are, and then finding a new behavior, a new routine

that corresponds that old Q, and that delivers something similar to that old reward. As you mentioned, AA is a perfect example of this, right? So for many people who have drinking problems, they have a sort of a habit dysfunction, which is, you know, they come home from work and they've had a long day, that's their cue, is it now they're ready to relax? And so they grab a beer or a glass of wine, maybe two or three or four, more than they would like. And what it allows them to do is it allows them to physically relax. And very often people will do this in the company of other people, right?

They'll do it at a bar. They'll do it with friends. And they'll get into a habit where the reward that's getting delivered to them is a sense of catharsis and release and relaxation and social time. Right? I can be with my friends. I can talk about what's bothering me. I can relax and sort of be open and free about what's going on in my life. And I've come to associate the alcohol, and particularly the physical effects of the alcohol, as the catalyst that allows me to do that. So the Q is a certain time of day, the reward is a certain feeling that I get

where I get to unburden myself, either through talking to other people, or simply through relaxing and kind of admitting to myself, you know, like why my day was good or bad. So what A-A says is A-A says, look, we're not gonna take this away from you. We recognize that you have a habit in your life that is important to you.

You have a craving for a certain type of reward. What we're going to do is we're just going to change the routine a little bit. So now when you get home from work, instead of going to a bar, we're going to ask you to use that same queue and come to an AA meeting. And at the AA meeting, it used to be you'd go to the bar, you'd have a couple of drinks, then you'd like start telling everyone about your problems or start talking about your day. When you come to an AA meeting,

you're gonna do the exact same thing. You're gonna talk about your problems. You're gonna talk about your day, but you're gonna do it with other people. And in fact, we're gonna create an environment where it is expected that you will talk about the things that are meaningful to you, right? At the beginning of an AA meeting,

everyone stands up and they say, hi, my name is Jeff, I'm an alcoholic. And then they tell their story about being an alcoholic or what was hard that day. And that's a part, that's how AA meetings work. If you've ever been to an AA meeting and anyone can go to an AA meeting, most of them are open to people who aren't alcoholics and it's well worth going. It's a very emotional, very cathartic experience. And so what AA says is they say, look, we're not gonna change the queue or the reward. We're just gonna change the routine.

Instead of going to a bar at six o'clock and telling everyone about your day after having three drinks, you're gonna go to an AA meeting at six o'clock and you're gonna tell everyone all about your problems not after a few drinks, but after saying, my name is Jeff and I'm an alcoholic. And this is why AA is so successful is because it does not try and change your behavior entirely.

It tries to help people change this one habit by finding a new behavior that corresponds to the old cues and that delivers something similar to the old rewards. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors. You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide, whether you sell

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Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I recently had bestselling author Kim Scott on the show, and after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on masterclass, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give in solicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture, and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework, and I'm so happy because I really needed this class. With masterclass, you can learn from the best

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your computer, tablet, smart TV, and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way, I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com-profiting. So the last concept that I really want to go over before you got to go is keystone habits

because I think these are so powerful, so interesting. Can you first define what a keystone habit is and then we can talk through it a bit? Sure. So what we know is that some habits are more important than others. That some habits, when they change, they tend to set off this chain reaction that changes other patterns in people's lives as well. Exercise is a great example of this, right? When many people start exercising habitually,

on the days that they exercise, it's easier for them to eat more healthily. And this doesn't necessarily make any sense when you think about it, like I don't know why, when your legs are sore, it's easier to eat the salad rather than the sandwich and the cafeteria, but we know that that's true, right? We also know that oftentimes, and people aren't aware of this, but study shows true, that

when people exercise, on the days that they exercise, they tend to use their credit cards less. They procrastinate less at work. For many people, exercises a keystone habit that when they begin exercising habitually, it changes other patterns in their lives, such as eating patterns and spending patterns and how and procrastination patterns. And so as a result, when people are trying to figure out what habit to focus on, the answer is if you can figure out what that keystone habit is for you,

if you change that keystone habit, then the other habits in your life will begin to change almost automatically without you having to work quite so hard. So it's basically like a domino effect. You get this one habit started and then you think differently about yourself and you start to do other things that positively impact your life. So the other thing that I just want to stress to my listeners is that if you were like an

athlete in school growing up, if you were an athlete your whole life, then then exercise is not going to be a keystone habit. So how do people actually find out what keystone habit they should do? Like what are the signs? Then it's a good keystone habit for you. Yeah, so you're exactly right. So keystone habits, they tend to have a lot of power because they change how we think about ourselves.

So yes, if someone was like a high school athlete and they started exercising again, it's probably not going to change how they think about themselves. It's not going to change their self-image. But if there's someone who is unacousted to exercise, who are kind of irrationally scared of exercising, they worry like, I'm going to look dumb, I don't know what shoes to use. Then when they start exercising, it'll kind of change their self-image of themselves. They'll begin thinking like, you know, I'm the type of person who goes running every morning, and that type of person, they don't pull out their MX and buy something they don't need,

they don't eat unhelpfully in the cafeteria, they eat the salad. And so when people are trying to figure out that Kisone Habits and their own lives, one of the things that they ought to do is they ought to look for these kinds of change that seem irrationally scary, right? The type of thing that like, it seems like it should be easy for me to change this thing, to start doing this activity, to stop doing that activity. But like, for whatever reason, whenever I think about it, I get kind of anxious, right? Irrationally, I know that it should be easy to start running in the morning. But when I think about it, I just like,

it makes me kind of anxious, it makes me a little bit of tight even think about doing it. That means that that's something that ties into how people view themselves. And when they begin to change that thing, then almost automatically it'll change how they see themselves. And that's really what we're going for is that when you start seeing yourself in a different way, you start seeing yourself as the kind of person who exercises or you start seeing yourself as the kind of person who exercises, or you start seeing yourself as the kind of person who doesn't smoke, or doesn't have a drink after work, as the kind of person who doesn't get angry

with your kids or spends more time being present with your wife or your husband. Once you start behaving that way, your image of yourself in your own head starts to change. And that's how the other behaviors flow out automatically. That topic is so interesting to me. So Charles, thank you so much for your time. The last question I ask all my guests is,

what is your secret to profiting in life? You know, I think that in general, one of the things that the research tells us and that I've definitely found in my own life is that the more we give ourselves time to think deeply about the choices that we're making, the more we make better choices. And so one of the big questions is to ask yourself, you know, am I spending time on the things

that actually matter to me? Or if I simply got into an autopilot mode, we're like, because I have 30 emails today, I'm going to spend an hour and a half doing emails. And of course, if you spend an hour and a half doing emails, you're going to have 40 emails tomorrow. It is natural to get into a place where our habits take over. And we stop making decisions because it's easier not to make decisions. But the most successful people are the ones who force themselves

to make choices every single day. Because of course, the most important choices you can make is, when am I going to spend my time on it and what am I going to say no to And it really pays off. I love that those are some great productivity tips And I'd love to talk to you about your other books, Martyr Faster, Better One Day Charles. Thank you so much for your time Thank you. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? You can look me up online at Charles du Higg or Charles duDuHig.com or I'm on Twitter at C-DuHig or really, anyway, and anyone who emails me,

I can promise you that I will actually read the email and respond to you. Amazing, thank you so much, Charles, for your time. Thank you, take care. Wow, what a great conversation with Charles. You know, I've been looking forward to this day for such a long time. I've wanted Charles on my podcast since I first started young and profiting almost four

years ago, like three and a half years ago. And I was consistent. I kept messaging him and messaging him until he finally agreed to come on the show. So I'm so thankful that we had this conversation. And Charles really dropped some valuable gems. Something that really stood out to me was that stat that he gave us, that Wendy Wood at USC found that about 40 to 45% of what we do every day is a habit. That's like half our behaviors every day.

A habit starts as a decision, and it's a decision we make quite a bit. And the habit officially forms when we stop consciously making that decision and yet continue to act on it. So that's what a habit actually is. Charles let us in on the anatomy of our brain. Every animal on Earth has a basal ganglia. It's a part of our brain that is in charge of making habits. It's located towards the inner center of the brain. And without habits, no species would have ever evolved. To understand your own habits, you need to identify the components of your habit loops. Once you've diagnosed the habit loop of a particular behavior, you can look for ways to supplement old vices with new routines.

There are three main steps to break down a habit, and I'll recap them in this outro. The first main step is to identify a cue, which is a trigger for an automatic behavior to start. The driver of this habit loop is a craving, anticipating that reward. It's easier to change behaviors when queues are disrupted. The second step is to identify your routine. What is the typical behavior developed continuously after that queue? The third is the typical behavior developed continuously after that queue? The third is the reward.

The reward is what the basal ganglia latches onto and makes an action habitual. Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings, but we're often not conscious of these cravings that drive our behaviors. Our brain pays attention to rewards and punishments. An example of this is social media. Social media makes it easy for us to access these rewards. When I get onto social media, my reward is seeing my fans' comments.

And then I feel fulfilled. I feel happy. I feel accomplished. Social media platforms create a back and forth and anticipation of this feedback. It understands what kind of rewards we want. The more I get these rewards, the more I visit the social media sites.

We shouldn't think about extinguishing a habit. That's not really possible. Rather, we should think about changing our habits. Through willpower, you can ignore a habit all you want, but in times of stress, you're going to fall back on that habit because you really haven't changed anything. Diagnose what your Q routine and reward are in a bad habit you want to break, and then find a new routine that corresponds with that Q and creates a new reward. We have habits everywhere in our lives, but certain routines, keystone habits, lead to a cascade of other actions because of them. When some habits change, they set off a chain reaction.

An example of this is exercise. When people start exercising, they stop spending as much. They start eating better, and they do better at work. To find the right keystone habit for you, you have to think about what is going to change your own self image of yourself. Look for the type of change that seems irrationally scary. If you've never worked out before, then working out will be a great keystone habit. But if you've been working out since you were 12, then not so much. Imagine how much easier and more fulfilling your lifestyle could be if you discovered keystone habits that naturally put the rest of your life in place.

So here's my challenge to you. Discover your own keystone habit. What habit could drastically change your life? Think about it, determine what it is, and then act on it. This was such an inspiring conversation with Charles, and I hope you all learned something and learned as much as I did. Thank you for listening to another episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you like this episode, don't forget to drop us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. You can find me on Instagram at YappwithHalla or LinkedIn, just search from my name, it's Halla Taha.

Big thanks to Yapp team Asoise, this is Halla, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits.

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