I recently plowed through the book “The Power of Habit” by
Charles Duhigg. It was a really interesting read. I did however,
like I am sure every other reader, expect this book to tell me:
1. That everything I am currently doing is an endless series
of bad habits and;
2. Creative, fun ways to change those bad habits.
This is what I was thinking would come of it: beer consuming
= running; eating bad food = eating fruit and vegetables; sitting on couch
watching endless hours of Netflix = going to the gym and actually
exercising. Not that I participate in ANY of those terrible behaviours,
however….. what I did learn was that humans are predisposed to creating and
maintaining all sorts of habits and once ingrained, we stop realizing the
things we are doing are even habits. Common everyday things like your
morning routines, what you do when you come home from work and even where you
walk your dog. There were definite guidelines at the end of the book
about how to change an existing habit by first finding out what is driving that
habit (the reward) and what you are doing before you start the habit (the
cue). The trick is to change the routine that falls in between the cue
and the reward. Immediately I came up with the brilliant idea of
Cue – get on scale/cry; go for a run (routine); drink delicious beer
(reward). Sounds good to me however the “go for a run” portion almost
never happens (read-never happens) so I need to find creative tools to change
the habit before I have to buy larger clothing! Is it defeating the
purpose to have a beer as the reward? Of course I have over-thought this
since finishing the book. What if it was a beer for every
kilometer? Can you bank the kilometers and have the reward all
week? For example, I could run a lofty half marathon every single Sunday
and drink 21.5 beers the rest of the week! Huh. That’s beer for
thought.
At the end of the day I learned an awful lot about human
behaviour and that I should totally have considered studying/researching human
behaviour. This is truly a career I was built for. I am a curious
(all be it opinionated) person who enjoys research of all kinds and would love
to delve into the inner workings of what exactly makes humans tick. The
study of habit is fascinating in that people all over the world have habits –
some very, very bad habits and some not so bad. How can you change the
habits of an overweight, couch potato to an Ironman athlete? Is there a
simple formula for habit change? The book did talk about drive and will
power and the tenacity for change but how much or how little does a human need
to make the change? Goodness, so many questions….. that I will need to ponder
over a beer of course because if nothing else my mind is running!
