Use Science To Control Your Habits w/ Charles Duhigg

How often are you exhausted by being busy all the time, but not ever feeling very productive? Do you get frustrated that you’re not closer to living the life you dreamed of? If so, get ready to download some KNOWLEDGE that’s going to CHANGE how you live. One of the ways your brain is REMARKABLE is that it is always searching for ways to conserve energy by being more EFFICIENT. And one of the most important ways it does this is by steering you toward what you already know. And what you already know are your HABITS. The science behind HABITS and PRODUCTIVITY is a fascinating topic. Once you understand how habits are formed, you can apply this knowledge to your life and create MASSIVE POSITIVE CHANGES. This week, I’m excited to discuss exactly how you can do that with one of the TOP EXPERTS in this field. CHARLES DUHIGG is a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter and the author of “Smarter Faster Better,” about the science of productivity, and “The Power of Habit,” about the science of habit formation in our lives, companies, and societies. He’s also a veteran journalist who has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker Magazine and is a frequent contributor the shows such as This American Life, N. P. R., The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and Frontline. He’s spent years studying the NEUROLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS of habits and productivity, looking closely at HOW HABITS ARE FORMED, the importance of CUES, the psychology of NEAR MISSES (Hint: pay close attention to what Charles has to say about gambling in Las Vegas), and why it’s important to create and enjoy REWARDS when you engage in positive habits. If you’re a business owner, top executive, or leader of any kind, you’ll want to hear Charles’s take on how KEYSTONE HABITS can change an organization. As you can already figure out, the right organizational habits can not only lead to huge increases in positive work culture and your BOTTOM LINE, but they can often spell the difference between whether a business ultimately succeeds or fails as well. In practical terms, Charles will also tell you HOW TO CREATE NEW HABITS, engage in the practice of DIRECTED FOCUS, and why STARTING SMALL is one of the keys to making sure new habits stay locked in. If you’re concerned about efficiency in your life (as you should be!), Charles Duhigg is going to teach you how to SAVE TIME AND MONEY, be more PRODUCTIVE, and GAIN CONTROL so you can lead a HAPPIER and more BLISSFUL life. And that’s a HABIT we should all strive for… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

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  On October 2nd.

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  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  This is the Ed Mileage Show.

• 1:40Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to the program, everybody. I am so excited. I read this man's book many years ago, and it's one of the best books I've ever read. But it says a great deal. You guys know that. And one of the reasons is it created an ability in me to change things about myself that I want to be able to change. And so. He is incredible. The information today will be game changing for so many of you, for many of you, life changing. Charles Duhigg is here today, everybody. The Power of Habit is the book. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. He's brilliant and the content here today is stuff you've never heard before. So Charles, welcome to the show.

• 2:13Charles Duhigg?

  Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

• 2:15Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, brother, I mean that. And I read the book. I kind of put a mind stamp. I'm gonna have him on someday. And then your folks reached out. I told my team immediately, yes.

• 2:23Charles Duhigg?

  Oh, that's really kind of you. Thank you so much.

• 2:26Ed Mylett?

  Well, you know, that's a great book and it's long lasting as well. So let's start with the premise.

• 2:32Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 2:32Ed Mylett?

  Which is, you know, you say in the book that somewhere around 40% of the decisions we make every single day aren't even really decisions, they're habits because the brain wants to conserve energy, go into autopilot mode. But there's, what are habits and how do they work? You talk in the beginning about the habit loop, which to me is groundbreaking content. Never heard it before. So what's a habit loop and how do we form them?

• 2:52Charles Duhigg?

  So you're exactly right that, as you know, and as listeners of your show know, habits are so important, right? And in fact, our brain has a part of it, a part of it that exists simply to make habits, known as the basal ganglia. And the reason why that part of the brain exists is because our brain wants to take any behavior and make it into a habit that it can't. And so the way that it does this is that it looks for certain things. And that's where we get to the habit. We think of a habit as one thing, but it's actually three things. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to start. And then the routine, which is the behavior itself, and then a reward. And that reward is how your brain learns to take that cue, routine and reward, make it into a little bundle and start making it happen automatically. And that's really, really important because

• 3:37Charles Duhigg?

  when we think about our own habits, we tend to focus on the behavior, on the routine. But what we know is that if you can pay attention, if you can diagnose and then begin to fiddle with the cue and the reward, that's where you get the most influence over changing those own habits in your own life. As you mentioned, 40, 45% of what we do every single day, we think is a decision, but it's actually a habit. When you back your car out of the driveway, when you walk into the cafeteria and you hold your, your spouse, I'm gonna have a healthy salad today. And you walk into the cafeteria and you get the sandwich that you get every single day that's unhealthy for you. That's a habit taking over. And there's a cue and there's a reward there. And if we can figure out what that is, we can change the behavior.

• 4:16Ed Mylett?

  So real world application of that. So actually in the book, I want everyone to get the books. We're not going to go through the whole thing, but the actual this sort of dawned on you with this study of these rats, right? So I want people to be able to picture what kind of what cue actually is. I think the rat story is perfect. That's why you put it in the book.

• 4:33Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Ed Mylett?

  Mind taking us through that?

• 4:34Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. So this is work that comes from Dr. Anne Grabiel, who's a researcher at MIT. And what she did is she put a bunch of sensors in rats' brains so she could observe their neural activity as they went about their daily business. And then she would drop each one in like the world's simplest maze was a T shaped maze. There was this partition that would click when it rose up. So the rat could run up and down the maze. And then there was some chocolate on one of the ends. And so what she found is that when the rat first goes through that maze, it hears the click, it starts moving up and down the maze. It takes it about 20 minutes to find the chocolate. And the reason why is because the rats trying to make sense of everything. It's scratching the walls and the motor vehicle parts of its brain are lighting up with activity and it's sniffing the air and the olfactory centers are are becoming active. And then eventually it finds the chocolate and there's this reward sensation.

• 5:19Charles Duhigg?

  So she drops the mouse in the in the maze again and again and again, each she did this with over 200, 200 rats. And what she found is that over time, each rat unsurprisingly got faster and faster and faster finding the chocolate. But as it did, it started to thinking less and less and less. And the reason why because is because as soon as it heard that click, that was the cue, its brain would say, okay, now I'm going to start using the find the chocolate in the maze script, right? I'm going to run that thing automatically. I don't even have to think about it. I can do this so well and so effortlessly. And then when I get to the end, I know that there's going to be some chocolate. When I find that chocolate, it's going to reinforce that pattern in my brain. It's going to make it easier and easier and easier for the next time and the next time and the next time. So that I

• 6:04Charles Duhigg?

  have to think less and less and less. And the same thing happens to us, right? You say, I'm going to have a salad for lunch today. You walk into the cafeteria, you get the same sandwich you always did, because you're kind of craving that like, the fatty pastrami that comes on that sandwich, right? It's in your brain. It's saying to yourself, just let just give in, just let the easiest neural channels have their way and grab that sandwich. And it's not until you really figure out what that cue and that reward is. And the cue probably is walking into the to the cafeteria, or maybe it's that it's noon every day, a certain time. Maybe you only get the pastrami sandwich when you're feeling like really lethargic, or you've just had a really tough assignment, or you're feeling kind of down. But once you identify those cues and those rewards, then you can start saying, okay,

• 6:49Charles Duhigg?

  look, actually, I know that whenever I walk in the cafeteria, I'm gonna have this craving for this reward, for this pastrami sandwich. What if, instead of getting a pastrami sandwich, what if I get a salad and I put one piece of pastrami on top of it? Let's see if that satisfies my craving. And if you do that, suddenly you change the habit. Before too long, you're like, oh, it doesn't have to be pastrami. It can be skinless chicken. It can be salmon. It can be something that's healthy for me.

• 7:16Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 7:17Charles Duhigg?

  That's how you change the habit.

• 7:18Ed Mylett?

  The application of all of this, everybody, is so broad. And you know, I've coached some of the top people in the world, and I can just tell you, the separator between most people is not their motivation level. People ask me this constantly. How do you stay motivated all the time? I don't. It's what I do on the days I'm not motivated. It's my habits, rituals, and routines. Show me your habits, rituals, and routines, and I will pretty much show you the results in your life, long term. If the data is right, that you're saying 40% of everything we think isn't really a thought, it's autopilot, so our brains can serve in this energy. Guys, this is so important for you to be starting to identify for you, what is this trigger or cue that's putting me into this particular mode? And this can also be in selling and getting people to make different decisions. You use this example

• 8:02Ed Mylett?

  in the book about Fabreeze.

• 8:05Charles Duhigg?

  Right.

• 8:05Ed Mylett?

  Really, and I think people can get this, because they know what, most people know what Fabreeze is. If they don't, I'll let you enlighten them. But this is a way to take advantage of habits by changing one of the three things in there. I'll let you tell them which one it is, between the, you know, the cue and the routine and the reward. But go ahead and tell them the Fabreeze story, if you don't mind.

• 8:22Charles Duhigg?

  Sure. And it's a great example you bring up. And I think, I think you're really savvy to identify this, that is part of selling, is part of understanding other psychology. The understanding their habits is so critical. So, everyone knows Fabreeze, right? It's that spray that you, you put on smelly, you know, after you like vacuum the carpet, you spray the carpet so it smells nice, or after you make the bed, or if your kids are teenagers, as mine are, and they bring home smelly gym clothes all the time, a little Fabreeze goes a long way. And so, when Fabreeze first came out from Brockton Gamble, they released this product, and they figured, okay, look, we want to create a new habit in people's lives, right? We want to get them to use Fabreeze. So, we think the cue is something smelly in your life. And the routine is, we want to train you to pull out the Fabreeze

• 9:05Charles Duhigg?

  and spray it. And the reward will be that the bad smell is gone. So they go into three test markets. They spend millions of dollars on making ads to to sort of teach this new habit. They give away thousands of bottles of Fabreeze. A couple of months later, they go and they track down the people they've given the bottles to, and they find it's just not working. The product isn't selling. And so they go into some woman's house and they're like, look, can you tell us like, did you, did you use the Fabreeze? And this is a woman who has a lot of cats. She's got like 13 cats. And so they're talking to her and they're like, you know, we sent you a free bottle of Fabreeze. Have you used it? And she says, you know, yeah, once or twice I've used it. And the cat smell is overpowering in her house, right? The researchers are sitting down on her,

• 9:49Charles Duhigg?

  on her, in her living room on the couch. One of them is like kind of gagging because it smells so strongly of cats. But what's weird is that this woman's house is totally clean. She's like a clean freak, except for the cat smell. And so the guy who had just been gagging, he's like, well, what about right now? Would you consider using the Fabreeze right now for your, for the cat smell? And the woman's like, look, I don't, I don't mean to be prideful, but I have the best cats. They hardly ever smell. At which point, the scientists realize what all of us know, which is if you have bad smells in your life, you have no idea that you have bad smells in your life. Right? And, and by the way, if you don't know that you have bad smells in your life, getting rid of them, that's not a reward. So they have to change completely how they think

• 10:32Charles Duhigg?

  about this. Now what they say is we want to create a totally different habit in your life. Now what we want to do is we want to add perfume to Fabreeze. So it has its own scent. And we want to say to you, after you vacuumed the carpet, after you've made your bed, that's your cue. Now spray the Fabreeze to make it smell nice, to, to give yourself a little reward that you just did a good job. You're kind of making everything smell as good as it looks. And that's the reward. It's a self-satisfaction that you've just done a good job cleaning, a way to end the cleaning ritual. And once they changed the advertisements and they started teaching that, sales went through the roof. Fabreeze is now over a billion dollars a year.

• 11:11Ed Mylett?

  Guys, this is so awesome. It's these subtle distinctions that you can be oblivious to them. And for me, I'm, I'm super, I'm obsessed with habits. And so one of the things you say in the book is that habits, and I would have never thought of it this way, habits are actually cravings, like neurological cravings. And I know we sort of touched on it, but it's a different way to say almost the same thing. Cause I want What I do the show for one reason, brother, I want people's lives to get better and change. So I want this point to be sort of hammered home. What is a neurological craving? Is that, is that what you mean by the brain is trying to form a habit all the time? Is that what you mean by that?

• 11:50Charles Duhigg?

  A little, I mean, we've all felt this, right? Like, um, you know, you go to work and you're not hungry at all. And then you walk by pass, I mean, back when we used to go to work on a regular basis, right? You walk past the break room and you look in and you see those donuts that are there. And suddenly you're like craving a donut. Like you, like 30 seconds ago, you weren't hungry. But now you're like, man, I really, maybe just half of like that maple, maple donut. Right? Cause like, that's the craving. When your brain is exposed, the cue there is that it sees the donuts. It begins craving that taste sensation, right? And it could be that it's craving the sugar. It could be that it's craving the taste. It could be it's craving the carbohydrates. Sometimes you have to do some experiments to figure out exactly what it is craving. But the point is that you feel that inside your head, you feel that craving.

• 12:34Charles Duhigg?

  And, and it wasn't there until you saw the cue. Same thing going into the cafeteria, right? You said, tell your wife or your husband, I'm going to have a salad today. And then you go into the cafeteria and like, you were pretty set on having a salad until you walked into the cafeteria. Then suddenly you're craving the pastrami sandwich. Our brain exists to create that craving. Cause think about it, for ancestors, if you didn't crave an apple, you're, it's just as likely that you'd pick up an apple or a rock and try and bite on it, right? So our brain has this way of teaching us what we want to do by creating a sense of craving. When we see the thing, the trigger that causes it.

• 13:11Ed Mylett?

  I'm gonna, I'm a full confessional. Right before the show, I'm eating pretty healthy right now. I usually eat pretty healthy. My, I have a friend named Kelly Gwynne, but I call him Richard Cabeza on my Instagram. He's, that stands for something in Spanish, but, um, he brought these lemon bars by yesterday. And in front of him, I said, I'm not eating your lemon bars. They're from this bakery here in town. I'm not eating them and I put on a good front in front of them. He's gone, my wife's gone. I'm here alone for the show today and I'm walking in the kitchen. I'm not exaggerating. I have to walk by the refrigerator to grab this protein bar. I'm going to eat before we do this show. And as I walk by. My housekeeper is here. She opened the fridge and I saw these lemon bars. I could act my, my brain, there was the cue. My brain literally started to salivate in my mouth and I could taste

• 13:55Ed Mylett?

  them. And I went in and I ate an entire lemon bar before we just, this was like, and knowing I'm going to be interviewing you. And I'm like, that's the freaking cue.

• 14:05Charles Duhigg?

  That's it. That's it. And what's interesting is that if we could see inside your brain while that was happening, my, my guess is you ate the lemon bar. The first bite was probably pretty good. After the first bite, you probably even stopped paying attention to whether it was taste or not, because your brain expects that. And if you hadn't eaten that lemon, lemon bar, what we would have seen inside your brain is a sense of disappointment. Actually, the same sense of disappointment when clinical psychologists talk about this neurological disappointment, where they refer to it is as depression.

• 14:38Charles Duhigg?

  Because the same thing that causes clinical depression is the same basic pattern that happens when your brain expects some reward and then doesn't get it, your brain starts complaining. It makes you feel bad. It makes you feel disappointed. It makes you feel like you're missing something.

• 14:53Ed Mylett?

  Okay. And this is why change is so difficult for people, which to me, right now, we are now going to the brilliance of your work. Because the process of changing the habit is that, as you guys, just want to make sure everyone's with us, that what Charles is saying is there's a cue, then you have a routine to get a reward. So how do you create this new habit? What's brilliant is, he's leveraging how your brain already is wired to work. And so what do we change? Do we change the cue? I know the answer, but do we change the cue to create a new habit? Do we change the routine? Do we change the reward? Do we keep two of the three? Do we keep one of the three? How do we create a new habit?

• 15:29Charles Duhigg?

  So this is known as the golden rule of habit.

• 15:31Ed Mylett?

  Yes, so good.

• 15:32Charles Duhigg?

  And what it, what it says is, look, you, at first, you can use willpower, right? You could white knuckle your way past eating that lemon bar. You could white knuckle your way to going to the gym in the morning. And sometimes you have to.

• 15:45Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 15:46Charles Duhigg?

  But inevitably, what happens is, there's a setback, right? You, your mother-in-law comes into town and you're really stressed out. And so you go eat like a whole plate of, of lemon bars. Or you're just tired and you wake up and you don't feel like working out. So you your willpower is weak because willpower is like a muscle. It gets it gets tired. It gets weakened and you stop doing it. So what's the right way to create the habit? Because the habit lets us do things without having to use willpower. Well, the key is first of all, you have to diagnose the cue and the reward, right? So let's let's take your lemon bar. There are let's take a more serious habit. What other habits do you have that you that that you've tried to change?

• 16:23Ed Mylett?

  Smoking cigars.

• 16:24Charles Duhigg?

  Okay, okay. So what's the cue? When you when you start feeling that craving to smoke a cigar, what's the cue, do you think?

• 16:34Ed Mylett?

  Well, one, there's a visual cue when I see them or anybody around me is smoking them, I think is one. And I've I think stress. I think that when stress hits me, the the cue for me is for some reason, if I touch that cigar and I put it in my mouth, I'm in chill out mode with my dudes. Even though even though the dudes may not even be there anymore, but some of the happiest times of my life have been when that cigar is in my hand or my mouth with my buddies on a golf course or just sitting around talking smack. So stress causes me to want to chill and relax. I think the cue is stress most of the time.

• 17:10Charles Duhigg?

  And and the and the the reward, you think, is that you sort of feel that that relaxation? It's like, this is a signal to yourself, like, now it's time to put work away. Now I can relax. I can stop obsessing about the thing that's making me stressed.

• 17:23Ed Mylett?

  Well, Charles, you just said something that's so profound. I've been I gotta be honest with you. I've been smoking more and more cigars lately as I've been working more and more. It's almost my much my one cue to break my work cycle. Wow, I didn't think about it till you just said it.

• 17:36Charles Duhigg?

  Okay, so let's let's figure out how do we change this habit, right? Because because you know the cue and you know the reward. Now, what we want to find is we want to find a new behavior, a new routine that corresponds to that old cue and that delivers something similar to that old reward. So the cue, I think, doesn't have to change, right? You still need a break from work, like you still need to get to the end of the day and say, okay. Finished like that's now I'm gonna put it away. So let's keep the same cue. And the reward we want is something that makes you feel like you have permission to relax. What else in your life do you do that gives you permission? Gives you just a sense of sitting there and saying like, all right. Like this is, this is the time when I kick up my heels and I feel okay.

• 18:18Ed Mylett?

  We're cheating on this little because I have been working on it based on the foundation of your work on this thing. But I will tell you, the other time that I find myself in non-work chill mode is when I drink coffee. I know that sounds odd, but I consider coffee still to be healthy for me, the way that I drink it. So for me, the other time I'm like unplugged is usually in the morning or a billion of a lot. I'll even drink coffee in the afternoon. Is when I unplug and relax. So I have been using the same cue with the same reward. But the routine has been having a cup of coffee. For some reason, that just puts me in peaceful state. Disconnects me. And so I've been using coffee as that replaced routine, keeping the cue and the reward the same.

• 18:58Charles Duhigg?

  You know what else I I'm gonna do it. And oftentimes cues are pretty easy to figure out, right? Rewards can be tricky. So sometimes we need to run these experiments because like a reward could be like one of 10 things. We've got to figure out which one it is. My guess is that for you, not only does that cigar bring up the memory of kind of like good friends, relaxation. But because coffee is doing something similar. My guess is, and this is pretty typical, is that part of the reward there is stimulation, like literally like biochemical stimulation.

• 19:26Ed Mylett?

  I think in both.

• 19:27Charles Duhigg?

  It gives you a burst of energy, makes you feel good. That cigar nicotine, we know does the exact same thing. It gives us a burst of energy. Makes it, that's why people smoked for years, right? Because they actually liked it. And so my guess is that now it sounds like coffee is a great replacement habit for you. It's provide the same thing. But let's say we're now at like six or seven in the evening. You're getting home from work. You can't have a cup of coffee. Now the question is like, could you use decaf? Or maybe it's like, all you need is like an Oreo cookie. Like not enough sugar to throw off your diet, right? Maybe it's, it's not gonna like totally mess up unless you're, unless you're going hardcore keto. It's not gonna totally mess up what's going on, but maybe that small bit of sugar is just enough to give you. The stimulation that a cigar and coffee was providing.

• 20:11Ed Mylett?

  Really good.

• 20:12Charles Duhigg?

  And the question is, you just test it. You you try, you know, today, when you get home at seven and you're craving a cigar and it's too late for coffee. Try a cup of decaf. Tomorrow, you try a cookie and you just sort of run through these hypotheses until you figure out the thing. And there's going to be something that your brain is going to say, oh, you know what? It's just as good. It's it's the old cue and the old reward. I don't mind having a cookie instead of a cigar.

• 20:34Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, I gotta tell everybody, Charles and I have never talked about this. Okay, so you know, we didn't even know we were going to talk about this today. And I'm going to tell you how this has grown into such a habit that served me. Like, bro, you're brilliant. You just, I love brilliant people. So what I did is I like the taste of coffee. Like, I like coffee ice cream. I like coffee, anything. And so I did do this. Number one, the I either go with a decaf of protein coffee flavored powder in my coffee. But here's the other thing. This is like where it's just like completely flipped into a positive habit. I drink a coffee shake about seven thirty every single night. That's a protein shake that's delicious to me. So I literally went from moving this thing from my eat. I know something. I don't have a cigar anymore. I do have a cigar when I smoke on the golf course or something like that, but I went from.

• 21:17Ed Mylett?

  I've distilled it. Sometimes habits aren't eliminating something. It's reducing the frequency of something, right?

• 21:22Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. Just having control of.

• 21:24Ed Mylett?

  And I've gone all the way so that the cup of coffee earlier in the day and the coffee shake, which is a protein shake, and I got to get my protein in because I do lift weights at that time. And it's exactly Charles's formula, though. The cue is the same, which is sort of a stressful thing or trying to get out of work. I've replaced that cigar to went to coffee to went to a protein shake now, and it gives me the same reward. Euphoria, I get the sugar high, everything that you've said from my protein shake. That's just so brilliant. And that's.

• 21:49Charles Duhigg?

  And what I.

• 21:50Ed Mylett?

  Go ahead.

• 21:50Charles Duhigg?

  What I love about this is that you're exactly right. Being in control of your habits doesn't mean you have to give up cigars. It just means you decide when to have a cigar, right? Rather than letting it happen to you. And because you now understand your own habits, because you understand the habit loop inside your own head, you can change anything. Like, sometimes people ask me, so what's the difference between a good habit and a bad habit? You know, should the strategies differ? And the answer is, your brain doesn't distinguish between good habits and bad habits. Your brain just says habits. You decide which one is a good one or a bad one, your brain just wants to automate everything it can. And so there are often times when a cigar is not a bad habit when you're on the golf course, when you, when you want a cigar and it's time for a cigar and you're not doing it too much. And then there's other times when you like, it just

• 22:35Charles Duhigg?

  feels like it's controlling you instead of you making the choice yourself. And that's what this gives you. It gives all of us these tools to say, this is something I want to keep in my life, but I want to tone it down. This is something I want to bring into my life. I want to start exercising and I haven't. How do I figure it out? Okay, I need to find a cue and a reward for that exercise. It gives us control and that's what's so like deeply meaningful, right? Is to have control.

• 23:00Ed Mylett?

  There's no exaggeration that it changes your life because you really are your habits. So if I'm a person listening to this, let's, this is so good. If I'm a person listening to this, you say, I don't, how do I identify a cue? Like, here's all I know. I know that I find myself getting down or I find myself not wanting to get up and go to work or I, you know, I know that's not a habit that serves me or I, uh, whatever it might be, I, I concluded I'm going to be better with my children and be more loving and I find myself saying something I regret to them on a regular basis. How do we identify? Cause there are, it could be a room, it could be a sound. How do you start to look at your habit and go, what is the cue here? Like the application that's not, what would you say to that?

• 23:39Charles Duhigg?

  It's a great question. So, so there's a really easy method for this because like I said, cues are pretty easy. So first of all, identify what the behavior is that you want to shift, right? Search like, like saying like, be better with my kids. That's not really a habit, but when my kid, sometimes I snap at my kids.

• 23:55Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 23:56Charles Duhigg?

  Okay. So I know exactly what the behavior is. I want to stop snapping at my kids. Okay. So take an index card and for the next three or four days, every time you feel the instinct to snap at your kids, every single time it either happens or you just want, you just feel like you're going to, write down five things. You're going to write down, because all cues fall into these five categories for 95% of the time. A certain time of day, a particular place, a certain emotion, the presence of certain other people, or a preceding behavior that has become ritualized. So you're at dinner, one of your kids is like screwing around, they won't sit down. You just write down those five things. Okay. So now the

• 24:39Charles Duhigg?

  next morning, you have that same instinct. Now suddenly you want to snap at the kids again and you write down those five things and you start to notice. Whenever I want to snap at my kids, it's because I'm feeling even before the kids and the kid does something, I'm feeling annoyed. Like I'm either rushed and I'm stressed, or I'm having a tough conversation with my wife about like money stuff. I start to notice, okay, the cue seems to be, I'm in a particular emotional place whenever I want to snap at my kid. And when I'm not in that emotional place, even if they're screwing around at the dinner table or doing whatever normally drives me crazy, if I'm calm and relaxed, I don't feel any need to snap at my kid. So now we know what the cue is. The cue for that is a particular behavior,

• 25:24Charles Duhigg?

  a particular emotion. Very good. And it might be, it might be, you know, you mentioned that at 7:30 you have that protein drink. So for you, the protein drink might be a certain time of day. It might be that other people, whenever I get around gym, like for some reason, I like, I get really like worked up, I get really anxious. So your cue is gym. Now, that doesn't mean that you're gonna eradicate that cue from your life. You still gotta be in meetings with Jim. You still gotta like, you're still gonna be annoyed sometimes at the dinner table. You're still gonna be talking about tough things with your wife. But now you know what the cue is. And now part of you is a little bit on guard to say, normally, when I'm around this cue,

• 26:04Charles Duhigg?

  I snap at my children. And probably the reward is that it gives me a sense of control. Right? I'm feeling like overwhelmed. I'm feeling like I'm talking about money and it stresses me out. I'm feeling out of control. And I snap at my kid and now I feel in control. So now the question becomes, what else can give you that same feeling of control? So when you're feeling annoyed, when you're feeling weak, when you're feeling stressed, and you know that you're likely to snap at someone because you want to feel in control because that's a reward it delivers, what other behavior gives you that same feeling? And it might be something as simple as just saying, hey, you know what? I'm feeling annoyed right now. Jimmy, I see is like crawling out of his chair and driving me nuts. Let's all just take a break. We're just gonna control our breathing for 30 seconds. Really good.

• 26:49Charles Duhigg?

  Right? And that, and then suddenly like, suddenly you feel in control. You remind yourself you're in control.

• 26:54Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 26:54Charles Duhigg?

  And you've substituted that old habit with a new one.

• 26:56Ed Mylett?

  So I'm asking you hard stuff because this is really good. Mike, I think it's this awareness level. It's investing the time and trying to uncover what you said, that index card strategy. Okay. What preceded this?

• 27:06Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Ed Mylett?

  Times, because that is truly what your cue is on a negative habit.

• 27:10Charles Duhigg?

  Well, and the thing is that, remember that in that experiment, the rat's brains sort of turned off as they're running through the maze, right? This is why habits are so powerful is because our brain turns off in the grip of a habit. So we, so things that could be obvious to our spouse, things that could be obvious if we were paying attention, they're not obvious to us.

• 27:29Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Charles Duhigg?

  Because our brains turned off. That's what it's supposed to do in the grip of a habit.

• 27:32Ed Mylett?

  And that's sometimes why if it's a regrettable habit, and not all habits are, that you later go, why did I, what was I thinking? You weren't thinking.

• 27:39Charles Duhigg?

  That's exactly right.

• 27:40Ed Mylett?

  You were not thinking. You were in habit mode.

• 27:43Charles Duhigg?

  That's a hundred percent.

• 27:47Ed Mylett?

  So I'm golfing yesterday. I'm telling these guys, I'm interviewing this dude tomorrow that I wanted to talk to for a long time because the book made a massive, my work, I already talk a lot when I work with people like with athletes and stuff on creating triggers. We create them, create a trigger to put you into a state, right? And then there's a reward. So I didn't have your terminology, but I've used triggers and stuff like that for many, many years with getting people to get into a peak state. So I'm telling these guys about you. And I said, anything you want me to ask them? And I never asked, I never ask other people's questions on the show, but this question was so good from one of the dudes that I thought it was good. This is a person who owns a very prominent gym, like a lot of them, lot, lot, lot, one of the top gyms on the planet. He goes, look, a lot of people that come to our gym want to work out right when they wake up. They

• 28:32Ed Mylett?

  have a hard time creating the habit of waking up and, and finding themselves working out prior to work every day. They feel like they'd get a better workout in the morning, but they just don't seem to get their mojo going in the morning. And I said, it's interesting because he has this thing that says, you know, you have a cue or trigger, and then you have the routine you wish for, and then there's a reward. I said, I wonder if you could create, could the, I don't know the answer, so I'm going to ask you. Could the alarm going off become the cue that puts you into the routine of getting up, getting dressed, going to the gym? So the answer is, could the cue be something that simple? And then lastly, how do you create a reward for something like working out?

• 29:09Charles Duhigg?

  So it's a good, well, okay. So let me ask you. So, so do you work out every day?

• 29:13Ed Mylett?

  I work out about five days a week.

• 29:14Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 29:15Ed Mylett?

  Not about, I work out five days a week.

• 29:17Charles Duhigg?

  And do you do it in the morning, evenings? What, when's your, tell me about your?

• 29:19Ed Mylett?

  I do it in the morning.

• 29:21Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 29:21Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Charles Duhigg?

  And for you, you do it right after you wake up?

• 29:23Ed Mylett?

  Pretty close to it, within 30 minutes.

• 29:26Charles Duhigg?

  And have you got, when you wake up, that alarm goes off? Are your, your workout clothes, you know exactly where they are?

• 29:33Ed Mylett?

  My workout clothes are done. I'm in, I'm in, I'm in habit. I think, I think that probably the reason I'm asking it this way is that my alarm is the cue.

• 29:42Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 29:43Ed Mylett?

  That puts me, I think it is, it could be putting the workout clothes on, but I have a sequence of things that I've done repeatedly that trigger this routine.

• 29:54Charles Duhigg?

  And that's, that's great. Cause like, you don't need just one, like it's fine. If you're trying to create this exercise habit, it's fine to create seven cues, right? Put your running shoes next to the bed so you see them. Put your, lay out your workout clothes. All you gotta do is slip them on, right? All of that stuff. Now here's my question for you. When you first started working out, what was the reward? Cause when you first started, it sucks, right? Exercise is terrible before you go.

• 30:17Ed Mylett?

  That's the part where I was challenging myself about the formula. To be honest with you, I don't recall the reward other than I do recall, cause I didn't like working out. I didn't like getting sore. I didn't like sweating. Um, I didn't see immediate results. So what was the reward? I was thinking to myself. I, I can only conclude that I felt good about myself, that I was doing something I had never done before. I remember consciously driving back early. This was like 30 years ago, but I drove to the gym back in those days. I do recall pretty early, like one of the first few workouts I did going, well, most people wouldn't do this, man. Good job. I remember telling myself that, like you're doing something most people wouldn't be willing to do right now. And I think that was probably a form of reward was pride.

• 31:00Charles Duhigg?

  Yes.

• 31:01Ed Mylett?

  Pleasure.

• 31:01Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely.

• 31:03Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. I'm sure that's a, I mean, what's interesting is you, you could have told yourself something else. You could have said like, okay, so like, thank goodness I got it done. Or, you know, me and like every other person I saw in the gym with me this morning. There's like literally tens of thousands of people who are working at the gym right at the same time I am. Or you could have just said like, okay, check it off, got that done. But instead, what you did is you gave yourself a reward. You consciously decided to reward yourself. Now, my, my guess is, and you probably weren't even aware of this. If, if we were to go back like time travel, watch you. My guess is also you did a couple of other things. You probably also, without even realizing it, you might have let yourself eat a little bit better that day. Right? Maybe have a smoothie after that workout because you think you, you deserve it. Take a little bit of a longer shower, right?

• 31:48Charles Duhigg?

  Like let yourself really like kind of feel those endorphins. You were giving yourself rewards both consciously and unconsciously to make that exercise powerful. Now compare that to how so many people start to exercise. You say tomorrow I'm going to go for a run and you wake up and you start, you start looking for your workout clothes. And you're thinking the whole time like, I'm going to look like an idiot. I don't even know like where to run, like I'm going to like, I like, I don't, I don't have the right clothes. You finally get the clothes on, you go, you run for a little bit. You said like, I'm going to do a mile. You end up doing half a mile and you're like winded and you like come home and now you're running late. So you like jump in the shower as fast as you can. You like speed the kids to school and you're like, get out of the car, get out of the car. You like rush to your office and now for the first time you can like sit down at your desk and catch your breath.

• 32:32Charles Duhigg?

  And like you feel the sweat on your body and, and, and you realize you're like 10 minutes late to like the meeting. Most people punish themselves for exercising as they plan for the exercise. They don't plan for what happens after the exercise. They don't plan for that reward. You got in the habit of giving yourself a reward when you exercise. And part of it was deliberate and part of it was unconscious, but you gave yourself the space to have those rewards. And unless you do that, if you were super stressed, if you were rushing home from the gym that day, because you got to get to some meeting and you hadn't planned for it, you wouldn't have thought, man, I did great today. I did the thing that nobody else is doing. You would have thought, God, I gotta get home as fast as I can. You gotta create that space for the reward in your life.

• 33:14Ed Mylett?

  Oh, everyone, you need to go back and listen to that again. That's it. That's the thing. That's the thing that causes people, I think, to not make this a habit. It's like it's they don't plan this. Wow, that's so good. Plan the space for the reward in anything you want to create for yourself. I was kind of controversial early on in in personal development where everyone's grind, grind, grind. I said, hey, look, I outwork everybody, but you have to give room for for the reward to yourself, for the celebration, or eventually your brain concludes, I don't want to do this. I'm getting no dopamine. I'm getting nothing out of this.

• 33:46Charles Duhigg?

  So let me ask you now, now that you you exercise five times a week, it's like completely ingrained. What's the reward for you now? Like, what do you what do you feel or do after that workout?

• 33:57Ed Mylett?

  Well, it's funny. You said the shower thing. One of my favorite things in the world is how good I feel in the shower after I train. And that just sort of reflection of myself that and now there's a pride thing where like, I've been doing this for 30 years. I think there's a reward.

• 34:12Ed Mylett?

  I get I get multiple rewards. I get someone, you know, people telling you that you look great. That's a form of reward. I'm not giving it to myself, but it is a reward. It's someone saying, hey, what are you asking me for advice on how to work out over the years? You know, at the gym eventually, there ended up being these stacks of rewards. I'd say the reward now is I feel physically strong. I remind myself that I'm physically strong. It's certainly being physicals now become even past a habit to part of my identity. I feel like it's a part of my identity. It's been so ingrained into me that in the absence of it, I don't feel like myself anymore. So that it's become that deeply ingrained. But I do, I am, it's funny because I didn't know your work, but I've always been pretty good at going,

• 34:55Ed Mylett?

  hey, man, this is great what you're doing, like consciously doing it. I give myself other rewards, though, what you said earlier. Even the lemon bar thing, to be candid with you, I give myself permission to eat a certain way sometimes. And it's one of the rewards of having trained very hard is, hey, man, I've burned a bunch of calories already. I've done this, this, and this. I deserve the damn lemon bar.

• 35:17Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, and that doesn't mean it's gonna be a daily thing, right? Like, I don't deserve a lemon bar every single day. But when I feel that craving, it's okay to give into it. It's a, I'm making a reward for myself because I know that like this lemon bar, like this is not going to impact me. This one lemon bar, I've, I've banked away the self-discipline to allow myself this.

• 35:36Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 35:37Charles Duhigg?

  And that's a form of reward, and that's really powerful. And yet, you know, and I'm sure you see this all the time in your practice. America is a stoic nation. We are a nation that tries to, to bully ourselves into, into productivity, into success, into accomplishment. And the truth of the matter is, some of that is good, right? It's a great nation because we are so disciplined and then we have so much willpower. But the way that you leverage that, the way that you take advantage of that, is you give yourself time to enjoy the spoils of it.

• 36:10Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, and the truth is, what you're saying, this is what I wanted to get everybody to hear. You're doing this anyway. You're already rewarding yourself possibly for routines that don't serve you. So this is something you're going to do. So you might as well acknowledge it. What's great about what you're doing is you're leveraging the brain as it is already wired. Right? That's why your work is so powerful. You're already giving yourself rewards for behavior sometimes. You're already having cues that don't serve you into routines that don't serve you. So simply leveraging this is not, it's not nearly as difficult as it might seem. If you'll take an inventory or create cues, create a routine and have a reward. I also think some people are like, well, I should go to the gym. And like you said, everybody goes, this isn't something I should be patting myself on the back for. Not all rewards have to be a pat on the back.

• 36:54Ed Mylett?

  It could be, it could be that you just, there are days where I've had good workouts and I'll find myself even doing what we're doing now, I'm sitting going, I feel good. My back doesn't hurt today. My abs feel strong. That's a form of a reward. It makes that absolutely is. So it's this reward feature, and just so we're all clear on what Charles has been saying. If you want to change your habit, you can keep the same cue. Right? You can keep the same reward and change the routine in the middle. And that's a formula for change. Let's go to another application. This, by the way, and you could tell, I know people have entered. Then there's people that are really passionate about what you teach. I'm really passionate about this.

• 37:29Charles Duhigg?

  You, I, I mean, this is incredible. You're amazing.

• 37:32Ed Mylett?

  Cause I want people to change and I want them to just go, I want to change. How the heck do I change? This is how you change.

• 37:38Charles Duhigg?

  So this is how you make it happen.

• 37:40Ed Mylett?

  It's also true. So the application, let your minds go with your children. You want them to change a habit. There's a cue, there's a routine, there's a reward. But talk about it from an organizational standpoint. I'm going to confess something to you and then I'll let you reference it in the organizational part. My dad drank for the first 15 years of my life. He was an alcoholic. He was always a good man, always a good man, but oh, just had this habit that just didn't serve him, his work, his family, anybody. And my dad got sober and my dad was a part of AA for 35 some odd years. For my dad, that program worked very, very well. And you actually reference AA as one of the organizational structures that maybe they did this without even knowing it. But they sort of leveraged.

• 38:23Ed Mylett?

  So how does, how do Keystone Habits, habits in general, impact organizations? Or how can one change an organization that they're leading?

• 38:32Charles Duhigg?

  It's a great question and, and I'm, I'm really glad to hear that your dad found some solace in AA because, because it, you know, AA doesn't work for everyone, but it, it works for a lot of people by teaching them how to recognize their own cues, recognize the rewards that they're craving. So you mentioned this thing Keystone Habit. So this is an important idea because what Keystone Habit is, is that some habits seem to be more powerful than others. In many people's lives, when you change one habit, it seems to set off a chain reaction that changes other patterns. So for a lot of people, exercise is a Keystone Habit, right? On the days that you exercise, people, people end up eating, eating more healthily. Their eating habits change because they exercise that morning. They, they don't even really think about it, but it's, you know, you go into the cafeteria and your legs feel sore. And for some reason that means you get the healthy salad.

• 39:18Charles Duhigg?

  What's interesting is if you look at people who exercise for whom it's a Keystone Habit, they also tend to use their credit cards less on the days that they exercise. They procrastinate less at work. They'll start doing their dishes earlier in the day by about 20 minutes. There's a, these researchers named Oaten and Cheng who documented all of this. And, and that's not true for everyone though, right? So, so for people who have been athletes their entire lives, and maybe they, they, you know, had a kid, so they fell off for a couple of years. Now they're back to it. Exercising again, doesn't tend to be a super powerful keystone habit. It's more for people like me who, you know, I, I was not an athlete in high school. And then I started training for, for half marathons and for marathons and, and still do.

• 40:01Charles Duhigg?

  And, and for me, exercise has been a keystone habit. And the reason why is because it changes how I think about myself. You mentioned that being fit is now part of your identity. If you're the kind of person who has not been fit and suddenly you start running, then you, when you go into the, to the cafeteria, when you go into the grocery store and you, instead of pulling out your credit card, you think to yourself, on part of your brain, you think, I'm the kind of person who went for a run this morning. That kind of person doesn't eat a pastrami sandwich. That kind of person doesn't eat, doesn't buy some nonsense they don't need. You start changing your image of yourself to yourself. And, and the same thing is true in so many different places, particularly when it comes to AA, right? What does AA do? It makes you stand up and say, I am an alcoholic.

• 40:44Charles Duhigg?

  It starts changing your opinion, your self-identity of yourself. And it sets off a whole new cascade of changes. Or when you go to work, right? So, so many people listening probably go to an office and in that office, you have an identity. Your boss thinks of you a certain way. Your coworkers think of you a certain way. You're the guy who always cracks a joke when they need a joke. Or maybe you're the gal who always disagrees when someone's bringing up some nonsense idea and they need someone to shoot them down. You're that person. And so the question is, is that the person you want to be? And if it isn't, what rewards do you need from your organization to become the person you want to be? How can that organization help you become your best self?

• 41:27Charles Duhigg?

  By giving you the rewards to be who you want to be as opposed to just who you've always been?

• 41:36Ed Mylett?

  So if I'm leading an organization and there are cues that are creating

• 41:44Ed Mylett?

  a routine in the company that I want to change, are you saying that I need to link that new routine to a form of recognition or reward in order to change the behavior of an organization?

• 41:55Charles Duhigg?

  I think the first thing to do is call it out, right? So a lot of like, like take, um, take emails. Okay. So oftentimes when I talk to companies, they say like, I ask them, what's the worst habit inside this company? And they say, everyone sends emails, they CC everyone else on the email. My inbox is like a nightmare every single night because I'm on an 80% of those emails I didn't have to receive. So, so, but, okay, so let's talk about what the cue is. The cue is that when you're sending an email, there's this instinct, do I just put one person's name on it or I put 10 people's name on it? So I decided to put 10 people's name on it. What's the reward that's being offered to me? Probably the reward is CYA, right? Like as long as I have 10 other people on there, then no one can

• 42:36Charles Duhigg?

  blame me for leaving anyone out of the loop. No one's going to say, hey, Jim, like you made a mistake. Cause I would have said, look, you got an email. You could have objected two weeks ago if you had a problem with it, right? So how do we change that? We know that that instinct, that paranoia, that insecurity is going to be there regardless of what we do. So what we can do is we can sit down as a group and we can say, look, here's the cue. It's sending emails, right? And the reward that we're all craving is this, is this, this sense of safety, the sense of security from having other people in the loop that I know that there's someone else to blame instead of just me if things go wrong. Here as your boss, here's a promise I'm going to make. I am never ever going to blame you for

• 43:18Charles Duhigg?

  making a bad choice and not CC me on the email. That's how you, that, and I'm going to give you that security without putting 10 other names on it. Now, the thing is you have to mean it because there is going to come a time, your emails are going to go down and things are going to be much more efficient. And there's going to come a time that Jim, Jim makes some dumb decision and you think to yourself, if he had only CC'd me two weeks ago, we could have headed this off at the past. And at that moment, you have to decide, what do you care about more? Having like an orderly inbox? Or having Jim notify you about every single thing he's doing because you can't have both.

• 43:56Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 43:57Charles Duhigg?

  And now at least you know which choice you're making now instead of like organizational habits happening to you. Now you are making a decision and maybe you say to Jim, hey, Jim, by the way, just always CC me, right? You don't have to CC everyone else. Or maybe you say, actually, this is the price. This is the price of giving people freedom and responsibility to do their jobs. Netflix is a great example of this. When you go to Netflix, their corporate culture is freedom and responsibility. You can make any decision Netflix. You can sign any contract up to like half a million dollars. Every single worker can sign a contract up to half a million dollars with no approval from their bosses. Now, does that mean that sometimes bad contracts get signed? Absolutely.

• 44:39Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely, but they also are able to move so fast and so efficiently because of that, that they beat their competitors. And that outweighs those few instances of people signing bad contracts. And by the way, when someone does sign a bad contract, they go to them and they say, can you explain the mistake? And if they can say, here's what I learned from it, they say, okay, no problem. And if they can't, they say, look, Netflix is in the right place for you. Thank God you signed this bad contract and you alerted us to the fact that you're not a good fit. You know, six months or two years ahead of when it should have happened or it could have otherwise happened. So the point is that like, just understanding habits doesn't mean the world becomes perfect. But it means you are in control of what choices you're making.

• 45:18Ed Mylett?

  So this is so good. I want to ask you something. I don't know if you've ever been asked this before. I'm curious about this. The reward part, what is more, maybe not more important, it doesn't matter. Is it the extent of the reward? In other words, the degree of the reward, like there's a difference between pat on the back and here's a hundred million dollars. There's a difference in a reward, right? So in creating a new habit, if we're doing with ourselves, or we're trying to change the habits of our company or our family or our church or whatever it is. Is it the extent, the degree of the reward or the repetition of it?

• 45:51Charles Duhigg?

  It's actually something else. It's the timeliness of it.

• 45:55Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 45:57Charles Duhigg?

  So as fast as humanly possible.

• 45:59Ed Mylett?

  The immediacy of the reward.

• 46:01Charles Duhigg?

  The immediacy and the less immediate it is, the bigger the reward needs to be. So, so think about like now, when you exercise, you're in that shower, right? You literally like just got out of your gym clothes. You're probably seven minutes from your workout. You've got those endorphins and endocannabinoids in your brain and they are making you feel amazing. Right? That happens almost right away. In fact, as you're lifting, those things are in your brain, making you feel good. And now you're really enjoying them in the shower. Now, if you didn't have those, if you're, if every time you work out, like you come out afterwards and you're feeling sore and weak, which happens sometimes, then when you, then you're going to have to start seeing the results pretty eventually, right? And those results aren't going to be like, oh, like my wrist looks a little bit better. It's like, no, man, I got like, I got guns.

• 46:45Charles Duhigg?

  I'm putting it on, right? So what happens is, is that a reward has two components that determine how powerful it is. First is exactly what you mentioned, the amplitude, how big is the size of the reward? And the second part of it is the immediacy of it. And they act in tandem. If a reward is immediate, the amplitude does not have to be huge. If a reward is delayed, the amplitude has to be pretty big. And the reason why is because our brains are like computers that discount everything. So we know that eating a, eating a donut three days from now is less valuable than eating a donut right now. So if I'm going to wait three days, the donut has to be tastier than the donut I'm going to have right now. And so that's how you kind of figure out what that reward ought to be.

• 47:28Ed Mylett?

  God, this is so good. Okay, I'm bummed. We'll have time for two more questions, so.

• 47:32Charles Duhigg?

  You got it.

• 47:33Ed Mylett?

  Cause I just could keep going with you. There's so much to dig deep here. Let's talk about the free will piece of it for a minute. So, okay, I think there's an analogy in the book about gambling that I think is really, I just want people to be able to picture. I always, there's, there's concept and then there's application. And I think the more clearly someone gets a concept, the more they can take it and apply it in their own lives. So, yeah, becoming a gambling addict, walk us through, how does this happen? That that habit get established? I want them to hear your description because it's brilliant. And then if we wanted to change that potential habit, what would you recommend?

• 48:09Charles Duhigg?

  So, so the way that it happens, and it's, it's complicated, right? Cause, cause casino companies are so good at this. They're so, they're so precise and they have so much data. But in general, what they do is they want to let you win just enough to make you feel like every single time you've lost, that it's been a near miss. This is actually known as the near miss effect. If you go and you play slots, which you'll notice is because when the slot wheels come up, it's not random, right? There's a computer determining what, what happens. You'll win about one every 30 slot pulls. You'll have a near miss about 15 of every 30 slot pulls. And the near miss means you get seven, seven, and then the next seven is just a little bit out of place, right? Yes.

• 48:54Charles Duhigg?

  And you think to yourself, oh man, it was so close. If I just play one more time, I'm probably going to get it. Our brain has this, has this weakness, which is that we look for patterns, even when those patterns don't exist. And so whenever we, you know, the dice don't remember what they rolled last time, but we think, oh man, it's been, you know, I just rolled two threes in a row. I'm probably going to roll another three, or maybe I'm never going to roll another three because I just rolled two threes. The dice don't care. It's a, it's a fresh roll every single time, but our brain, our brain loves patterns. And this is good because we use patterns to survive, but companies can use it against us. And so the question then becomes, how do we change this? How do we get better at it? The first thing is to recognize what the casinos are doing.

• 49:37Charles Duhigg?

  When they're giving you free drinks, when they're giving you comp rooms, they are not doing it out of the kindness of their heart. They are not giving you a reward. They're making it easier for you to lose your money, right? And you really have to accept that and embrace that. But then second of all, when you feel that near miss instant kicking in, you see that slot machine and it almost got you the jackpot, remind yourself, that does not mean that I'm closer to winning. It also doesn't mean I'm farther away than winning, but it has no impact whatsoever on what's going to happen next time. True. If I put that, if I've lost the first la, the last five spins, the odds are I'm going to lose the next five spins. And here's the next thing that the casinos do. They give what are known as intermittent, non-presumable rewards.

• 50:22Charles Duhigg?

  So they give you rewards when you don't expect it. Video games do the same thing, right? When you're playing a video game, there's all these like expected rewards. Like if I make it to the end of this level, then I get like, you know, new armor or something like that. But ever so often you'll like shoot some enemy and like pick up a new gun or something like that. All these unexpected rewards because our brain loves unexpected rewards even more than expected rewards. If I tell you I'm going to give you a donut in 10 minutes, you're going to enjoy it less than if I just give you the donut right now.

• 50:49Ed Mylett?

  True.

• 50:50Charles Duhigg?

  And so as a result, as long as you're aware of what the casinos are doing, now you can take control. Cause gambling isn't bad, but gambling, when you don't feel like you have any control over it is terrible.

• 51:01Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, I was thinking about the reason it becomes so habitual too, is the reward when you do win is immediate. So there's an immediate to it and it's

• 51:07Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. There's all those bells.

• 51:08Ed Mylett?

  And it's amplified also.

• 51:10Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Ed Mylett?

  So I was thinking about that. As a leader, listening to this, what Charles just said, gave you one of the great keys to being a great leader in an organization, which is unexpected rewards for your folks also. Not just when they perform that you reward them, but that there are unexpected rewards that you give people that create a sense of a culture in your family. You know, hey, if you guys get straight A's, we're going on vacation or you're getting a hundred dollars. You're getting $2 an A or whatever it is. That's one thing. Another thing, just to reward your family, just to reward your team, reward your organization unexpectedly. Major key in there in leading people.

• 51:42Charles Duhigg?

  And, and, and that reward doesn't have to be transactional. It can be as simple as just coming into someone's office and saying,

• 51:46Ed Mylett?

  Appreciate.

• 51:47Charles Duhigg?

  Jim, I just want you to know, I've noticed in the last two weeks, you've been killing them, man. Like, thank you so much for being here. With my kids, I try and do this, right? Like, I don't wait for them to get their grades. Like if, if my, my, one of my kids, Ollie, if he works hard over the weekend, I say like, hey, look, I just want you to know, I noticed.

• 52:03Ed Mylett?

  I love that, brother.

• 52:05Charles Duhigg?

  Killing this, man.

• 52:05Ed Mylett?

  I love that. And the reason that's so important, then we'll do our last question is that most of us were raised only getting love and recognition and reward when we performed. And so we've become performance addicts. We actually connect love with recognition. And that's not a very good thing. It's not very healthy so that if your children can feel a sense of love from you unconditionally to their performance. Or unexpectedly rather to performance. That's a huge deal in leading

• 52:30Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely.

• 52:31Ed Mylett?

  And everywhere else. Last question. It's a generic one.

• 52:33Charles Duhigg?

  Sure.

• 52:33Ed Mylett?

  Just a basic one. First off, thank you for today.

• 52:36Charles Duhigg?

  No, thank you.

• 52:37Ed Mylett?

  I loved today's conversation. I knew I would. I've wanted to talk with you for so many years and your team reached out. I'm like, yes. So, um, just to, I'm listening today or I'm watching. Okay. I got most of it. And I want to start a new habit that certainly I'm not eliminating a bad one or anything like that. I want to start making 10 phone calls a day or I'm going to get up early and work out. I'm going to be, uh, you know, I'm going to start eating healthier, whatever it might be. And I ran into you at Starbucks. I said, just give me a quick message about what I should do next. You would say what?

• 53:10Charles Duhigg?

  Okay. So here's the thing. First of all, start as small as you can. Right? So like if, if it, it's not going to be 10 phone calls tomorrow. You're going to make one phone call tomorrow. You're going to make one phone call. You wouldn't have otherwise made. And you're going to sit down and you're going to say, here's my cue. When that clock hits one o'clock, when I'm done with lunch, when it's 4:50 and usually I walk out the door, that's the moment it would, that's my cue. That when I'm feeling powerful, uh, cause I just had a cup of coffee. That I'm deciding that's my cue to make one phone call. And when I'm done with that one phone call, no matter how it goes, phone call might go well, might go poorly. They might not even pick up. They might tell me to like buzz off. Does not matter. I'm going to give myself a reward and I'm going to decide ahead of time what that reward is.

• 53:51Charles Duhigg?

  I'm going to let myself have another cup of coffee. I'm going to go take a walk around the block. I'm going to let myself watch Netflix on my computer for 10 minutes. Whatever it is and just do it. And you'll find it is the easiest thing on earth. You're going to spend more time rewarding yourself than you are making the phone call. But then the next day, you're going to say, I'm going to do two phone calls. And it's going to be pretty easy because you're looking forward to that Netflix or you're looking for the, to that cup of coffee. And pretty soon you're going to be pounding out 10 phone calls every single day and you're not even going to think about it. You'll, you won't, you won't even be conscious that you're giving yourself a reward. Maybe you'll still get the coffee or maybe it'll just be a sense of accomplishment. Cause you're thinking to yourself, you know, I wanted to do 10 phone calls like three weeks ago and now I'm doing it. I'm making it happen.

• 54:35Charles Duhigg?

  Start small, come up with a plan that has a cue and a reward, and then let it happen.

• 54:40Ed Mylett?

  So good. So start small. And everybody, you know, the routine, the habit you want. The idea now is you got to create the cue and you got to create the reward. You have to do it repeatedly and the reward needs to be immediate. It's another thing that I learned today. And I don't think the also remember what Charles said earlier in the year. It doesn't have to be huge reward. No, it has to be an adequate reward for what you're asking of yourself. This is one of those podcasts to people that I know makes an immediate difference in their lives. So I'm very grateful to you. And we didn't waste a second like we flew through.

• 55:07Charles Duhigg?

  Thank you for having me on. I really. And if anyone has any questions, you can find me online. Just Google my name, Charles Duhigg, Google the power of habit. My email address will come up. It's it's a Charles at Charles Duhigg.com. I respond to every single email that I get. And from readers or from listeners or whatever it is. It might take a couple of weeks, but I promise you, you're going to get a response. And and yeah, if you have any questions, let me know.

• 55:33Ed Mylett?

  You're going to get flooded. All right, brother. Thanks so much, Charles. Everybody else, hey, I know you got tremendous value. This is one of the things you want your kids, your team, your organization to hear. Share it with everybody that you love and care about, that you believe in. Fastest growing show in the world and we are already huge, but we keep doubling every 90 days. And that's because you guys all share the show. So God bless all of you. Max out your life. This is the Ed Mylett Show.