Do something that requires a lot of discipline.

Instead, here are 3 uncommon ways in which you can grow your total willpower capacity over time: Having been to the moon and back in terms of willpower research, I don’t want to tell you to eat right, sleep enough and exercise regularly. Not all habits are created equal and Duhigg says willpower is by far one of the most important ones, as it helps us do better in all aspects of life.

Lesson 3: Your most important habit is willpower, and you can strengthen it over time in 3 ways. You’ll still have the entire experience from A to Z, but instead of pressing a button you’re now pouring hot water over decaf coffee powder, and voilà, you won’t miss caffeine for even a single day. If you’re trying to get off caffeine, the tweak is incredibly simple: switch to decaf ( like my “friend” Replacing Rick). The trick to changing a habit then, is to switch the routine, and leave everything else in tact. In case of the coffee, you might crave it the second you sit down at your kitchen table, and when you can’t have it that day, because the machine broke, you’ll probably get very grumpy and buy one later at work. Naturally, the more often you reinforce a habit, the more embedded in your brain it gets. Lesson 2: You can change your habits by substituting just one part of the loop, the routine. That’s how habits are built and the stronger this link gets, the harder it becomes to change them. At the beginning, to figure out which habit to engage in, and at the end, when the link between cue and routine is reinforced ( here’s a graphic from the book). Your brain’s activity only spikes twice during this loop. Note: My friend Sam Thomas Davies created an excellent blog post with a beautiful visualization of the loop. Lastly, you’ll receive a reward for completing the routine, such as the rich smell of your coffee, it’s hearty taste and getting to watch the steam rise from the cup as it sits on your kitchen table in the sunlight (I really love coffee, can you tell?). The routine is the behavior you then automatically engage in, which, for drinking coffee, might be to go over to your coffeemaker, turn it on, and press the “large cup” button.

The cue is what triggers you to do the habit, for example sitting down at your kitchen table to have breakfast every morning at 7 AM. Habits are your brain’s way of saving energy, so given you spend around 6 of your 16 waking hours doing things you’re not aware of, it might be worth understanding what happens here.ĭuhigg discovered that at the root of all habits, like drinking your coffee every morning, lies a simple 3-part loop. Roughly 40% of what you do happens on autopilot. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: Habits work in 3-step loops: cue, routine, reward.

The power of habit ted talk