Jan 24, 2023
Habits are foundational to
everything we do. When we think about habits we tend to think about
the “bad” ones, things we want to change but there is so much more
to it. Our brains run on habits, and without them, we couldn’t
function. Many episodes of this podcast that have been dedicated to
habits and related topics throughout the years, and this is the
first one, which originally aired in the fall of
2019.
Since then, I’ve interviewed
habits expert Wendy Wood and discussed habits with Richard Chataway
(links to their episodes in these notes). I included habits heavily
in my books and the reason I chose to refresh this episode right
now is because of this upcoming Friday’s guest.
Cassie Holmes, the author
of Happier
Hour is my guest on
Friday, and I thought that some reflection on habits is the best
way to set you up to get the most out of that conversation. When
you look at your day, what makes you happy? What is serving you and
what isn’t? What has become a habit and what you should be more
thoughtful about? This episode will help you in that process to
understand further what a habit is, how they work, and what to keep
in mind as you look to reinforce some and change
others.
The main thing to remember is
that we need habits. They aren’t inherently bad. Most of them are
good. Understanding them and leveraging them is where the
opportunity lies.
Show Notes:
- [00:37] Today’s episode is all
about habits. Habits are foundational to everything we
do.
- [02:45] You have a lot more
good habits than bad ones. You just aren’t consciously aware of the
vast majority of them.
- [04:27] Sorting by color is a
form of habitual purchasing. Even with infrequent purchases, the
place you go and look is based on habits.
- [06:25] The human brain
essentially works on many many
associations.
- [09:03] Up to 95% of all buying
decisions are habitual.
- [11:09] Unfortunately the idea
that it takes us 21-30 days to create a habit is
wrong.
- [13:33] 21 days is not the
magic number for making or breaking a habit.
- [15:16] A 2009 study from the
European Journal of Social Psychology found the average number of
days it took to form a habit was 66 days. (But don’t let that fool
you…the range of data points matters!)
- [16:58] We approach habit
changing all wrong.
- [18:20] Habits are made up of
four phases: cue, craving, response, and reward.
- [19:31] Habits form because
your brain is trying to find predictable ways to get rewards. A cue
is a signal to the brain that there is a reward around and that
instantly leads to craving/desire/filter for that
item.
- [21:21] If you want to change a
habit or start a new one, the cue and reward phases are driving the
behavior.
- [22:44] Cues have been found to
fall into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state,
other people, and an immediately preceding
action.
- [24:27] You aren’t craving
the thing, but rather the reward it
provides.
- [27:05] When we know the cue
and the reward our brain wants we can work to change the
habit.
- [29:31] One other crazy brain
trick is word choice.
- [31:27] Saying “I don’t” is
empowering. This was your choice. It affirms the choice you made
and makes you feel determined and full of willpower. (This is very
different from “I can’t.”)
- [33:12] You should be confident
that you made this choice so you can firmly say “No, I don’t do
that.”
- [35:04] We can check our
notifications and emails every couple of hours or a couple of times
a day (instead of every instant as we get continuous pings, dings
and buzzes) and it will be fine. Once the cue is gone, we won’t
look at our phones as much and we can be more
productive.
- [38:07] Interrupting shoppers'
habitual sequence can be a problem depending on your business
positioning.
- [39:05] As the brand leader you
don’t want to do too much to shake things up or rock the
boat.
- [41:59] The habits of your
current and potential customers are important to consider when
building out your strategies.
- [42:28] Melina’s closing
thoughts
- [43:29] We are all surrounded
by habits all day, they are a huge portion of the 35,000 decisions
we all make each day. Understanding the rules of your habits is the
first step in identifying which are working well for you and which
you might want to let go of because they aren’t serving you
well.
- [44:58] You want to focus on
the right stuff at the right time and not changes habits that you
don’t need to.
Thanks for listening. Don’t
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what you heard, please leave a
review on iTunes
and share what you liked about the
show.
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