Hey there, guys!
Today I wanted to give you five lessons that I learned
from reading the book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
Now, I read this book a little while ago.
I took a lot of notes on it and learned a ton from it
and it actually helped me start to change a lot of my habits
which led to some pretty drastic changes in my life.
So, I wanted to share some of the most important things
that I've learned from this book.
And the first lesson, is simply that all habits
can be broken down into a three-step process.
Habits are triggered by cues
which then lead into a routine
and the routine ultimately culminates in a reward.
One of the key things to note in this lesson
is that habits are delicate things.
They don't trigger unless the cue triggers them.
So if you don't expose yourself to a cue
you're not going to do a habit.
Now, this is important for both good habits and bad habits.
You need to build cues that trigger good habits
and you want to try to avoid cues that trigger the bad ones.
Now, speaking of cues that trigger habits
the second lesson I learned from this book
that I want to share with you is that almost all cues
fall into one of five different categories.
They either fall into the category of location
time, emotional state, actions of other people
or the immediately preceding action.
Knowing these five categories of cues
is useful when you wanna start changing bad habits
because they'll allow you to pick out the cues
of each individual, specific habit that you're targeting.
Now, the third lesson that I learned
from this book is that there's actually
a fourth component to the habit loop.
When I read the first chapter
it presented the first three parts of that loop
but then later on in the book you learn about the fourth one
which is craving.
Through an experiment done on a monkey
scientists have been able to figure out
that in the initial stages of building a habit
the brain receives a spike of activity.
Basically, a dopamine surge, when the actual reward
of the habit is achieved.
However, as time goes on and the habit is done over and over
and over again and becomes more ingrained
the spike of activity starts to come
before the routine has even gone through.
It comes when the cue happens.
Now what this means for you is that when you're exposed
to a cue for a habit that you've already had for a while
and have gone through many different times
your brain gets that spike of activity
before even going through the routine.
At that point you get this craving
this need to get the reward and it's self-perpetuating cycle
that keeps the habit going.
Now the book talks a lot about how to change your habits
how to actually break bad habits and start building new ones
but one of the most interesting parts of this
that I read about, which I wanna make the subject
of this fourth lesson, is that people who want to break
bad habits or who are trying to make a change in their life
are often more successful if they plan in advance
what they're going to do when there's a pain point
when something difficult comes up.
The example Duhigg gave in the book was of people
who had knee-replacement surgeries.
People who have this surgery have to go through
lots of painful rehabilitation and walking, exercising
to actually regain full functionality of their knees
but this rehabilitation is actually really painful
and a lot of patients just can't muster
the willpower to go through it.
Now what researchers found is patients
who actually wrote down a plan of what they were
going to do at specific times during the day
to rehabilitate their knee were much more likely
to go through that painful rehabilitation process
and were, in turn, much more likely to recover.
And finally, the last lesson that I wanna share
from this book is that some habits have a tendency
to spawn other habits and these habits are called
keystone habits.
The book mentions that for people trying to lose weight
one of the most successful methods that has been used
is simply having them keep a daily food journal.
By establishing this one little, easy-to-maintain habit
dieters were actually able to recognize patterns
in their life they hadn't noticed before
and that spurred them on to start making
more positive changes to tackle those patterns.
Essentially, keystone habits help to create small wins
which, in turn, boost your overall motivation
and give you some momentum to build
even more habits in your life.
To give you a personal example, I started
getting serious about building new habits back in 2014
and my keystone habit was simply waking up early everyday.
By establishing that habit, I was waking up early
and feeling really productive in the morning
and that gave me the motivation to start creating
a morning routine full of other good habits.
So, those are my five lessons, I wanted to share
with you from The Power of Habit.
Overall, I learned a lot from this book
and I highly recommend reading it.
And if you wanna find it, I've linked to it
down in the description below.
By the way, this video is the start of a new series
in this channel that I'm calling Five Lessons.
Essentially, when I finish a book that I really
wanna share lessons from with you guys
I'm gonna create a video that shares those lessons.
And I'm doing this because I'm not really
that good at criticizing books.
I'm not really a reviewer, of sorts
but I am a good curator and I do like
sharing the things that I learn.
Now these videos won't be replacing the weekly videos
that are already coming out on this channel
they'll actually be in addition to those videos
and they won't be weekly themselves
because I don't read a book every single week.
I actually take my time to read books
and I make sure to take really good notes on them
and I think that'll enable me to share
better lessons from them as well.
So, if you're already a subscriber to this channel
don't worry, the other content's not going away
this is simply in addition to it.
And if you're new here, this channel is actually all about
studying more effectively and being a better student.
So, if you enjoyed this video and you wanna learn
how to learn more effectively, try subscribing.
Also, if you've already read this book
or you're a voracious reader and just want
more book recommendations, I've got a whole list of books
that I've enjoyed and think are really good for students
on my site and you can click the card or the link
down in the description to find them right now.
That's all I got, so thanks so much for watching
and I'll see you on Thursday.
Hey guys, thanks so much for watching
this inaugural video of my Five Lessons series.
Now, if you enjoyed it, you can support
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If you wanna read a summary for all five of these lessons
and get links to this book and others I recommend
click the orange logo right there
to go to the companion blog post.
You can click the thumbnail to see another video
of mine with book recommendations.
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Thanks.