THE POWER OF HABIT - Inglês (2024)

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Ulisses Ferreira 04/10/2024

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<p>The Power of Habit is a work of nonfiction. Nonetheless, some</p><p>names and personal characteristics of individuals or events have</p><p>been changed in order to disguise identities. Any resulting</p><p>resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and</p><p>unintentional.</p><p>Copyright © 2012 by Charles Duhigg</p><p>All rights reserved.</p><p>Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of</p><p>The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random</p><p>House, Inc., New York.</p><p>RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of</p><p>Random House, Inc.</p><p>Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data</p><p>Duhigg, Charles.</p><p>The power of habit : why we do what we do in life and business</p><p>/ by Charles Duhigg.</p><p>p. cm.</p><p>Includes bibliographical references and index.</p><p>eISBN: 978-0-679-60385-6</p><p>1. Habit. 2. Habit—Social aspects. 3. Change</p><p>(Psychology) I. Title.</p><p>BF335.D76 2012</p><p>158.1—dc23 2011029545</p><p>Illustration on this page by Andrew Pole</p><p>All other illustrations by Anton Ioukhnovets</p><p>www.atrandom.com</p><p>v3.1</p><p>CONTENTS</p><p>Cover</p><p>Title Page</p><p>Copyright</p><p>Dedication</p><p>PROLOGUE</p><p>The Habit Cure</p><p>PART ONE</p><p>The Habits of Individuals</p><p>1. THE HABIT LOOP</p><p>How Habits Work</p><p>2. THE CRAVING BRAIN</p><p>How to Create New Habits</p><p>3. THE GOLDEN RULE OF HABIT CHANGE</p><p>Why Transformation Occurs</p><p>PART TWO</p><p>The Habits of Successful Organizations</p><p>4. KEYSTONE HABITS, OR THE BALLAD OF PAUL O’NEILL</p><p>Which Habits Matter Most</p><p>5. STARBUCKS AND THE HABIT OF SUCCESS</p><p>When Willpower Becomes Automatic</p><p>6. THE POWER OF A CRISIS</p><p>How Leaders Create Habits Through Accident</p><p>and Design</p><p>7. HOW TARGET KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT BEFORE YOU</p><p>DO</p><p>When Companies Predict (and Manipulate) Habits</p><p>PART THREE</p><p>The Habits of Societies</p><p>8. SADDLEBACK CHURCH AND THE MONTGOMERY BUS</p><p>BOYCOTT</p><p>How Movements Happen</p><p>9. THE NEUROLOGY OF FREE WILL</p><p>Are We Responsible for Our Habits?</p><p>APPENDIX</p><p>A Reader’s Guide to Using These Ideas</p><p>Acknowledgments</p><p>A Note on Sources</p><p>Notes</p><p>PROLOGUE</p><p>The Habit Cure</p><p>She was the scientists’ favorite participant.</p><p>Lisa Allen, according to her file, was thirty-four years old, had</p><p>started smoking and drinking when she was sixteen, and had</p><p>struggled with obesity for most of her life. At one point, in her mid-</p><p>twenties, collection agencies were hounding her to recover $10,000</p><p>in debts. An old résumé listed her longest job as lasting less than a</p><p>year.</p><p>The woman in front of the researchers today, however, was lean</p><p>and vibrant, with the toned legs of a runner. She looked a decade</p><p>younger than the photos in her chart and like she could out-exercise</p><p>anyone in the room. According to the most recent report in her file,</p><p>Lisa had no outstanding debts, didn’t drink, and was in her thirty-</p><p>ninth month at a graphic design firm.</p><p>“How long since your last cigarette?” one of the physicians</p><p>asked, starting down the list of questions Lisa answered every time</p><p>she came to this laboratory outside Bethesda, Maryland.</p><p>“Almost four years,” she said, “and I’ve lost sixty pounds and</p><p>run a marathon since then.” She’d also started a master’s degree</p><p>and bought a home. It had been an eventful stretch.</p><p>The scientists in the room included neurologists, psychologists,</p><p>geneticists, and a sociologist. For the past three years, with funding</p><p>from the National Institutes of Health, they had poked and prodded</p><p>Lisa and more than two dozen other former smokers, chronic</p><p>overeaters, problem drinkers, obsessive shoppers, and people with</p><p>other destructive habits. All of the participants had one thing in</p><p>common: They had remade their lives in relatively short periods of</p><p>time. The researchers wanted to understand how. So they measured</p><p>subjects’ vital signs, installed video cameras inside their homes to</p><p>watch their daily routines, sequenced portions of their DNA, and,</p><p>with technologies that allowed them to peer inside people’s skulls in</p><p>real time, watched as blood and electrical impulses flowed through</p><p>their brains while they were exposed to temptations such as</p><p>cigarette smoke and lavish meals.prl.1 The researchers’ goal was to</p><p>figure out how habits work on a neurological level—and what it took</p><p>to make them change.</p><p>“I know you’ve told this story a dozen times,” the doctor said to</p><p>Lisa, “but some of my colleagues have only heard it secondhand.</p><p>Would you mind describing again how you gave up cigarettes?”</p><p>“Sure,” Lisa said. “It started in Cairo.” The vacation had been</p><p>something of a rash decision, she explained. A few months earlier,</p><p>her husband had come home from work and announced that he was</p><p>leaving her because he was in love with another woman. It took Lisa</p><p>a while to process the betrayal and absorb the fact that she was</p><p>actually getting a divorce. There was a period of mourning, then a</p><p>period of obsessively spying on him, following his new girlfriend</p><p>around town, calling her after midnight and hanging up. Then there</p><p>was the evening Lisa showed up at the girlfriend’s house, drunk,</p><p>pounding on her door and screaming that she was going to burn the</p><p>condo down.</p><p>“It wasn’t a great time for me,” Lisa said. “I had always wanted</p><p>to see the pyramids, and my credit cards weren’t maxed out yet,</p><p>so … ”</p><p>On her first morning in Cairo, Lisa woke at dawn to the sound of</p><p>the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. It was pitch black inside her</p><p>hotel room. Half blind and jet-lagged, she reached for a cigarette.</p><p>She was so disoriented that she didn’t realize—until she</p><p>smelled burning plastic—that she was trying to light a pen, not a</p><p>Marlboro. She had spent the past four months crying, binge eating,</p><p>unable to sleep, and feeling ashamed, helpless, depressed, and</p><p>angry, all at once. Lying in bed, she broke down. “It was like this</p><p>wave of sadness,” she said. “I felt like everything I had ever wanted</p><p>had crumbled. I couldn’t even smoke right.</p><p>“And then I started thinking about my ex-husband, and how</p><p>hard it would be to find another job when I got back, and how much I</p><p>was going to hate it and how unhealthy I felt all the time. I got up and</p><p>knocked over a water jug and it shattered on the floor, and I started</p><p>crying even harder. I felt desperate, like I had to change something,</p><p>at least one thing I could control.”</p><p>She showered and left the hotel. As she rode through Cairo’s</p><p>rutted streets in a taxi and then onto the dirt roads leading to the</p><p>Sphinx, the pyramids of Giza, and the vast, endless desert around</p><p>them, her self-pity, for a brief moment, gave way. She needed a goal</p><p>in her life, she thought. Something to work toward.</p><p>So she decided, sitting in the taxi, that she would come back to</p><p>Egypt and trek through the desert.</p><p>It was a crazy idea, Lisa knew. She was out of shape,</p><p>overweight, with no money in the bank. She didn’t know the name of</p><p>the desert she was looking at or if such a trip was possible. None of</p><p>that mattered, though. She needed something to focus on. Lisa</p><p>decided that she would give herself one year to prepare. And to</p><p>survive such an expedition, she was certain she would have to make</p><p>sacrifices.</p><p>In particular, she would need to quit smoking.</p><p>When Lisa finally made her way across the desert eleven</p><p>months later—in an air-conditioned and motorized tour with a half-</p><p>dozen other people, mind you—the caravan carried so much water,</p><p>food, tents, maps, global positioning systems, and two-way radios</p><p>that throwing in a carton of cigarettes wouldn’t have made much of a</p><p>difference.</p><p>But in the taxi, Lisa didn’t know that. And to the scientists at the</p><p>laboratory, the details of her trek weren’t relevant. Because for</p><p>reasons they were just beginning to understand, that one small shift</p><p>in Lisa’s perception that day in Cairo—the conviction that she had to</p><p>give up smoking to accomplish her goal—had touched off a series of</p><p>changes that would ultimately radiate out to every part of her life.</p><p>Over the next six months, she would replace smoking with jogging,</p><p>and that, in turn, changed how she ate, worked, slept, saved money,</p><p>scheduled her workdays, planned for the future, and so on. She</p><p>would start running half-marathons, and then a marathon, go back to</p><p>school,</p><p>The friend, however, was persistent.</p><p>He came back again and again, appealing to Hopkins’s considerable</p><p>ego until, eventually, the ad man gave in.</p><p>“I finally agreed to undertake the campaign if he gave me a six</p><p>months’ option on a block of stock,” Hopkins wrote. The friend</p><p>agreed.</p><p>It would be the wisest financial decision of Hopkins’s life.</p><p>Within five years of that partnership, Hopkins turned Pepsodent</p><p>into one of the best-known products on earth and, in the process,</p><p>helped create a toothbrushing habit that moved across America with</p><p>startling speed. Soon, everyone from Shirley Temple to Clark Gable</p><p>was bragging about their “Pepsodent smile.”2.4By 1930, Pepsodent</p><p>was sold in China, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and almost</p><p>anywhere else Hopkins could buy ads.2.5A decade after the first</p><p>Pepsodent campaign, pollsters found that toothbrushing had become</p><p>a ritual for more than half the American population.2.6 Hopkins had</p><p>helped establish toothbrushing as a daily activity.</p><p>The secret to his success, Hopkins would later boast, was that</p><p>he had found a certain kind of cue and reward that fueled a particular</p><p>habit. It’s an alchemy so powerful that even today the basic</p><p>principles are still used video game designers, food companies,</p><p>hospitals, and millions of salesmen around the world. Eugene Pauly</p><p>taught us about the habit loop, but it was Claude Hopkins that</p><p>showed how new habits can be cultivated and grown.</p><p>So what, exactly, did Hopkins do?</p><p>He created a craving. And that craving, it turns out, is what</p><p>makes cues and rewards work. That craving is what powers the</p><p>habit loop.</p><p>Throughout his career, one of Claude Hopkins’s signature</p><p>tactics was to find simple triggers to convince consumers to use his</p><p>products every day. He sold Quaker Oats, for instance, as a</p><p>breakfast cereal that could provide energy for twenty-four hours—but</p><p>only if you ate a bowl every morning. He hawked tonics that cured</p><p>stomachaches, joint pain, bad skin, and “womanly problems”—but</p><p>only if you drank the medicine at symptoms’ first appearance. Soon,</p><p>people were devouring oatmeal at daybreak and chugging from little</p><p>brown bottles whenever they felt a hint of fatigue, which, as luck</p><p>would have it, often happened at least once a day.</p><p>To sell Pepsodent, then, Hopkins needed a trigger that would</p><p>justify the toothpaste’s daily use. He sat down with a pile of dental</p><p>textbooks. “It was dry reading,” he later wrote. “But in the middle of</p><p>one book I found a reference to the mucin plaques on teeth, which I</p><p>afterward called ‘the film.’ That gave me an appealing idea. I</p><p>resolved to advertise this toothpaste as a creator of beauty. To deal</p><p>with that cloudy film.”</p><p>In focusing on tooth film, Hopkins was ignoring the fact that this</p><p>same film has always covered people’s teeth and hadn’t seemed to</p><p>bother anyone. The film is a naturally occurring membrane that</p><p>builds up on teeth regardless of what you eat or how often you</p><p>brush.2.7 People had never paid much attention to it, and there was</p><p>little reason why they should: You can get rid of the film by eating an</p><p>apple, running your finger over your teeth, brushing, or vigorously</p><p>swirling liquid around your mouth. Toothpaste didn’t do anything to</p><p>help remove the film. In fact, one of the leading dental researchers of</p><p>the time said that all toothpastes—particularly Pepsodent—were</p><p>worthless.2.8</p><p>That didn’t stop Hopkins from exploiting his discovery. Here, he</p><p>decided, was a cue that could trigger a habit. Soon, cities were</p><p>plastered with Pepsodent ads.</p><p>“Just run your tongue across your teeth,” read one. “You’ll feel a</p><p>film—that’s what makes your teeth look ‘off color’ and invites decay.”</p><p>“Note how many pretty teeth are seen everywhere,” read</p><p>another ad, featuring smiling beauties. “Millions are using a new</p><p>method of teeth cleansing. Why would any woman have dingy film</p><p>on her teeth? Pepsodent removes the film!”2.9</p><p>The brilliance of these appeals was that they relied upon a cue</p><p>—tooth film—that was universal and impossible to ignore. Telling</p><p>someone to run their tongue across their teeth, it turned out, was</p><p>likely to cause them to run their tongue across their teeth. And when</p><p>they did, they were likely to feel a film. Hopkins had found a cue that</p><p>was simple, had existed for ages, and was so easy to trigger that an</p><p>advertisement could cause people to comply automatically.</p><p>Moreover, the reward, as Hopkins envisioned it, was even more</p><p>enticing. Who, after all, doesn’t want to be more beautiful? Who</p><p>doesn’t want a prettier smile? Particularly when all it takes is a quick</p><p>brush with Pepsodent?</p><p>HOPKINS’S CONCEPTION OF THE PEPSODENT HABIT</p><p>LOOP</p><p>After the campaign launched, a quiet week passed. Then two.</p><p>In the third week, demand exploded. There were so many orders for</p><p>Pepsodent that the company couldn’t keep up. In three years, the</p><p>product went international, and Hopkins was crafting ads in Spanish,</p><p>German, and Chinese. Within a decade, Pepsodent was one of the</p><p>top-selling goods in the world, and remained America’s best-selling</p><p>toothpaste for more than thirty years.2.10, 2.11</p><p>Before Pepsodent appeared, only 7 percent of Americans had a</p><p>tube of toothpaste in their medicine chests. A decade after Hopkins’s</p><p>ad campaign went nationwide, that number had jumped to 65</p><p>percent.2.12 By the end of World War II, the military downgraded</p><p>concerns about recruits’ teeth because so many soldiers were</p><p>brushing every day.</p><p>“I made for myself a million dollars on Pepsodent,” Hopkins</p><p>wrote a few years after the product appeared on shelves. The key,</p><p>he said, was that he had “learned the right human psychology.” That</p><p>psychology was grounded in two basic rules:</p><p>First, find a simple and obvious cue.</p><p>Second, clearly define the rewards.</p><p>If you get those elements right, Hopkins promised, it was like</p><p>magic. Look at Pepsodent: He had identified a cue—tooth film—and</p><p>a reward—beautiful teeth—that had persuaded millions to start a</p><p>daily ritual. Even today, Hopkins’s rules are a staple of marketing</p><p>textbooks and the foundation of millions of ad campaigns.</p><p>And those same principles have been used to create thousands</p><p>of other habits—often without people realizing how closely they are</p><p>hewing to Hopkins’s formula. Studies of people who have</p><p>successfully started new exercise routines, for instance, show they</p><p>are more likely to stick with a workout plan if they choose a specific</p><p>cue, such as running as soon as they get home from work, and a</p><p>clear reward, such as a beer or an evening of guilt-free</p><p>television.2.13Research on dieting says creating new food habits</p><p>requires a predetermined cue—such as planning menus in advance</p><p>—and simple rewards for dieters when they stick to their</p><p>intentions.2.14</p><p>“The time has come when advertising has in some hands</p><p>reached the status of a science,” Hopkins wrote. “Advertising, once a</p><p>gamble, has thus become, under able direction, one of the safest of</p><p>business ventures.”</p><p>It’s quite a boast. However, it turns out that Hopkins’s two rules</p><p>aren’t enough. There’s also a third rule that must be satisfied to</p><p>create a habit—a rule so subtle that Hopkins himself relied on it</p><p>without knowing it existed. It explains everything from why it’s so</p><p>hard to ignore a box of doughnuts to how a morning jog can become</p><p>a nearly effortless routine.</p><p>II.</p><p>The scientists and marketing executives at Procter & Gamble</p><p>were gathered around a beat-up table in a small, windowless room,</p><p>reading the transcript of an interview with a woman who owned nine</p><p>cats, when one of them finally said what everyone was thinking.</p><p>“If we get fired, what exactly happens?” she asked. “Do security</p><p>guards show up and walk us out, or do we get some kind of warning</p><p>beforehand?”</p><p>The team’s leader, a onetime rising star within the company</p><p>named Drake Stimson, stared at her.</p><p>“I don’t know,” he said. His hair was a mess. His eyes were</p><p>tired. “I never thought things would get this bad. They told me</p><p>running this project was a promotion.”</p><p>It was 1996, and the group at the table was finding out, despite</p><p>Claude Hopkins’s assertions, how utterly unscientific</p><p>the process of</p><p>selling something could become. They all worked for one of the</p><p>largest consumer goods firms on earth, the company behind Pringles</p><p>potato chips, Oil of Olay, Bounty paper towels, CoverGirl cosmetics,</p><p>Dawn, Downy, and Duracell, as well as dozens of other brands. P&G</p><p>collected more data than almost any other merchant on earth and</p><p>relied on complex statistical methods to craft their marketing</p><p>campaigns. The firm was incredibly good at figuring out how to sell</p><p>things. In the clothes-washing market alone, P&G’s products cleaned</p><p>one out of every two laundry loads in America.2.15 Its revenues</p><p>topped $35 billion per year.2.16</p><p>However, Stimson’s team, which had been entrusted with</p><p>designing the ad campaign for one of P&G’s most promising new</p><p>products, was on the brink of failure. The company had spent</p><p>millions of dollars developing a spray that could remove bad smells</p><p>from almost any fabric. And the researchers in that tiny, windowless</p><p>room had no idea how to get people to buy it.</p><p>The spray had been created about three years earlier, when</p><p>one of P&G’s chemists was working with a substance called</p><p>hydroxypropyl beta cyclodextrin, or HPBCD, in a laboratory. The</p><p>chemist was a smoker. His clothes usually smelled like an ashtray.</p><p>One day, after working with HPBCD, his wife greeted him at the door</p><p>when he got home.</p><p>“Did you quit smoking?” she asked him.</p><p>“No,” he said. He was suspicious. She had been harassing him</p><p>to give up cigarettes for years. This seemed like some kind of</p><p>reverse psychology trickery.</p><p>“You don’t smell like smoke, is all,” she said.</p><p>The next day, he went back to the lab and started experimenting</p><p>with HPBCD and various scents. Soon, he had hundreds of vials</p><p>containing fabrics that smelled like wet dogs, cigars, sweaty socks,</p><p>Chinese food, musty shirts, and dirty towels. When he put HPBCD in</p><p>water and sprayed it on the samples, the scents were drawn into the</p><p>chemical’s molecules. After the mist dried, the smell was gone.</p><p>When the chemist explained his findings to P&G’s executives,</p><p>they were ecstatic. For years, market research had said that</p><p>consumers were clamoring for something that could get rid of bad</p><p>smells—not mask them, but eradicate them altogether. When one</p><p>team of researchers had interviewed customers, they found that</p><p>many of them left their blouses or slacks outside after a night at a</p><p>bar or party. “My clothes smell like cigarettes when I get home, but I</p><p>don’t want to pay for dry cleaning every time I go out,” one woman</p><p>said.</p><p>P&G, sensing an opportunity, launched a top-secret project to</p><p>turn HPBCD into a viable product. They spent millions perfecting the</p><p>formula, finally producing a colorless, odorless liquid that could wipe</p><p>out almost any foul odor. The science behind the spray was so</p><p>advanced that NASA would eventually use it to clean the interiors of</p><p>shuttles after they returned from space. The best part was that it was</p><p>cheap to manufacture, didn’t leave stains, and could make any stinky</p><p>couch, old jacket, or stained car interior smell, well, scentless. The</p><p>project had been a major gamble, but P&G was now poised to earn</p><p>billions—if they could come up with the right marketing campaign.</p><p>They decided to call it Febreze, and asked Stimson, a thirty-</p><p>one-year-old wunderkind with a background in math and psychology,</p><p>to lead the marketing team.2.17 Stimson was tall and handsome, with</p><p>a strong chin, a gentle voice, and a taste for high-end meals. (“I’d</p><p>rather my kids smoked weed than ate in McDonald’s,” he once told a</p><p>colleague.) Before joining P&G, he had spent five years on Wall</p><p>Street building mathematical models for choosing stocks. When he</p><p>relocated to Cincinnati, where P&G was headquartered, he was</p><p>tapped to help run important business lines, including Bounce fabric</p><p>softener and Downy dryer sheets. But Febreze was different. It was</p><p>a chance to launch an entirely new category of product—to add</p><p>something to a consumer’s shopping cart that had never been there</p><p>before. All Stimson needed to do was figure out how to make</p><p>Febreze into a habit, and the product would fly off the shelves. How</p><p>tough could that be?</p><p>Stimson and his colleagues decided to introduce Febreze in a</p><p>few test markets—Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Boise. They flew in</p><p>and handed out samples, and then asked people if they could come</p><p>by their homes. Over the course of two months, they visited</p><p>hundreds of households. Their first big breakthrough came when</p><p>they visited a park ranger in Phoenix. She was in her late twenties</p><p>and lived by herself. Her job was to trap animals that wandered out</p><p>of the desert. She caught coyotes, raccoons, the occasional</p><p>mountain lion. And skunks. Lots and lots of skunks. Which often</p><p>sprayed her when they were caught.</p><p>“I’m single, and I’d like to find someone to have kids with,” the</p><p>ranger told Stimson and his colleagues while they sat in her living</p><p>room. “I go on a lot of dates. I mean, I think I’m attractive, you know?</p><p>I’m smart and I feel like I’m a good catch.”</p><p>But her love life was crippled, she explained, because</p><p>everything in her life smelled like skunk. Her house, her truck, her</p><p>clothing, her boots, her hands, her curtains. Even her bed. She had</p><p>tried all sorts of cures. She bought special soaps and shampoos.</p><p>She burned candles and used expensive carpet shampooing</p><p>machines. None of it worked.</p><p>“When I’m on a date, I’ll get a whiff of something that smells like</p><p>skunk and I’ll start obsessing about it,” she told them. “I’ll start</p><p>wondering, does he smell it? What if I bring him home and he wants</p><p>to leave?</p><p>“I went on four dates last year with a really nice guy, a guy I</p><p>really liked, and I waited forever to invite him to my place. Eventually,</p><p>he came over, and I thought everything was going really well. Then</p><p>the next day, he said he wanted to ‘take a break.’ He was really</p><p>polite about it, but I keep wondering, was it the smell?”</p><p>“Well, I’m glad you got a chance to try Febreze,” Stimson said.</p><p>“How’d you like it?”</p><p>She looked at him. She was crying.</p><p>“I want to thank you,” she said. “This spray has changed my</p><p>life.”</p><p>After she had received samples of Febreze, she had gone</p><p>home and sprayed her couch. She sprayed the curtains, the rug, the</p><p>bedspread, her jeans, her uniform, the interior of her car. The bottle</p><p>ran out, so she got another one, and sprayed everything else.</p><p>“I’ve asked all of my friends to come over,” the woman said.</p><p>“They can’t smell it anymore. The skunk is gone.”</p><p>By now, she was crying so hard that one of Stimson’s</p><p>colleagues was patting her on the shoulder. “Thank you so much,”</p><p>the woman said. “I feel so free. Thank you. This product is so</p><p>important.”</p><p>Stimson sniffed the air inside her living room. He couldn’t smell</p><p>anything. We’re going to make a fortune with this stuff, he thought.</p><p>Stimson and his team went back to P&G headquarters and</p><p>started reviewing the marketing campaign they were about to roll</p><p>out. The key to selling Febreze, they decided, was conveying that</p><p>sense of relief the park ranger felt. They had to position Febreze as</p><p>something that would allow people to rid themselves of</p><p>embarrassing smells. All of them were familiar with Claude Hopkins’s</p><p>rules, or the modern incarnations that filled business school</p><p>textbooks. They wanted to keep the ads simple: Find an obvious cue</p><p>and clearly define the reward.</p><p>They designed two television commercials. The first showed a</p><p>woman talking about the smoking section of a restaurant. Whenever</p><p>she eats there, her jacket smells like smoke. A friend tells her if she</p><p>uses Febreze, it will eliminate the odor. The cue: the smell of</p><p>cigarettes. The reward: odor eliminated from clothes. The second ad</p><p>featured a woman worrying about her dog, Sophie, who always sits</p><p>on the couch.2.18 “Sophie will always smell like Sophie,” she says,</p><p>but with Febreze, “now my furniture doesn’t have to.” The cue: pet</p><p>smells, which are familiar to the seventy million households with</p><p>animals.2.19 The reward: a house that doesn’t smell like a kennel.</p><p>Stimson and his colleagues began airing the advertisements in</p><p>1996 in the same</p><p>test cities. They gave away samples, put</p><p>advertisements in mailboxes, and paid grocers to build mountains of</p><p>Febreze near cash registers. Then they sat back, anticipating how</p><p>they would spend their bonuses.</p><p>A week passed. Then two. A month. Two months. Sales started</p><p>small—and got smaller. Panicked, the company sent researchers</p><p>into stores to see what was happening. Shelves were filled with</p><p>Febreze bottles that had never been touched. They started visiting</p><p>housewives who had received free samples.</p><p>“Oh, yes!” one of them told a P&G researcher. “The spray! I</p><p>remember it. Let’s see.” The woman got down on her knees in the</p><p>kitchen and started rooting through the cabinet underneath the sink.</p><p>“I used it for a while, but then I forgot about it. I think it’s back here</p><p>somewhere.” She stood up. “Maybe it’s in the closet?” She walked</p><p>over and pushed aside some brooms. “Yes! Here it is! In the back!</p><p>See? It’s still almost full. Did you want it back?”</p><p>Febreze was a dud.</p><p>For Stimson, this was a disaster. Rival executives in other</p><p>divisions sensed an opportunity in his failure. He heard whispers that</p><p>some people were lobbying to kill Febreze and get him reassigned to</p><p>Nicky Clarke hair products, the consumer goods equivalent of</p><p>Siberia.</p><p>One of P&G’s divisional presidents called an emergency</p><p>meeting and announced they had to cut their losses on Febreze</p><p>before board members started asking questions. Stimson’s boss</p><p>stood up and made an impassioned plea. “There’s still a chance to</p><p>turn everything around,” he said. “At the very least, let’s ask the</p><p>PhDs to figure out what’s going on.” P&G had recently snapped up</p><p>scientists from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and elsewhere who were</p><p>supposed experts in consumer psychology. The division’s president</p><p>agreed to give the product a little more time.</p><p>So a new group of researchers joined Stimson’s team and</p><p>started conducting more interviews.2.20 Their first inkling of why</p><p>Febreze was failing came when they visited a woman’s home</p><p>outside Phoenix. They could smell her nine cats before they went</p><p>inside. The house’s interior, however, was clean and organized. She</p><p>was somewhat of a neat freak, the woman explained. She vacuumed</p><p>every day and didn’t like to open her windows, since the wind blew in</p><p>dust. When Stimson and the scientists walked into her living room,</p><p>where the cats lived, the scent was so overpowering that one of</p><p>them gagged.</p><p>“What do you do about the cat smell?” a scientist asked the</p><p>woman.</p><p>“It’s usually not a problem,” she said.</p><p>“How often do you notice a smell?”</p><p>“Oh, about once a month,” the woman replied.</p><p>The researchers looked at one another.</p><p>“Do you smell it now?” a scientist asked.</p><p>“No,” she said.</p><p>The same pattern played out in dozens of other smelly homes</p><p>the researchers visited. People couldn’t detect most of the bad</p><p>smells in their lives. If you live with nine cats, you become</p><p>desensitized to their scent. If you smoke cigarettes, it damages your</p><p>olfactory capacities so much that you can’t smell smoke anymore.</p><p>Scents are strange; even the strongest fade with constant exposure.</p><p>That’s why no one was using Febreze, Stimson realized. The</p><p>product’s cue—the thing that was supposed to trigger daily use—</p><p>was hidden from the people who needed it most. Bad scents simply</p><p>weren’t noticed frequently enough to trigger a regular habit. As a</p><p>result, Febreze ended up in the back of a closet. The people with the</p><p>greatest proclivity to use the spray never smelled the odors that</p><p>should have reminded them the living room needed a spritz.</p><p>Stimson’s team went back to headquarters and gathered in the</p><p>windowless conference room, rereading the transcript of the woman</p><p>with nine cats. The psychologist asked what happens if you get fired.</p><p>Stimson put his head in his hands. If he couldn’t sell Febreze to a</p><p>woman with nine cats, he wondered, who could he sell it to? How do</p><p>you build a new habit when there’s no cue to trigger usage, and</p><p>when the consumers who most need it don’t appreciate the reward?</p><p>III.</p><p>The laboratory belonging to Wolfram Schultz, a professor of</p><p>neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, is not a pretty place.</p><p>His desk has been alternately described by colleagues as a black</p><p>hole where documents are lost forever and a petri dish where</p><p>organisms can grow, undisturbed and in wild proliferation, for years.</p><p>When Schultz needs to clean something, which is uncommon, he</p><p>doesn’t use sprays or cleansers. He wets a paper towel and wipes</p><p>hard. If his clothes smell like smoke or cat hair, he doesn’t notice. Or</p><p>care.</p><p>However, the experiments that Schultz has conducted over the</p><p>past twenty years have revolutionized our understanding of how</p><p>cues, rewards, and habits interact. He has explained why some cues</p><p>and rewards have more power than others, and has provided a</p><p>scientific road map that explains why Pepsodent was a hit, how</p><p>some dieters and exercise buffs manage to change their habits so</p><p>quickly, and—in the end—what it took to make Febreze sell.</p><p>In the 1980s, Schultz was part of a group of scientists studying</p><p>the brains of monkeys as they learned to perform certain tasks, such</p><p>as pulling on levers or opening clasps. Their goal was to figure out</p><p>which parts of the brain were responsible for new actions.</p><p>“One day, I noticed this thing that is interesting to me,” Schultz</p><p>told me. He was born in Germany and now, when he speaks English,</p><p>sounds a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger if the Terminator were a</p><p>member of the Royal Society. “A few of the monkeys we watched</p><p>loved apple juice, and the other monkeys loved grape juice, and so I</p><p>began to wonder, what is going on inside those little monkey heads?</p><p>Why do different rewards affect the brain in different ways?”</p><p>Schultz began a series of experiments to decipher how rewards</p><p>work on a neurochemical level. As technology progressed, he gained</p><p>access, in the 1990s, to devices similar to those used by the</p><p>researchers at MIT. Rather than rats, however, Schultz was</p><p>interested in monkeys like Julio, an eight-pound macaque with hazel</p><p>eyes who had a very thin electrode inserted into his brain that</p><p>allowed Schultz to observe neuronal activity as it occurred.2.21</p><p>One day, Schultz positioned Julio on a chair in a dimly lit room</p><p>and turned on a computer monitor. Julio’s job was to touch a lever</p><p>whenever colored shapes—small yellow spirals, red squiggles, blue</p><p>lines—appeared on the screen. If Julio touched the lever when a</p><p>shape appeared, a drop of blackberry juice would run down a tube</p><p>hanging from the ceiling and onto the monkey’s lips.</p><p>Julio liked blackberry juice.</p><p>At first, Julio was only mildly interested in what was happening</p><p>on the screen. He spent most of his time trying to squirm out of the</p><p>chair. But once the first dose of juice arrived, Julio became very</p><p>focused on the monitor. As the monkey came to understand, through</p><p>dozens of repetitions, that the shapes on the screen were a cue for a</p><p>routine (touch the lever) that resulted in a reward (blackberry juice),</p><p>he started staring at the screen with a laserlike intensity. He didn’t</p><p>squirm. When a yellow squiggle appeared, he went for the lever.</p><p>When a blue line flashed, he pounced. And when the juice arrived,</p><p>Julio would lick his lips contentedly.</p><p>JULIO’S REWARD RESPONSE WHEN HE RECEIVES THE</p><p>JUICE</p><p>As Schultz monitored the activity within Julio’s brain, he saw a</p><p>pattern emerge. Whenever Julio received his reward, his brain</p><p>activity would spike in a manner that suggested he was experiencing</p><p>happiness.2.22 A transcript of that neurological activity shows what it</p><p>looks like when a monkey’s brain says, in essence, “I got a reward!”</p><p>Schultz took Julio through the same experiment again and</p><p>again, recording the neurological response each time. Whenever</p><p>Julio received his juice, the “I got a reward!” pattern appeared on the</p><p>computer attached to the probe in the monkey’s head. Gradually,</p><p>from a neurological perspective, Julio’s behavior became a habit.</p><p>JULIO’S HABIT LOOP</p><p>What was most interesting to Schultz, however, was how things</p><p>changed as the experiment proceeded. As the monkey</p><p>became</p><p>more and more practiced at the behavior—as the habit became</p><p>stronger and stronger—Julio’s brain began anticipating the</p><p>blackberry juice. Schultz’s probes started recording the “I got a</p><p>reward!” pattern the instant Julio saw the shapes on the screen,</p><p>before the juice arrived:</p><p>NOW, JULIO’S REWARD RESPONSE OCCURS BEFORE</p><p>THE JUICE ARRIVES</p><p>In other words, the shapes on the monitor had become a cue</p><p>not just for pulling a lever, but also for a pleasure response inside the</p><p>monkey’s brain. Julio started expecting his reward as soon as he</p><p>saw the yellow spirals and red squiggles.</p><p>Then Schultz adjusted the experiment. Previously, Julio had</p><p>received juice as soon as he touched the lever. Now, sometimes, the</p><p>juice didn’t arrive at all, even if Julio performed correctly. Or it would</p><p>arrive after a slight delay. Or it would be watered down until it was</p><p>only half as sweet.</p><p>When the juice didn’t arrive or was late or diluted, Julio would</p><p>get angry and make unhappy noises, or become mopey. And within</p><p>Julio’s brain, Schultz watched a new pattern emerge: craving. When</p><p>Julio anticipated juice but didn’t receive it, a neurological pattern</p><p>associated with desire and frustration erupted inside his skull. When</p><p>Julio saw the cue, he started anticipating a juice-fueled joy. But if the</p><p>juice didn’t arrive, that joy became a craving that, if unsatisfied,</p><p>drove Julio to anger or depression.</p><p>Researchers in other labs have found similar patterns. Other</p><p>monkeys were trained to anticipate juice whenever they saw a shape</p><p>on a screen. Then, researchers tried to distract them. They opened</p><p>the lab’s door, so the monkeys could go outside and play with their</p><p>friends. They put food in a corner, so the monkeys could eat if they</p><p>abandoned the experiment.</p><p>For those monkeys who hadn’t developed a strong habit, the</p><p>distractions worked. They slid out of their chairs, left the room, and</p><p>never looked back. They hadn’t learned to crave the juice. However,</p><p>once a monkey had developed a habit—once its brain anticipated</p><p>the reward—the distractions held no allure. The animal would sit</p><p>there, watching the monitor and pressing the lever, over and over</p><p>again, regardless of the offer of food or the opportunity to go outside.</p><p>The anticipation and sense of craving was so overwhelming that the</p><p>monkeys stayed glued to their screens, the same way a gambler will</p><p>play slots long after he’s lost his winnings.2.23</p><p>This explains why habits are so powerful: They create</p><p>neurological cravings. Most of the time, these cravings emerge so</p><p>gradually that we’re not really aware they exist, so we’re often blind</p><p>to their influence. But as we associate cues with certain rewards, a</p><p>subconscious craving emerges in our brains that starts the habit loop</p><p>spinning. One researcher at Cornell, for instance, found how</p><p>powerfully food and scent cravings can affect behavior when he</p><p>noticed how Cinnabon stores were positioned inside shopping malls.</p><p>Most food sellers locate their kiosks in food courts, but Cinnabon</p><p>tries to locate their stores away from other food stalls.2.24 Why?</p><p>Because Cinnabon executives want the smell of cinnamon rolls to</p><p>waft down hallways and around corners uninterrupted, so that</p><p>shoppers will start subconsciously craving a roll. By the time a</p><p>consumer turns a corner and sees the Cinnabon store, that craving</p><p>is a roaring monster inside his head and he’ll reach, unthinkingly, for</p><p>his wallet. The habit loop is spinning because a sense of craving has</p><p>emerged.2.25</p><p>“There is nothing programmed into our brains that makes us</p><p>see a box of doughnuts and automatically want a sugary treat,”</p><p>Schultz told me. “But once our brain learns that a doughnut box</p><p>contains yummy sugar and other carbohydrates, it will start</p><p>anticipating the sugar high. Our brains will push us toward the box.</p><p>Then, if we don’t eat the doughnut, we’ll feel disappointed.”</p><p>To understand this process, consider how Julio’s habit emerged.</p><p>First, he saw a shape on the screen:</p><p>Over time, Julio learned that the appearance of the shape</p><p>meant it was time to execute a routine. So he touched the lever:</p><p>As a result, Julio received a drop of blackberry juice.</p><p>That’s basic learning. The habit only emerges once Julio begins</p><p>craving the juice when he sees the cue. Once that craving exists,</p><p>Julio will act automatically. He’ll follow the habit:</p><p>JULIO’S HABIT LOOP</p><p>This is how new habits are created: by putting together a cue, a</p><p>routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a craving that drives the</p><p>loop.2.26 Take, for instance, smoking. When a smoker sees a cue—</p><p>say, a pack of Marlboros—her brain starts anticipating a hit of</p><p>nicotine. Just the sight of cigarettes is enough for the brain to crave a</p><p>nicotine rush. If it doesn’t arrive, the craving grows until the smoker</p><p>reaches, unthinkingly, for a Marlboro.</p><p>Or take email. When a computer chimes or a smartphone</p><p>vibrates with a new message, the brain starts anticipating the</p><p>momentary distraction that opening an email provides. That</p><p>expectation, if unsatisfied, can build until a meeting is filled with</p><p>antsy executives checking their buzzing BlackBerrys under the table,</p><p>even if they know it’s probably only their latest fantasy football</p><p>results. (On the other hand, if someone disables the buzzing—and,</p><p>thus, removes the cue—people can work for hours without thinking</p><p>to check their in-boxes.)</p><p>Scientists have studied the brains of alcoholics, smokers, and</p><p>overeaters and have measured how their neurology—the structures</p><p>of their brains and the flow of neurochemicals inside their skulls—</p><p>changes as their cravings became ingrained. Particularly strong</p><p>habits, wrote two researchers at the University of Michigan, produce</p><p>addiction-like reactions so that “wanting evolves into obsessive</p><p>craving” that can force our brains into autopilot, “even in the face of</p><p>strong disincentives, including loss of reputation, job, home, and</p><p>family.”2.27</p><p>However, these cravings don’t have complete authority over us.</p><p>As the next chapter explains, there are mechanisms that can help us</p><p>ignore the temptations. But to overpower the habit, we must</p><p>recognize which craving is driving the behavior. If we’re not</p><p>conscious of the anticipation, then we’re like the shoppers who</p><p>wander, as if drawn by an unseen force, into Cinnabon.</p><p>To understand the power of cravings in creating habits, consider</p><p>how exercise habits emerge. In 2002 researchers at New Mexico</p><p>State University wanted to understand why people habitually</p><p>exercise.2.28 They studied 266 individuals, most of whom worked out</p><p>at least three times a week. What they found was that many of them</p><p>had started running or lifting weights almost on a whim, or because</p><p>they suddenly had free time or wanted to deal with unexpected</p><p>stresses in their lives. However, the reason they continued—why it</p><p>became a habit—was because of a specific reward they started to</p><p>crave.</p><p>In one group, 92 percent of people said they habitually</p><p>exercised because it made them “feel good”—they grew to expect</p><p>and crave the endorphins and other neurochemicals a workout</p><p>provided. In another group, 67 percent of people said that working</p><p>out gave them a sense of “accomplishment”—they had come to</p><p>crave a regular sense of triumph from tracking their performances,</p><p>and that self-reward was enough to make the physical activity into a</p><p>habit.</p><p>If you want to start running each morning, it’s essential that you</p><p>choose a simple cue (like always lacing up your sneakers before</p><p>breakfast or leaving your running clothes next to your bed) and a</p><p>clear reward (such as a midday treat, a sense of accomplishment</p><p>from recording your miles, or the endorphin rush you get from a jog).</p><p>But countless studies have shown that a cue and a reward, on their</p><p>own, aren’t enough for a new habit to last. Only when your brain</p><p>starts expecting the reward—craving the endorphins or sense of</p><p>accomplishment—will it become automatic to lace up your jogging</p><p>shoes each morning. The cue, in addition to triggering a routine,</p><p>must also trigger a craving for the reward to come.2.29</p><p>“Let me ask you about a problem I have,”</p><p>I said to Wolfram</p><p>Schultz, the neuroscientist, after he explained to me how craving</p><p>emerges. “I have a two-year-old, and when I’m home feeding him</p><p>dinner—chicken nuggets and stuff like that—I’ll reach over and eat</p><p>one myself without thinking about it. It’s a habit. And now I’m gaining</p><p>weight.”</p><p>“Everybody does that,” Schultz said. He has three children of</p><p>his own, all adults now. When they were young, he would pick at</p><p>their dinners unthinkingly. “In some ways,” he told me, “we’re like the</p><p>monkeys. When we see the chicken or fries on the table, our brains</p><p>begin anticipating that food, even if we’re not hungry. Our brains are</p><p>craving them. Frankly, I don’t even like this kind of food, but</p><p>suddenly, it’s hard to fight this urge. And as soon as I eat it, I feel this</p><p>rush of pleasure as the craving is satisfied. It’s humiliating, but that’s</p><p>how habits work.</p><p>“I guess I should be thankful,” he said, “because the same</p><p>process has let me create good habits. I work hard because I expect</p><p>pride from a discovery. I exercise because I expect feeling good</p><p>afterward. I just wish I could pick and choose better.”</p><p>IV.</p><p>After their disastrous interview with the cat woman, Drake</p><p>Stimson’s team at P&G started looking outside the usual channels</p><p>for help. They began reading up on experiments such as those</p><p>conducted by Wolfram Schultz. They asked a Harvard Business</p><p>School professor to conduct psychological tests of Febreze’s ad</p><p>campaigns. They interviewed customer after customer, looking for</p><p>something that would give them a clue how to make Febreze a</p><p>regular part of consumers’ lives.</p><p>One day, they went to speak with a woman in a suburb near</p><p>Scottsdale. She was in her forties with four kids. Her house was</p><p>clean, but not compulsively tidy. To the surprise of the researchers,</p><p>she loved Febreze.</p><p>“I use it every day,” she told them.</p><p>“You do?” Stimson said. The house didn’t seem like the kind of</p><p>place with smelly problems. There weren’t any pets. No one smoked.</p><p>“How? What smells are you trying to get rid of?”</p><p>“I don’t really use it for specific smells,” the woman said. “I</p><p>mean, you know, I’ve got boys. They’re going through puberty, and if</p><p>I don’t clean their rooms, it smells like a locker. But I don’t really use</p><p>it that way. I use it for normal cleaning—a couple of sprays when I’m</p><p>done in a room. It’s a nice way to make everything smell good as a</p><p>final touch.”</p><p>They asked if they could watch her clean the house. In the</p><p>bedroom, she made her bed, plumped the pillows, tightened the</p><p>sheet’s corners, and then took a Febreze bottle and sprayed the</p><p>smoothed comforter. In the living room, she vacuumed, picked up</p><p>the kids’ shoes, straightened the coffee table, and sprayed Febreze</p><p>on the freshly cleaned carpet. “It’s nice, you know?” she said.</p><p>“Spraying feels like a little mini-celebration when I’m done with a</p><p>room.” At the rate she was using Febreze, Stimson estimated, she</p><p>would empty a bottle every two weeks.</p><p>P&G had collected thousands of hours of videotapes of people</p><p>cleaning their homes over the years. When the researchers got back</p><p>to Cincinnati, some of them spent an evening looking through the</p><p>tapes. The next morning, one of the scientists asked the Febreze</p><p>team to join him in the conference room. He cued up the tape of one</p><p>woman—a twenty-six-year-old with three children—making a bed.</p><p>She smoothed the sheets and adjusted a pillow. Then, she smiled</p><p>and left the room.</p><p>“Did you see that?” the researcher asked excitedly.</p><p>He put on another clip. A younger, brunette woman spread out a</p><p>colorful bedspread, straightened a pillow, and then smiled at her</p><p>handiwork. “There it is again!” the researcher said. The next clip</p><p>showed a woman in workout clothes tidying her kitchen and wiping</p><p>the counter before easing into a relaxing stretch.</p><p>The researcher looked at his colleagues.</p><p>“Do you see it?” he asked.</p><p>“Each of them is doing something relaxing or happy when they</p><p>finish cleaning,” he said. “We can build off that! What if Febreze was</p><p>something that happened at the end of the cleaning routine, rather</p><p>than the beginning? What if it was the fun part of making something</p><p>cleaner?”</p><p>Stimson’s team ran one more test. Previously, the product’s</p><p>advertising had focused on eliminating bad smells. The company</p><p>printed up new labels that showed open windows and gusts of fresh</p><p>air. More perfume was added to the recipe, so that instead of merely</p><p>neutralizing odors, Febreze had its own distinct scent. Television</p><p>commercials were filmed of women spraying freshly made beds and</p><p>spritzing just-laundered clothing. The tagline had been “Gets bad</p><p>smells out of fabrics.” It was rewritten as “Cleans life’s smells.”</p><p>Each change was designed to appeal to a specific, daily cue:</p><p>Cleaning a room. Making a bed. Vacuuming a rug. In each one,</p><p>Febreze was positioned as the reward: the nice smell that occurs at</p><p>the end of a cleaning routine. Most important, each ad was</p><p>calibrated to elicit a craving: that things will smell as nice as they</p><p>look when the cleaning ritual is done. The irony is that a product</p><p>manufactured to destroy odors was transformed into the opposite.</p><p>Instead of eliminating scents on dirty fabrics, it became an air</p><p>freshener used as the finishing touch, once things are already clean.</p><p>When the researchers went back into consumers’ homes after</p><p>the new ads aired and the redesigned bottles were given away, they</p><p>found that some housewives in the test market had started expecting</p><p>—craving—the Febreze scent. One woman said that when her bottle</p><p>ran dry, she squirted diluted perfume on her laundry. “If I don’t smell</p><p>something nice at the end, it doesn’t really seem clean now,” she told</p><p>them.</p><p>“The park ranger with the skunk problem sent us in the wrong</p><p>direction,” Stimson told me. “She made us think that Febreze would</p><p>succeed by providing a solution to a problem. But who wants to</p><p>admit their house stinks?</p><p>“We were looking at it all wrong. No one craves scentlessness.</p><p>On the other hand, lots of people crave a nice smell after they’ve</p><p>spent thirty minutes cleaning.”</p><p>THE FEBREZE HABIT LOOP</p><p>The Febreze relaunch took place in the summer of 1998. Within</p><p>two months, sales doubled. Within a year, customers had spent</p><p>more than $230 million on the product.2.30 Since then, Febreze has</p><p>spawned dozens of spin-offs—air fresheners, candles, laundry</p><p>detergents, and kitchen sprays—that, all told, now account for sales</p><p>of more than $1 billion per year. Eventually, P&G began mentioning</p><p>to customers that, in addition to smelling good, Febreze can also kill</p><p>bad odors.</p><p>Stimson was promoted and his team received their bonuses.</p><p>The formula had worked. They had found simple and obvious cues.</p><p>They had clearly defined the reward.</p><p>But only once they created a sense of craving—the desire to</p><p>make everything smell as nice as it looked—did Febreze become a</p><p>hit. That craving is an essential part of the formula for creating new</p><p>habits that Claude Hopkins, the Pepsodent ad man, never</p><p>recognized.</p><p>V.</p><p>In his final years of life, Hopkins took to the lecture circuit. His</p><p>talks on the “Laws of Scientific Advertising” attracted thousands of</p><p>people. From stages, he often compared himself to Thomas Edison</p><p>and George Washington and spun out wild forecasts about the future</p><p>(flying automobiles featured prominently). But he never mentioned</p><p>cravings or the neurological roots of the habit loop. After all, it would</p><p>be another seventy years before the MIT scientists and Wolfram</p><p>Schultz conducted their experiments.</p><p>So how did Hopkins manage to build such a powerful</p><p>toothbrushing habit without the benefit of those insights?</p><p>Well, it turns out that he actually did take advantage of the</p><p>principles eventually discovered at MIT and inside Schultz’s</p><p>laboratory, even if nobody knew it at the time.</p><p>Hopkins’s experiences with Pepsodent weren’t quite as</p><p>straightforward as he portrays them in his memoirs. Though he</p><p>boasted that he discovered an amazing cue in tooth film, and</p><p>bragged that he was the first to offer consumers the clear reward of</p><p>beautiful teeth, it turns out that Hopkins wasn’t the originator</p><p>of those</p><p>tactics. Not by a long shot. Consider, for instance, some of the</p><p>advertisements for other toothpastes that filled magazines and</p><p>newspapers even before Hopkins knew that Pepsodent existed.</p><p>“The ingredients of this preparation are especially intended to</p><p>prevent deposits of tartar from accumulating around the necks of the</p><p>teeth,” read an ad for Dr. Sheffield’s Crème Dentifrice that predated</p><p>Pepsodent. “Clean that dirty layer!”</p><p>“Your white enamel is only hidden by a coating of film,” read an</p><p>advertisement that appeared while Hopkins was looking through his</p><p>dental textbooks. “Sanitol Tooth Paste quickly restores the original</p><p>whiteness by removing film.”</p><p>“The charm of a lovely smile depends upon the beauty of your</p><p>teeth,” proclaimed a third ad. “Beautiful, satin smooth teeth are often</p><p>the secret of a pretty girl’s attractiveness. Use S.S. White</p><p>Toothpaste!”</p><p>Dozens of other advertising men had used the same language</p><p>as Pepsodent years before Hopkins jumped in the game. All of their</p><p>ads had promised to remove tooth film and had offered the reward of</p><p>beautiful, white teeth. None of them had worked.</p><p>But once Hopkins launched his campaign, sales of Pepsodent</p><p>exploded. Why was Pepsodent different?</p><p>Because Hopkins’s success was driven by the same factors that</p><p>caused Julio the monkey to touch the lever and housewives to spray</p><p>Febreze on freshly made beds. Pepsodent created a craving.</p><p>Hopkins doesn’t spend any of his autobiography discussing the</p><p>ingredients in Pepsodent, but the recipe listed on the toothpaste’s</p><p>patent application and company records reveals something</p><p>interesting: Unlike other pastes of the period, Pepsodent contained</p><p>citric acid, as well as doses of mint oil and other chemicals.2.31</p><p>Pepsodent’s inventor used those ingredients to make the toothpaste</p><p>taste fresh, but they had another, unanticipated effect as well.</p><p>They’re irritants that create a cool, tingling sensation on the tongue</p><p>and gums.</p><p>After Pepsodent started dominating the marketplace,</p><p>researchers at competing companies scrambled to figure out why.</p><p>What they found was that customers said that if they forgot to use</p><p>Pepsodent, they realized their mistake because they missed that</p><p>cool, tingling sensation in their mouths. They expected—they craved</p><p>—that slight irritation. If it wasn’t there, their mouths didn’t feel clean.</p><p>Claude Hopkins wasn’t selling beautiful teeth. He was selling a</p><p>sensation. Once people craved that cool tingling—once they equated</p><p>it with cleanliness—brushing became a habit.</p><p>When other companies discovered what Hopkins was really</p><p>selling, they started imitating him. Within a few decades, almost</p><p>every toothpaste contained oils and chemicals that caused gums to</p><p>tingle. Soon, Pepsodent started getting outsold. Even today, almost</p><p>all toothpastes contain additives with the sole job of making your</p><p>mouth tingle after you brush.</p><p>THE REAL PEPSODENT HABIT LOOP</p><p>“Consumers need some kind of signal that a product is</p><p>working,” Tracy Sinclair, who was a brand manager for Oral-B and</p><p>Crest Kids Toothpaste, told me. “We can make toothpaste taste like</p><p>anything—blueberries, green tea—and as long as it has a cool</p><p>tingle, people feel like their mouth is clean. The tingling doesn’t make</p><p>the toothpaste work any better. It just convinces people it’s doing the</p><p>job.”</p><p>Anyone can use this basic formula to create habits of her or his</p><p>own. Want to exercise more? Choose a cue, such as going to the</p><p>gym as soon as you wake up, and a reward, such as a smoothie</p><p>after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the</p><p>endorphin rush you’ll feel. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward.</p><p>Eventually, that craving will make it easier to push through the gym</p><p>doors every day.</p><p>Want to craft a new eating habit? When researchers affiliated</p><p>with the National Weight Control Registry—a project involving more</p><p>than six thousand people who have lost more than thirty pounds—</p><p>looked at the habits of successful dieters, they found that 78 percent</p><p>of them ate breakfast every morning, a meal cued by a time of</p><p>day.2.32 But most of the successful dieters also envisioned a specific</p><p>reward for sticking with their diet—a bikini they wanted to wear or the</p><p>sense of pride they felt when they stepped on the scale each day—</p><p>something they chose carefully and really wanted. They focused on</p><p>the craving for that reward when temptations arose, cultivated the</p><p>craving into a mild obsession. And their cravings for that reward,</p><p>researchers found, crowded out the temptation to drop the diet. The</p><p>craving drove the habit loop.2.33</p><p>For companies, understanding the science of cravings is</p><p>revolutionary. There are dozens of daily rituals we ought to perform</p><p>each day that never become habits. We should watch our salt and</p><p>drink more water. We should eat more vegetables and fewer fats.</p><p>We should take vitamins and apply sunscreen. The facts could not</p><p>be more clear on this last front: Dabbing a bit of sunscreen on your</p><p>face each morning significantly lowers the odds of skin cancer. Yet,</p><p>while everyone brushes their teeth, fewer than 10 percent of</p><p>Americans apply sunscreen each day.2.34 Why?</p><p>Because there’s no craving that has made sunscreen into a</p><p>daily habit. Some companies are trying to fix that by giving</p><p>sunscreens a tingling sensation or something that lets people know</p><p>they’ve applied it to their skin. They’re hoping it will cue an</p><p>expectation the same way the craving for a tingling mouth reminds</p><p>us to brush our teeth. They’ve already used similar tactics in</p><p>hundreds of other products.</p><p>“Foaming is a huge reward,” said Sinclair, the brand manager.</p><p>“Shampoo doesn’t have to foam, but we add foaming chemicals</p><p>because people expect it each time they wash their hair. Same thing</p><p>with laundry detergent. And toothpaste—now every company adds</p><p>sodium laureth sulfate to make toothpaste foam more. There’s no</p><p>cleaning benefit, but people feel better when there’s a bunch of suds</p><p>around their mouth. Once the customer starts expecting that foam,</p><p>the habit starts growing.”</p><p>Cravings are what drive habits. And figuring out how to spark a</p><p>craving makes creating a new habit easier. It’s as true now as it was</p><p>almost a century ago. Every night, millions of people scrub their</p><p>teeth in order to get a tingling feeling; every morning, millions put on</p><p>their jogging shoes to capture an endorphin rush they’ve learned to</p><p>crave.</p><p>And when they get home, after they clean the kitchen or tidy</p><p>their bedrooms, some of them will spray a bit of Febreze.</p><p>THE GOLDEN RULE OF HABIT CHANGE</p><p>Why Transformation Occurs</p><p>I.</p><p>The game clock at the far end of the field says there are eight</p><p>minutes and nineteen seconds left when Tony Dungy, the new head</p><p>coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—one of the worst teams in the</p><p>National Football League, not to mention the history of professional</p><p>football—starts to feel a tiny glimmer of hope.3.1</p><p>It’s late on a Sunday afternoon, November 17, 1996.3.2 The</p><p>Buccaneers are playing in San Diego against the Chargers, a team</p><p>that appeared in the Super Bowl the previous year. The Bucs are</p><p>losing, 17 to 16. They’ve been losing all game. They’ve been losing</p><p>all season. They’ve been losing all decade. The Buccaneers have</p><p>not won a game on the West Coast in sixteen years, and many of</p><p>the team’s current players were in grade school the last time the</p><p>Bucs had a victorious season. So far this year, their record is 2–8. In</p><p>one of those games, the Detroit Lions—a team so bad it would later</p><p>be described as putting the “less” in “hopeless”—beat the Bucs 21 to</p><p>6, and then, three weeks later, beat them again, 27 to 0.3.3 One</p><p>newspaper columnist has started referring to the Bucs as “America’s</p><p>Orange Doormat.”3.4 ESPN is predicting that Dungy, who got his job</p><p>only in January, could be fired before the year is done.</p><p>On the sidelines, however, as Dungy watches his team arrange</p><p>itself for the next play, it feels like the sun has finally broken through</p><p>the clouds. He doesn’t smile. He never lets his emotions show during</p><p>a game. But something is taking place on the field, something</p><p>he’s</p><p>been working toward for years. As the jeers from the hostile crowd of</p><p>fifty thousand rain down upon him, Tony Dungy sees something that</p><p>no one else does. He sees proof that his plan is starting to work.</p><p>Tony Dungy had waited an eternity for this job. For seventeen</p><p>years, he prowled the sidelines as an assistant coach, first at the</p><p>University of Minnesota, then with the Pittsburgh Steelers, then the</p><p>Kansas City Chiefs, and then back to Minnesota with the Vikings.</p><p>Four times in the past decade, he had been invited to interview for</p><p>head coaching positions with NFL teams.</p><p>All four times, the interviews hadn’t gone well.</p><p>Part of the problem was Dungy’s coaching philosophy. In his job</p><p>interviews, he would patiently explain his belief that the key to</p><p>winning was changing players’ habits. He wanted to get players to</p><p>stop making so many decisions during a game, he said. He wanted</p><p>them to react automatically, habitually. If he could instill the right</p><p>habits, his team would win. Period.</p><p>“Champions don’t do extraordinary things,” Dungy would</p><p>explain. “They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking,</p><p>too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve</p><p>learned.”</p><p>How, the owners would ask, are you going to create those new</p><p>habits?</p><p>Oh, no, he wasn’t going to create new habits, Dungy would</p><p>answer. Players spent their lives building the habits that got them to</p><p>the NFL. No athlete is going to abandon those patterns simply</p><p>because some new coach says to.</p><p>So rather than creating new habits, Dungy was going to change</p><p>players’ old ones. And the secret to changing old habits was using</p><p>what was already inside players’ heads. Habits are a three-step loop</p><p>—the cue, the routine, and the reward—but Dungy only wanted to</p><p>attack the middle step, the routine. He knew from experience that it</p><p>was easier to convince someone to adopt a new behavior if there</p><p>was something familiar at the beginning and end.3.5</p><p>His coaching strategy embodied an axiom, a Golden Rule of</p><p>habit change that study after study has shown is among the most</p><p>powerful tools for creating change. Dungy recognized that you can</p><p>never truly extinguish bad habits.</p><p>Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and</p><p>deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.</p><p>That’s the rule: If you use the same cue, and provide the same</p><p>reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any</p><p>behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.</p><p>The Golden Rule has influenced treatments for alcoholism,</p><p>obesity, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and hundreds of other</p><p>destructive behaviors, and understanding it can help anyone change</p><p>their own habits. (Attempts to give up snacking, for instance, will</p><p>often fail unless there’s a new routine to satisfy old cues and reward</p><p>urges. A smoker usually can’t quit unless she finds some activity to</p><p>replace cigarettes when her nicotine craving is triggered.)</p><p>Four times Dungy explained his habit-based philosophy to team</p><p>owners. Four times they listened politely, thanked him for his time,</p><p>and then hired someone else.</p><p>Then, in 1996, the woeful Buccaneers called. Dungy flew to</p><p>Tampa Bay and, once again, laid out his plan for how they could win.</p><p>The day after the final interview, they offered him the job.</p><p>THE GOLDEN RULE OF HABIT CHANGE</p><p>You Can’t Extinguish a Bad Habit, You Can Only Change It.</p><p>HOW IT WORKS: USE THE SAME CUE. PROVIDE THE</p><p>SAME REWARD. CHANGE THE ROUTINE.</p><p>Dungy’s system would eventually turn the Bucs into one of the</p><p>league’s winningest teams. He would become the only coach in NFL</p><p>history to reach the play-offs in ten consecutive years, the first</p><p>African American coach to win a Super Bowl, and one of the most</p><p>respected figures in professional athletics. His coaching techniques</p><p>would spread throughout the league and all of sports. His approach</p><p>would help illuminate how to remake the habits in anyone’s life.</p><p>But all of that would come later. Today, in San Diego, Dungy just</p><p>wanted to win.</p><p>From the sidelines, Dungy looks up at the clock: 8:19 remaining.</p><p>The Bucs have been behind all game and have squandered</p><p>opportunity after opportunity, in typical fashion. If their defense</p><p>doesn’t make something happen right now, this game will effectively</p><p>be over. San Diego has the ball on their own twenty-yard line, and</p><p>the Chargers’ quarterback, Stan Humphries, is preparing to lead a</p><p>drive that, he hopes, will put the game away. The play clock begins,</p><p>and Humphries is poised to take the snap.</p><p>But Dungy isn’t looking at Humphries. Instead, he’s watching his</p><p>own players align into a formation they have spent months</p><p>perfecting. Traditionally, football is a game of feints and</p><p>counterfeints, trick plays and misdirection. Coaches with the thickest</p><p>playbooks and most complicated schemes usually win. Dungy,</p><p>however, has taken the opposite approach. He isn’t interested in</p><p>complication or obfuscation. When Dungy’s defensive players line</p><p>up, it is obvious to everyone exactly which play they are going to</p><p>use.</p><p>Dungy has opted for this approach because, in theory, he</p><p>doesn’t need misdirection. He simply needs his team to be faster</p><p>than everyone else. In football, milliseconds matter. So instead of</p><p>teaching his players hundreds of formations, he has taught them</p><p>only a handful, but they have practiced over and over until the</p><p>behaviors are automatic. When his strategy works, his players can</p><p>move with a speed that is impossible to overcome.3.6</p><p>But only when it works. If his players think too much or hesitate</p><p>or second-guess their instincts, the system falls apart. And so far,</p><p>Dungy’s players have been a mess.</p><p>This time, however, as the Bucs line up on the twenty-yard line,</p><p>something is different. Take Regan Upshaw, a Buccaneer defensive</p><p>end who has settled into a three-point stance on the scrimmage line.</p><p>Instead of looking up and down the line, trying to absorb as much</p><p>information as possible, Upshaw is looking only at the cues that</p><p>Dungy taught him to focus on. First, he glances at the outside foot of</p><p>the opposite lineman (his toes are back, which means he is</p><p>preparing to step backward and block while the quarterback passes);</p><p>next, Upshaw looks at the lineman’s shoulders (rotated slightly</p><p>inward), and the space between him and the next player (a fraction</p><p>narrower than expected).</p><p>Upshaw has practiced how to react to each of these cues so</p><p>many times that, at this point, he doesn’t have to think about what to</p><p>do. He just follows his habits.</p><p>San Diego’s quarterback approaches the line of scrimmage and</p><p>glances right, then left, barks the count and takes the ball. He drops</p><p>back five steps and stands tall, swiveling his head, looking for an</p><p>open receiver. Three seconds have passed since the play started.</p><p>The stadium’s eyes and the television cameras are on him.</p><p>So most observers fail to see what’s happening among the</p><p>Buccaneers. As soon as Humphries took the snap, Upshaw sprang</p><p>into action. Within the first second of the play, he darted right, across</p><p>the line of scrimmage, so fast the offensive lineman couldn’t block</p><p>him. Within the next second, Upshaw ran four more paces downfield,</p><p>his steps a blur. In the next second, Upshaw moved three strides</p><p>closer to the quarterback, his path impossible for the offensive</p><p>lineman to predict.</p><p>As the play moves into its fourth second, Humphries, the San</p><p>Diego quarterback, is suddenly exposed. He hesitates, sees Upshaw</p><p>from the corner of his eye. And that’s when Humphries makes his</p><p>mistake. He starts thinking.</p><p>Humphries spots a teammate, a rookie tight end named Brian</p><p>Roche, twenty yards downfield. There’s another San Diego receiver</p><p>much closer, waving his arms, calling for the ball. The short pass is</p><p>the safe choice. Instead, Humphries, under pressure, performs a</p><p>split-second analysis, cocks his arm, and heaves to Roche.</p><p>That hurried decision is precisely what Dungy was hoping for.</p><p>As soon as the ball is in the air, a Buccaneer safety named John</p><p>Lynch starts moving. Lynch’s job was straightforward: When the play</p><p>started, he ran to a particular</p><p>point on the field and waited for his</p><p>cue. There’s enormous pressure to improvise in this situation. But</p><p>Dungy has drilled Lynch until his routine is automatic. And as a</p><p>result, when the ball leaves the quarterback’s hands, Lynch is</p><p>standing ten yards from Roche, waiting.</p><p>As the ball spins through the air, Lynch reads his cues—the</p><p>direction of the quarterback’s face mask and hands, the spacing of</p><p>the receivers—and starts moving before it’s clear where the ball will</p><p>land. Roche, the San Diego receiver, springs forward, but Lynch cuts</p><p>around him and intercepts the pass. Before Roche can react, Lynch</p><p>takes off down the field toward the Chargers’ end zone. The other</p><p>Buccaneers are perfectly positioned to clear his route. Lynch runs</p><p>10, then 15, then 20, then almost 25 yards before he is finally</p><p>pushed out of bounds. The entire play has taken less than ten</p><p>seconds.</p><p>Two minutes later, the Bucs score a touchdown, taking the lead</p><p>for the first time all game. Five minutes later, they kick a field goal. In</p><p>between, Dungy’s defense shuts down each of San Diego’s</p><p>comeback attempts. The Buccaneers win, 25 to 17, one of the</p><p>biggest upsets of the season.</p><p>At the end of the game, Lynch and Dungy exit the field together.</p><p>“It feels like something was different out there,” Lynch says as</p><p>they walk into the tunnel.</p><p>“We’re starting to believe,” Dungy replies.</p><p>II.</p><p>To understand how a coach’s focus on changing habits could</p><p>remake a team, it’s necessary to look outside the world of sports.</p><p>Way outside, to a dingy basement on the Lower East Side of New</p><p>York City in 1934, where one of the largest and most successful</p><p>attempts at wide-scale habit change was born.</p><p>Sitting in the basement was a thirty-nine-year-old alcoholic</p><p>named Bill Wilson.3.7, 3.8 Years earlier, Wilson had taken his first</p><p>drink during officers’ training camp in New Bedford, Massachusetts,</p><p>where he was learning to fire machine guns before getting shipped</p><p>to France and World War I. Prominent families who lived near the</p><p>base often invited officers to dinner, and one Sunday night, Wilson</p><p>attended a party where he was served rarebit and beer. He was</p><p>twenty-two years old and had never had alcohol before. The only</p><p>polite thing, it seemed, was to drink the glass served to him. A few</p><p>weeks later, Wilson was invited to another elegant affair. Men were</p><p>in tuxedos, women were flirting. A butler came by and put a Bronx</p><p>cocktail—a combination of gin, dry and sweet vermouth, and orange</p><p>juice—into Wilson’s hand. He took a sip and felt, he later said, as if</p><p>he had found “the elixir of life.”3.9</p><p>By the mid-1930s, back from Europe, his marriage falling apart</p><p>and a fortune from selling stocks vaporized, Wilson was consuming</p><p>three bottles of booze a day. On a cold November afternoon, while</p><p>he was sitting in the gloom, an old drinking buddy called. Wilson</p><p>invited him over and mixed a pitcher of pineapple juice and gin.3.10</p><p>He poured his friend a glass.</p><p>His friend handed it back. He’d been sober for two months, he</p><p>said.</p><p>Wilson was astonished. He started describing his own struggles</p><p>with alcohol, including the fight he’d gotten into at a country club that</p><p>had cost him his job. He had tried to quit, he said, but couldn’t</p><p>manage it. He’d been to detox and had taken pills. He’d made</p><p>promises to his wife and joined abstinence groups. None of it</p><p>worked. How, Wilson asked, had his friend done it?</p><p>“I got religion,” the friend said. He talked about hell and</p><p>temptation, sin and the devil. “Realize you are licked, admit it, and</p><p>get willing to turn your life over to God.”</p><p>Wilson thought the guy was nuts. “Last summer an alcoholic</p><p>crackpot; now, I suspected, a little cracked about religion,” he later</p><p>wrote. When his friend left, Wilson polished off the booze and went</p><p>to bed.</p><p>A month later, in December 1934, Wilson checked into the</p><p>Charles B. Towns Hospital for Drug and Alcohol Addictions, an</p><p>upscale Manhattan detox center. A physician started hourly infusions</p><p>of a hallucinogenic drug called belladonna, then in vogue for the</p><p>treatment of alcoholism. Wilson floated in and out of consciousness</p><p>on a bed in a small room.</p><p>Then, in an episode that has been described at millions of</p><p>meetings in cafeterias, union halls, and church basements, Wilson</p><p>began writhing in agony. For days, he hallucinated. The withdrawal</p><p>pains made it feel as if insects were crawling across his skin. He was</p><p>so nauseous he could hardly move, but the pain was too intense to</p><p>stay still. “If there is a God, let Him show Himself!” Wilson yelled to</p><p>his empty room. “I am ready to do anything. Anything!” At that</p><p>moment, he later wrote, a white light filled his room, the pain ceased,</p><p>and he felt as if he were on a mountaintop, “and that a wind not of air</p><p>but of spirit was blowing.3.11 And then it burst upon me that I was a</p><p>free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for</p><p>a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness.”</p><p>Bill Wilson would never have another drink. For the next thirty-</p><p>six years, until he died of emphysema in 1971, he would devote</p><p>himself to founding, building, and spreading Alcoholics Anonymous,</p><p>until it became the largest, most well-known and successful habit-</p><p>changing organization in the world.</p><p>An estimated 2.1 million people seek help from AA each year,</p><p>and as many as 10 million alcoholics may have achieved sobriety</p><p>through the group.3.12, 3.13 AA doesn’t work for everyone—success</p><p>rates are difficult to measure, because of participants’ anonymity—</p><p>but millions credit the program with saving their lives. AA’s</p><p>foundational credo, the famous twelve steps, have become cultural</p><p>lodestones incorporated into treatment programs for overeating,</p><p>gambling, debt, sex, drugs, hoarding, self-mutilation, smoking, video</p><p>game addictions, emotional dependency, and dozens of other</p><p>destructive behaviors. The group’s techniques offer, in many</p><p>respects, one of the most powerful formulas for change.</p><p>All of which is somewhat unexpected, because AA has almost</p><p>no grounding in science or most accepted therapeutic methods.</p><p>Alcoholism, of course, is more than a habit. It’s a physical</p><p>addiction with psychological and perhaps genetic roots. What’s</p><p>interesting about AA, however, is that the program doesn’t directly</p><p>attack many of the psychiatric or biochemical issues that researchers</p><p>say are often at the core of why alcoholics drink.3.14 In fact, AA’s</p><p>methods seem to sidestep scientific and medical findings altogether,</p><p>as well as the types of intervention many psychiatrists say alcoholics</p><p>really need.1</p><p>What AA provides instead is a method for attacking the habits</p><p>that surround alcohol use.3.15 AA, in essence, is a giant machine for</p><p>changing habit loops. And though the habits associated with</p><p>alcoholism are extreme, the lessons AA provides demonstrate how</p><p>almost any habit—even the most obstinate—can be changed.</p><p>Bill Wilson didn’t read academic journals or consult many</p><p>doctors before founding AA. A few years after he achieved sobriety,</p><p>he wrote the now-famous twelve steps in a rush one night while</p><p>sitting in bed.3.16He chose the number twelve because there were</p><p>twelve apostles.3.17 And some aspects of the program are not just</p><p>unscientific, they can seem downright strange.</p><p>Take, for instance, AA’s insistence that alcoholics attend “ninety</p><p>meetings in ninety days”—a stretch of time, it appears, chosen at</p><p>random. Or the program’s intense focus on spirituality, as articulated</p><p>in step three, which says that alcoholics can achieve sobriety by</p><p>making “a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of</p><p>God as we understand him.”3.18 Seven of the twelve steps mention</p><p>God or spirituality, which seems odd for a program founded by a</p><p>onetime agnostic who, throughout his life, was openly hostile toward</p><p>organized religion. AA meetings don’t have a prescribed schedule or</p><p>curriculum. Rather, they usually begin with a member telling his or</p><p>her story, after which other people can chime in. There are no</p><p>professionals who guide conversations and few rules about how</p><p>meetings are supposed to function.</p><p>In the past five decades, as</p><p>almost every aspect of psychiatry and addiction research has been</p><p>revolutionized by discoveries in behavioral sciences, pharmacology,</p><p>and our understanding of the brain, AA has remained frozen in time.</p><p>Because of the program’s lack of rigor, academics and</p><p>researchers have often criticized it.3.19 AA’s emphasis on spirituality,</p><p>some claimed, made it more like a cult than a treatment. In the past</p><p>fifteen years, however, a reevaluation has begun. Researchers now</p><p>say the program’s methods offer valuable lessons. Faculty at</p><p>Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, the University of New</p><p>Mexico, and dozens of other research centers have found a kind of</p><p>science within AA that is similar to the one Tony Dungy used on the</p><p>football field. Their findings endorse the Golden Rule of habit</p><p>change: AA succeeds because it helps alcoholics use the same</p><p>cues, and get the same reward, but it shifts the routine.</p><p>Researchers say that AA works because the program forces</p><p>people to identify the cues and rewards that encourage their</p><p>alcoholic habits, and then helps them find new behaviors. When</p><p>Claude Hopkins was selling Pepsodent, he found a way to create a</p><p>new habit by triggering a new craving. But to change an old habit,</p><p>you must address an old craving. You have to keep the same cues</p><p>and rewards as before, and feed the craving by inserting a new</p><p>routine.</p><p>Take steps four (to make “a searching and fearless inventory of</p><p>ourselves”) and five (to admit “to God, to ourselves, and to another</p><p>human being the exact nature of our wrongs”).</p><p>“It’s not obvious from the way they’re written, but to complete</p><p>those steps, someone has to create a list of all the triggers for their</p><p>alcoholic urges,” said J. Scott Tonigan, a researcher at the University</p><p>of New Mexico who has studied AA for more than a decade.3.20</p><p>“When you make a self-inventory, you’re figuring out all the things</p><p>that make you drink. And admitting to someone else all the bad</p><p>things you’ve done is a pretty good way of figuring out the moments</p><p>where everything spiraled out of control.”</p><p>Then, AA asks alcoholics to search for the rewards they get</p><p>from alcohol. What cravings, the program asks, are driving your habit</p><p>loop? Often, intoxication itself doesn’t make the list. Alcoholics crave</p><p>a drink because it offers escape, relaxation, companionship, the</p><p>blunting of anxieties, and an opportunity for emotional release. They</p><p>might crave a cocktail to forget their worries. But they don’t</p><p>necessarily crave feeling drunk. The physical effects of alcohol are</p><p>often one of the least rewarding parts of drinking for addicts.</p><p>“There is a hedonistic element to alcohol,” said Ulf Mueller, a</p><p>German neurologist who has studied brain activity among alcoholics.</p><p>“But people also use alcohol because they want to forget something</p><p>or to satisfy other cravings, and these relief cravings occur in totally</p><p>different parts of the brain than the craving for physical pleasure.”</p><p>In order to offer alcoholics the same rewards they get at a bar,</p><p>AA has built a system of meetings and companionship—the</p><p>“sponsor” each member works with—that strives to offer as much</p><p>escape, distraction, and catharsis as a Friday night bender. If</p><p>someone needs relief, they can get it from talking to their sponsor or</p><p>attending a group gathering, rather than toasting a drinking buddy.</p><p>“AA forces you to create new routines for what to do each night</p><p>instead of drinking,” said Tonigan. “You can relax and talk through</p><p>your anxieties at the meetings. The triggers and payoffs stay the</p><p>same, it’s just the behavior that changes.”</p><p>KEEP THE CUE, PROVIDE THE SAME REWARD, INSERT A</p><p>NEW ROUTINE</p><p>One particularly dramatic demonstration of how alcoholics’ cues</p><p>and rewards can be transferred to new routines occurred in 2007,</p><p>when Mueller, the German neurologist, and his colleagues at the</p><p>University of Magdeburg implanted small electrical devices inside the</p><p>brains of five alcoholics who had repeatedly tried to give up</p><p>booze.3.21 The alcoholics in the study had each spent at least six</p><p>months in rehab without success. One of them had been through</p><p>detox more than sixty times.</p><p>The devices implanted in the men’s heads were positioned</p><p>inside their basal ganglia—the same part of the brain where the MIT</p><p>researchers found the habit loop—and emitted an electrical charge</p><p>that interrupted the neurological reward that triggers habitual</p><p>cravings. After the men recovered from the operations, they were</p><p>exposed to cues that had once triggered alcoholic urges, such as</p><p>photos of beer or trips to a bar. Normally, it would have been</p><p>impossible for them to resist a drink. But the devices inside their</p><p>brains “overrode” each man’s neurological cravings. They didn’t</p><p>touch a drop.</p><p>“One of them told me the craving disappeared as soon as we</p><p>turned the electricity on,” Mueller said. “Then, we turned it off, and</p><p>the craving came back immediately.”</p><p>Eradicating the alcoholics’ neurological cravings, however,</p><p>wasn’t enough to stop their drinking habits. Four of them relapsed</p><p>soon after the surgery, usually after a stressful event. They picked up</p><p>a bottle because that’s how they automatically dealt with anxiety.</p><p>However, once they learned alternate routines for dealing with</p><p>stress, the drinking stopped for good. One patient, for instance,</p><p>attended AA meetings. Others went to therapy. And once they</p><p>incorporated those new routines for coping with stress and anxiety</p><p>into their lives, the successes were dramatic. The man who had</p><p>gone to detox sixty times never had another drink. Two other</p><p>patients had started drinking at twelve, were alcoholics by eighteen,</p><p>drank every day, and now have been sober for four years.</p><p>Notice how closely this study hews to the Golden Rule of habit</p><p>change: Even when alcoholics’ brains were changed through</p><p>surgery, it wasn’t enough. The old cues and cravings for rewards</p><p>were still there, waiting to pounce. The alcoholics only permanently</p><p>changed once they learned new routines that drew on the old</p><p>triggers and provided a familiar relief. “Some brains are so addicted</p><p>to alcohol that only surgery can stop it,” said Mueller. “But those</p><p>people also need new ways for dealing with life.”</p><p>AA provides a similar, though less invasive, system for inserting</p><p>new routines into old habit loops. As scientists have begun</p><p>understanding how AA works, they’ve started applying the program’s</p><p>methods to other habits, such as two-year-olds’ tantrums, sex</p><p>addictions, and even minor behavioral tics. As AA’s methods have</p><p>spread, they’ve been refined into therapies that can be used to</p><p>disrupt almost any pattern.</p><p>In the summer of 2006, a twenty-four-year-old graduate student</p><p>named Mandy walked into the counseling center at Mississippi State</p><p>University.3.22, 3.23 For most of her life, Mandy had bitten her nails,</p><p>gnawing them until they bled. Lots of people bite their nails. For</p><p>chronic nail biters, however, it’s a problem of a different scale. Mandy</p><p>would often bite until her nails pulled away from the skin underneath.</p><p>Her fingertips were covered with tiny scabs. The end of her fingers</p><p>had become blunted without nails to protect them and sometimes</p><p>they tingled or itched, a sign of nerve injury. The biting habit had</p><p>damaged her social life. She was so embarrassed around her friends</p><p>that she kept her hands in her pockets and, on dates, would become</p><p>preoccupied with balling her fingers into fists. She had tried to stop</p><p>by painting her nails with foul-tasting polishes or promising herself,</p><p>starting right now, that she would muster the willpower to quit. But as</p><p>soon as she began doing homework or watching television, her</p><p>fingers ended up in her mouth.</p><p>The counseling center referred Mandy to a doctoral psychology</p><p>student who was studying a treatment known as “habit reversal</p><p>training.”3.24 The psychologist was well acquainted with the Golden</p><p>Rule of habit change. He knew that changing Mandy’s nail biting</p><p>habit required inserting a new routine into her life.</p><p>“What do you feel right before you bring your hand up to your</p><p>mouth to bite your nails?”</p><p>he asked her.</p><p>“There’s a little bit of tension in my fingers,” Mandy said. “It hurts</p><p>a little bit here, at the edge of the nail. Sometimes I’ll run my thumb</p><p>along, looking for hangnails, and when I feel something catch, I’ll</p><p>bring it up to my mouth. Then I’ll go finger by finger, biting all the</p><p>rough edges. Once I start, it feels like I have to do all of them.”</p><p>Asking patients to describe what triggers their habitual behavior</p><p>is called awareness training, and like AA’s insistence on forcing</p><p>alcoholics to recognize their cues, it’s the first step in habit reversal</p><p>training. The tension that Mandy felt in her nails cued her nail biting</p><p>habit.</p><p>“Most people’s habits have occurred for so long they don’t pay</p><p>attention to what causes it anymore,” said Brad Dufrene, who treated</p><p>Mandy. “I’ve had stutterers come in, and I’ll ask them which words or</p><p>situations trigger their stuttering, and they won’t know because they</p><p>stopped noticing so long ago.”</p><p>Next, the therapist asked Mandy to describe why she bit her</p><p>nails. At first, she had trouble coming up with reasons. As they</p><p>talked, though, it became clear that she bit when she was bored. The</p><p>therapist put her in some typical situations, such as watching</p><p>television and doing homework, and she started nibbling. When she</p><p>had worked through all of the nails, she felt a brief sense of</p><p>completeness, she said. That was the habit’s reward: a physical</p><p>stimulation she had come to crave.</p><p>MANDY’S HABIT LOOP</p><p>At the end of their first session, the therapist sent Mandy home</p><p>with an assignment: Carry around an index card, and each time you</p><p>feel the cue—a tension in your fingertips—make a check mark on</p><p>the card. She came back a week later with twenty-eight checks. She</p><p>was, by that point, acutely aware of the sensations that preceded her</p><p>habit. She knew how many times it occurred during class or while</p><p>watching television.</p><p>Then the therapist taught Mandy what is known as a “competing</p><p>response.” Whenever she felt that tension in her fingertips, he told</p><p>her, she should immediately put her hands in her pockets or under</p><p>her legs, or grip a pencil or something else that made it impossible to</p><p>put her fingers in her mouth. Then Mandy was to search for</p><p>something that would provide a quick physical stimulation—such as</p><p>rubbing her arm or rapping her knuckles on a desk—anything that</p><p>would produce a physical response.</p><p>The cues and rewards stayed the same. Only the routine</p><p>changed.</p><p>MANDY’S NEW HABIT LOOP</p><p>They practiced in the therapist’s office for about thirty minutes</p><p>and Mandy was sent home with a new assignment: Continue with</p><p>the index card, but make a check when you feel the tension in your</p><p>fingertips and a hash mark when you successfully override the habit.</p><p>A week later, Mandy had bitten her nails only three times and</p><p>had used the competing response seven times. She rewarded</p><p>herself with a manicure, but kept using the note cards. After a month,</p><p>the nail-biting habit was gone. The competing routines had become</p><p>automatic. One habit had replaced another.</p><p>“It seems ridiculously simple, but once you’re aware of how your</p><p>habit works, once you recognize the cues and rewards, you’re</p><p>halfway to changing it,” Nathan Azrin, one of the developers of habit</p><p>reversal training, told me.3.25 “It seems like it should be more</p><p>complex. The truth is, the brain can be reprogrammed. You just have</p><p>to be deliberate about it.”2</p><p>Today, habit reversal therapy is used to treat verbal and</p><p>physical tics, depression, smoking, gambling problems, anxiety,</p><p>bedwetting, procrastination, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and</p><p>other behavioral problems.3.26, 3.27 And its techniques lay bare one of</p><p>the fundamental principles of habits: Often, we don’t really</p><p>understand the cravings driving our behaviors until we look for them.</p><p>Mandy never realized that a craving for physical stimulation was</p><p>causing her nail biting, but once she dissected the habit, it became</p><p>easy to find a new routine that provided the same reward.</p><p>Say you want to stop snacking at work. Is the reward you’re</p><p>seeking to satisfy your hunger? Or is it to interrupt boredom? If you</p><p>snack for a brief release, you can easily find another routine—such</p><p>as taking a quick walk, or giving yourself three minutes on the</p><p>Internet—that provides the same interruption without adding to your</p><p>waistline.</p><p>If you want to stop smoking, ask yourself, do you do it because</p><p>you love nicotine, or because it provides a burst of stimulation, a</p><p>structure to your day, a way to socialize? If you smoke because you</p><p>need stimulation, studies indicate that some caffeine in the afternoon</p><p>can increase the odds you’ll quit. More than three dozen studies of</p><p>former smokers have found that identifying the cues and rewards</p><p>they associate with cigarettes, and then choosing new routines that</p><p>provide similar payoffs—a piece of Nicorette, a quick series of push-</p><p>ups, or simply taking a few minutes to stretch and relax—makes it</p><p>more likely they will quit.3.28</p><p>If you identify the cues and rewards, you can change the</p><p>routine.</p><p>At least, most of the time. For some habits, however, there’s</p><p>one other ingredient that’s necessary: belief.</p><p>III.</p><p>“Here are the six reasons everyone thinks we can’t win,” Dungy</p><p>told his Buccaneers after becoming head coach in 1996. It was</p><p>months before the season started and everyone was sitting in the</p><p>locker room. Dungy started listing the theories they had all read in</p><p>the newspapers or heard on the radio: The team’s management was</p><p>messed up. Their new coach was untested. The players were</p><p>spoiled. The city didn’t care. Key players were injured. They didn’t</p><p>have the talent they needed.</p><p>“Those are the supposed reasons,” Dungy said. “Now here is a</p><p>fact: Nobody is going to outwork us.”</p><p>Dungy’s strategy, he explained, was to shift the team’s</p><p>behaviors until their performances were automatic. He didn’t believe</p><p>the Buccaneers needed the thickest playbook. He didn’t think they</p><p>had to memorize hundreds of formations. They just had to learn a</p><p>few key moves and get them right every time.</p><p>However, perfection is hard to achieve in football. “Every play in</p><p>football—every play—someone messes up,” said Herm Edwards,</p><p>one of Dungy’s assistant coaches in Tampa Bay. “Most of the time,</p><p>it’s not physical.3.29 It’s mental.” Players mess up when they start</p><p>thinking too much or second-guessing their plays. What Dungy</p><p>wanted was to take all that decision making out of their game.</p><p>And to do that, he needed them to recognize their existing</p><p>habits and accept new routines.</p><p>He started by watching how his team already played.</p><p>“Let’s work on the Under Defense,” Dungy shouted at a morning</p><p>practice one day. “Number fifty-five, what’s your read?”</p><p>“I’m watching the running back and guard,” said Derrick Brooks,</p><p>an outside linebacker.</p><p>“What precisely are you looking at? Where are your eyes?”</p><p>“I’m looking at the movement of the guard,” said Brooks. “I’m</p><p>watching the QB’s legs and hips after he gets the ball. And I’m</p><p>looking for gaps in the line, to see if they’re gonna pass and if the QB</p><p>is going to throw to my side or away.”</p><p>In football, these visual cues are known as “keys,” and they’re</p><p>critical to every play. Dungy’s innovation was to use these keys as</p><p>cues for reworked habits. He knew that, sometimes, Brooks</p><p>hesitated a moment too long at the start of a play. There were so</p><p>many things for him to think about—is the guard stepping out of</p><p>formation? Does the running back’s foot indicate he’s preparing for a</p><p>running or passing play?—that sometimes he slowed down.</p><p>Dungy’s goal was to free Brooks’s mind from all that analysis.</p><p>Like Alcoholics Anonymous, he used the same cues that Brooks was</p><p>already accustomed to, but gave him different routines that,</p><p>eventually, occurred automatically.</p><p>“I want you to use those same keys,” Dungy told Brooks. “But at</p><p>first, focus only on the running back. That’s it. Do it without thinking.</p><p>Once you’re in position, then start looking for the QB.”</p><p>This was a relatively modest shift—Brooks’s eyes went to the</p><p>same cues, but rather than looking multiple places</p><p>buy a house, and get engaged. Eventually she was recruited</p><p>into the scientists’ study, and when researchers began examining</p><p>images of Lisa’s brain, they saw something remarkable: One set of</p><p>neurological patterns—her old habits—had been overridden by new</p><p>patterns. They could still see the neural activity of her old behaviors,</p><p>but those impulses were crowded out by new urges. As Lisa’s habits</p><p>changed, so had her brain.</p><p>It wasn’t the trip to Cairo that had caused the shift, scientists</p><p>were convinced, or the divorce or desert trek. It was that Lisa had</p><p>focused on changing just one habit—smoking—at first. Everyone in</p><p>the study had gone through a similar process. By focusing on one</p><p>pattern—what is known as a “keystone habit”—Lisa had taught</p><p>herself how to reprogram the other routines in her life, as well.</p><p>It’s not just individuals who are capable of such shifts. When</p><p>companies focus on changing habits, whole organizations can</p><p>transform. Firms such as Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Alcoa, and</p><p>Target have seized on this insight to influence how work gets done,</p><p>how employees communicate, and—without customers realizing it—</p><p>the way people shop.</p><p>“I want to show you one of your most recent scans,” a</p><p>researcher told Lisa near the end of her exam. He pulled up a picture</p><p>on a computer screen that showed images from inside her head.</p><p>“When you see food, these areas”—he pointed to a place near the</p><p>center of her brain—“which are associated with craving and hunger,</p><p>are still active. Your brain still produces the urges that made you</p><p>overeat.</p><p>“However, there’s new activity in this area”—he pointed to the</p><p>region closest to her forehead—“where we believe behavioral</p><p>inhibition and self-discipline starts. That activity has become more</p><p>pronounced each time you’ve come in.”</p><p>Lisa was the scientists’ favorite participant because her brain</p><p>scans were so compelling, so useful in creating a map of where</p><p>behavioral patterns—habits—reside within our minds. “You’re</p><p>helping us understand how a decision becomes an automatic</p><p>behavior,” the doctor told her.</p><p>Everyone in the room felt like they were on the brink of</p><p>something important. And they were.</p><p>When you woke up this morning, what did you do first? Did you</p><p>hop in the shower, check your email, or grab a doughnut from the</p><p>kitchen counter? Did you brush your teeth before or after you</p><p>toweled off? Tie the left or right shoe first? What did you say to your</p><p>kids on your way out the door? Which route did you drive to work?</p><p>When you got to your desk, did you deal with email, chat with a</p><p>colleague, or jump into writing a memo? Salad or hamburger for</p><p>lunch? When you got home, did you put on your sneakers and go for</p><p>a run, or pour yourself a drink and eat dinner in front of the TV?</p><p>“All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of</p><p>habits,” William James wrote in 1892.prl.2 Most of the choices we</p><p>make each day may feel like the products of well-considered</p><p>decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each</p><p>habit means relatively little on its own, over time, the meals we order,</p><p>what we say to our kids each night, whether we save or spend, how</p><p>often we exercise, and the way we organize our thoughts and work</p><p>routines have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, financial</p><p>security, and happiness. One paper published by a Duke University</p><p>researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions</p><p>people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.prl.3</p><p>William James—like countless others, from Aristotle to Oprah—</p><p>spent much of his life trying to understand why habits exist. But only</p><p>in the past two decades have scientists and marketers really begun</p><p>understanding how habits work—and more important, how they</p><p>change.</p><p>This book is divided into three parts. The first section focuses</p><p>on how habits emerge within individual lives. It explores the</p><p>neurology of habit formation, how to build new habits and change old</p><p>ones, and the methods, for instance, that one ad man used to push</p><p>toothbrushing from an obscure practice into a national obsession. It</p><p>shows how Procter & Gamble turned a spray named Febreze into a</p><p>billion-dollar business by taking advantage of consumers’ habitual</p><p>urges, how Alcoholics Anonymous reforms lives by attacking habits</p><p>at the core of addiction, and how coach Tony Dungy reversed the</p><p>fortunes of the worst team in the National Football League by</p><p>focusing on his players’ automatic reactions to subtle on-field cues.</p><p>The second part examines the habits of successful companies</p><p>and organizations. It details how an executive named Paul O’Neill—</p><p>before he became treasury secretary—remade a struggling</p><p>aluminum manufacturer into the top performer in the Dow Jones</p><p>Industrial Average by focusing on one keystone habit, and how</p><p>Starbucks turned a high school dropout into a top manager by</p><p>instilling habits designed to strengthen his willpower. It describes</p><p>why even the most talented surgeons can make catastrophic</p><p>mistakes when a hospital’s organizational habits go awry.</p><p>The third part looks at the habits of societies. It recounts how</p><p>Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement succeeded, in</p><p>part, by changing the ingrained social habits of Montgomery,</p><p>Alabama—and why a similar focus helped a young pastor named</p><p>Rick Warren build the nation’s largest church in Saddleback Valley,</p><p>California. Finally, it explores thorny ethical questions, such as</p><p>whether a murderer in Britain should go free if he can convincingly</p><p>argue that his habits led him to kill.</p><p>Each chapter revolves around a central argument: Habits can</p><p>be changed, if we understand how they work.</p><p>This book draws on hundreds of academic studies, interviews</p><p>with more than three hundred scientists and executives, and</p><p>research conducted at dozens of companies. (For an index of</p><p>resources, please see the book’s notes and</p><p>http://www.thepowerofhabit.com.) It focuses on habits as they are</p><p>technically defined: the choices that all of us deliberately make at</p><p>some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often</p><p>every day. At one point, we all consciously decided how much to eat</p><p>and what to focus on when we got to the office, how often to have a</p><p>drink or when to go for a jog. Then we stopped making a choice, and</p><p>the behavior became automatic. It’s a natural consequence of our</p><p>neurology. And by understanding how it happens, you can rebuild</p><p>those patterns in whichever way you choose.</p><p>I first became interested in the science of habits eight years</p><p>ago, as a newspaper reporter in Baghdad. The U.S. military, it</p><p>occurred to me as I watched it in action, is one of the biggest habit-</p><p>formation experiments in history.prl.4 Basic training teaches soldiers</p><p>carefully designed habits for how to shoot, think, and communicate</p><p>under fire. On the battlefield, every command that’s issued draws on</p><p>behaviors practiced to the point of automation. The entire</p><p>organization relies on endlessly rehearsed routines for building</p><p>bases, setting strategic priorities, and deciding how to respond to</p><p>attacks. In those early days of the war, when the insurgency was</p><p>spreading and death tolls were mounting, commanders were looking</p><p>for habits they could instill among soldiers and Iraqis that might</p><p>create a durable peace.</p><p>I had been in Iraq for about two months when I heard about an</p><p>officer conducting an impromptu habit modification program in Kufa,</p><p>a small city ninety miles south of the capital. He was an army major</p><p>who had analyzed videotapes of recent riots and had identified a</p><p>pattern: Violence was usually preceded by a crowd of Iraqis</p><p>gathering in a plaza or other open space and, over the course of</p><p>several hours, growing in size. Food vendors would show up, as well</p><p>as spectators. Then, someone would throw a rock or a bottle and all</p><p>hell would break loose.</p><p>When the major met with Kufa’s mayor, he made an odd</p><p>request: Could they keep food vendors out of the plazas? Sure, the</p><p>mayor said. A few weeks later, a small crowd gathered near the</p><p>Masjid al-Kufa, or Great Mosque of Kufa. Throughout the afternoon,</p><p>at once, Dungy</p><p>put them in a sequence and told him, ahead of time, the choice to</p><p>make when he saw each key. The brilliance of this system was that it</p><p>removed the need for decision making. It allowed Brooks to move</p><p>faster, because everything was a reaction—and eventually a habit—</p><p>rather than a choice.</p><p>Dungy gave every player similar instructions, and practiced the</p><p>formations over and over. It took almost a year for Dungy’s habits to</p><p>take hold. The team lost early, easy games. Sports columnists asked</p><p>why the Bucs were wasting so much time on psychological quackery.</p><p>But slowly, they began to improve. Eventually, the patterns</p><p>became so familiar to players that they unfolded automatically when</p><p>the team took the field. In Dungy’s second season as coach, the</p><p>Bucs won their first five games and went to the play-offs for the first</p><p>time in fifteen years. In 1999, they won the division championship.</p><p>Dungy’s coaching style started drawing national attention. The</p><p>sports media fell in love with his soft-spoken demeanor, religious</p><p>piety, and the importance he placed on balancing work and family.</p><p>Newspaper stories described how he brought his sons, Eric and</p><p>Jamie, to the stadium so they could hang out during practice. They</p><p>did their homework in his office and picked up towels in the locker</p><p>room. It seemed like, finally, success had arrived.</p><p>In 2000, the Bucs made it to the play-offs again, and then again</p><p>in 2001. Fans now filled the stadium every week. Sportscasters</p><p>talked about the team as Super Bowl contenders. It was all</p><p>becoming real.</p><p>But even as the Bucs became a powerhouse, a troubling</p><p>problem emerged. They often played tight, disciplined games.</p><p>However, during crucial, high-stress moments, everything would fall</p><p>apart.3.30</p><p>In 1999, after racking up six wins in a row at the end of the</p><p>season, the Bucs blew the conference championship against the St.</p><p>Louis Rams. In 2000, they were one game away from the Super</p><p>Bowl when they disintegrated against the Philadelphia Eagles, losing</p><p>21 to 3. The next year, the same thing happened again, and the</p><p>Bucs lost to the Eagles, 31 to 9, blowing their chance of advancing.</p><p>“We would practice, and everything would come together and</p><p>then we’d get to a big game and it was like the training disappeared,”</p><p>Dungy told me. “Afterward, my players would say, ‘Well, it was a</p><p>critical play and I went back to what I knew,’ or ‘I felt like I had to step</p><p>it up.’ What they were really saying was they trusted our system</p><p>most of the time, but when everything was on the line, that belief</p><p>broke down.”3.31</p><p>At the conclusion of the 2001 season, after the Bucs had</p><p>missed the Super Bowl for the second straight year, the team’s</p><p>general manager asked Dungy to come to his house. He parked</p><p>near a huge oak tree, walked inside, and thirty seconds later was</p><p>fired.</p><p>The Bucs would go on to win the Super Bowl the next year</p><p>using Dungy’s formations and players, and by relying on the habits</p><p>he had shaped. He would watch on television as the coach who</p><p>replaced him lifted up the Lombardi trophy. But by then, he would</p><p>already be far away.</p><p>IV.</p><p>About sixty people—soccer moms and lawyers on lunch breaks,</p><p>old guys with fading tattoos and hipsters in skinny jeans—are sitting</p><p>in a church and listening to a man with a slight paunch and a tie that</p><p>complements his pale blue eyes. He looks like a successful</p><p>politician, with the warm charisma of assured reelection.</p><p>“My name is John,” he says, “and I’m an alcoholic.”</p><p>“Hi, John,” everyone replies.</p><p>“The first time I decided to get help was when my son broke his</p><p>arm,” John says. He’s standing behind a podium. “I was having an</p><p>affair with a woman at work, and she told me that she wanted to end</p><p>it. So I went to a bar and had two vodkas, and went back to my desk,</p><p>and at lunch I went to Chili’s with a friend, and we each had a few</p><p>beers, and then at about two o’clock, me and another friend left and</p><p>found a place with a two-for-one happy hour. It was my day to pick</p><p>up the kids—my wife didn’t know about the affair yet—so I drove to</p><p>their school and got them, and I was driving home on a street I must</p><p>have driven a thousand times, and I slammed into a stop sign at the</p><p>end of the block. Up on the sidewalk and, bam, right into the sign.</p><p>Sam—that’s my boy—hadn’t put on his seat belt, so he flew against</p><p>the windshield and broke his arm. There was blood on the dash</p><p>where he hit his nose and the windshield was cracked and I was so</p><p>scared. That’s when I decided I needed help.</p><p>“So I checked into a clinic and then came out, and everything</p><p>was pretty good for a while. For about thirteen months, everything</p><p>was great. I felt like I was in control and I went to meetings every</p><p>couple of days, but eventually I started thinking, I’m not such a loser</p><p>that I need to hang out with a bunch of drunks. So I stopped going.</p><p>“Then my mom got cancer, and she called me at work, almost</p><p>two years after I got sober. She was driving home from the doctor’s</p><p>office, and she said, ‘He told me we can treat it, but it’s pretty</p><p>advanced.’ The first thing I did after I hung up is find a bar, and I was</p><p>pretty much drunk for the next two years until my wife moved out,</p><p>and I was supposed to pick up my kids again. I was in a really bad</p><p>place by then. A friend was teaching me to use coke, and every</p><p>afternoon I would do a line inside my office, and five minutes later I</p><p>would get that little drip into the back of my throat and do another</p><p>line.</p><p>“Anyways, it was my turn to get the kids. I was on the way to</p><p>their school and I felt totally fine, like I was on top of everything, and I</p><p>pulled into an intersection when the light was red and this huge truck</p><p>slammed into my car. It actually flipped the car on its side. I didn’t</p><p>have a scratch on me. I got out, and started trying to push my car</p><p>over, because I figured, if I can make it home and leave before the</p><p>cops arrive, I’ll be fine. Of course that didn’t work out, and when they</p><p>arrested me for DUI they showed me how the passenger side of the</p><p>car was completely crushed in. That’s where Sammy usually sat. If</p><p>he had been there, he would have been killed.</p><p>“So I started going to meetings again, and my sponsor told me</p><p>that it didn’t matter if I felt in control. Without a higher power in my</p><p>life, without admitting my powerlessness, none of it was going to</p><p>work. I thought that was bull—I’m an atheist. But I knew that if</p><p>something didn’t change, I was going to kill my kids. So I started</p><p>working at that, working at believing in something bigger than me.</p><p>And it’s working. I don’t know if it’s God or something else, but there</p><p>is a power that has helped me stay sober for seven years now and</p><p>I’m in awe of it. I don’t wake up sober every morning—I mean, I</p><p>haven’t had a drink in seven years, but some mornings I wake up</p><p>feeling like I’m gonna fall down that day. Those days, I look for the</p><p>higher power, and I call my sponsor, and most of the time we don’t</p><p>talk about drinking. We talk about life and marriage and my job, and</p><p>by the time I’m ready for a shower, my head is on straight.”</p><p>The first cracks in the theory that Alcoholics Anonymous</p><p>succeeded solely by reprogramming participants’ habits started</p><p>appearing a little over a decade ago and were caused by stories</p><p>from alcoholics like John. Researchers began finding that habit</p><p>replacement worked pretty well for many people until the stresses of</p><p>life—such as finding out your mom has cancer, or your marriage is</p><p>coming apart—got too high, at which point alcoholics often fell off the</p><p>wagon. Academics asked why, if habit replacement is so effective, it</p><p>seemed to fail at such critical moments. And as they dug into</p><p>alcoholics’ stories to answer that question, they learned that</p><p>replacement habits only become durable new behaviors when they</p><p>are accompanied by something else.</p><p>One group of researchers at the Alcohol Research Group in</p><p>California, for instance, noticed a pattern in interviews. Over and</p><p>over again, alcoholics said the same thing: Identifying cues and</p><p>choosing new routines is important, but without another ingredient,</p><p>the</p><p>new habits never fully took hold.</p><p>The secret, the alcoholics said, was God.</p><p>Researchers hated that explanation. God and spirituality are not</p><p>testable hypotheses. Churches are filled with drunks who continue</p><p>drinking despite a pious faith. In conversations with addicts, though,</p><p>spirituality kept coming up again and again. So in 2005, a group of</p><p>scientists—this time affiliated with UC Berkeley, Brown University,</p><p>and the National Institutes of Health—began asking alcoholics about</p><p>all kinds of religious and spiritual topics.3.32 Then they looked at the</p><p>data to see if there was any correlation between religious belief and</p><p>how long people stayed sober.3.33</p><p>A pattern emerged. Alcoholics who practiced the techniques of</p><p>habit replacement, the data indicated, could often stay sober until</p><p>there was a stressful event in their lives—at which point, a certain</p><p>number started drinking again, no matter how many new routines</p><p>they had embraced.</p><p>However, those alcoholics who believed, like John in Brooklyn,</p><p>that some higher power had entered their lives were more likely to</p><p>make it through the stressful periods with their sobriety intact.</p><p>It wasn’t God that mattered, the researchers figured out. It was</p><p>belief itself that made a difference. Once people learned how to</p><p>believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of</p><p>their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was</p><p>the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent</p><p>behavior.</p><p>“I wouldn’t have said this a year ago—that’s how fast our</p><p>understanding is changing,” said Tonigan, the University of New</p><p>Mexico researcher, “but belief seems critical. You don’t have to</p><p>believe in God, but you do need the capacity to believe that things</p><p>will get better.</p><p>“Even if you give people better habits, it doesn’t repair why they</p><p>started drinking in the first place. Eventually they’ll have a bad day,</p><p>and no new routine is going to make everything seem okay. What</p><p>can make a difference is believing that they can cope with that stress</p><p>without alcohol.”</p><p>By putting alcoholics in meetings where belief is a given—</p><p>where, in fact, belief is an integral part of the twelve steps—AA trains</p><p>people in how to believe in something until they believe in the</p><p>program and themselves. It lets people practice believing that things</p><p>will eventually get better, until things actually do.</p><p>“At some point, people in AA look around the room and think, if</p><p>it worked for that guy, I guess it can work for me,” said Lee Ann</p><p>Kaskutas, a senior scientist at the Alcohol Research Group. “There’s</p><p>something really powerful about groups and shared experiences.</p><p>People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by</p><p>themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A</p><p>community creates belief.”</p><p>As John was leaving the AA meeting, I asked him why the</p><p>program worked now, after it had failed him before. “When I started</p><p>coming to meetings after the truck accident, someone asked for</p><p>volunteers to help put away the chairs,” he told me. “I raised my</p><p>hand. It wasn’t a big thing, it took like five minutes, but it felt good to</p><p>do something that wasn’t all about me. I think that started me on a</p><p>different path.</p><p>“I wasn’t ready to give in to the group the first time, but when I</p><p>came back, I was ready to start believing in something.”</p><p>V.</p><p>Within a week of Dungy’s firing by the Bucs, the owner of the</p><p>Indianapolis Colts left an impassioned fifteen-minute message on his</p><p>answering machine. The Colts, despite having one of the NFL’s best</p><p>quarterbacks, Peyton Manning, had just finished a dreadful season.</p><p>The owner needed help. He was tired of losing, he said. Dungy</p><p>moved to Indianapolis and became head coach.</p><p>He immediately started implementing the same basic game</p><p>plan: remaking the Colts’ routines and teaching players to use old</p><p>cues to build reworked habits. In his first season, the Colts went 10–</p><p>6 and qualified for the play-offs. The next season, they went 12–4</p><p>and came within one game of the Super Bowl. Dungy’s celebrity</p><p>grew. Newspaper and television profiles appeared around the</p><p>country. Fans flew in so they could visit the church Dungy attended.</p><p>His sons became fixtures in the Colts’ locker room and on the</p><p>sidelines. In 2005, Jamie, his eldest boy, graduated from high school</p><p>and went to college in Florida.</p><p>Even as Dungy’s successes mounted, however, the same</p><p>troubling patterns emerged. The Colts would play a season of</p><p>disciplined, winning football, and then under play-off pressure,</p><p>choke.</p><p>“Belief is the biggest part of success in professional football,”</p><p>Dungy told me. “The team wanted to believe, but when things got</p><p>really tense, they went back to their comfort zones and old habits.”</p><p>The Colts finished the 2005 regular season with fourteen wins</p><p>and two losses, the best record in its history.</p><p>Then tragedy struck.</p><p>Three days before Christmas, Tony Dungy’s phone rang in the</p><p>middle of the night. His wife answered and handed him the receiver,</p><p>thinking it was one of his players. There was a nurse on the line.</p><p>Dungy’s son Jamie had been brought into the hospital earlier in the</p><p>evening, she said, with compression injuries on his throat. His</p><p>girlfriend had found him hanging in his apartment, a belt around his</p><p>neck. Paramedics had rushed him to the hospital, but efforts at</p><p>revival were unsuccessful.3.34 He was gone.</p><p>A chaplain flew to spend Christmas with the family. “Life will</p><p>never be the same again,” the chaplain told them, “but you won’t</p><p>always feel like you do right now.”</p><p>A few days after the funeral, Dungy returned to the sidelines. He</p><p>needed something to distract himself, and his wife and team</p><p>encouraged him to go back to work. “I was overwhelmed by their</p><p>love and support,” he later wrote. “As a group, we had always leaned</p><p>on each other in difficult times; I needed them now more than ever.”</p><p>The team lost their first play-off game, concluding their season.</p><p>But in the aftermath of watching Dungy during this tragedy,</p><p>“something changed,” one of his players from that period told me.</p><p>“We had seen Coach through this terrible thing and all of us wanted</p><p>to help him somehow.”</p><p>It is simplistic, even cavalier, to suggest that a young man’s</p><p>death can have an impact on football games. Dungy has always said</p><p>that nothing is more important to him than his family. But in the wake</p><p>of Jamie’s passing, as the Colts started preparing for the next</p><p>season, something shifted, his players say. The team gave in to</p><p>Dungy’s vision of how football should be played in a way they hadn’t</p><p>before. They started to believe.</p><p>“I had spent a lot of previous seasons worrying about my</p><p>contract and salary,” said one player who, like others, spoke about</p><p>that period on the condition of anonymity. “When Coach came back,</p><p>after the funeral, I wanted to give him everything I could, to take</p><p>away his hurt. I kind of gave myself to the team.”</p><p>“Some men like hugging each other,” another player told me. “I</p><p>don’t. I haven’t hugged my sons in a decade. But after Coach came</p><p>back, I walked over and I hugged him as long as I could, because I</p><p>wanted him to know that I was there for him.”</p><p>After the death of Dungy’s son, the team started playing</p><p>differently. A conviction emerged among players about the strength</p><p>of Dungy’s strategy. In practices and scrimmages leading up to the</p><p>start of the 2006 season, the Colts played tight, precise football.</p><p>“Most football teams aren’t really teams. They’re just guys who</p><p>work together,” a third player from that period told me. “But we</p><p>became a team. It felt amazing. Coach was the spark, but it was</p><p>about more than him. After he came back, it felt like we really</p><p>believed in each other, like we knew how to play together in a way</p><p>we didn’t before.”</p><p>For the Colts, a belief in their team—in Dungy’s tactics and their</p><p>ability to win—began to emerge out of tragedy. But just as often, a</p><p>similar belief can emerge without any kind of adversity.</p><p>In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had</p><p>radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that</p><p>some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such</p><p>as a divorce or a life-threatening illness.3.35 Others changed after</p><p>they saw a friend go through something awful, the same way that</p><p>Dungy’s players watched him struggle.</p><p>Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded</p><p>people’s transformations. Rather, they changed because they were</p><p>embedded in social groups that made change easier. One woman</p><p>said her entire life shifted when she signed up for a psychology class</p><p>and met a wonderful group. “It opened a Pandora’s box,” the woman</p><p>told researchers. “I could not tolerate the status quo any longer. I had</p><p>changed in my core.” Another man said that he found new friends</p><p>among whom he could practice being gregarious. “When I do make</p><p>the effort to overcome my shyness, I feel that it is not really me</p><p>acting, that it’s someone else,” he said. But by practicing with his</p><p>new group, it stopped feeling like acting. He started to believe he</p><p>wasn’t shy, and then, eventually, he wasn’t anymore. When people</p><p>join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that</p><p>change to occur becomes more real. For most people who overhaul</p><p>their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters.</p><p>There are simply communities—sometimes of just one other person</p><p>—who make change believable. One woman told researchers her</p><p>life transformed after a day spent cleaning toilets—and after weeks</p><p>of discussing with the rest of the cleaning crew whether she should</p><p>leave her husband.</p><p>“Change occurs among other people,” one of the psychologists</p><p>involved in the study, Todd Heatherton, told me. “It seems real when</p><p>we can see it in other people’s eyes.”</p><p>The precise mechanisms of belief are still little understood. No</p><p>one is certain why a group encountered in a psychology class can</p><p>convince a woman that everything is different, or why Dungy’s team</p><p>came together after their coach’s son passed away. Plenty of people</p><p>talk to friends about unhappy marriages and never leave their</p><p>spouses; lots of teams watch their coaches experience adversity and</p><p>never gel.</p><p>But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people</p><p>must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes</p><p>AA so effective—the power of a group to teach individuals how to</p><p>believe—happens whenever people come together to help one</p><p>another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.</p><p>Ten months after Jamie’s death, the 2006 football season</p><p>began. The Colts played peerless football, winning their first nine</p><p>games, and finishing the year 12–4. They won their first play-off</p><p>game, and then beat the Baltimore Ravens for the divisional title. At</p><p>that point, they were one step away from the Super Bowl, playing for</p><p>the conference championship—the game that Dungy had lost eight</p><p>times before.</p><p>The matchup occurred on January 21, 2007, against the New</p><p>England Patriots, the same team that had snuffed out the Colts’</p><p>Super Bowl aspirations twice.</p><p>The Colts started the game strong, but before the first half</p><p>ended, they began falling apart. Players were afraid of making</p><p>mistakes or so eager to get past the final Super Bowl hurdle that</p><p>they lost track of where they were supposed to be focusing. They</p><p>stopped relying on their habits and started thinking too much. Sloppy</p><p>tackling led to turnovers. One of Peyton Manning’s passes was</p><p>intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Their opponents, the</p><p>Patriots, pulled ahead 21 to 3. No team in the history of the NFL had</p><p>ever overcome so big a deficit in a conference championship.</p><p>Dungy’s team, once again, was going to lose.3.36</p><p>At halftime, the team filed into the locker room, and Dungy</p><p>asked everyone to gather around. The noise from the stadium</p><p>filtered through the closed doors, but inside everyone was quiet.</p><p>Dungy looked at his players.</p><p>They had to believe, he said.</p><p>“We faced this same situation—against this same team—in</p><p>2003,” Dungy told them. In that game, they had come within one</p><p>yard of winning. One yard. “Get your sword ready because this time</p><p>we’re going to win. This is our game. It’s our time.”3.37</p><p>The Colts came out in the second half and started playing as</p><p>they had in every preceding game. They stayed focused on their</p><p>cues and habits. They carefully executed the plays they had spent</p><p>the past five years practicing until they had become automatic. Their</p><p>offense, on the opening drive, ground out seventy-six yards over</p><p>fourteen plays and scored a touchdown. Then, three minutes after</p><p>taking the next possession, they scored again.</p><p>As the fourth quarter wound down, the teams traded points.</p><p>Dungy’s Colts tied the game, but never managed to pull ahead. With</p><p>3:49 left in the game, the Patriots scored, putting Dungy’s players at</p><p>a three-point disadvantage, 34 to 31. The Colts got the ball and</p><p>began driving down the field. They moved seventy yards in nineteen</p><p>seconds, and crossed into the end zone. For the first time, the Colts</p><p>had the lead, 38 to 34. There were now sixty seconds left on the</p><p>clock. If Dungy’s team could stop the Patriots from scoring a</p><p>touchdown, the Colts would win.</p><p>Sixty seconds is an eternity in football.</p><p>The Patriots’ quarterback, Tom Brady, had scored touchdowns</p><p>in far less time. Sure enough, within seconds of the start of play,</p><p>Brady moved his team halfway down the field. With seventeen</p><p>seconds remaining, the Patriots were within striking distance, poised</p><p>for a final big play that would hand Dungy another defeat and crush,</p><p>yet again, his team’s Super Bowl dreams.</p><p>As the Patriots approached the line of scrimmage, the Colts’</p><p>defense went into their stances. Marlin Jackson, a Colts cornerback,</p><p>stood ten yards back from the line. He looked at his cues: the width</p><p>of the gaps between the Patriot linemen and the depth of the running</p><p>back’s stance. Both told him this was going to be a passing play.</p><p>Tom Brady, the Patriots’ quarterback, took the snap and dropped</p><p>back to pass. Jackson was already moving. Brady cocked his arm</p><p>and heaved the ball. His intended target was a Patriot receiver</p><p>twenty-two yards away, wide open, near the middle of the field. If the</p><p>receiver caught the ball, it was likely he could make it close to the</p><p>end zone or score a touchdown. The football flew through the air.</p><p>Jackson, the Colts cornerback, was already running at an angle,</p><p>following his habits. He rushed past the receiver’s right shoulder,</p><p>cutting in front of him just as the ball arrived. Jackson plucked the</p><p>ball out of the air for an interception, ran a few more steps and then</p><p>slid to the ground, hugging the ball to his chest. The whole play had</p><p>taken less than five seconds. The game was over. Dungy and the</p><p>Colts had won.</p><p>Two weeks later, they won the Super Bowl. There are dozens of</p><p>reasons that might explain why the Colts finally became champions</p><p>that year. Maybe they got lucky. Maybe it was just their time. But</p><p>Dungy’s players say it’s because they believed, and because that</p><p>belief made everything they had learned—all the routines they had</p><p>practiced until they became automatic—stick, even at the most</p><p>stressful moments.</p><p>“We’re proud to have won this championship for our leader,</p><p>Coach Dungy,” Peyton Manning told the crowd afterward, cradling</p><p>the Lombardi Trophy.</p><p>Dungy turned to his wife. “We did it,” he said.</p><p>How do habits change?</p><p>There is, unfortunately, no specific set of steps guaranteed to</p><p>work for every person. We know that a habit cannot be eradicated—</p><p>it must, instead, be replaced. And we know that habits are most</p><p>malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applied: If we</p><p>keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be</p><p>inserted.</p><p>But that’s not enough. For a habit to stay changed, people must</p><p>believe change is possible. And most often, that belief only emerges</p><p>with the help of a group.</p><p>If you want to quit smoking, figure out a different routine that will</p><p>satisfy the cravings filled by cigarettes. Then, find a support group, a</p><p>collection of other former smokers, or a community that will help you</p><p>believe you can stay away from nicotine, and use that group</p><p>when</p><p>you feel you might stumble.</p><p>If you want to lose weight, study your habits to determine why</p><p>you really leave your desk for a snack each day, and then find</p><p>someone else to take a walk with you, to gossip with at their desk</p><p>rather than in the cafeteria, a group that tracks weight-loss goals</p><p>together, or someone who also wants to keep a stock of apples,</p><p>rather than chips, nearby.</p><p>The evidence is clear: If you want to change a habit, you must</p><p>find an alternative routine, and your odds of success go up</p><p>dramatically when you commit to changing as part of a group. Belief</p><p>is essential, and it grows out of a communal experience, even if that</p><p>community is only as large as two people.</p><p>We know that change can happen. Alcoholics can stop drinking.</p><p>Smokers can quit puffing. Perennial losers can become champions.</p><p>You can stop biting your nails or snacking at work, yelling at your</p><p>kids, staying up all night, or worrying over small concerns. And as</p><p>scientists have discovered, it’s not just individual lives that can shift</p><p>when habits are tended to. It’s also companies, organizations, and</p><p>communities, as the next chapters explain.</p><p>1 The line separating habits and addictions is often difficult to</p><p>measure. For instance, the American Society of Addiction Medicine</p><p>defines addiction as “a primary, chronic disease of brain reward,</p><p>motivation, memory and related circuitry.… Addiction is</p><p>characterized by impairment in behavioral control, craving, inability</p><p>to consistently abstain, and diminished relationships.”</p><p>By that definition, some researchers note, it is difficult to</p><p>determine why spending fifty dollars a week on cocaine is bad, but</p><p>fifty dollars a week on coffee is okay. Someone who craves a latte</p><p>every afternoon may seem clinically addicted to an observer who</p><p>thinks five dollars for coffee demonstrates an “impairment in</p><p>behavioral control.” Is someone who would prefer running to having</p><p>breakfast with his kids addicted to exercise?</p><p>In general, say many researchers, while addiction is</p><p>complicated and still poorly understood, many of the behaviors that</p><p>we associate with it are often driven by habit. Some substances,</p><p>such as drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol, can create physical</p><p>dependencies. But these physical cravings often fade quickly after</p><p>use is discontinued. A physical addiction to nicotine, for instance,</p><p>lasts only as long as the chemical is in a smoker’s bloodstream—</p><p>about one hundred hours after the last cigarette. Many of the</p><p>lingering urges that we think of as nicotine’s addictive twinges are</p><p>really behavioral habits asserting themselves—we crave a cigarette</p><p>at breakfast a month later not because we physically need it, but</p><p>because we remember so fondly the rush it once provided each</p><p>morning. Attacking the behaviors we think of as addictions by</p><p>modifying the habits surrounding them has been shown, in clinical</p><p>studies, to be one of the most effective modes of treatment. (Though</p><p>it is worth noting that some chemicals, such as opiates, can cause</p><p>prolonged physical addictions, and some studies indicate that a</p><p>small group of people seem predisposed to seek out addictive</p><p>chemicals, regardless of behavioral interventions. The number of</p><p>chemicals that cause long-term physical addictions, however, is</p><p>relatively small, and the number of predisposed addicts is estimated</p><p>to be much less than the number of alcoholics and addicts seeking</p><p>help.)</p><p>2 It is important to note that though the process of habit change</p><p>is easily described, it does not necessarily follow that it is easily</p><p>accomplished. It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism,</p><p>overeating, or other ingrained patterns can be upended without real</p><p>effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the</p><p>cravings driving behaviors. Changing any habit requires</p><p>determination. No one will quit smoking cigarettes simply because</p><p>they sketch a habit loop.</p><p>However, by understanding habits’ mechanisms, we gain</p><p>insights that make new behaviors easier to grasp. Anyone struggling</p><p>with addiction or destructive behaviors can benefit from help from</p><p>many quarters, including trained therapists, physicians, social</p><p>workers, and clergy. Even professionals in those fields, though,</p><p>agree that most alcoholics, smokers, and other people struggling</p><p>with problematic behaviors quit on their own, away from formal</p><p>treatment settings. Much of the time, those changes are</p><p>accomplished because people examine the cues, cravings, and</p><p>rewards that drive their behaviors and then find ways to replace their</p><p>self-destructive routines with healthier alternatives, even if they</p><p>aren’t fully aware of what they are doing at the time. Understanding</p><p>the cues and cravings driving your habits won’t make them suddenly</p><p>disappear—but it will give you a way to plan how to change the</p><p>pattern.</p><p>KEYSTONE HABITS, OR THE BALLAD OF PAUL O’NEILL</p><p>Which Habits Matter Most</p><p>I.</p><p>On a blustery October day in 1987, a herd of prominent Wall</p><p>Street investors and stock analysts gathered in the ballroom of a</p><p>posh Manhattan hotel. They were there to meet the new CEO of the</p><p>Aluminum Company of America—or Alcoa, as it was known—a</p><p>corporation that, for nearly a century, had manufactured everything</p><p>from the foil that wraps Hershey’s Kisses and the metal in Coca-Cola</p><p>cans to the bolts that hold satellites together.4.1</p><p>Alcoa’s founder had invented the process for smelting aluminum</p><p>a century earlier, and since then the company had become one of</p><p>the largest on earth. Many of the people in the audience had</p><p>invested millions of dollars in Alcoa stock and had enjoyed a steady</p><p>return. In the past year, however, investor grumblings started.</p><p>Alcoa’s management had made misstep after misstep, unwisely</p><p>trying to expand into new product lines while competitors stole</p><p>customers and profits away.</p><p>So there had been a palpable sense of relief when Alcoa’s</p><p>board announced it was time for new leadership. That relief, though,</p><p>turned to unease when the choice was announced: the new CEO</p><p>would be a former government bureaucrat named Paul O’Neill. Many</p><p>on Wall Street had never heard of him. When Alcoa scheduled this</p><p>meet and greet at the Manhattan ballroom, every major investor</p><p>asked for an invitation.</p><p>A few minutes before noon, O’Neill took the stage. He was fifty-</p><p>one years old, trim, and dressed in gray pinstripes and a red power</p><p>tie. His hair was white and his posture military straight. He bounced</p><p>up the steps and smiled warmly. He looked dignified, solid, confident.</p><p>Like a chief executive.</p><p>Then he opened his mouth.</p><p>“I want to talk to you about worker safety,” he said. “Every year,</p><p>numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of</p><p>work. Our safety record is better than the general American</p><p>workforce, especially considering that our employees work with</p><p>metals that are 1500 degrees and machines that can rip a man’s arm</p><p>off. But it’s not good enough. I intend to make Alcoa the safest</p><p>company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries.”</p><p>The audience was confused. These meetings usually followed a</p><p>predictable script: A new CEO would start with an introduction, make</p><p>a faux self-deprecating joke—something about how he slept his way</p><p>through Harvard Business School—then promise to boost profits and</p><p>lower costs. Next would come an excoriation of taxes, business</p><p>regulations, and sometimes, with a fervor that suggested firsthand</p><p>experience in divorce court, lawyers. Finally, the speech would end</p><p>with a blizzard of buzzwords—“synergy,” “rightsizing,” and “co-</p><p>opetition”—at which point everyone could return to their offices,</p><p>reassured that capitalism was safe for another day.</p><p>O’Neill hadn’t said anything about profits. He didn’t mention</p><p>taxes. There was no talk of “using alignment to achieve a win-win</p><p>synergistic market advantage.” For all anyone in the audience knew,</p><p>given his talk of worker safety, O’Neill might be pro-regulation. Or,</p><p>worse, a Democrat. It was a terrifying prospect.</p><p>“Now, before I go any further,” O’Neill said, “I want to point out</p><p>the safety exits in this room.” He gestured to the rear</p><p>of the ballroom.</p><p>“There’s a couple of doors in the back, and in the unlikely event of a</p><p>fire or other emergency, you should calmly walk out, go down the</p><p>stairs to the lobby, and leave the building.”</p><p>Silence. The only noise was the hum of traffic through the</p><p>windows. Safety? Fire exits? Was this a joke? One investor in the</p><p>audience knew that O’Neill had been in Washington, D.C., during the</p><p>sixties. Guy must have done a lot of drugs, he thought.</p><p>Eventually, someone raised a hand and asked about inventories</p><p>in the aerospace division. Another asked about the company’s</p><p>capital ratios.</p><p>“I’m not certain you heard me,” O’Neill said. “If you want to</p><p>understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at our workplace</p><p>safety figures. If we bring our injury rates down, it won’t be because</p><p>of cheerleading or the nonsense you sometimes hear from other</p><p>CEOs. It will be because the individuals at this company have</p><p>agreed to become part of something important: They’ve devoted</p><p>themselves to creating a habit of excellence. Safety will be an</p><p>indicator that we’re making progress in changing our habits across</p><p>the entire institution. That’s how we should be judged.”</p><p>The investors in the room almost stampeded out the doors</p><p>when the presentation ended. One jogged to the lobby, found a pay</p><p>phone, and called his twenty largest clients.</p><p>“I said, ‘The board put a crazy hippie in charge and he’s going</p><p>to kill the company,’ ” that investor told me. “I ordered them to sell</p><p>their stock immediately, before everyone else in the room started</p><p>calling their clients and telling them the same thing.</p><p>“It was literally the worst piece of advice I gave in my entire</p><p>career.”</p><p>Within a year of O’Neill’s speech, Alcoa’s profits would hit a</p><p>record high. By the time O’Neill retired in 2000, the company’s</p><p>annual net income was five times larger than before he arrived, and</p><p>its market capitalization had risen by $27 billion. Someone who</p><p>invested a million dollars in Alcoa on the day O’Neill was hired would</p><p>have earned another million dollars in dividends while he headed the</p><p>company, and the value of their stock would be five times bigger</p><p>when he left.</p><p>What’s more, all that growth occurred while Alcoa became one</p><p>of the safest companies in the world. Before O’Neill’s arrival, almost</p><p>every Alcoa plant had at least one accident per week. Once his</p><p>safety plan was implemented, some facilities would go years without</p><p>a single employee losing a workday due to an accident. The</p><p>company’s worker injury rate fell to one-twentieth the U.S. average.</p><p>So how did O’Neill make one of the largest, stodgiest, and most</p><p>potentially dangerous companies into a profit machine and a bastion</p><p>of safety?</p><p>By attacking one habit and then watching the changes ripple</p><p>through the organization.</p><p>“I knew I had to transform Alcoa,” O’Neill told me. “But you can’t</p><p>order people to change. That’s not how the brain works. So I decided</p><p>I was going to start by focusing on one thing. If I could start</p><p>disrupting the habits around one thing, it would spread throughout</p><p>the entire company.”</p><p>O’Neill believed that some habits have the power to start a</p><p>chain reaction, changing other habits as they move through an</p><p>organization. Some habits, in other words, matter more than others</p><p>in remaking businesses and lives. These are “keystone habits,” and</p><p>they can influence how people work, eat, play, live, spend, and</p><p>communicate. Keystone habits start a process that, over time,</p><p>transforms everything.</p><p>Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting</p><p>every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key</p><p>priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers. This book’s first</p><p>section explained how habits work, how they can be created and</p><p>changed. However, where should a would-be habit master start?</p><p>Understanding keystone habits holds the answer to that question:</p><p>The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to</p><p>shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.</p><p>Keystone habits explain how Michael Phelps became an</p><p>Olympic champion and why some college students outperform their</p><p>peers. They describe why some people, after years of trying,</p><p>suddenly lose forty pounds while becoming more productive at work</p><p>and still getting home in time for dinner with their kids. And keystone</p><p>habits explain how Alcoa became one of the best performing stocks</p><p>in the Dow Jones index, while also becoming one of the safest</p><p>places on earth.</p><p>When Alcoa first approached O’Neill about becoming CEO, he</p><p>wasn’t sure he wanted the job. He’d already earned plenty of money,</p><p>and his wife liked Connecticut, where they lived. They didn’t know</p><p>anything about Pittsburgh, where Alcoa was headquartered. But</p><p>before turning down the offer, O’Neill asked for some time to think it</p><p>over. To help himself make the decision, he started working on a list</p><p>of what would be his biggest priorities if he accepted the post.</p><p>O’Neill had always been a big believer in lists. Lists were how</p><p>he organized his life. In college at Fresno State—where he finished</p><p>his courses in a bit over three years, while also working thirty hours a</p><p>week—O’Neill had drafted a list of everything he hoped to</p><p>accomplish during his lifetime, including, near the top, “Make a</p><p>Difference.” After graduating in 1960, at a friend’s encouragement,</p><p>O’Neill picked up an application for a federal internship and, along</p><p>with three hundred thousand others, took the government</p><p>employment exam. Three thousand people were chosen for</p><p>interviews. Three hundred of them were offered jobs. O’Neill was</p><p>one.4.2</p><p>He started as a middle manager at the Veterans Administration</p><p>and was told to learn about computer systems. All the while, O’Neill</p><p>kept writing his lists, recording why some projects were more</p><p>successful than others, which contractors delivered on time and</p><p>which didn’t. He was promoted each year. And as he rose through</p><p>the VA’s ranks, he made a name for himself as someone whose lists</p><p>always seemed to include a bullet point that got a problem solved.</p><p>By the mid-1960s, such skills were in high demand in</p><p>Washington, D.C. Robert McNamara had recently remade the</p><p>Pentagon by hiring a crop of young mathematicians, statisticians,</p><p>and computer programmers. President Johnson wanted some whiz</p><p>kids of his own. So O’Neill was recruited to what eventually became</p><p>known as the Office of Management and Budget, one of D.C.’s most</p><p>powerful agencies. Within a decade, at age thirty-eight, he was</p><p>promoted to deputy director and was, suddenly, among the most</p><p>influential people in town.</p><p>That’s when O’Neill’s education in organizational habits really</p><p>started. One of his first assignments was to create an analytical</p><p>framework for studying how the government was spending money on</p><p>health care. He quickly figured out that the government’s efforts,</p><p>which should have been guided by logical rules and deliberate</p><p>priorities, were instead driven by bizarre institutional processes that,</p><p>in many ways, operated like habits. Bureaucrats and politicians,</p><p>rather than making decisions, were responding to cues with</p><p>automatic routines in order to get rewards such as promotions or</p><p>reelection. It was the habit loop—spread across thousands of people</p><p>and billions of dollars.</p><p>For instance, after World War II, Congress had created a</p><p>program to build community hospitals. A quarter century later, it was</p><p>still chugging along, and so whenever lawmakers allocated new</p><p>health-care funds, bureaucrats immediately started building. The</p><p>towns where the new hospitals were located didn’t necessarily need</p><p>more patient beds, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was</p><p>erecting a big structure that a politician could point to while stumping</p><p>for votes.4.3</p><p>Federal workers would “spend months debating blue or yellow</p><p>curtains, figuring out if patient rooms should contain one or two</p><p>televisions, designing nurses’ stations, real pointless stuff,” O’Neill</p><p>told me. “Most of the time, no one ever asked if the town wanted a</p><p>hospital. The bureaucrats had gotten into a habit of solving every</p><p>medical problem by building something so</p><p>that a congressman could</p><p>say, ‘Here’s what I did!’ It didn’t make any sense, but everybody did</p><p>the same thing again and again.”</p><p>Researchers have found institutional habits in almost every</p><p>organization or company they’ve scrutinized. “Individuals have</p><p>habits; groups have routines,” wrote the academic Geoffrey</p><p>Hodgson, who spent a career examining organizational patterns.</p><p>“Routines are the organizational analogue of habits.”4.4</p><p>To O’Neill, these kinds of habits seemed dangerous. “We were</p><p>basically ceding decision making to a process that occurred without</p><p>actually thinking,” O’Neill said. But at other agencies, where change</p><p>was in the air, good organizational habits were creating success.</p><p>Some departments at NASA, for instance, were overhauling</p><p>themselves by deliberately instituting organizational routines that</p><p>encouraged engineers to take more risks. When unmanned rockets</p><p>exploded on takeoff, department heads would applaud, so that</p><p>everyone would know their division had tried and failed, but at least</p><p>they had tried. Eventually, mission control filled with applause every</p><p>time something expensive blew up. It became an organizational</p><p>habit.4.5 Or take the Environmental Protection Agency, which was</p><p>created in 1970. The EPA’s first administrator, William Ruckelshaus,</p><p>consciously engineered organizational habits that encouraged his</p><p>regulators to be aggressive on enforcement. When lawyers asked for</p><p>permission to file a lawsuit or enforcement action, it went through a</p><p>process for approval.4.6 The default was authorization to go ahead.</p><p>The message was clear: At the EPA, aggression gets rewarded. By</p><p>1975, the EPA was issuing more than fifteen hundred new</p><p>environmental rules a year.4.7</p><p>“Every time I looked at a different part of the government, I</p><p>found these habits that seemed to explain why things were either</p><p>succeeding or failing,” O’Neill told me. “The best agencies</p><p>understood the importance of routines. The worst agencies were</p><p>headed by people who never thought about it, and then wondered</p><p>why no one followed their orders.”</p><p>In 1977, after sixteen years in Washington, D.C., O’Neill</p><p>decided it was time to leave. He was working fifteen hours a day,</p><p>seven days a week, and his wife was tired of raising four children on</p><p>her own. O’Neill resigned and landed a job with International Paper,</p><p>the world’s largest pulp and paper company. He eventually became</p><p>its president.</p><p>By then, some of his old government friends were on Alcoa’s</p><p>board. When the company needed a new chief executive, they</p><p>thought of him, which is how he ended up writing a list of his</p><p>priorities if he decided to take the job.</p><p>At the time, Alcoa was struggling. Critics said the company’s</p><p>workers weren’t nimble enough and the quality of its products was</p><p>poor. But at the top of O’Neill’s list he didn’t write “quality” or</p><p>“efficiency” as his biggest priorities. At a company as big and as old</p><p>as Alcoa, you can’t flip a switch and expect everyone to work harder</p><p>or produce more. The previous CEO had tried to mandate</p><p>improvements, and fifteen thousand employees had gone on strike.</p><p>It got so bad they would bring dummies to the parking lots, dress</p><p>them like managers, and burn them in effigy. “Alcoa was not a happy</p><p>family,” one person from that period told me. “It was more like the</p><p>Manson family, but with the addition of molten metal.”</p><p>O’Neill figured his top priority, if he took the job, would have to</p><p>be something that everybody—unions and executives—could agree</p><p>was important. He needed a focus that would bring people together,</p><p>that would give him leverage to change how people worked and</p><p>communicated.</p><p>“I went to basics,” he told me. “Everyone deserves to leave work</p><p>as safely as they arrive, right? You shouldn’t be scared that feeding</p><p>your family is going to kill you. That’s what I decided to focus on:</p><p>changing everyone’s safety habits.”</p><p>At the top of O’Neill’s list he wrote down “SAFETY” and set an</p><p>audacious goal: zero injuries. Not zero factory injuries. Zero injuries,</p><p>period. That would be his commitment no matter how much it cost.</p><p>O’Neill decided to take the job.</p><p>“I’m really glad to be here,” O’Neill told a room full of workers at</p><p>a smelting plant in Tennessee a few months after he was hired. Not</p><p>everything had gone smoothly. Wall Street was still panicked. The</p><p>unions were concerned. Some of Alcoa’s vice presidents were miffed</p><p>at being passed over for the top job. And O’Neill kept talking about</p><p>worker safety.</p><p>“I’m happy to negotiate with you about anything,” O’Neill said.</p><p>He was on a tour of Alcoa’s American plants, after which he was</p><p>going to visit the company’s facilities in thirty-one other countries.</p><p>“But there’s one thing I’m never going to negotiate with you, and</p><p>that’s safety. I don’t ever want you to say that we haven’t taken every</p><p>step to make sure people don’t get hurt. If you want to argue with me</p><p>about that, you’re going to lose.”</p><p>The brilliance of this approach was that no one, of course,</p><p>wanted to argue with O’Neill about worker safety. Unions had been</p><p>fighting for better safety rules for years. Managers didn’t want to</p><p>argue about it, either, since injuries meant lost productivity and low</p><p>morale.</p><p>What most people didn’t realize, however, was that O’Neill’s</p><p>plan for getting to zero injuries entailed the most radical realignment</p><p>in Alcoa’s history. The key to protecting Alcoa employees, O’Neill</p><p>believed, was understanding why injuries happened in the first place.</p><p>And to understand why injuries happened, you had to study how the</p><p>manufacturing process was going wrong. To understand how things</p><p>were going wrong, you had to bring in people who could educate</p><p>workers about quality control and the most efficient work processes,</p><p>so that it would be easier to do everything right, since correct work is</p><p>also safer work.</p><p>In other words, to protect workers, Alcoa needed to become the</p><p>best, most streamlined aluminum company on earth.</p><p>O’Neill’s safety plan, in effect, was modeled on the habit loop.</p><p>He identified a simple cue: an employee injury. He instituted an</p><p>automatic routine: Any time someone was injured, the unit president</p><p>had to report it to O’Neill within twenty-four hours and present a plan</p><p>for making sure the injury never happened again.4.8, 4.9 And there</p><p>was a reward: The only people who got promoted were those who</p><p>embraced the system.</p><p>Unit presidents were busy people. To contact O’Neill within</p><p>twenty-four hours of an injury, they needed to hear about an accident</p><p>from their vice presidents as soon as it happened. So vice presidents</p><p>needed to be in constant communication with floor managers. And</p><p>floor managers needed to get workers to raise warnings as soon as</p><p>they saw a problem and keep a list of suggestions nearby, so that</p><p>when the vice president asked for a plan, there was an idea box</p><p>already full of possibilities. To make all of that happen, each unit had</p><p>to build new communication systems that made it easier for the</p><p>lowliest worker to get an idea to the loftiest executive, as fast as</p><p>possible. Almost everything about the company’s rigid hierarchy had</p><p>to change to accommodate O’Neill’s safety program. He was</p><p>building new corporate habits.</p><p>ALCOA’S INSTITUTIONAL HABIT LOOP</p><p>As Alcoa’s safety patterns shifted, other aspects of the company</p><p>started changing with startling speed, as well. Rules that unions had</p><p>spent decades opposing—such as measuring the productivity of</p><p>individual workers—were suddenly embraced, because such</p><p>measurements helped everyone figure out when part of the</p><p>manufacturing process was getting out of whack, posing a safety</p><p>risk. Policies that managers had long resisted—such as giving</p><p>workers autonomy to shut down a production line when the pace</p><p>became overwhelming—were now welcomed, because that was the</p><p>best way to stop injuries before they occurred. The company shifted</p><p>so much that some employees found safety habits spilling into other</p><p>parts of their lives.</p><p>“Two or three years ago, I’m in my office, looking at the Ninth</p><p>Street bridge out the window, and there’s some guys working who</p><p>aren’t using correct</p><p>safety procedures,” said Jeff Shockey, Alcoa’s</p><p>current safety director. One of them was standing on top of the</p><p>bridge’s guardrail, while the other held on to his belt. They weren’t</p><p>using safety harnesses or ropes. “They worked for some company</p><p>that has nothing to do with us, but without thinking about it, I got out</p><p>of my chair, went down five flights of stairs, walked over the bridge</p><p>and told these guys, hey, you’re risking your life, you have to use</p><p>your harness and safety gear.” The men explained their supervisor</p><p>had forgotten to bring the equipment. So Shockey called the local</p><p>Occupational Safety and Health Administration office and turned the</p><p>supervisor in.</p><p>“Another executive told me that one day, he stopped at a street</p><p>excavation near his house because they didn’t have a trench box,</p><p>and gave everyone a lecture on the importance of proper</p><p>procedures. It was the weekend, and he stopped his car, with his</p><p>kids in the back, to lecture city workers about trench safety. That isn’t</p><p>natural, but that’s kind of the point. We do this stuff without thinking</p><p>about it now.”</p><p>O’Neill never promised that his focus on worker safety would</p><p>increase Alcoa’s profits. However, as his new routines moved</p><p>through the organization, costs came down, quality went up, and</p><p>productivity skyrocketed. If molten metal was injuring workers when</p><p>it splashed, then the pouring system was redesigned, which led to</p><p>fewer injuries. It also saved money because Alcoa lost less raw</p><p>materials in spills. If a machine kept breaking down, it was replaced,</p><p>which meant there was less risk of a broken gear snagging an</p><p>employee’s arm. It also meant higher quality products because, as</p><p>Alcoa discovered, equipment malfunctions were a chief cause of</p><p>subpar aluminum.</p><p>Researchers have found similar dynamics in dozens of other</p><p>settings, including individuals’ lives.</p><p>Take, for instance, studies from the past decade examining the</p><p>impacts of exercise on daily routines.4.10 When people start</p><p>habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start</p><p>changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly.</p><p>Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming</p><p>more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience</p><p>with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less</p><p>frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear</p><p>why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers</p><p>widespread change. “Exercise spills over,” said James Prochaska, a</p><p>University of Rhode Island researcher. “There’s something about it</p><p>that makes other good habits easier.”</p><p>Studies have documented that families who habitually eat</p><p>dinner together seem to raise children with better homework skills,</p><p>higher grades, greater emotional control, and more</p><p>confidence.4.11Making your bed every morning is correlated with</p><p>better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills</p><p>at sticking with a budget.4.12 It’s not that a family meal or a tidy bed</p><p>causes better grades or less frivolous spending. But somehow those</p><p>initial shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits take</p><p>hold.</p><p>If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can</p><p>cause widespread shifts. However, identifying keystone habits is</p><p>tricky. To find them, you have to know where to look. Detecting</p><p>keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics.</p><p>Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as</p><p>“small wins.” They help other habits to flourish by creating new</p><p>structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes</p><p>contagious.</p><p>But as O’Neill and countless others have found, crossing the</p><p>gap between understanding those principles and using them</p><p>requires a bit of ingenuity.</p><p>II.</p><p>When Michael Phelps’s alarm clock went off at 6:30 A.M. on the</p><p>morning of August 13, 2008, he crawled out of bed in the Olympic</p><p>Village in Beijing and fell right into his routine.</p><p>He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and walked to breakfast. He</p><p>had already won three gold medals earlier that week—giving him</p><p>nine in his career—and had two races that day. By 7 A.M.4.13, he</p><p>was in the cafeteria, eating his regular race-day menu of eggs,</p><p>oatmeal, and four energy shakes, the first of more than six thousand</p><p>calories he would consume over the next sixteen hours.</p><p>Phelps’s first race—the 200-meter butterfly, his strongest event</p><p>—was scheduled for ten o’clock. Two hours before the starting gun</p><p>fired, he began his usual stretching regime, starting with his arms,</p><p>then his back, then working down to his ankles, which were so</p><p>flexible they could extend more than ninety degrees, farther than a</p><p>ballerina’s en pointe. At eight-thirty, he slipped into the pool and</p><p>began his first warm-up lap, 800 meters of mixed styles, followed by</p><p>600 meters of kicking, 400 meters pulling a buoy between his legs,</p><p>200 meters of stroke drills, and a series of 25-meter sprints to</p><p>elevate his heart rate. The workout took precisely forty-five minutes.</p><p>At nine-fifteen, he exited the pool and started squeezing into his</p><p>LZR Racer, a bodysuit so tight it required twenty minutes of tugging</p><p>to put it on. Then he clamped headphones over his ears, cranked up</p><p>the hip-hop mix he played before every race, and waited.</p><p>Phelps had started swimming when he was seven years old to</p><p>burn off some of the energy that was driving his mom and teachers</p><p>crazy. When a local swimming coach named Bob Bowman saw</p><p>Phelps’s long torso, big hands, and relatively short legs (which</p><p>offered less drag in the water), he knew Phelps could become a</p><p>champion. But Phelps was emotional. He had trouble calming down</p><p>before races. His parents were divorcing, and he had problems</p><p>coping with the stress. Bowman purchased a book of relaxation</p><p>exercises and asked Phelps’s mom to read them aloud every night.</p><p>The book contained a script—“Tighten your right hand into a fist and</p><p>release it. Imagine the tension melting away”—that tensed and</p><p>relaxed each part of Phelps’s body before he fell asleep.</p><p>Bowman believed that for swimmers, the key to victory was</p><p>creating the right routines. Phelps, Bowman knew, had a perfect</p><p>physique for the pool. That said, everyone who eventually competes</p><p>at the Olympics has perfect musculature. Bowman could also see</p><p>that Phelps, even at a young age, had a capacity for obsessiveness</p><p>that made him an ideal athlete. Then again, all elite performers are</p><p>obsessives.</p><p>What Bowman could give Phelps, however—what would set</p><p>him apart from other competitors—were habits that would make him</p><p>the strongest mental swimmer in the pool. He didn’t need to control</p><p>every aspect of Phelps’s life. All he needed to do was target a few</p><p>specific habits that had nothing to do with swimming and everything</p><p>to do with creating the right mind-set. He designed a series of</p><p>behaviors that Phelps could use to become calm and focused before</p><p>each race, to find those tiny advantages that, in a sport where victory</p><p>can come in milliseconds, would make all the difference.</p><p>When Phelps was a teenager, for instance, at the end of each</p><p>practice, Bowman would tell him to go home and “watch the</p><p>videotape. Watch it before you go to sleep and when you wake up.”</p><p>The videotape wasn’t real. Rather, it was a mental visualization</p><p>of the perfect race. Each night before falling asleep and each</p><p>morning after waking up, Phelps would imagine himself jumping off</p><p>the blocks and, in slow motion, swimming flawlessly. He would</p><p>visualize his strokes, the walls of the pool, his turns, and the finish.</p><p>He would imagine the wake behind his body, the water dripping off</p><p>his lips as his mouth cleared the surface, what it would feel like to rip</p><p>off his cap at the end. He would lie in bed with his eyes shut and</p><p>watch the entire competition, the smallest details, again and again,</p><p>until he knew each second by heart.</p><p>During practices, when Bowman ordered Phelps to swim at race</p><p>speed, he would shout, “Put in the videotape!” and Phelps would</p><p>push himself, as hard as he could. It almost felt anticlimactic as he</p><p>cut through the water. He had done</p><p>this so many times in his head</p><p>that, by now, it felt rote. But it worked. He got faster and faster.</p><p>Eventually, all Bowman had to do before a race was whisper, “Get</p><p>the videotape ready,” and Phelps would settle down and crush the</p><p>competition.</p><p>And once Bowman established a few core routines in Phelps’s</p><p>life, all the other habits—his diet and practice schedules, the</p><p>stretching and sleep routines—seemed to fall into place on their</p><p>own. At the core of why those habits were so effective, why they</p><p>acted as keystone habits, was something known within academic</p><p>literature as a “small win.”</p><p>Small wins are exactly what they sound like, and are part of how</p><p>keystone habits create widespread changes. A huge body of</p><p>research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an</p><p>influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories</p><p>themselves. “Small wins are a steady application of a small</p><p>advantage,” one Cornell professor wrote in 1984. “Once a small win</p><p>has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another</p><p>small win.”4.14Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging</p><p>tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger</p><p>achievements are within reach.4.15</p><p>For example, when gay rights organizations started</p><p>campaigning against homophobia in the late 1960s, their initial</p><p>efforts yielded only a string of failures. They pushed to repeal laws</p><p>used to prosecute gays and were roundly defeated in state</p><p>legislatures. Teachers tried to create curriculums to counsel gay</p><p>teens, and were fired for suggesting that homosexuality should be</p><p>embraced. It seemed like the gay community’s larger goals—ending</p><p>discrimination and police harassment, convincing the American</p><p>Psychiatric Association to stop defining homosexuality as a mental</p><p>disease—were out of reach.4.16</p><p>Then, in the early 1970s, the American Library Association’s</p><p>Task Force on Gay Liberation decided to focus on one modest goal:</p><p>convincing the Library of Congress to reclassify books about the gay</p><p>liberation movement from HQ 71–471 (“Abnormal Sexual Relations,</p><p>Including Sexual Crimes”) to another, less pejorative category.4.17</p><p>In 1972, after receiving a letter requesting the reclassification,</p><p>the Library of Congress agreed to make the shift, reclassifying books</p><p>into a newly created category, HQ 76.5 (“Homosexuality, Lesbianism</p><p>—Gay Liberation Movement, Homophile Movement”). It was a minor</p><p>tweak of an old institutional habit regarding how books were shelved,</p><p>but the effect was electrifying. News of the new policy spread across</p><p>the nation. Gay rights organizations, citing the victory, started fund-</p><p>raising drives. Within a few years, openly gay politicians were</p><p>running for political office in California, New York, Massachusetts,</p><p>and Oregon, many of them citing the Library of Congress’s decision</p><p>as inspiration. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association, after</p><p>years of internal debate, rewrote the definition of homosexuality so it</p><p>was no longer a mental illness—paving the way for the passage of</p><p>state laws that made it illegal to discriminate against people because</p><p>of their sexual orientation.</p><p>And it all began with one small win.</p><p>“Small wins do not combine in a neat, linear, serial form, with</p><p>each step being a demonstrable step closer to some predetermined</p><p>goal,” wrote Karl Weick, a prominent organizational psychologist.</p><p>“More common is the circumstance where small wins are</p><p>scattered … like miniature experiments that test implicit theories</p><p>about resistance and opportunity and uncover both resources and</p><p>barriers that were invisible before the situation was stirred up.”</p><p>Which is precisely what happened with Michael Phelps. When</p><p>Bob Bowman started working with Phelps and his mother on the</p><p>keystone habits of visualization and relaxation, neither Bowman nor</p><p>Phelps had any idea what they were doing. “We’d experiment, try</p><p>different things until we found stuff that worked,” Bowman told me.</p><p>“Eventually we figured out it was best to concentrate on these tiny</p><p>moments of success and build them into mental triggers. We worked</p><p>them into a routine. There’s a series of things we do before every</p><p>race that are designed to give Michael a sense of building victory.</p><p>“If you were to ask Michael what’s going on in his head before</p><p>competition, he would say he’s not really thinking about anything.</p><p>He’s just following the program. But that’s not right. It’s more like his</p><p>habits have taken over. When the race arrives, he’s more than</p><p>halfway through his plan and he’s been victorious at every step. All</p><p>the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like</p><p>he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected.</p><p>The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier</p><p>that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural</p><p>extension.”</p><p>Back in Beijing, it was 9:56 A.M.—four minutes before the</p><p>race’s start—and Phelps stood behind his starting block, bouncing</p><p>slightly on his toes. When the announcer said his name, Phelps</p><p>stepped onto the block, as he always did before a race, and then</p><p>stepped down, as he always did. He swung his arms three times, as</p><p>he had before every race since he was twelve years old. He stepped</p><p>up on the blocks again, got into his stance, and, when the gun</p><p>sounded, leapt.</p><p>Phelps knew that something was wrong as soon as he hit the</p><p>water. There was moisture inside his goggles. He couldn’t tell if they</p><p>were leaking from the top or bottom, but as he broke the water’s</p><p>surface and began swimming, he hoped the leak wouldn’t become</p><p>too bad.4.18</p><p>By the second turn, however, everything was getting blurry. As</p><p>he approached the third turn and final lap, the cups of his goggles</p><p>were completely filled. Phelps couldn’t see anything. Not the line</p><p>along the pool’s bottom, not the black T marking the approaching</p><p>wall. He couldn’t see how many strokes were left. For most</p><p>swimmers, losing your sight in the middle of an Olympic final would</p><p>be cause for panic.</p><p>Phelps was calm.</p><p>Everything else that day had gone according to plan. The</p><p>leaking goggles were a minor deviation, but one for which he was</p><p>prepared. Bowman had once made Phelps swim in a Michigan pool</p><p>in the dark, believing that he needed to be ready for any surprise.</p><p>Some of the videotapes in Phelps’s mind had featured problems like</p><p>this. He had mentally rehearsed how he would respond to a goggle</p><p>failure. As he started his last lap, Phelps estimated how many</p><p>strokes the final push would require—nineteen or twenty, maybe</p><p>twenty-one—and started counting. He felt totally relaxed as he swam</p><p>at full strength. Midway through the lap he began to increase his</p><p>effort, a final eruption that had become one of his main techniques in</p><p>overwhelming opponents. At eighteen strokes, he started</p><p>anticipating the wall. He could hear the crowd roaring, but since he</p><p>was blind, he had no idea if they were cheering for him or someone</p><p>else. Nineteen strokes, then twenty. It felt like he needed one more.</p><p>That’s what the videotape in his head said. He made a twenty-first,</p><p>huge stroke, glided with his arm outstretched, and touched the wall.</p><p>He had timed it perfectly. When he ripped off his goggles and looked</p><p>up at the scoreboard, it said “WR”—world record—next to his name.</p><p>He’d won another gold.</p><p>After the race, a reporter asked what it had felt like to swim</p><p>blind.</p><p>“It felt like I imagined it would,” Phelps said. It was one</p><p>additional victory in a lifetime full of small wins.4.19</p><p>Six months after Paul O’Neill became CEO of Alcoa, he got a</p><p>telephone call in the middle of the night. A plant manager in Arizona</p><p>was on the line, panicked, talking about how an extrusion press had</p><p>stopped operating and one of the workers—a young man who had</p><p>joined the company a few weeks earlier, eager for the job because it</p><p>offered health care for his pregnant wife—had tried a repair. He had</p><p>jumped over a yellow safety wall surrounding the press and walked</p><p>across the pit. There was a piece of aluminum jammed into the hinge</p><p>on a swinging six-foot arm. The young man pulled on the aluminum</p><p>scrap, removing it. The machine was fixed. Behind him, the arm</p><p>restarted its arc, swinging toward his head. When it hit, the arm</p><p>crushed his skull. He was killed instantly.4.20</p><p>Fourteen hours later, O’Neill ordered all the plant’s executives—</p><p>as well as Alcoa’s top officers in Pittsburgh—into an emergency</p><p>meeting. For much of the day, they painstakingly re-created the</p><p>accident with diagrams and by watching videotapes again and again.</p><p>They identified dozens of errors that had contributed to the death,</p><p>including two managers who had seen the man jump over the barrier</p><p>but failed to stop him; a training program that hadn’t emphasized to</p><p>the man that he wouldn’t be blamed for a breakdown; lack of</p><p>instructions that he should find a manager before attempting a</p><p>repair; and the absence of sensors to automatically shut down the</p><p>machine when someone stepped into the pit.</p><p>“We killed this man,” a grim-faced O’Neill told the group. “It’s my</p><p>failure of leadership. I caused his death. And it’s the failure of all of</p><p>you in the chain of command.”</p><p>The executives in the room were taken aback. Sure, a tragic</p><p>accident had occurred, but tragic accidents were part of life at Alcoa.</p><p>It was a huge company with employees who handled red-hot metal</p><p>and dangerous machines. “Paul had come in as an outsider, and</p><p>there was a lot of skepticism when he talked about safety,” said Bill</p><p>O’rourke, a top executive. “We figured it would last a few weeks, and</p><p>then he would start focusing on something else. But that meeting</p><p>really shook everyone up. He was serious about this stuff, serious</p><p>enough that he would stay up nights worrying about some employee</p><p>he’d never met. That’s when things started to change.”</p><p>Within a week of that meeting, all the safety railings at Alcoa’s</p><p>plants were repainted bright yellow, and new policies were written</p><p>up. Managers told employees not to be afraid to suggest proactive</p><p>maintenance, and rules were clarified so that no one would attempt</p><p>unsafe repairs. The newfound vigilance resulted in a short-term,</p><p>noticeable decline in the injury rate. Alcoa experienced a small win.</p><p>Then O’Neill pounced.</p><p>“I want to congratulate everyone for bringing down the number</p><p>of accidents, even just for two weeks,” he wrote in a memo that</p><p>made its way through the entire company. “We shouldn’t celebrate</p><p>because we’ve followed the rules, or brought down a number. We</p><p>should celebrate because we are saving lives.”</p><p>Workers made copies of the note and taped it to their lockers.</p><p>Someone painted a mural of O’Neill on one of the walls of a smelting</p><p>plant with a quote from the memo inscribed underneath. Just as</p><p>Michael Phelps’s routines had nothing to do with swimming and</p><p>everything to do with his success, so O’Neill’s efforts began</p><p>snowballing into changes that were unrelated to safety, but</p><p>transformative nonetheless.</p><p>“I said to the hourly workers, ‘If your management doesn’t follow</p><p>up on safety issues, then call me at home, here’s my number,’ ”</p><p>O’Neill told me. “Workers started calling, but they didn’t want to talk</p><p>about accidents. They wanted to talk about all these other great</p><p>ideas.”</p><p>The Alcoa plant that manufactured aluminum siding for houses,</p><p>for instance, had been struggling for years because executives</p><p>would try to anticipate popular colors and inevitably guess wrong.</p><p>They would pay consultants millions of dollars to choose shades of</p><p>paint and six months later, the warehouse would be overflowing with</p><p>“sunburst yellow” and out of suddenly in-demand “hunter green.”</p><p>One day, a low-level employee made a suggestion that quickly</p><p>worked its way to the general manager: If they grouped all the</p><p>painting machines together, they could switch out the pigments</p><p>faster and become more nimble in responding to shifts in customer</p><p>demand. Within a year, profits on aluminum siding doubled.</p><p>The small wins that started with O’Neill’s focus on safety</p><p>created a climate in which all kinds of new ideas bubbled up.</p><p>“It turns out this guy had been suggesting this painting idea for a</p><p>decade, but hadn’t told anyone in management,” an Alcoa executive</p><p>told me. “Then he figures, since we keep on asking for safety</p><p>recommendations, why not tell them about this other idea? It was</p><p>like he gave us the winning lottery numbers.”</p><p>III.</p><p>When a young Paul O’Neill was working for the government and</p><p>creating a framework for analyzing federal spending on health care,</p><p>one of the foremost issues concerning officials was infant mortality.</p><p>The United States, at the time, was one of the wealthiest countries</p><p>on earth. Yet it had a higher infant mortality rate than most of Europe</p><p>and some parts of South America. Rural areas, in particular, saw a</p><p>staggering number of babies die before their first birthdays.4.21</p><p>O’Neill was tasked with figuring out why. He asked other federal</p><p>agencies to start analyzing infant mortality data, and each time</p><p>someone came back with an answer, he’d ask another question,</p><p>trying to get deeper, to understand the problem’s root causes.</p><p>Whenever someone came into O’Neill’s office with some discovery,</p><p>O’Neill would start interrogating them with new inquiries. He drove</p><p>people crazy with his never-ending push to learn more, to</p><p>understand what was really going on. (“I love Paul O’Neill, but you</p><p>could not pay me enough to work for him again,” one official told me.</p><p>“The man has never encountered an answer he can’t turn into</p><p>another twenty hours of work.”)</p><p>Some research, for instance, suggested that the biggest cause</p><p>of infant deaths was premature births. And the reason babies were</p><p>born too early was that mothers suffered from malnourishment</p><p>during pregnancy. So to lower infant mortality, improve mothers’</p><p>diets. Simple, right? But to stop malnourishment, women had to</p><p>improve their diets before they became pregnant. Which meant the</p><p>government had to start educating women about nutrition before</p><p>they became sexually active. Which meant officials had to create</p><p>nutrition curriculums inside high schools.</p><p>However, when O’Neill began asking about how to create those</p><p>curriculums, he discovered that many high school teachers in rural</p><p>areas didn’t know enough basic biology to teach nutrition. So the</p><p>government had to remake how teachers were getting educated in</p><p>college, and give them a stronger grounding in biology so they could</p><p>eventually teach nutrition to teenage girls, so those teenagers would</p><p>eat better before they started having sex, and, eventually, be</p><p>sufficiently nourished when they had children.</p><p>Poor teacher training, the officials working with O’Neill finally</p><p>figured out, was a root cause of high infant mortality. If you asked</p><p>doctors or public health officials for a plan to fight infant deaths, none</p><p>of them would have suggested changing how teachers are trained.</p><p>They wouldn’t have known there was a link. However, by teaching</p><p>college students about biology, you made it possible for them to</p><p>eventually pass on that knowledge to teenagers, who started eating</p><p>healthier, and years later give birth to stronger babies. Today, the</p><p>U.S.4.22 infant mortality rate is 68 percent lower than when O’Neill</p><p>started the job.</p><p>O’Neill’s experiences with infant mortality illustrate the second</p><p>way that keystone habits encourage change: by creating structures</p><p>that help other habits to flourish. In the case of premature deaths,</p><p>changing collegiate curriculums for teachers started a chain reaction</p><p>that eventually trickled down to how girls were educated in rural</p><p>areas, and whether they were sufficiently nourished when they</p><p>became pregnant. And O’Neill’s habit of constantly pushing other</p><p>bureaucrats to continue researching until they found a problem’s root</p><p>causes overhauled how the government thought about problems like</p><p>infant mortality.</p><p>The same thing can happen in people’s lives. For example, until</p><p>about twenty years ago, conventional wisdom held that the best way</p><p>for people to lose weight was to radically alter their lives. Doctors</p><p>would give obese patients strict diets and tell them to join a gym,</p><p>attend regular counseling sessions—sometimes as often as every</p><p>day—and</p><p>shift their daily routines by walking up stairs, for instance,</p><p>instead of taking the elevator. Only by completely shaking up</p><p>someone’s life, the thinking went, could their bad habits be reformed.</p><p>But when researchers studied the effectiveness of these</p><p>methods over prolonged periods, they discovered they were failures.</p><p>Patients would use the stairs for a few weeks, but by the end of the</p><p>month, it was too much hassle. They began diets and joined gyms,</p><p>but after the initial burst of enthusiasm wore off, they slid back into</p><p>their old eating and TV-watching habits.4.23 Piling on so much</p><p>change at once made it impossible for any of it to stick.</p><p>Then, in 2009 a group of researchers funded by the National</p><p>Institutes of Health published a study of a different approach to</p><p>weight loss.4.24 They had assembled a group of sixteen hundred</p><p>obese people and asked them to concentrate on writing down</p><p>everything they ate at least one day per week.</p><p>It was hard at first. The subjects forgot to carry their food</p><p>journals, or would snack and not note it. Slowly, however, people</p><p>started recording their meals once a week—and sometimes, more</p><p>often. Many participants started keeping a daily food log. Eventually,</p><p>it became a habit. Then, something unexpected happened. The</p><p>participants started looking at their entries and finding patterns they</p><p>didn’t know existed. Some noticed they always seemed to snack at</p><p>about 10 A.M., so they began keeping an apple or banana on their</p><p>desks for midmorning munchies. Others started using their journals</p><p>to plan future menus, and when dinner rolled around, they ate the</p><p>healthy meal they had written down, rather than junk food from the</p><p>fridge.</p><p>The researchers hadn’t suggested any of these behaviors. They</p><p>had simply asked everyone to write down what they ate once a</p><p>week. But this keystone habit—food journaling—created a structure</p><p>that helped other habits to flourish. Six months into the study, people</p><p>who kept daily food records had lost twice as much weight as</p><p>everyone else.</p><p>“After a while, the journal got inside my head,” one person told</p><p>me.4.25 “I started thinking about meals differently. It gave me a</p><p>system for thinking about food without becoming depressed.”</p><p>Something similar happened at Alcoa after O’Neill took over.</p><p>Just as food journals provided a structure for other habits to flourish,</p><p>O’Neill’s safety habits created an atmosphere in which other</p><p>behaviors emerged. Early on, O’Neill took the unusual step of</p><p>ordering Alcoa’s offices around the world to link up in an electronic</p><p>network. This was in the early 1980s, when large, international</p><p>networks weren’t usually connected to people’s desktop computers.</p><p>O’Neill justified his order by arguing that it was essential to create a</p><p>real-time safety data system that managers could use to share</p><p>suggestions. As a result, Alcoa developed one of the first genuinely</p><p>worldwide corporate email systems.</p><p>O’Neill logged on every morning and sent messages to make</p><p>sure everyone else was logged on as well. At first, people used the</p><p>network primarily to discuss safety issues. Then, as email habits</p><p>became more ingrained and comfortable, they started posting</p><p>information on all kinds of other topics, such as local market</p><p>conditions, sales quotas, and business problems. High-ranking</p><p>executives were required to send in a report every Friday, which</p><p>anyone in the company could read. A manager in Brazil used the</p><p>network to send a colleague in New York data on changes in the</p><p>price of steel. The New Yorker took that information and turned a</p><p>quick profit for the company on Wall Street. Pretty soon, everyone</p><p>was using the system to communicate about everything. “I would</p><p>send in my accident report, and I knew everyone else read it, so I</p><p>figured, why not send pricing information, or intelligence on other</p><p>companies?” one manager told me. “It was like we had discovered a</p><p>secret weapon. The competition couldn’t figure out how we were</p><p>doing it.”</p><p>When the Web blossomed, Alcoa was perfectly positioned to</p><p>take advantage. O’Neill’s keystone habit—worker safety—had</p><p>created a platform that encouraged another practice—email—years</p><p>ahead of competitors.</p><p>By 1996, Paul O’Neill had been at Alcoa for almost a decade.</p><p>His leadership had been studied by the Harvard Business School</p><p>and the Kennedy School of Government. He was regularly</p><p>mentioned as a potential commerce secretary or secretary of</p><p>defense. His employees and the unions gave him high marks. Under</p><p>his watch, Alcoa’s stock price had risen more than 200 percent. He</p><p>was, at last, a universally acknowledged success.</p><p>In May of that year, at a shareholder meeting in downtown</p><p>Pittsburgh, a Benedictine nun stood up during the question-and-</p><p>answer session and accused O’Neill of lying. Sister Mary Margaret</p><p>represented a social advocacy group concerned about wages and</p><p>conditions inside an Alcoa plant in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. She said</p><p>that while O’Neill extolled Alcoa’s safety measures, workers in</p><p>Mexico were becoming sick because of dangerous fumes.</p><p>“It’s untrue,” O’Neill told the room. On his laptop, he pulled up</p><p>the safety records from the Mexican plant. “See?” he said, showing</p><p>the room its high scores on safety, environmental compliance, and</p><p>employee satisfaction surveys. The executive in charge of the</p><p>facility, Robert Barton, was one of Alcoa’s most senior managers. He</p><p>had been with the company for decades and was responsible for</p><p>some of their largest partnerships. The nun said that the audience</p><p>shouldn’t trust O’Neill. She sat down.</p><p>After the meeting, O’Neill asked her to come to his office. The</p><p>nun’s religious order owned fifty Alcoa shares, and for months they</p><p>had been asking for a shareholder vote on a resolution to review the</p><p>company’s Mexican operations. O’Neill asked Sister Mary if she had</p><p>been to any of the plants herself. No, she told him. To be safe,</p><p>O’Neill asked the company’s head of human resources and general</p><p>counsel to fly to Mexico to see what was going on.</p><p>When the executives arrived, they poked through the Acuña</p><p>plant’s records, and found reports of an incident that had never been</p><p>sent to headquarters. A few months earlier, there had been a buildup</p><p>of fumes within a building. It was a relatively minor event. The plant’s</p><p>executive, Barton, had installed ventilators to remove the gases. The</p><p>people who had become ill had fully recovered within a day or two.</p><p>But Barton had never reported the illnesses.</p><p>When the executives returned to Pittsburgh and presented their</p><p>findings, O’Neill had a question.</p><p>“Did Bob Barton know that people had gotten sick?”</p><p>“We didn’t meet with him,” they answered. “But, yeah, it’s pretty</p><p>clear he knew.”</p><p>Two days later, Barton was fired.</p><p>The exit shocked outsiders. Barton had been mentioned in</p><p>articles as one of the company’s most valuable executives. His</p><p>departure was a blow to important joint ventures.</p><p>Within Alcoa, however, no one was surprised. It was seen as an</p><p>inevitable extension of the culture that O’Neill had built.</p><p>“Barton fired himself,” one of his colleagues told me. “There</p><p>wasn’t even a choice there.”</p><p>This is the final way that keystone habits encourage widespread</p><p>change: by creating cultures where new values become ingrained.</p><p>Keystone habits make tough choices—such as firing a top executive</p><p>—easier, because when that person violates the culture, it’s clear</p><p>they have to go. Sometimes these cultures manifest themselves in</p><p>special vocabularies, the use of which becomes, itself, a habit that</p><p>defines an organization. At Alcoa, for instance, there were “Core</p><p>Programs” and “Safety Philosophies,” phrases that acted like</p><p>suitcases, containing whole conversations about priorities, goals,</p><p>and ways of thinking.</p><p>“It might have been hard at another company to fire someone</p><p>who had been there so long,” O’Neill told me. “It wasn’t hard for me.</p><p>It was clear what our values dictated. He got fired because he didn’t</p><p>report the incident, and so no one else had the opportunity to learn</p><p>from it. Not sharing an opportunity to learn is a cardinal sin.”</p><p>Cultures grow out of the keystone</p><p>it grew in size. Some people started chanting angry slogans. Iraqi</p><p>police, sensing trouble, radioed the base and asked U.S. troops to</p><p>stand by. At dusk, the crowd started getting restless and hungry.</p><p>People looked for the kebab sellers normally filling the plaza, but</p><p>there were none to be found. The spectators left. The chanters</p><p>became dispirited. By 8 P.M., everyone was gone.</p><p>When I visited the base near Kufa, I talked to the major. You</p><p>wouldn’t necessarily think about a crowd’s dynamics in terms of</p><p>habits, he told me. But he had spent his entire career getting drilled</p><p>in the psychology of habit formation.</p><p>At boot camp, he had absorbed habits for loading his weapon,</p><p>falling asleep in a war zone, maintaining focus amid the chaos of</p><p>battle, and making decisions while exhausted and overwhelmed. He</p><p>had attended classes that taught him habits for saving money,</p><p>exercising each day, and communicating with bunkmates. As he</p><p>moved up the ranks, he learned the importance of organizational</p><p>habits in ensuring that subordinates could make decisions without</p><p>constantly asking permission, and how the right routines made it</p><p>easier to work alongside people he normally couldn’t stand. And</p><p>now, as an impromptu nation builder, he was seeing how crowds and</p><p>cultures abided by many of the same rules. In some sense, he said,</p><p>a community was a giant collection of habits occurring among</p><p>thousands of people that, depending on how they’re influenced,</p><p>could result in violence or peace. In addition to removing the food</p><p>vendors, he had launched dozens of different experiments in Kufa to</p><p>influence residents’ habits. There hadn’t been a riot since he arrived.</p><p>“Understanding habits is the most important thing I’ve learned in</p><p>the army,” the major told me. “It’s changed everything about how I</p><p>see the world. You want to fall asleep fast and wake up feeling</p><p>good? Pay attention to your nighttime patterns and what you</p><p>automatically do when you get up. You want to make running easy?</p><p>Create triggers to make it a routine. I drill my kids on this stuff. My</p><p>wife and I write out habit plans for our marriage. This is all we talk</p><p>about in command meetings. Not one person in Kufa would have</p><p>told me that we could influence crowds by taking away the kebab</p><p>stands, but once you see everything as a bunch of habits, it’s like</p><p>someone gave you a flashlight and a crowbar and you can get to</p><p>work.”</p><p>The major was a small man from Georgia. He was perpetually</p><p>spitting either sunflower seeds or chewing tobacco into a cup. He</p><p>told me that prior to entering the military, his best career option had</p><p>been repairing telephone lines, or, possibly, becoming a</p><p>methamphetamine entrepreneur, a path some of his high school</p><p>peers had chosen to less success. Now, he oversaw eight hundred</p><p>troops in one of the most sophisticated fighting organizations on</p><p>earth.</p><p>“I’m telling you, if a hick like me can learn this stuff, anyone can.</p><p>I tell my soldiers all the time, there’s nothing you can’t do if you get</p><p>the habits right.”</p><p>In the past decade, our understanding of the neurology and</p><p>psychology of habits and the way patterns work within our lives,</p><p>societies, and organizations has expanded in ways we couldn’t have</p><p>imagined fifty years ago. We now know why habits emerge, how</p><p>they change, and the science behind their mechanics. We know how</p><p>to break them into parts and rebuild them to our specifications. We</p><p>understand how to make people eat less, exercise more, work more</p><p>efficiently, and live healthier lives. Transforming a habit isn’t</p><p>necessarily easy or quick. It isn’t always simple.</p><p>But it is possible. And now we understand how.</p><p>THE HABIT LOOP</p><p>How Habits Work</p><p>I.</p><p>In the fall of 1993, a man who would upend much of what we</p><p>know about habits walked into a laboratory in San Diego for a</p><p>scheduled appointment. He was elderly, a shade over six feet tall,</p><p>and neatly dressed in a blue button-down shirt.1.1 His thick white hair</p><p>would have inspired envy at any fiftieth high school reunion. Arthritis</p><p>caused him to limp slightly as he paced the laboratory’s hallways,</p><p>and he held his wife’s hand, walking slowly, as if unsure about what</p><p>each new step would bring.</p><p>About a year earlier, Eugene Pauly, or “E.P.” as he would come</p><p>to be known in medical literature, had been at home in Playa del</p><p>Rey, preparing for dinner, when his wife mentioned that their son,</p><p>Michael, was coming over.</p><p>“Who’s Michael?” Eugene asked.1.2</p><p>“Your child,” said his wife, Beverly. “You know, the one we</p><p>raised?”</p><p>Eugene looked at her blankly. “Who is that?” he asked.</p><p>The next day, Eugene started vomiting and writhing with</p><p>stomach cramps. Within twenty-four hours, his dehydration was so</p><p>pronounced that a panicked Beverly took him to the emergency</p><p>room. His temperature started rising, hitting 105 degrees as he</p><p>sweated a yellow halo of perspiration onto the hospital’s sheets. He</p><p>became delirious, then violent, yelling and pushing when nurses tried</p><p>to insert an IV into his arm. Only after sedation was a physician able</p><p>to slide a long needle between two vertebra in the small of his back</p><p>and extract a few drops of cerebrospinal fluid.</p><p>The doctor performing the procedure sensed trouble</p><p>immediately. The fluid surrounding the brain and spinal nerves is a</p><p>barrier against infection and injury. In healthy individuals, it is clear</p><p>and quick flowing, moving with an almost silky rush through a</p><p>needle. The sample from Eugene’s spine was cloudy and dripped</p><p>out sluggishly, as if filled with microscopic grit.1.3 When the results</p><p>came back from the laboratory, Eugene’s physicians learned why he</p><p>was ill: He was suffering from viral encephalitis, a disease caused by</p><p>a relatively harmless virus that produces cold sores, fever blisters,</p><p>and mild infections on the skin. In rare cases, however, the virus can</p><p>make its way into the brain, inflicting catastrophic damage as it</p><p>chews through the delicate folds of tissue where our thoughts,</p><p>dreams—and according to some, souls—reside.</p><p>Eugene’s doctors told Beverly there was nothing they could do</p><p>to counter the damage already done, but a large dose of antiviral</p><p>drugs might prevent it from spreading. Eugene slipped into a coma</p><p>and for ten days was close to death. Gradually, as the drugs fought</p><p>the disease, his fever receded and the virus disappeared. When he</p><p>finally awoke, he was weak and disoriented and couldn’t swallow</p><p>properly. He couldn’t form sentences and would sometimes gasp, as</p><p>if he had momentarily forgotten how to breathe. But he was alive.</p><p>Eventually, Eugene was well enough for a battery of tests. The</p><p>doctors were amazed to find that his body—including his nervous</p><p>system—appeared largely unscathed. He could move his limbs and</p><p>was responsive to noise and light. Scans of his head, though,</p><p>revealed ominous shadows near the center of his brain. The virus</p><p>had destroyed an oval of tissue close to where his cranium and</p><p>spinal column met. “He might not be the person you remember,” one</p><p>doctor warned Beverly. “You need to be ready if your husband is</p><p>gone.”</p><p>Eugene was moved to a different wing of the hospital. Within a</p><p>week, he was swallowing easily. Another week, and he started</p><p>talking normally, asking for Jell-O and salt, flipping through television</p><p>channels and complaining about boring soap operas. By the time he</p><p>was discharged to a rehabilitation center five weeks later, Eugene</p><p>was walking down hallways and offering nurses unsolicited advice</p><p>about their weekend plans.</p><p>“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone come back like this,” a</p><p>doctor told Beverly. “I don’t want to raise your hopes, but this is</p><p>amazing.”</p><p>Beverly, however, remained concerned. In the rehab hospital it</p><p>became clear that the disease had changed her husband in</p><p>unsettling ways. Eugene couldn’t remember which day of the week it</p><p>was, for instance, or the names of his doctors and nurses, no matter</p><p>how many times they introduced themselves. “Why do they keep</p><p>asking me all these questions?” he asked Beverly one day after a</p><p>physician left his room. When he finally returned home, things got</p><p>even stranger. Eugene didn’t</p><p>habits in every organization,</p><p>whether leaders are aware of them or not. For instance, when</p><p>researchers studied an incoming class of cadets at West Point, they</p><p>measured their grade point averages, physical aptitude, military</p><p>abilities, and self-discipline. When they correlated those factors with</p><p>whether students dropped out or graduated, however, they found</p><p>that all of them mattered less than a factor researchers referred to as</p><p>“grit,” which they defined as the tendency to work “strenuously</p><p>toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite</p><p>failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”4.26, 4.27</p><p>What’s most interesting about grit is how it emerges. It grows</p><p>out of a culture that cadets create for themselves, and that culture</p><p>often emerges because of keystone habits they adopt at West Point.</p><p>“There’s so much about this school that’s hard,” one cadet told me.</p><p>“They call the first summer ‘Beast Barracks,’ because they want to</p><p>grind you down. Tons of people quit before the school year starts.</p><p>“But I found this group of guys in the first couple of days here,</p><p>and we started this thing where, every morning, we get together to</p><p>make sure everyone is feeling strong. I go to them if I’m feeling</p><p>worried or down, and I know they’ll pump me back up. There’s only</p><p>nine of us, and we call ourselves the musketeers. Without them, I</p><p>don’t think I would have lasted a month here.”</p><p>Cadets who are successful at West Point arrive at the school</p><p>armed with habits of mental and physical discipline. Those assets,</p><p>however, only carry you so far. To succeed, they need a keystone</p><p>habit that creates a culture—such as a daily gathering of like-minded</p><p>friends—to help find the strength to overcome obstacles. Keystone</p><p>habits transform us by creating cultures that make clear the values</p><p>that, in the heat of a difficult decision or a moment of uncertainty, we</p><p>might otherwise forget.</p><p>In 2000, O’Neill retired from Alcoa, and at the request of the</p><p>newly elected president George W. Bush, became secretary of the</p><p>treasury.1 He left that post two years later, and today spends most of</p><p>his time teaching hospitals how to focus on worker safety and</p><p>keystone habits that can lower medical error rates, as well as serving</p><p>on various corporate boards.</p><p>Companies and organizations across America, in the meantime,</p><p>have embraced the idea of using keystone habits to remake</p><p>workplaces. At IBM, for instance, Lou Gerstner rebuilt the firm by</p><p>initially concentrating on one keystone habit: IBM’s research and</p><p>selling routines. At the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, a</p><p>culture of continuous improvement is created through a keystone</p><p>habit of wide-ranging internal critiques that are at the core of every</p><p>assignment. Within Goldman Sachs, a keystone habit of risk</p><p>assessment undergirds every decision.</p><p>And at Alcoa, O’Neill’s legacy lives on. Even in his absence, the</p><p>injury rate has continued to decline. In 2010, 82 percent of Alcoa</p><p>locations didn’t lose one employee day due to injury, close to an all-</p><p>time high. On average, workers are more likely to get injured at a</p><p>software company, animating cartoons for movie studios, or doing</p><p>taxes as an accountant than handling molten aluminum at Alcoa.</p><p>“When I was made a plant manager,” said Jeff Shockey, the</p><p>Alcoa executive, “the first day I pulled into the parking lot I saw all</p><p>these parking spaces near the front doors with people’s titles on</p><p>them. The head guy for this or that. People who were important got</p><p>the best parking spots. The first thing I did was tell a maintenance</p><p>manager to paint over all the titles. I wanted whoever got to work</p><p>earliest to get the best spot. Everyone understood the message:</p><p>Every person matters. It was an extension of what Paul was doing</p><p>around worker safety. It electrified the plant. Pretty soon, everyone</p><p>was getting to work earlier each day.”</p><p>1 O’Neill’s tenure at Treasury was not as successful as his</p><p>career at Alcoa. Almost immediately after taking office he began</p><p>focusing on a couple of key issues, including worker safety, job</p><p>creation, executive accountability, and fighting African poverty,</p><p>among other initiatives.</p><p>However, O’Neill’s politics did not line up with those of President</p><p>Bush, and he launched an internal fight opposing Bush’s proposed</p><p>tax cuts. He was asked to resign at the end of 2002. “What I thought</p><p>was the right thing for economic policy was the opposite of what the</p><p>White House wanted,” O’Neill told me. “That’s not good for a</p><p>treasury secretary, so I got fired.”</p><p>STARBUCKS AND THE HABIT OF SUCCESS</p><p>When Willpower Becomes Automatic</p><p>I.</p><p>The first time Travis Leach saw his father overdose, he was</p><p>nine years old. His family had just moved into a small apartment at</p><p>the end of an alleyway, the latest in a seemingly endless series of</p><p>relocations that had most recently caused them to abandon their</p><p>previous home in the middle of the night, throwing everything they</p><p>owned into black garbage bags after receiving an eviction notice.</p><p>Too many people coming and going too late at night, the landlord</p><p>said. Too much noise.</p><p>Sometimes, at his old house, Travis would come home from</p><p>school and find the rooms neatly cleaned, leftovers meticulously</p><p>wrapped in the fridge and packets of hot sauce and ketchup in</p><p>Tupperware containers. He knew this meant his parents had</p><p>temporarily abandoned heroin for crank and spent the day in a</p><p>cleaning frenzy. Those usually ended badly. Travis felt safer when</p><p>the house was messy and his parents were on the couch, their eyes</p><p>half-lidded, watching cartoons. There is no chaos at the end of a</p><p>heroin fog.</p><p>Travis’s father was a gentle man who loved to cook and, except</p><p>for a stint in the navy, spent his entire life within a few miles of his</p><p>parents in Lodi, California. Travis’s mother, by the time everyone</p><p>moved into the alleyway apartment, was in prison for heroin</p><p>possession and prostitution. His parents were, essentially, functional</p><p>addicts and the family maintained a veneer of normalcy. They went</p><p>camping every summer and on most Friday nights attended his</p><p>sister and brother’s softball games. When Travis was four years old,</p><p>he went to Disneyland with his dad and was photographed for the</p><p>first time in his life, by a Disney employee. The family camera had</p><p>been sold to a pawn shop years before.</p><p>On the morning of the overdose, Travis and his brother were</p><p>playing in the living room on top of blankets they laid out on the floor</p><p>each night for sleeping. Travis’s father was getting ready to make</p><p>pancakes when he stepped into the bathroom. He was carrying the</p><p>tube sock that contained his needle, spoon, lighter, and cotton</p><p>swabs. A few moments later, he came out, opened the refrigerator to</p><p>get the eggs, and crashed to the floor. When the kids ran around the</p><p>corner, their father was convulsing, his face turning blue.</p><p>Travis’s siblings had seen an overdose before and knew the</p><p>drill. His brother rolled him onto his side. His sister opened his mouth</p><p>to make sure he wouldn’t choke on his tongue, and told Travis to run</p><p>next door, ask to use the neighbor’s phone, and dial 911.</p><p>“My name is Travis, my dad is passed out, and we don’t know</p><p>what happened. He’s not breathing,” Travis lied to the police</p><p>operator. Even at nine years old, he knew why his father was</p><p>unconscious. He didn’t want to say it in front of the neighbor. Three</p><p>years earlier, one of his dad’s friends had died in their basement</p><p>after shooting up. When the paramedics had taken the body away,</p><p>neighbors gawked at Travis and his sister while they held the door</p><p>open for the gurney. One of the neighbors had a cousin whose son</p><p>was in his class, and soon everyone in school had known.</p><p>After hanging up the phone, Travis walked to the end of the</p><p>alleyway and waited for the ambulance. His father was treated at the</p><p>hospital that morning, charged at the police station in the afternoon,</p><p>and home again by dinnertime. He made spaghetti. Travis turned ten</p><p>a few weeks later.</p><p>When Travis was sixteen, he dropped out of high school. “I was</p><p>tired of being called a faggot,” he said, “tired of</p><p>people following me</p><p>home and throwing things at me. Everything seemed really</p><p>overwhelming. It was easier to quit and go somewhere else.” He</p><p>moved two hours south, to Fresno, and got a job at a car wash. He</p><p>was fired for insubordination. He got jobs at McDonald’s and</p><p>Hollywood Video, but when customers were rude—“I wanted ranch</p><p>dressing, you moron!”—he would lose control.</p><p>“Get out of my drive-through!” he shouted at one woman,</p><p>throwing the chicken nuggets at her car before his manager pulled</p><p>him inside.</p><p>Sometimes he’d get so upset that he would start crying in the</p><p>middle of a shift. He was often late, or he’d take a day off for no</p><p>reason. In the morning, he would yell at his reflection in the mirror,</p><p>order himself to be better, to suck it up. But he couldn’t get along</p><p>with people, and he wasn’t strong enough to weather the steady drip</p><p>of criticisms and indignities. When the line at his register would get</p><p>too long and the manager would shout at him, Travis’s hands would</p><p>start shaking and he’d feel like he couldn’t catch his breath. He</p><p>wondered if this is what his parents felt like, so defenseless against</p><p>life, when they started using drugs.</p><p>One day, a regular customer at Hollywood Video who’d gotten</p><p>to know Travis a little bit suggested he think about working at</p><p>Starbucks. “We’re opening a new store on Fort Washington, and I’m</p><p>going to be an assistant manager,” the man said. “You should apply.”</p><p>A month later, Travis was a barista on the morning shift.</p><p>That was six years ago. Today, at twenty-five, Travis is the</p><p>manager of two Starbucks where he oversees forty employees and</p><p>is responsible for revenues exceeding $2 million per year. His salary</p><p>is $44,000 and he has a 401(k) and no debt. He’s never late to work.</p><p>He does not get upset on the job. When one of his employees</p><p>started crying after a customer screamed at her, Travis took her</p><p>aside.</p><p>“Your apron is a shield,” he told her. “Nothing anyone says will</p><p>ever hurt you. You will always be as strong as you want to be.”</p><p>He picked up that lecture in one of his Starbucks training</p><p>courses, an education program that began on his first day and</p><p>continues throughout an employee’s career. The program is</p><p>sufficiently structured that he can earn college credits by completing</p><p>the modules. The training has, Travis says, changed his life.</p><p>Starbucks has taught him how to live, how to focus, how to get to</p><p>work on time, and how to master his emotions. Most crucially, it has</p><p>taught him willpower.</p><p>“Starbucks is the most important thing that has ever happened</p><p>to me,” he told me. “I owe everything to this company.”</p><p>For Travis and thousands of others, Starbucks—like a handful</p><p>of other companies—has succeeded in teaching the kind of life skills</p><p>that schools, families, and communities have failed to provide. With</p><p>more than 137,000 current employees and more than one million</p><p>alumni, Starbucks is now, in a sense, one of the nation’s largest</p><p>educators. All of those employees, in their first year alone, spent at</p><p>least fifty hours in Starbucks classrooms, and dozens more at home</p><p>with Starbucks’ workbooks and talking to the Starbucks mentors</p><p>assigned to them.</p><p>At the core of that education is an intense focus on an all-</p><p>important habit: willpower. Dozens of studies show that willpower is</p><p>the single most important keystone habit for individual success.5.1 In</p><p>a 2005 study, for instance, researchers from the University of</p><p>Pennsylvania analyzed 164 eighth-grade students, measuring their</p><p>IQs and other factors, including how much willpower the students</p><p>demonstrated, as measured by tests of their self-discipline.</p><p>Students who exerted high levels of willpower were more likely</p><p>to earn higher grades in their classes and gain admission into more</p><p>selective schools. They had fewer absences and spent less time</p><p>watching television and more hours on homework. “Highly self-</p><p>disciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on</p><p>every academic-performance variable,” the researchers wrote. “Self-</p><p>discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did</p><p>IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their</p><p>grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.…</p><p>Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than</p><p>does intellectual talent.”5.2</p><p>And the best way to strengthen willpower and give students a</p><p>leg up, studies indicate, is to make it into a habit. “Sometimes it looks</p><p>like people with great self-control aren’t working hard—but that’s</p><p>because they’ve made it automatic,” Angela Duckworth, one of the</p><p>University of Pennsylvania researchers told me. “Their willpower</p><p>occurs without them having to think about it.”</p><p>For Starbucks, willpower is more than an academic curiosity.</p><p>When the company began plotting its massive growth strategy in the</p><p>late 1990s, executives recognized that success required cultivating</p><p>an environment that justified paying four dollars for a fancy cup of</p><p>coffee. The company needed to train its employees to deliver a bit of</p><p>joy alongside lattes and scones. So early on, Starbucks started</p><p>researching how they could teach employees to regulate their</p><p>emotions and marshal their self-discipline to deliver a burst of pep</p><p>with every serving. Unless baristas are trained to put aside their</p><p>personal problems, the emotions of some employees will inevitably</p><p>spill into how they treat customers. However, if a worker knows how</p><p>to remain focused and disciplined, even at the end of an eight-hour</p><p>shift, they’ll deliver the higher class of fast food service that</p><p>Starbucks customers expect.</p><p>The company spent millions of dollars developing curriculums to</p><p>train employees on self-discipline. Executives wrote workbooks that,</p><p>in effect, serve as guides to how to make willpower a habit in</p><p>workers’ lives.5.3 Those curriculums are, in part, why Starbucks has</p><p>grown from a sleepy Seattle company into a behemoth with more</p><p>than seventeen thousand stores and revenues of more than $10</p><p>billion a year.</p><p>So how does Starbucks do it? How do they take people like</p><p>Travis—the son of drug addicts and a high school dropout who</p><p>couldn’t muster enough self-control to hold down a job at</p><p>McDonald’s—and teach him to oversee dozens of employees and</p><p>tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each month? What,</p><p>precisely, did Travis learn?</p><p>II.</p><p>Everyone who walked into the room where the experiment was</p><p>being conducted at Case Western Reserve University agreed on one</p><p>thing: The cookies smelled delicious. They had just come out of the</p><p>oven and were piled in a bowl, oozing with chocolate chips. On the</p><p>table next to the cookies was a bowl of radishes. All day long, hungry</p><p>students walked in, sat in front of the two foods, and submitted,</p><p>unknowingly, to a test of their willpower that would upend our</p><p>understanding of how self-discipline works.</p><p>At the time, there was relatively little academic scrutiny into</p><p>willpower. Psychologists considered such subjects to be aspects of</p><p>something they called “self-regulation,” but it wasn’t a field that</p><p>inspired great curiosity. There was one famous experiment,</p><p>conducted in the 1960s, in which scientists at Stanford had tested</p><p>the willpower of a group of four-year-olds. The kids were brought into</p><p>a room and presented with a selection of treats, including</p><p>marshmallows. They were offered a deal: They could eat one</p><p>marshmallow right away, or, if they waited a few minutes, they could</p><p>have two marshmallows. Then the researcher left the room. Some</p><p>kids gave in to temptation and ate the marshmallow as soon as the</p><p>adult left. About 30 percent managed to ignore their urges, and</p><p>doubled their treats when the researcher came back fifteen minutes</p><p>later. Scientists, who were watching everything from behind a two-</p><p>way mirror, kept careful track of which kids had enough self-control</p><p>to earn the second marshmallow.</p><p>Years later, they tracked down many of the study’s participants.</p><p>By now, they were in high school. The researchers asked about their</p><p>grades and SAT scores, ability to maintain friendships, and their</p><p>capacity to “cope with important</p><p>problems.” They discovered that the</p><p>four-year-olds who could delay gratification the longest ended up</p><p>with the best grades and with SAT scores 210 points higher, on</p><p>average, than everyone else. They were more popular and did fewer</p><p>drugs. If you knew how to avoid the temptation of a marshmallow as</p><p>a preschooler, it seemed, you also knew how to get yourself to class</p><p>on time and finish your homework once you got older, as well as how</p><p>to make friends and resist peer pressure. It was as if the</p><p>marshmallow-ignoring kids had self-regulatory skills that gave them</p><p>an advantage throughout their lives.5.4</p><p>Scientists began conducting related experiments, trying to figure</p><p>out how to help kids increase their self-regulatory skills. They</p><p>learned that teaching them simple tricks—such as distracting</p><p>themselves by drawing a picture, or imagining a frame around the</p><p>marshmallow, so it seemed more like a photo and less like a real</p><p>temptation—helped them learn self-control. By the 1980s, a theory</p><p>emerged that became generally accepted: Willpower is a learnable</p><p>skill, something that can be taught the same way kids learn to do</p><p>math and say “thank you.” But funding for these inquiries was</p><p>scarce. The topic of willpower wasn’t in vogue. Many of the Stanford</p><p>scientists moved on to other areas of research.</p><p>WHEN KIDS LEARN HABITS FOR DELAYING THEIR</p><p>CRAVINGS…</p><p>THOSE HABITS SPILL OVER TO OTHER PARTS OF LIFE</p><p>However, when a group of psychology PhD candidates at Case</p><p>Western—including one named Mark Muraven—discovered those</p><p>studies in the mid-nineties, they started asking questions the</p><p>previous research didn’t seem to answer. To Muraven, this model of</p><p>willpower-as-skill wasn’t a satisfying explanation. A skill, after all, is</p><p>something that remains constant from day to day. If you have the</p><p>skill to make an omelet on Wednesday, you’ll still know how to make</p><p>it on Friday.</p><p>In Muraven’s experience, though, it felt like he forgot how to</p><p>exert willpower all the time. Some evenings he would come home</p><p>from work and have no problem going for a jog. Other days, he</p><p>couldn’t do anything besides lie on the couch and watch television. It</p><p>was as if his brain—or, at least, that part of his brain responsible for</p><p>making him exercise—had forgotten how to summon the willpower to</p><p>push him out the door. Some days, he ate healthily. Other days,</p><p>when he was tired, he raided the vending machines and stuffed</p><p>himself with candy and chips.</p><p>If willpower is a skill, Muraven wondered, then why doesn’t it</p><p>remain constant from day to day? He suspected there was more to</p><p>willpower than the earlier experiments had revealed. But how do you</p><p>test that in a laboratory?</p><p>Muraven’s solution was the lab containing one bowl of freshly</p><p>baked cookies and one bowl of radishes. The room was essentially a</p><p>closet with a two-way mirror, outfitted with a table, a wooden chair, a</p><p>hand bell, and a toaster oven. Sixty-seven undergraduates were</p><p>recruited and told to skip a meal. One by one, the undergrads sat in</p><p>front of the two bowls.</p><p>“The point of this experiment is to test taste perceptions,” a</p><p>researcher told each student, which was untrue. The point was to</p><p>force students—but only some students—to exert their willpower. To</p><p>that end, half the undergraduates were instructed to eat the cookies</p><p>and ignore the radishes; the other half were told to eat the radishes</p><p>and ignore the cookies. Muraven’s theory was that ignoring cookies</p><p>is hard—it takes willpower. Ignoring radishes, on the other hand,</p><p>hardly requires any effort at all.</p><p>“Remember,” the researcher said, “eat only the food that has</p><p>been assigned to you.” Then she left the room.</p><p>Once the students were alone, they started munching. The</p><p>cookie eaters were in heaven. The radish eaters were in agony.</p><p>They were miserable forcing themselves to ignore the warm cookies.</p><p>Through the two-way mirror, the researchers watched one of the</p><p>radish eaters pick up a cookie, smell it longingly, and then put it back</p><p>in the bowl. Another grabbed a few cookies, put them down, and</p><p>then licked melted chocolate off his fingers.</p><p>After five minutes, the researcher reentered the room. By</p><p>Muraven’s estimation, the radish eaters’ willpower had been</p><p>thoroughly taxed by eating the bitter vegetable and ignoring the</p><p>treats; the cookie eaters had hardly used any of their self-discipline.</p><p>“We need to wait about fifteen minutes for the sensory memory</p><p>of the food you ate to fade,” the researcher told each participant. To</p><p>pass the time, she asked them to complete a puzzle. It looked fairly</p><p>simple: trace a geometric pattern without lifting your pencil from the</p><p>page or going over the same line twice. If you want to quit, the</p><p>researcher said, ring the bell. She implied the puzzle wouldn’t take</p><p>long.</p><p>In truth, the puzzle was impossible to solve.</p><p>This puzzle wasn’t a way to pass time; it was the most important</p><p>part of the experiment. It took enormous willpower to keep working</p><p>on the puzzle, particularly when each attempt failed. The scientists</p><p>wondered, would the students who had already expended their</p><p>willpower by ignoring the cookies give up on the puzzle faster? In</p><p>other words, was willpower a finite resource?</p><p>From behind their two-way mirror, the researchers watched. The</p><p>cookie eaters, with their unused reservoirs of self-discipline, started</p><p>working on the puzzle. In general, they looked relaxed. One of them</p><p>tried a straightforward approach, hit a roadblock, and then started</p><p>again. And again. And again. Some worked for over half an hour</p><p>before the researcher told them to stop. On average, the cookie</p><p>eaters spent almost nineteen minutes apiece trying to solve the</p><p>puzzle before they rang the bell.</p><p>The radish eaters, with their depleted willpower, acted</p><p>completely different. They muttered as they worked. They got</p><p>frustrated. One complained that the whole experiment was a waste</p><p>of time. Some of them put their heads on the table and closed their</p><p>eyes. One snapped at the researcher when she came back in. On</p><p>average, the radish eaters worked for only about eight minutes, 60</p><p>percent less time than the cookie eaters, before quitting. When the</p><p>researcher asked afterward how they felt, one of the radish eaters</p><p>said he was “sick of this dumb experiment.”</p><p>“By making people use a little bit of their willpower to ignore</p><p>cookies, we had put them into a state where they were willing to quit</p><p>much faster,” Muraven told me. “There’s been more than two</p><p>hundred studies on this idea since then, and they’ve all found the</p><p>same thing. Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles</p><p>in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s</p><p>less power left over for other things.”</p><p>Researchers have built on this finding to explain all sorts of</p><p>phenomena. Some have suggested it helps clarify why otherwise</p><p>successful people succumb to extramarital affairs (which are most</p><p>likely to start late at night after a long day of using willpower at work)</p><p>or why good physicians make dumb mistakes (which most often</p><p>occur after a doctor has finished a long, complicated task that</p><p>requires intense focus).5.5 “If you want to do something that requires</p><p>willpower—like going for a run after work—you have to conserve</p><p>your willpower muscle during the day,” Muraven told me. “If you use</p><p>it up too early on tedious tasks like writing emails or filling out</p><p>complicated and boring expense forms, all the strength will be gone</p><p>by the time you get home.”5.6</p><p>But how far does this analogy extend? Will exercising willpower</p><p>muscles make them stronger the same way using dumbbells</p><p>strengthen biceps?</p><p>In 2006, two Australian researchers—Megan Oaten and Ken</p><p>Cheng—tried to answer that question by creating a willpower</p><p>workout. They enrolled two dozen people between the ages of</p><p>eighteen and fifty in a physical exercise program and, over two</p><p>months, put them through an increasing number of weight lifting,</p><p>resistance training, and aerobic routines.5.7 Week after week, people</p><p>forced themselves to exercise more frequently, using more and more</p><p>willpower each time they hit the gym.</p><p>After two months,</p><p>the researchers scrutinized the rest of the</p><p>participants’ lives to see if increased willpower at the gym resulted in</p><p>greater willpower at home. Before the experiment began, most of the</p><p>subjects were self-professed couch potatoes. Now, of course, they</p><p>were in better physical shape. But they were also healthier in other</p><p>parts of their lives, as well. The more time they spent at the gym, the</p><p>fewer cigarettes they smoked and the less alcohol, caffeine, and junk</p><p>food they consumed. They were spending more hours on homework</p><p>and fewer watching TV. They were less depressed.</p><p>Maybe, Oaten and Cheng wondered, those results had nothing</p><p>to do with willpower. What if exercise just makes people happier and</p><p>less hungry for fast food?</p><p>So they designed another experiment.5.8 This time, they signed</p><p>up twenty-nine people for a four-month money management</p><p>program. They set savings goals and asked participants to deny</p><p>themselves luxuries, such as meals at restaurants or movies.</p><p>Participants were asked to keep detailed logs of everything they</p><p>bought, which was annoying at first, but eventually people worked up</p><p>the self-discipline to jot down every purchase.</p><p>People’s finances improved as they progressed through the</p><p>program. More surprising, they also smoked fewer cigarettes and</p><p>drank less alcohol and caffeine—on average, two fewer cups of</p><p>coffee, two fewer beers, and, among smokers, fifteen fewer</p><p>cigarettes each day.5.9 They ate less junk food and were more</p><p>productive at work and school. It was like the exercise study: As</p><p>people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives</p><p>—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength</p><p>spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once</p><p>willpower became stronger, it touched everything.</p><p>Oaten and Cheng did one more experiment. They enrolled forty-</p><p>five students in an academic improvement program that focused on</p><p>creating study habits.5.10 Predictably, participants’ learning skills</p><p>improved. And the students also smoked less, drank less, watched</p><p>less television, exercised more, and ate healthier, even though all</p><p>those things were never mentioned in the academic program. Again,</p><p>as their willpower muscles strengthened, good habits seemed to spill</p><p>over into other parts of their lives.</p><p>“When you learn to force yourself to go to the gym or start your</p><p>homework or eat a salad instead of a hamburger, part of what’s</p><p>happening is that you’re changing how you think,” said Todd</p><p>Heatherton, a researcher at Dartmouth who has worked on willpower</p><p>studies.5.11 “People get better at regulating their impulses. They</p><p>learn how to distract themselves from temptations. And once you’ve</p><p>gotten into that willpower groove, your brain is practiced at helping</p><p>you focus on a goal.”</p><p>There are now hundreds of researchers, at nearly every major</p><p>university, studying willpower. Public and charter schools in</p><p>Philadelphia, Seattle, New York, and elsewhere have started</p><p>incorporating willpower-strengthening lessons into curriculums. At</p><p>KIPP, or the “Knowledge Is Power Program”—a collection of charter</p><p>schools serving low-income students across the nation—teaching</p><p>self-control is part of the schools’ philosophy. (A KIPP school in</p><p>Philadelphia gave students shirts proclaiming “Don’t Eat the</p><p>Marshmallow.”) Many of these schools have dramatically raised</p><p>students’ test scores.5.12</p><p>“That’s why signing kids up for piano lessons or sports is so</p><p>important. It has nothing to do with creating a good musician or a</p><p>five-year-old soccer star,” said Heatherton. “When you learn to force</p><p>yourself to practice for an hour or run fifteen laps, you start building</p><p>self-regulatory strength. A five-year-old who can follow the ball for</p><p>ten minutes becomes a sixth grader who can start his homework on</p><p>time.”5.13</p><p>As research on willpower has become a hot topic in scientific</p><p>journals and newspaper articles, it has started to trickle into</p><p>corporate America. Firms such as Starbucks—and the Gap,</p><p>Walmart, restaurants, or any other business that relies on entry-level</p><p>workers—all face a common problem: No matter how much their</p><p>employees want to do a great job, many will fail because they lack</p><p>self-discipline. They show up late. They snap at rude customers.</p><p>They get distracted or drawn into workplace dramas. They quit for no</p><p>reason.</p><p>“For a lot of employees, Starbucks is their first professional</p><p>experience,” said Christine Deputy, who helped oversee the</p><p>company’s training programs for more than a decade. “If your</p><p>parents or teachers have been telling you what to do your entire life,</p><p>and suddenly customers are yelling and your boss is too busy to give</p><p>you guidance, it can be really overwhelming. A lot of people can’t</p><p>make the transition. So we try to figure out how to give our</p><p>employees the self-discipline they didn’t learn in high school.”</p><p>But when companies like Starbucks tried to apply the willpower</p><p>lessons from the radish-and-cookie studies to the workplace, they</p><p>encountered difficulties. They sponsored weight-loss classes and</p><p>offered employees free gym memberships, hoping the benefits</p><p>would spill over to how they served coffee.5.14 Attendance was</p><p>spotty. It was hard to sit through a class or hit the gym after a full day</p><p>at work, employees complained. “If someone has trouble with self-</p><p>discipline at work, they’re probably also going to have trouble</p><p>attending a program designed to strengthen their self-discipline after</p><p>work,” Muraven said.</p><p>But Starbucks was determined to solve this problem. By 2007,</p><p>during the height of its expansion, the company was opening seven</p><p>new stores every day and hiring as many as fifteen hundred</p><p>employees each week.5.15 Training them to excel at customer</p><p>service—to show up on time and not get angry at patrons and serve</p><p>everyone with a smile while remembering customers’ orders and, if</p><p>possible, their names—was essential. People expect an expensive</p><p>latte delivered with a bit of sparkle. “We’re not in the coffee business</p><p>serving people,” Howard Behar, the former president of Starbucks,</p><p>told me. “We’re in the people business serving coffee. Our entire</p><p>business model is based on fantastic customer service. Without that,</p><p>we’re toast.”</p><p>The solution, Starbucks discovered, was turning self-discipline</p><p>into an organizational habit.</p><p>III.</p><p>In 1992, a British psychologist walked into two of Scotland’s</p><p>busiest orthopedic hospitals and recruited five-dozen patients for an</p><p>experiment she hoped would explain how to boost the willpower of</p><p>people exceptionally resistant to change.5.16</p><p>The patients, on average, were sixty-eight years old. Most of</p><p>them earned less than $10,000 a year and didn’t have more than a</p><p>high school degree. All of them had recently undergone hip or knee</p><p>replacement surgeries, but because they were relatively poor and</p><p>uneducated, many had waited years for their operations. They were</p><p>retirees, elderly mechanics, and store clerks. They were in life’s final</p><p>chapters, and most had no desire to pick up a new book.</p><p>Recovering from a hip or knee surgery is incredibly arduous.</p><p>The operation involves severing joint muscles and sawing through</p><p>bones. While recovering, the smallest movements—shifting in bed or</p><p>flexing a joint—can be excruciating. However, it is essential that</p><p>patients begin exercising almost as soon as they wake from surgery.</p><p>They must begin moving their legs and hips before the muscles and</p><p>skin have healed, or scar tissue will clog the joint, destroying its</p><p>flexibility. In addition, if patients don’t start exercising, they risk</p><p>developing blood clots. But the agony is so extreme that it’s not</p><p>unusual for people to skip out on rehab sessions. Patients,</p><p>particularly elderly ones, often refuse to comply with doctors’ orders.</p><p>The Scottish study’s participants were the types of people most</p><p>likely to fail at rehabilitation. The scientist conducting the experiment</p><p>wanted to see if it was possible to help them harness their willpower.</p><p>She gave each patient a booklet after their surgeries that detailed</p><p>their rehab schedule, and in the back were thirteen additional pages</p><p>—one</p><p>for each week—with blank spaces and instructions: “My goals</p><p>for this week are __________ ? Write down exactly what you are</p><p>going to do. For example, if you are going to go for a walk this week,</p><p>write down where and when you are going to walk.” She asked</p><p>patients to fill in each of those pages with specific plans. Then she</p><p>compared the recoveries of those who wrote out goals with those of</p><p>patients who had received the same booklets, but didn’t write</p><p>anything.</p><p>It seems absurd to think that giving people a few pieces of blank</p><p>paper might make a difference in how quickly they recover from</p><p>surgery. But when the researcher visited the patients three months</p><p>later, she found a striking difference between the two groups. The</p><p>patients who had written plans in their booklets had started walking</p><p>almost twice as fast as the ones who had not. They had started</p><p>getting in and out of their chairs, unassisted, almost three times as</p><p>fast. They were putting on their shoes, doing the laundry, and</p><p>making themselves meals quicker than the patients who hadn’t</p><p>scribbled out goals ahead of time.</p><p>The psychologist wanted to understand why. She examined the</p><p>booklets, and discovered that most of the blank pages had been</p><p>filled in with specific, detailed plans about the most mundane</p><p>aspects of recovery. One patient, for example, had written, “I will</p><p>walk to the bus stop tomorrow to meet my wife from work,” and then</p><p>noted what time he would leave, the route he would walk, what he</p><p>would wear, which coat he would bring if it was raining, and what</p><p>pills he would take if the pain became too much. Another patient, in a</p><p>similar study, wrote a series of very specific schedules regarding the</p><p>exercises he would do each time he went to the bathroom. A third</p><p>wrote a minute-by-minute itinerary for walking around the block.</p><p>As the psychologist scrutinized the booklets, she saw that many</p><p>of the plans had something in common: They focused on how</p><p>patients would handle a specific moment of anticipated pain. The</p><p>man who exercised on the way to the bathroom, for instance, knew</p><p>that each time he stood up from the couch, the ache was</p><p>excruciating. So he wrote out a plan for dealing with it: Automatically</p><p>take the first step, right away, so he wouldn’t be tempted to sit down</p><p>again. The patient who met his wife at the bus stop dreaded the</p><p>afternoons, because that stroll was the longest and most painful</p><p>each day. So he detailed every obstacle he might confront, and</p><p>came up with a solution ahead of time.</p><p>Put another way, the patients’ plans were built around inflection</p><p>points when they knew their pain—and thus the temptation to quit—</p><p>would be strongest. The patients were telling themselves how they</p><p>were going to make it over the hump.</p><p>Each of them, intuitively, employed the same rules that Claude</p><p>Hopkins had used to sell Pepsodent. They identified simple cues and</p><p>obvious rewards. The man who met his wife at the bus stop, for</p><p>instance, identified an easy cue—It’s 3:30, she’s on her way home!</p><p>—and he clearly defined his reward—Honey, I’m here! When the</p><p>temptation to give up halfway through the walk appeared, the patient</p><p>could ignore it because he had crafted self-discipline into a habit.</p><p>PATIENTS DESIGNED WILLPOWER HABITS TO HELP THEM</p><p>OVERCOME PAINFUL INFLECTION POINTS</p><p>There’s no reason why the other patients—the ones who didn’t</p><p>write out recovery plans—couldn’t have behaved the same way. All</p><p>the patients had been exposed to the same admonitions and</p><p>warnings at the hospital. They all knew exercise was essential for</p><p>their recovery. They all spent weeks in rehab.</p><p>But the patients who didn’t write out any plans were at a</p><p>significant disadvantage, because they never thought ahead about</p><p>how to deal with painful inflection points. They never deliberately</p><p>designed willpower habits. Even if they intended to walk around the</p><p>block, their resolve abandoned them when they confronted the</p><p>agony of the first few steps.</p><p>When Starbucks’s attempts at boosting workers’ willpower</p><p>through gym memberships and diet workshops faltered, executives</p><p>decided they needed to take a new approach. They started by</p><p>looking more closely at what was actually happening inside their</p><p>stores. They saw that, like the Scottish patients, their workers were</p><p>failing when they ran up against inflection points. What they needed</p><p>were institutional habits that made it easier to muster their self-</p><p>discipline.</p><p>Executives determined that, in some ways, they had been</p><p>thinking about willpower all wrong. Employees with willpower lapses,</p><p>it turned out, had no difficulty doing their jobs most of the time. On</p><p>the average day, a willpower-challenged worker was no different</p><p>from anyone else. But sometimes, particularly when faced with</p><p>unexpected stresses or uncertainties, those employees would snap</p><p>and their self-control would evaporate. A customer might begin</p><p>yelling, for instance, and a normally calm employee would lose her</p><p>composure. An impatient crowd might overwhelm a barista, and</p><p>suddenly he was on the edge of tears.5.17</p><p>What employees really needed were clear instructions about</p><p>how to deal with inflection points—something similar to the Scottish</p><p>patients’ booklets: a routine for employees to follow when their</p><p>willpower muscles went limp.5.18 So the company developed new</p><p>training materials that spelled out routines for employees to use</p><p>when they hit rough patches. The manuals taught workers how to</p><p>respond to specific cues, such as a screaming customer or a long</p><p>line at a cash register. Managers drilled employees, role-playing with</p><p>them until the responses became automatic. The company identified</p><p>specific rewards—a grateful customer, praise from a manager—that</p><p>employees could look to as evidence of a job well done.</p><p>Starbucks taught their employees how to handle moments of</p><p>adversity by giving them willpower habit loops.</p><p>When Travis started at Starbucks, for instance, his manager</p><p>introduced him to the habits right away. “One of the hardest things</p><p>about this job is dealing with an angry customer,” Travis’s manager</p><p>told him. “When someone comes up and starts yelling at you</p><p>because they got the wrong drink, what’s your first reaction?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Travis said. “I guess I feel kind of scared. Or</p><p>angry.”</p><p>“That’s natural,” his manager said. “But our job is to provide the</p><p>best customer service, even when the pressure’s on.” The manager</p><p>flipped open the Starbucks manual, and showed Travis a page that</p><p>was largely blank. At the top, it read, “When a customer is unhappy,</p><p>my plan is to … ”</p><p>“This workbook is for you to imagine unpleasant situations, and</p><p>write out a plan for responding,” the manager said. “One of the</p><p>systems we use is called the LATTE method. We Listen to the</p><p>customer, Acknowledge their complaint, Take action by solving the</p><p>problem, Thank them, and then Explain why the problem</p><p>occurred.5.19</p><p>THE LATTE HABIT LOOP</p><p>“Why don’t you take a few minutes, and write out a plan for</p><p>dealing with an angry customer. Use the LATTE method. Then we</p><p>can role-play a little bit.”</p><p>Starbucks has dozens of routines that employees are taught to</p><p>use during stressful inflection points. There’s the What What Why</p><p>system of giving criticism and the Connect, Discover, and Respond</p><p>system for taking orders when things become hectic. There are</p><p>learned habits to help baristas tell the difference between patrons</p><p>who just want their coffee (“A hurried customer speaks with a sense</p><p>of urgency and may seem impatient or look at their watch”) and</p><p>those who need a bit more coddling (“A regular customer knows</p><p>other baristas by name and normally orders the same beverage</p><p>each day”). Throughout the training manuals are dozens of blank</p><p>pages where employees can write out plans that anticipate how they</p><p>will surmount inflection points. Then they practice those plans, again</p><p>and again, until they become automatic.5.20</p><p>This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain</p><p>behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an</p><p>inflection point arrives. When the Scottish patients filled out their</p><p>booklets, or</p><p>Travis studied the LATTE method, they decided ahead</p><p>of time how to react to a cue—a painful muscle or an angry</p><p>customer. When the cue arrived, the routine occurred.</p><p>Starbucks isn’t the only company to use such training methods.</p><p>For instance, at Deloitte Consulting, the largest tax and financial</p><p>services company in the world, employees are trained in a</p><p>curriculum named “Moments That Matter,” which focuses on dealing</p><p>with inflection points such as when a client complains about fees,</p><p>when a colleague is fired, or when a Deloitte consultant has made a</p><p>mistake. For each of those moments, there are preprogrammed</p><p>routines—Get Curious, Say What No One Else Will, Apply the 5/5/5</p><p>Rule—that guide employees in how they should respond. At the</p><p>Container Store, employees receive more than 185 hours of training</p><p>in their first year alone. They are taught to recognize inflection points</p><p>such as an angry coworker or an overwhelmed customer, and habits,</p><p>such as routines for calming shoppers or defusing a confrontation.</p><p>When a customer comes in who seems overwhelmed, for example,</p><p>an employee immediately asks them to visualize the space in their</p><p>home they are hoping to organize, and describe how they’ll feel</p><p>when everything is in its place. “We’ve had customers come up to us</p><p>and say, ‘This is better than a visit to my shrink,’ ” the company’s</p><p>CEO told a reporter.5.21</p><p>IV.</p><p>Howard Schultz, the man who built Starbucks into a colossus,</p><p>isn’t so different from Travis in some ways.5.22 He grew up in a public</p><p>housing project in Brooklyn, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with</p><p>his parents and two siblings. When he was seven years old,</p><p>Schultz’s father broke his ankle and lost his job driving a diaper</p><p>truck. That was all it took to throw the family into crisis. His father,</p><p>after his ankle healed, began cycling through a series of lower-</p><p>paying jobs. “My dad never found his way,” Schultz told me. “I saw</p><p>his self-esteem get battered. I felt like there was so much more he</p><p>could have accomplished.”</p><p>Schultz’s school was a wild, overcrowded place with asphalt</p><p>playgrounds and kids playing football, basketball, softball, punch</p><p>ball, slap ball, and any other game they could devise. If your team</p><p>lost, it could take an hour to get another turn. So Schultz made sure</p><p>his team always won, no matter the cost. He would come home with</p><p>bloody scrapes on his elbows and knees, which his mother would</p><p>gently rinse with a wet cloth. “You don’t quit,” she told him.</p><p>His competitiveness earned him a college football scholarship</p><p>(he broke his jaw and never played a game), a communications</p><p>degree, and eventually a job as a Xerox salesman in New York City.</p><p>He’d wake up every morning, go to a new midtown office building,</p><p>take the elevator to the top floor, and go door-to-door, politely</p><p>inquiring if anyone was interested in toner or copy machines. Then</p><p>he’d ride the elevator down one floor and start all over again.</p><p>By the early 1980s, Schultz was working for a plastics</p><p>manufacturer when he noticed that a little-known retailer in Seattle</p><p>was ordering an inordinate number of coffee drip cones. Schultz flew</p><p>out and fell in love with the company. Two years later, when he heard</p><p>that Starbucks, then just six stores, was for sale, he asked everyone</p><p>he knew for money and bought it.</p><p>That was 1987. Within three years, there were eighty-four</p><p>stores; within six years, more than a thousand. Today, there are</p><p>seventeen thousand stores in more than fifty countries.</p><p>Why did Schultz turn out so different from all the other kids on</p><p>that playground? Some of his old classmates are today cops and</p><p>firemen in Brooklyn. Others are in prison. Schultz is worth more than</p><p>$1 billion. He’s been heralded as one of the greatest CEOs of the</p><p>twentieth century. Where did he find the determination—the</p><p>willpower—to climb from a housing project to a private jet?</p><p>“I don’t really know,” he told me. “My mom always said, ‘You’re</p><p>going to be the first person to go to college, you’re going to be a</p><p>professional, you’re going to make us all proud.’ She would ask</p><p>these little questions, ‘How are you going to study tonight? What are</p><p>you going to do tomorrow? How do you know you’re ready for your</p><p>test?’ It trained me to set goals.</p><p>“I’ve been really lucky,” he said. “And I really, genuinely believe</p><p>that if you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they’ll</p><p>prove you right.”</p><p>Schultz’s focus on employee training and customer service</p><p>made Starbucks into one of the most successful companies in the</p><p>world. For years, he was personally involved in almost every aspect</p><p>of how the company was run. In 2000, exhausted, he handed over</p><p>day-to-day operations to other executives, at which point, Starbucks</p><p>began to stumble. Within a few years, customers were complaining</p><p>about the quality of the drinks and customer service. Executives,</p><p>focused on a frantic expansion, often ignored the complaints.</p><p>Employees grew unhappy. Surveys indicated people were starting to</p><p>equate Starbucks with tepid coffee and empty smiles.</p><p>So Schultz stepped back into the chief executive position in</p><p>2008. Among his priorities was restructuring the company’s training</p><p>program to renew its focus on a variety of issues, including</p><p>bolstering employees’—or “partners,” in Starbucks’ lingo—willpower</p><p>and self-confidence. “We had to start earning customer and partner</p><p>trust again,” Schultz told me.</p><p>At about the same time, a new wave of studies was appearing</p><p>that looked at the science of willpower in a slightly different way.</p><p>Researchers had noticed that some people, like Travis, were able to</p><p>create willpower habits relatively easily. Others, however, struggled,</p><p>no matter how much training and support they received. What was</p><p>causing the difference?</p><p>Mark Muraven, who was by then a professor at the University of</p><p>Albany, set up a new experiment.5.23 He put undergraduates in a</p><p>room that contained a plate of warm, fresh cookies and asked them</p><p>to ignore the treats. Half the participants were treated kindly. “We ask</p><p>that you please don’t eat the cookies. Is that okay?” a researcher</p><p>said. She then discussed the purpose of the experiment, explaining</p><p>that it was to measure their ability to resist temptations. She thanked</p><p>them for contributing their time. “If you have any suggestions or</p><p>thoughts about how we can improve this experiment, please let me</p><p>know. We want you to help us make this experience as good as</p><p>possible.”</p><p>The other half of the participants weren’t coddled the same way.</p><p>They were simply given orders.</p><p>“You must not eat the cookies,” the researcher told them. She</p><p>didn’t explain the experiment’s goals, compliment them, or show any</p><p>interest in their feedback. She told them to follow the instructions.</p><p>“We’ll start now,” she said.</p><p>The students from both groups had to ignore the warm cookies</p><p>for five minutes after the researcher left the room. None gave in to</p><p>temptation.</p><p>Then the researcher returned. She asked each student to look</p><p>at a computer monitor. It was programmed to flash numbers on the</p><p>screen, one at a time, for five hundred milliseconds apiece. The</p><p>participants were asked to hit the space bar every time they saw a</p><p>“6” followed by a “4.” This has become a standard way to measure</p><p>willpower—paying attention to a boring sequence of flashing</p><p>numbers requires a focus akin to working on an impossible puzzle.</p><p>Students who had been treated kindly did well on the computer</p><p>test. Whenever a “6” flashed and a “4” followed, they pounced on the</p><p>space bar. They were able to maintain their focus for the entire</p><p>twelve minutes. Despite ignoring the cookies, they had willpower to</p><p>spare.</p><p>Students who had been treated rudely, on the other hand, did</p><p>terribly. They kept forgetting to hit the space bar. They said they</p><p>were tired and couldn’t focus. Their willpower muscle, researchers</p><p>determined, had been fatigued by the brusque instructions.</p><p>When Muraven started exploring why students who had been</p><p>treated kindly had more willpower he found that the key difference</p><p>was the sense of control they had over their experience. “We’ve</p><p>found this again</p><p>and again,” Muraven told me. “When people are</p><p>asked to do something that takes self-control, if they think they are</p><p>doing it for personal reasons—if they feel like it’s a choice or</p><p>something they enjoy because it helps someone else—it’s much less</p><p>taxing. If they feel like they have no autonomy, if they’re just</p><p>following orders, their willpower muscles get tired much faster. In</p><p>both cases, people ignored the cookies. But when the students were</p><p>treated like cogs, rather than people, it took a lot more willpower.”</p><p>For companies and organizations, this insight has enormous</p><p>implications. Simply giving employees a sense of agency—a feeling</p><p>that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making</p><p>authority—can radically increase how much energy and focus they</p><p>bring to their jobs. One 2010 study at a manufacturing plant in Ohio,</p><p>for instance, scrutinized assembly-line workers who were</p><p>empowered to make small decisions about their schedules and work</p><p>environment.5.24 They designed their own uniforms and had authority</p><p>over shifts. Nothing else changed. All the manufacturing processes</p><p>and pay scales stayed the same. Within two months, productivity at</p><p>the plant increased by 20 percent. Workers were taking shorter</p><p>breaks. They were making fewer mistakes. Giving employees a</p><p>sense of control improved how much self-discipline they brought to</p><p>their jobs.</p><p>The same lessons hold true at Starbucks. Today, the company</p><p>is focused on giving employees a greater sense of authority. They</p><p>have asked workers to redesign how espresso machines and cash</p><p>registers are laid out, to decide for themselves how customers</p><p>should be greeted and where merchandise should be displayed. It’s</p><p>not unusual for a store manager to spend hours discussing with his</p><p>employees where a blender should be located.</p><p>“We’ve started asking partners to use their intellect and</p><p>creativity, rather than telling them ‘take the coffee out of the box, put</p><p>the cup here, follow this rule,’ ” said Kris Engskov, a vice president at</p><p>Starbucks. “People want to be in control of their lives.”</p><p>Turnover has gone down. Customer satisfaction is up. Since</p><p>Schultz’s return, Starbucks has boosted revenues by more than $1.2</p><p>billion per year.</p><p>V.</p><p>When Travis was sixteen, before he dropped out of school and</p><p>started working for Starbucks, his mother told him a story. They were</p><p>driving together, and Travis asked why he didn’t have more siblings.</p><p>His mother had always tried to be completely honest with her</p><p>children, and so she told him that she had become pregnant two</p><p>years before Travis was born but had gotten an abortion. They</p><p>already had two children at that point, she explained, and were</p><p>addicted to drugs. They didn’t think they could support another baby.</p><p>Then, a year later, she became pregnant with Travis. She thought</p><p>about having another abortion, but it was too much to bear. It was</p><p>easier to let nature take its course. Travis was born.</p><p>“She told me that she had made a lot of mistakes, but that</p><p>having me was one of the best things that ever happened to her,”</p><p>Travis said. “When your parents are addicts, you grow up knowing</p><p>you can’t always trust them for everything you need. But I’ve been</p><p>really lucky to find bosses who gave me what was missing. If my</p><p>mom had been as lucky as me, I think things would have turned out</p><p>different for her.”</p><p>A few years after that conversation, Travis’s father called to say</p><p>that an infection had entered his mother’s bloodstream through one</p><p>of the places on her arm she used to shoot up. Travis immediately</p><p>drove to the hospital in Lodi, but she was unconscious by the time he</p><p>arrived. She died a half hour later, when they removed her life</p><p>support.</p><p>A week later, Travis’s father was in the hospital with pneumonia.</p><p>His lung had collapsed. Travis drove to Lodi again, but it was 8:02</p><p>P.M. when he got to the emergency room. A nurse brusquely told</p><p>him he’d have to come back tomorrow; visiting hours were over.</p><p>Travis has thought a lot about that moment since then. He</p><p>hadn’t started working at Starbucks yet. He hadn’t learned how to</p><p>control his emotions. He didn’t have the habits that, since then, he’s</p><p>spent years practicing. When he thinks about his life now, how far he</p><p>is from a world where overdoses occur and stolen cars show up in</p><p>driveways and a nurse seems like an insurmountable obstacle, he</p><p>wonders how it’s possible to travel such a long distance in such a</p><p>short time.</p><p>“If he had died a year later, everything would have been</p><p>different,” Travis told me. By then, he would have known how to</p><p>calmly plead with the nurse. He would have known to acknowledge</p><p>her authority, and then ask politely for one small exception. He could</p><p>have gotten inside the hospital. Instead, he gave up and walked</p><p>away. “I said, ‘All I want to do is talk to him once,’ and she was like,</p><p>‘He’s not even awake, it’s after visiting hours, come back tomorrow.’ I</p><p>didn’t know what to say. I felt so small.”</p><p>Travis’s father died that night.</p><p>On the anniversary of his death, every year, Travis wakes up</p><p>early, takes an extra-long shower, plans out his day in careful detail,</p><p>and then drives to work. He always arrives on time.</p><p>THE POWER OF A CRISIS</p><p>How Leaders Create Habits Through Accident and Design</p><p>I.</p><p>The patient was already unconscious when he was wheeled</p><p>into the operating room at Rhode Island Hospital. His jaw was slack,</p><p>his eyes closed, and the top of an intubation tube peeked above his</p><p>lips. As a nurse hooked him up to a machine that would force air into</p><p>his lungs during surgery, one of his arms slipped off the gurney, the</p><p>skin mottled with liver spots.</p><p>The man was eighty-six years old and, three days earlier, had</p><p>fallen at home. Afterward, he had trouble staying awake and</p><p>answering questions, and so eventually his wife called an</p><p>ambulance.6.1 In the emergency room, a doctor asked him what</p><p>happened, but the man kept nodding off in the middle of his</p><p>sentences. A scan of his head revealed why: The fall had slammed</p><p>his brain against his skull, causing what’s known as a subdural</p><p>hematoma. Blood was pooling within the left portion of his cranium,</p><p>pushing against the delicate folds of tissue inside his skull. The fluid</p><p>had been building for almost seventy-two hours, and those parts of</p><p>the brain that controlled his breathing and heart were beginning to</p><p>falter. Unless the blood was drained, the man would die.6.2</p><p>At the time, Rhode Island Hospital was one of the nation’s</p><p>leading medical institutions, the main teaching hospital for Brown</p><p>University and the only Level I trauma center in southeastern New</p><p>England. Inside the tall brick and glass building, physicians had</p><p>pioneered cutting-edge medical techniques, including the use of</p><p>ultrasound waves to destroy tumors inside a patient’s body. In 2002,</p><p>the National Coalition on Health Care rated the hospital’s intensive</p><p>care unit as one of the finest in the country.6.3</p><p>But by the time the elderly patient arrived, Rhode Island</p><p>Hospital also had another reputation: a place riven by internal</p><p>tensions. There were deep, simmering enmities between nurses and</p><p>physicians. In 2000, the nurses’ union had voted to strike after</p><p>complaining that they were being forced to work dangerously long</p><p>hours. More than three hundred of them stood outside the hospital</p><p>with signs reading “Stop Slavery” and “They can’t take away our</p><p>pride.”6.4</p><p>“This place can be awful,” one nurse recalled telling a reporter.</p><p>“The doctors can make you feel like you’re worthless, like you’re</p><p>disposable. Like you should be thankful to pick up after them.”</p><p>Administrators eventually agreed to limit nurses’ mandatory</p><p>overtime, but tensions continued to rise.6.5 A few years later, a</p><p>surgeon was preparing for a routine abdominal operation when a</p><p>nurse called for a “time-out.” Such pauses are standard procedure at</p><p>most hospitals, a way for doctors and staff to make sure mistakes</p><p>are avoided.6.6 The nursing staff at Rhode Island Hospital was</p><p>insistent on time-outs, particularly since a surgeon had accidentally</p><p>removed the tonsils of a girl who was supposed to have eye</p><p>surgery.</p><p>Time-outs were supposed to catch such errors before they occurred.</p><p>At the abdominal surgery, when the OR nurse asked the team</p><p>to gather around the patient for a time-out and to discuss their plan,</p><p>the doctor headed for the doors.</p><p>“Why don’t you lead this?” the surgeon told the nurse. “I’m going</p><p>to step outside for a call. Knock when you’re ready.”</p><p>“You’re supposed to be here for this, Doctor,” she replied.</p><p>“You can handle it,” the surgeon said, as he walked toward the</p><p>door.</p><p>“Doctor, I don’t feel this is appropriate.”</p><p>The doctor stopped and looked at her. “If I want your damn</p><p>opinion, I’ll ask for it,” he said. “Don’t ever question my authority</p><p>again. If you can’t do your job, get the hell out of my OR.”</p><p>The nurse led the time-out, retrieved the doctor a few minutes</p><p>later, and the procedure occurred without complication. She never</p><p>contradicted a physician again, and never said anything when other</p><p>safety policies were ignored.</p><p>“Some doctors were fine, and some were monsters,” one nurse</p><p>who worked at Rhode Island Hospital in the mid-2000s told me. “We</p><p>called it the glass factory, because it felt like everything could crash</p><p>down at any minute.”</p><p>To deal with these tensions, the staff had developed informal</p><p>rules—habits unique to the institution—that helped avert the most</p><p>obvious conflicts. Nurses, for instance, always double-checked the</p><p>orders of error-prone physicians and quietly made sure that correct</p><p>doses were entered; they took extra time to write clearly on patients’</p><p>charts, lest a hasty surgeon make the wrong cut. One nurse told me</p><p>they developed a system of color codes to warn one another. “We</p><p>put doctors’ names in different colors on the whiteboards,” she said.</p><p>“Blue meant ‘nice,’ red meant ‘jerk,’ and black meant, ‘whatever you</p><p>do, don’t contradict them or they’ll take your head off.’ ”</p><p>Rhode Island Hospital was a place filled with a corrosive</p><p>culture. Unlike at Alcoa, where carefully designed keystone habits</p><p>surrounding worker safety had created larger and larger successes,</p><p>inside Rhode Island Hospital, habits emerged on the fly among</p><p>nurses seeking to offset physician arrogance. The hospital’s routines</p><p>weren’t carefully thought out. Rather, they appeared by accident and</p><p>spread through whispered warnings, until toxic patterns emerged.</p><p>This can happen within any organization where habits aren’t</p><p>deliberately planned. Just as choosing the right keystone habits can</p><p>create amazing change, the wrong ones can create disasters.</p><p>And when the habits within Rhode Island Hospital imploded,</p><p>they caused terrible mistakes.</p><p>When the emergency room staff saw the brain scans of the</p><p>eighty-six-year-old man with the subdural hematoma, they</p><p>immediately paged the neurosurgeon on duty. He was in the middle</p><p>of a routine spinal surgery, but when he got the page, he stepped</p><p>away from the operating table and looked at images of the elderly</p><p>man’s head on a computer screen. The surgeon told his assistant—a</p><p>nurse practitioner—to go to the emergency room and get the man’s</p><p>wife to sign a consent form approving surgery. He finished his spinal</p><p>procedure. A half hour later, the elderly man was wheeled into the</p><p>same operating theater.6.7</p><p>Nurses were rushing around. The unconscious elderly man was</p><p>placed on the table. A nurse picked up his consent form and medical</p><p>chart.</p><p>“Doctor,” the nurse said, looking at the patient’s chart. “The</p><p>consent form doesn’t say where the hematoma is.” The nurse leafed</p><p>through the paperwork. There was no clear indication of which side</p><p>of his head they were supposed to operate on.6.8</p><p>Every hospital relies upon paperwork to guide surgeries. Before</p><p>any cut is made, a patient or family member is supposed to sign a</p><p>document approving each procedure and verifying the details. In a</p><p>chaotic environment, where as many as a dozen doctors and nurses</p><p>may handle a patient between the ER and the recovery suite,</p><p>consent forms are the instructions that keep track of what is</p><p>supposed to occur. No one is supposed to go into surgery without a</p><p>signed and detailed consent.</p><p>“I saw the scans before,” the surgeon said. “It was the right side</p><p>of the head. If we don’t do this quickly, he’s gonna die.”</p><p>“Maybe we should pull up the films again,” the nurse said,</p><p>moving toward a computer terminal. For security reasons, the</p><p>hospital’s computers locked after fifteen minutes of idling. It would</p><p>take at least a minute for the nurse to log in and load the patient’s</p><p>brain scans onto the screen.</p><p>“We don’t have time,” the surgeon said. “They told me he’s</p><p>crashing. We’ve got to relieve the pressure.”</p><p>“What if we find the family?” the nurse asked.</p><p>“If that’s what you want, then call the fucking ER and find the</p><p>family! In the meantime, I’m going to save his life.” The surgeon</p><p>grabbed the paperwork, scribbled “right” on the consent form, and</p><p>initialed it.</p><p>“There,” he said. “We have to operate immediately.”6.9</p><p>The nurse had worked at Rhode Island Hospital for a year. He</p><p>understood the hospital’s culture. This surgeon’s name, the nurse</p><p>knew, was often scribbled in black on the large whiteboard in the</p><p>hallway, signaling that nurses should beware. The unwritten rules in</p><p>this scenario were clear: The surgeon always wins.</p><p>The nurse put down the chart and stood aside as the doctor</p><p>positioned the elderly man’s head in a cradle that provided access to</p><p>the right side of his skull and shaved and applied antiseptic to his</p><p>head. The plan was to open the skull and suction out the blood</p><p>pooling on top of his brain. The surgeon sliced away a flap of scalp,</p><p>exposed the skull, and put a drill against the white bone. He began</p><p>pushing until the bit broke through with a soft pop. He made two</p><p>more holes and used a saw to cut out a triangular piece of the man’s</p><p>skull. Underneath was the dura, the translucent sheath surrounding</p><p>the brain.</p><p>“Oh my God,” someone said.</p><p>There was no hematoma. They were operating on the wrong</p><p>side of the head.</p><p>“We need him turned!” the surgeon yelled.6.10</p><p>The triangle of bone was replaced and reattached with small</p><p>metal plates and screws, and the patient’s scalp sewed up. His head</p><p>was shifted to the other side and then, once again, shaved,</p><p>cleansed, cut, and drilled until a triangle of skull could be removed.</p><p>This time, the hematoma was immediately visible, a dark bulge that</p><p>spilled like thick syrup when the dura was pierced. The surgeon</p><p>vacuumed the blood and the pressure inside the old man’s skull fell</p><p>immediately. The surgery, which should have taken about an hour,</p><p>had run almost twice as long.</p><p>Afterward, the patient was taken to the intensive care unit, but</p><p>he never regained full consciousness. Two weeks later, he died.</p><p>A subsequent investigation said it was impossible to determine</p><p>the precise cause of death, but the patient’s family argued that the</p><p>trauma of the medical error had overwhelmed his already fragile</p><p>body, that the stress of removing two pieces of skull, the additional</p><p>time in surgery, and the delay in evacuating the hematoma had</p><p>pushed him over the edge. If not for the mistake, they claimed, he</p><p>might still be alive. The hospital paid a settlement and the surgeon</p><p>was barred from ever working at Rhode Island Hospital again.6.11</p><p>Such an accident, some nurses later claimed, was inevitable.</p><p>Rhode Island Hospital’s institutional habits were so dysfunctional, it</p><p>was only a matter of time until a grievous mistake occurred.1 It’s not</p><p>just hospitals that breed dangerous patterns, of course. Destructive</p><p>organizational habits can be found within hundreds of industries and</p><p>at thousands of firms. And almost always, they are the products of</p><p>thoughtlessness, of leaders who avoid thinking about the culture and</p><p>so let it develop without guidance. There are no organizations</p><p>without institutional habits. There are only places where they are</p><p>deliberately designed, and places where they are created without</p><p>forethought, so they often grow from rivalries or fear.</p><p>But sometimes, even destructive habits can be transformed by</p><p>leaders who know how to seize the right opportunities. Sometimes,</p><p>in</p><p>the heat of a crisis, the right habits emerge.</p><p>II.</p><p>When An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change was first</p><p>published in 1982, very few people outside of academia noticed. The</p><p>book’s bland cover and daunting first sentence—“In this volume we</p><p>develop an evolutionary theory of the capabilities and behavior of</p><p>business firms operating in a market environment, and construct and</p><p>analyze a number of models consistent with that theory”—almost</p><p>seemed designed to ward off readers.6.12 The authors, Yale</p><p>professors Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter, were best known for a</p><p>series of intensely analytic papers exploring Schumpeterian theory</p><p>that even most PhD candidates didn’t pretend to understand.6.13</p><p>Within the world of business strategy and organizational theory,</p><p>however, the book went off like a bombshell.6.14 It was soon hailed</p><p>as one of the most important texts of the century. Economics</p><p>professors started talking about it to their colleagues at business</p><p>schools, who started talking to CEOs at conferences, and soon</p><p>executives were quoting Nelson and Winter inside corporations as</p><p>different as General Electric, Pfizer, and Starwood Hotels.</p><p>Nelson and Winter had spent more than a decade examining</p><p>how companies work, trudging through swamps of data before</p><p>arriving at their central conclusion: “Much of firm behavior,” they</p><p>wrote, is best “understood as a reflection of general habits and</p><p>strategic orientations coming from the firm’s past,” rather than “the</p><p>result of a detailed survey of the remote twigs of the decision</p><p>tree.”6.15</p><p>Or, put in language that people use outside of theoretical</p><p>economics, it may seem like most organizations make rational</p><p>choices based on deliberate decision making, but that’s not really</p><p>how companies operate at all. Instead, firms are guided by long-held</p><p>organizational habits, patterns that often emerge from thousands of</p><p>employees’ independent decisions.6.16 And these habits have more</p><p>profound impacts than anyone previously understood.</p><p>For instance, it might seem like the chief executive of a clothing</p><p>company made the decision last year to feature a red cardigan on</p><p>the catalog’s cover by carefully reviewing sales and marketing data.</p><p>But, in fact, what really happened was that his vice president</p><p>constantly trolls websites devoted to Japanese fashion trends (where</p><p>red was hip last spring), and the firm’s marketers routinely ask their</p><p>friends which colors are “in,” and the company’s executives, back</p><p>from their annual trip to the Paris runway shows, reported hearing</p><p>that designers at rival firms were using new magenta pigments. All</p><p>these small inputs, the result of uncoordinated patterns among</p><p>executives gossiping about competitors and talking to their friends,</p><p>got mixed into the company’s more formal research and</p><p>development routines until a consensus emerged: Red will be</p><p>popular this year. No one made a solitary, deliberate decision.</p><p>Rather, dozens of habits, processes, and behaviors converged until</p><p>it seemed like red was the inevitable choice.</p><p>These organizational habits—or “routines,” as Nelson and</p><p>Winter called them—are enormously important, because without</p><p>them, most companies would never get any work done.6.17 Routines</p><p>provide the hundreds of unwritten rules that companies need to</p><p>operate.6.18, 6.19 They allow workers to experiment with new ideas</p><p>without having to ask for permission at every step. They provide a</p><p>kind of “organizational memory,” so that managers don’t have to</p><p>reinvent the sales process every six months or panic each time a VP</p><p>quits.6.20 Routines reduce uncertainty—a study of recovery efforts</p><p>after earthquakes in Mexico and Los Angeles, for instance, found</p><p>that the habits of relief workers (which they carried from disaster to</p><p>disaster, and which included things such as establishing</p><p>communication networks by hiring children to carry messages</p><p>between neighborhoods) were absolutely critical, “because without</p><p>them, policy formulation and implementation would be lost in a jungle</p><p>of detail.”6.21</p><p>But among the most important benefits of routines is that they</p><p>create truces between potentially warring groups or individuals within</p><p>an organization.6.22</p><p>Most economists are accustomed to treating companies as</p><p>idyllic places where everyone is devoted to a common goal: making</p><p>as much money as possible. Nelson and Winter pointed out that, in</p><p>the real world, that’s not how things work at all. Companies aren’t big</p><p>happy families where everyone plays together nicely. Rather, most</p><p>workplaces are made up of fiefdoms where executives compete for</p><p>power and credit, often in hidden skirmishes that make their own</p><p>performances appear superior and their rivals’ seem worse.</p><p>Divisions compete for resources and sabotage each other to steal</p><p>glory. Bosses pit their subordinates against one another so that no</p><p>one can mount a coup.</p><p>Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.</p><p>Yet despite this capacity for internecine warfare, most</p><p>companies roll along relatively peacefully, year after year, because</p><p>they have routines—habits—that create truces that allow everyone</p><p>to set aside their rivalries long enough to get a day’s work done.</p><p>Organizational habits offer a basic promise: If you follow the</p><p>established patterns and abide by the truce, then rivalries won’t</p><p>destroy the company, the profits will roll in, and, eventually, everyone</p><p>will get rich. A salesperson, for example, knows she can boost her</p><p>bonus by giving favored customers hefty discounts in exchange for</p><p>larger orders. But she also knows that if every salesperson gives</p><p>away hefty discounts, the firm will go bankrupt and there won’t be</p><p>any bonuses to hand out. So a routine emerges: The salespeople all</p><p>get together every January and agree to limit how many discounts</p><p>they offer in order to protect the company’s profits, and at the end of</p><p>the year everyone gets a raise.</p><p>Or take a young executive gunning for vice president who, with</p><p>one quiet phone call to a major customer, could kill a sale and</p><p>sabotage a colleague’s division, taking him out of the running for the</p><p>promotion. The problem with sabotage is that even if it’s good for</p><p>you, it’s usually bad for the firm. So at most companies, an unspoken</p><p>compact emerges: It’s okay to be ambitious, but if you play too</p><p>rough, your peers will unite against you. On the other hand, if you</p><p>focus on boosting your own department, rather than undermining</p><p>your rival, you’ll probably get taken care of over time.6.23</p><p>ROUTINES CREATE TRUCES THAT ALLOW WORK TO GET</p><p>DONE</p><p>Routines and truces offer a type of rough organizational justice,</p><p>and because of them, Nelson and Winter wrote, conflict within</p><p>companies usually “follows largely predictable paths and stays within</p><p>predictable bounds that are consistent with the ongoing routine.…</p><p>The usual amount of work gets done, reprimands and compliments</p><p>are delivered with the usual frequency.… Nobody is trying to steer</p><p>the organizational ship into a sharp turn in the hope of throwing a</p><p>rival overboard.”6.24</p><p>Most of the time, routines and truces work perfectly. Rivalries</p><p>still exist, of course, but because of institutional habits, they’re kept</p><p>within bounds and the business thrives.</p><p>However, sometimes even a truce proves insufficient.</p><p>Sometimes, as Rhode Island Hospital discovered, an unstable peace</p><p>can be as destructive as any civil war.</p><p>Somewhere in your office, buried in a desk drawer, there’s</p><p>probably a handbook you received on your first day of work. It</p><p>contains expense forms and rules about vacations, insurance</p><p>options, and the company’s organizational chart. It has brightly</p><p>colored graphs describing different health care plans, a list of</p><p>relevant phone numbers, and instructions on how to access your</p><p>email or enroll in the 401(k).</p><p>Now, imagine what you would tell a new colleague who asked</p><p>for advice about how to succeed at your firm. Your recommendations</p><p>probably wouldn’t contain anything you’d find in the company’s</p><p>handbook. Instead, the tips you would pass along—who is</p><p>trustworthy; which secretaries have more clout than their bosses;</p><p>how to manipulate the bureaucracy to get something done—are the</p><p>habits you rely on every day to survive. If you could somehow</p><p>diagram all your work habits—and the informal power structures,</p><p>relationships, alliances, and conflicts they represent—and then</p><p>overlay your diagram with diagrams prepared by your colleagues, it</p><p>would create a map of your firm’s secret hierarchy, a guide to who</p><p>knows how to make things happen and who never seems to get</p><p>ahead of the ball.</p><p>Nelson and Winter’s routines—and the truces they make</p><p>possible—are critical to every kind of business. One study from</p><p>Utrecht University in the Netherlands, for instance, looked at routines</p><p>within the world of high fashion. To survive, every fashion designer</p><p>has to possess some basic skills: creativity and a flair for haute</p><p>couture as a start. But that’s not enough to succeed.6.25 What makes</p><p>the difference between success or failure are a designer’s routines—</p><p>whether they have a system for getting Italian broadcloth before</p><p>wholesalers’ stocks sell out, a process for finding the best zipper and</p><p>button seamstresses, a routine for shipping a dress to a store in ten</p><p>days, rather than three weeks. Fashion is such a complicated</p><p>business that, without the right processes, a new company will get</p><p>bogged down with logistics, and once that happens, creativity</p><p>ceases to matter.</p><p>And which new designers are most likely to have the right</p><p>habits? The ones who have formed the right truces and found the</p><p>right alliances.6.26 Truces are so important that new fashion labels</p><p>usually succeed only if they are headed by people who left other</p><p>fashion companies on good terms.</p><p>Some might think Nelson and Winter were writing a book on dry</p><p>economic theory. But what they really produced was a guide to</p><p>surviving in corporate America.</p><p>What’s more, Nelson and Winter’s theories also explain why</p><p>things went so wrong at Rhode Island Hospital. The hospital had</p><p>routines that created an uneasy peace between nurses and doctors</p><p>—the whiteboards, for instance, and the warnings nurses whispered</p><p>to one another were habits that established a baseline truce. These</p><p>delicate pacts allowed the organization to function most of the time.</p><p>But truces are only durable when they create real justice. If a truce is</p><p>unbalanced—if the peace isn’t real—then the routines often fail when</p><p>they are needed most.</p><p>The critical issue at Rhode Island Hospital was that the nurses</p><p>were the only ones giving up power to strike a truce. It was the</p><p>nurses who double-checked patients’ medications and made extra</p><p>efforts to write clearly on charts; the nurses who absorbed abuse</p><p>from stressed-out doctors; the nurses who helped separate kind</p><p>physicians from the despots, so the rest of the staff knew who</p><p>tolerated operating-room suggestions and who would explode if you</p><p>opened your mouth. The doctors often didn’t bother to learn the</p><p>nurses’ names. “The doctors were in charge, and we were</p><p>underlings,” one nurse told me. “We tucked our tails and survived.”</p><p>The truces at Rhode Island Hospital were one-sided. So at</p><p>those crucial moments—when, for instance, a surgeon was about to</p><p>make a hasty incision and a nurse tried to intervene—the routines</p><p>that could have prevented the accident crumbled, and the wrong</p><p>side of an eighty-six-year-old man’s head was opened up.</p><p>Some might suggest that the solution is more equitable truces.</p><p>That if the hospital’s leadership did a better job of allocating</p><p>authority, a healthier balance of power might emerge and nurses and</p><p>doctors would be forced into a mutual respect.</p><p>That’s a good start. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough. Creating</p><p>successful organizations isn’t just a matter of balancing authority. For</p><p>an organization to work, leaders must cultivate habits that both</p><p>create a real and balanced peace and, paradoxically, make it</p><p>absolutely clear who’s in charge.</p><p>III.</p><p>Philip Brickell, a forty-three-year-old employee of the London</p><p>Underground, was inside the cavernous main hall of the King’s</p><p>Cross subway station on a November evening in 1987 when a</p><p>commuter stopped him as he was collecting tickets and said there</p><p>was a burning tissue at the bottom of a nearby escalator.6.27, 6.28</p><p>King’s Cross was one of the largest, grandest, and most heavily</p><p>trafficked of London’s subway stops, a labyrinth of deep escalators,</p><p>passageways, and tunnels, some of which were almost a century</p><p>old. The station’s escalators, in particular, were famous for their size</p><p>and age. Some stretched as many as five stories into the ground and</p><p>were built of wooden slats and rubber handrails, the same materials</p><p>used to construct them decades earlier. More than a quarter million</p><p>passengers passed through King’s Cross every day on six different</p><p>train lines. During evening rush hour, the station’s ticketing hall was</p><p>a sea of people hurrying beneath a ceiling repainted so many times</p><p>that no one could recall its original hue.</p><p>The burning tissue, the passenger said, was at the bottom of</p><p>one of the station’s longest escalators, servicing the Piccadilly line.</p><p>Brickell immediately left his position, rode the escalator down to the</p><p>platform, found the smoldering wad of tissue, and, with a rolled-up</p><p>magazine, beat out the fire. Then he returned to his post.</p><p>Brickell didn’t investigate further. He didn’t try to figure out why</p><p>the tissue was burning or if it might have flown off of a larger fire</p><p>somewhere else within the station. He didn’t mention the incident to</p><p>another employee or call the fire department. A separate department</p><p>handled fire safety, and Brickell, in keeping with the strict divisions</p><p>that ruled the Underground, knew better than to step on anyone’s</p><p>toes. Besides, even if he had investigated the possibility of a fire, he</p><p>wouldn’t have known what to do with any information he learned.</p><p>The tightly prescribed chain of command at the Underground</p><p>prohibited him from contacting another department without a</p><p>superior’s direct authorization. And the Underground’s routines—</p><p>handed down from employee to employee—told him that he should</p><p>never, under any circumstances, refer out loud to anything inside a</p><p>station as a “fire,” lest commuters become panicked. It wasn’t how</p><p>things were done.</p><p>The Underground was governed by a sort of theoretical rule</p><p>book that no one had ever seen or read—and that didn’t, in fact,</p><p>exist except in the unwritten rules that shaped every employee’s life.</p><p>For decades, the Underground had been run by the “Four Barons”—</p><p>the chiefs of civil, signal, electrical, and mechanical engineering—</p><p>and within each of their departments, there were bosses and</p><p>subbosses who all jealously guarded their authority. The trains ran</p><p>on time because all nineteen thousand Underground employees</p><p>cooperated in a delicate system that passed passengers and trains</p><p>among dozens—sometimes hundreds—of hands all day long. But</p><p>that cooperation depended upon a balance of power between each</p><p>of the four departments and all their lieutenants that, itself, relied</p><p>upon thousands of habits that employees adhered to. These habits</p><p>created a truce among the Four Barons and their deputies. And from</p><p>that truce arose policies that told Brickell: Looking for fires isn’t your</p><p>job. Don’t overstep your bounds.</p><p>“Even at the highest level, one director was unlikely to trespass</p><p>on the territory of another,” an investigator would later note. “Thus,</p><p>the engineering director did not concern himself with whether the</p><p>operating staff were properly trained in fire safety and evacuation</p><p>procedures because he considered those matters to be the province</p><p>of the Operations Directorate.”</p><p>So Brickell didn’t say anything about the burning tissue. In other</p><p>circumstances, it might have been an unimportant detail. In this</p><p>case, the tissue was a stray warning—a bit of fuel that had escaped</p><p>from a larger, hidden blaze—that would show how perilous even</p><p>perfectly balanced truces can become if they aren’t designed just</p><p>right.6.29</p><p>Fifteen minutes after Brickell returned to his booth, another</p><p>passenger noticed a wisp of smoke as he rode up the Piccadilly</p><p>escalator; he mentioned</p><p>seem to remember their friends. He</p><p>had trouble following conversations. Some mornings, he would get</p><p>out of bed, walk into the kitchen, cook himself bacon and eggs, then</p><p>climb back under the covers and turn on the radio. Forty minutes</p><p>later, he would do the same thing: get up, cook bacon and eggs,</p><p>climb back into bed, and fiddle with the radio. Then he would do it</p><p>again.</p><p>Alarmed, Beverly reached out to specialists, including a</p><p>researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who</p><p>specialized in memory loss. Which is how, on a sunny fall day,</p><p>Beverly and Eugene found themselves in a nondescript building on</p><p>the university’s campus, holding hands as they walked slowly down</p><p>a hallway. They were shown into a small exam room. Eugene began</p><p>chatting with a young woman who was using a computer.</p><p>“Having been in electronics over the years, I’m amazed at all</p><p>this,” he said, gesturing at the machine she was typing on. “When I</p><p>was younger, that thing would have been in a couple of six-foot racks</p><p>and taken up this whole room.”</p><p>The woman continued pecking at the keyboard. Eugene</p><p>chuckled.</p><p>“That is incredible,” he said. “All those printed circuits and</p><p>diodes and triodes. When I was in electronics, there would have</p><p>been a couple of six-foot racks holding that thing.”</p><p>A scientist entered the room and introduced himself. He asked</p><p>Eugene how old he was.</p><p>“Oh, let’s see, fifty-nine or sixty?” Eugene replied. He was</p><p>seventy-one years old.</p><p>The scientist started typing on the computer. Eugene smiled</p><p>and pointed at it. “That is really something,” he said. “You know,</p><p>when I was in electronics there would have been a couple of six-foot</p><p>racks holding that thing!”</p><p>The scientist was fifty-two-year-old Larry Squire, a professor</p><p>who had spent the past three decades studying the neuroanatomy of</p><p>memory. His specialty was exploring how the brain stores events.</p><p>His work with Eugene, however, would soon open a new world to</p><p>him and hundreds of other researchers who have reshaped our</p><p>understanding of how habits function. Squire’s studies would show</p><p>that even someone who can’t remember his own age or almost</p><p>anything else can develop habits that seem inconceivably complex—</p><p>until you realize that everyone relies on similar neurological</p><p>processes every day. His and others’ research would help reveal the</p><p>subconscious mechanisms that impact the countless choices that</p><p>seem as if they’re the products of well-reasoned thought, but actually</p><p>are influenced by urges most of us barely recognize or understand.</p><p>By the time Squire met Eugene, he had already been studying</p><p>images of his brain for weeks. The scans indicated that almost all the</p><p>damage within Eugene’s skull was limited to a five-centimeter area</p><p>near the center of his head. The virus had almost entirely destroyed</p><p>his medial temporal lobe, a sliver of cells which scientists suspected</p><p>was responsible for all sorts of cognitive tasks such as recall of the</p><p>past and the regulation of some emotions. The completeness of the</p><p>destruction didn’t surprise Squire—viral encephalitis consumes</p><p>tissue with a ruthless, almost surgical, precision. What shocked him</p><p>was how familiar the images seemed.</p><p>Thirty years earlier, as a PhD student at MIT, Squire had worked</p><p>alongside a group studying a man known as “H.M.,” one of the most</p><p>famous patients in medical history. When H.M.—his real name was</p><p>Henry Molaison, but scientists shrouded his identity throughout his</p><p>life—was seven years old, he was hit by a bicycle and landed hard</p><p>on his head.1.4, 1.5, 1.6 Soon afterward, he developed seizures and</p><p>started blacking out. At sixteen, he had his first grand mal seizure,</p><p>the kind that affects the entire brain; soon, he was losing</p><p>consciousness up to ten times a day.</p><p>By the time he turned twenty-seven, H.M. was desperate.</p><p>Anticonvulsive drugs hadn’t helped. He was smart, but couldn’t hold</p><p>a job.1.7 He still lived with his parents. H.M. wanted a normal</p><p>existence. So he sought help from a physician whose tolerance for</p><p>experimentation outweighed his fear of malpractice. Studies had</p><p>suggested that an area of the brain called the hippocampus might</p><p>play a role in seizures. When the doctor proposed cutting into H.M.’s</p><p>head, lifting up the front portion of his brain, and, with a small straw,</p><p>sucking out the hippocampus and some surrounding tissue from the</p><p>interior of his skull, H.M.1.8, 1.9 gave his consent.</p><p>The surgery occurred in 1953, and as H.M. healed, his seizures</p><p>slowed. Almost immediately, however, it became clear that his brain</p><p>had been radically altered. H.M. knew his name and that his mother</p><p>was from Ireland. He could remember the 1929 stock market crash</p><p>and news reports about the invasion of Normandy. But almost</p><p>everything that came afterward—all the memories, experiences, and</p><p>struggles from most of the decade before his surgery—had been</p><p>erased. When a doctor began testing H.M.’s memory by showing</p><p>him playing cards and lists of numbers, he discovered that H.M.</p><p>couldn’t retain any new information for more than twenty seconds or</p><p>so.</p><p>From the day of his surgery until his death in 2008, every</p><p>person H.M. met, every song he heard, every room he entered, was</p><p>a completely fresh experience. His brain was frozen in time. Each</p><p>day, he was befuddled by the fact that someone could change the</p><p>television channel by pointing a black rectangle of plastic at the</p><p>screen. He introduced himself to his doctors and nurses over and</p><p>over, dozens of times each day.1.10</p><p>“I loved learning about H.M., because memory seemed like</p><p>such a tangible, exciting way to study the brain,” Squire told me. “I</p><p>grew up in Ohio, and I can remember, in first grade, my teacher</p><p>handing everyone crayons, and I started mixing all the colors</p><p>together to see if it would make black. Why have I kept that memory,</p><p>but I can’t remember what my teacher looked like? Why does my</p><p>brain decide that one memory is more important than another?”</p><p>When Squire received the images of Eugene’s brain, he</p><p>marveled at how similar it seemed to H.M.’s. There were empty,</p><p>walnut-sized chunks in the middle of both their heads. Eugene’s</p><p>memory—just like H.M.’s—had been removed.</p><p>As Squire began examining Eugene, though, he saw that this</p><p>patient was different from H.M. in some profound ways. Whereas</p><p>almost everyone knew within minutes of meeting H.M. that</p><p>something was amiss, Eugene could carry on conversations and</p><p>perform tasks that wouldn’t alert a casual observer that anything was</p><p>wrong. The effects of H.M.’s surgery had been so debilitating that he</p><p>was institutionalized for the remainder of his life. Eugene, on the</p><p>other hand, lived at home with his wife. H.M. couldn’t really carry on</p><p>conversations. Eugene, in contrast, had an amazing knack for</p><p>guiding almost any discussion to a topic he was comfortable talking</p><p>about at length, such as satellites—he had worked as a technician</p><p>for an aerospace company—or the weather.</p><p>Squire started his exam of Eugene by asking him about his</p><p>youth. Eugene talked about the town where he had grown up in</p><p>central California, his time in the merchant marines, a trip he had</p><p>taken to Australia as a young man. He could remember most of the</p><p>events in his life that had occurred prior to about 1960. When Squire</p><p>asked about later decades, Eugene politely changed the topic and</p><p>said he had trouble recollecting some recent events.</p><p>Squire conducted a few intelligence tests and found that</p><p>Eugene’s intellect was still sharp for a man who couldn’t remember</p><p>the last three decades. What’s more, Eugene still had all the habits</p><p>he had formed in his youth, so whenever Squire gave him a cup of</p><p>water or complimented him on a particularly detailed answer,</p><p>Eugene would thank him and offer a compliment in return. Whenever</p><p>someone entered the room, Eugene would introduce himself and ask</p><p>about their day.</p><p>But when Squire asked Eugene to memorize a string of</p><p>numbers or describe the hallway outside the laboratory’s door, the</p><p>doctor found his patient couldn’t retain any new information for more</p><p>than a minute or so. When someone showed Eugene photos of his</p><p>grandchildren,</p><p>it to an Underground employee. The King’s</p><p>Cross safety inspector, Christopher Hayes, was eventually roused to</p><p>investigate. A third passenger, seeing smoke and a glow from</p><p>underneath the escalator’s stairs, hit an emergency stop button and</p><p>began shouting at passengers to exit the escalator. A policeman saw</p><p>a slight smoky haze inside the escalator’s long tunnel, and, halfway</p><p>down, flames beginning to dart above the steps.</p><p>Yet the safety inspector, Hayes, didn’t call the London Fire</p><p>Brigade. He hadn’t seen any smoke himself, and another of the</p><p>Underground’s unwritten rules was that the fire department should</p><p>never be contacted unless absolutely necessary. The policeman who</p><p>had noticed the haze, however, figured he should contact</p><p>headquarters. His radio didn’t work underground, so he walked up a</p><p>long staircase into the outdoors and called his superiors, who</p><p>eventually passed word to the fire department. At 7:36 p.m.—twenty-</p><p>two minutes after Brickell was alerted to the flaming tissue—the fire</p><p>brigade received a call: “Small fire at King’s Cross.” Commuters</p><p>were pushing past the policeman as he stood outside, speaking on</p><p>his radio. They were rushing into the station, down into the tunnels,</p><p>focused on getting home for dinner.</p><p>Within minutes, many of them would be dead.</p><p>At 7:36 P.M., an Underground worker roped off entry to the</p><p>Piccadilly escalator and another started diverting people to a</p><p>different stairway. New trains were arriving every few minutes. The</p><p>platforms where passengers exited subway cars were crowded. A</p><p>bottleneck started building at the bottom of an open staircase.</p><p>Hayes, the safety inspector, went into a passageway that led to</p><p>the Piccadilly escalator’s machine room. In the dark, there was a set</p><p>of controls for a sprinkler system specifically designed to fight fires</p><p>on escalators. It had been installed years earlier, after a fire in</p><p>another station had led to a series of dire reports about the risks of a</p><p>sudden blaze. More than two dozen studies and reprimands had</p><p>said that the Underground was unprepared for fires, and that staff</p><p>needed to be trained in how to use sprinklers and fire extinguishers,</p><p>which were positioned on every train platform. Two years earlier the</p><p>deputy assistant chief of the London Fire Brigade had written to the</p><p>operations director for railways, complaining about subway workers’</p><p>safety habits.</p><p>“I am gravely concerned,” the letter read. “I cannot urge too</p><p>strongly that … clear instructions be given that on any suspicion of</p><p>fire, the Fire Brigade be called without delay. This could save lives.”</p><p>However, Hayes, the safety inspector, never saw that letter</p><p>because it was sent to a separate division from the one he worked</p><p>within, and the Underground’s policies were never rewritten to reflect</p><p>the warning. No one inside King’s Cross understood how to use the</p><p>escalator sprinkler system or was authorized to use the</p><p>extinguishers, because another department controlled them. Hayes</p><p>completely forgot the sprinkler system existed. The truces ruling the</p><p>Underground made sure everyone knew their place, but they left no</p><p>room for learning about anything outside what you were assigned to</p><p>know. Hayes ran past the sprinkler controls without so much as a</p><p>glance.</p><p>When he reached the machine room, he was nearly overcome</p><p>by heat. The fire was already too big to fight. He ran back to the</p><p>main hall. There was a line of people standing at the ticket machines</p><p>and hundreds of people milling about the room, walking to platforms</p><p>or leaving the station. Hayes found a policeman.</p><p>“We’ve got to stop the trains and get everyone out of here,” he</p><p>told him. “The fire is out of control. It’s going everywhere.”</p><p>At 7:42 P.M.—almost a half hour after the burning tissue—the</p><p>first fireman arrived at King’s Cross. As he entered the ticketing hall</p><p>he saw dense black smoke starting to snake along the ceiling. The</p><p>escalator’s rubber handrails had begun to burn. As the acrid smell of</p><p>burning rubber spread, commuters in the ticketing hall began to</p><p>recognize that something was wrong. They moved toward the exits</p><p>as firemen waded through the crowd, fighting against the tide.</p><p>Below, the fire was spreading. The entire escalator was now</p><p>aflame, producing a superheated gas that rose to the top of the shaft</p><p>enclosing the escalator, where it was trapped against the tunnel’s</p><p>ceiling, which was covered with about twenty layers of old paint. A</p><p>few years earlier, the Underground’s director of operations had</p><p>suggested that all this paint might pose a fire hazard. Perhaps, he</p><p>said, the old layers should be removed before a new one is applied?</p><p>Painting protocols were not in his purview, however. Paint</p><p>responsibility resided with the maintenance department, whose chief</p><p>politely thanked his colleague for the recommendation, and then</p><p>noted that if he wanted to interfere with other departments, the favor</p><p>would be swiftly returned.</p><p>The director of operations withdrew his recommendation.</p><p>As the superheated gases pooled along the ceiling of the</p><p>escalator shaft, all those old layers of paint began absorbing the</p><p>warmth. As each new train arrived, it pushed a fresh gust of oxygen</p><p>into the station, feeding the fire like a bellows.</p><p>At 7:43 P.M., a train arrived and a salesman named Mark Silver</p><p>exited. He knew immediately that something was wrong. The air was</p><p>hazy, the platform packed with people. Smoke wafted around where</p><p>he was standing, curling around the train cars as they sat on the</p><p>tracks. He turned to reenter the train, but the doors had closed. He</p><p>hammered on the windows, but there was an unofficial policy to</p><p>avoid tardiness: Once the doors were sealed, they did not open</p><p>again. Up and down the platform, Silver and other passengers</p><p>screamed at the driver to open the doors. The signal light changed to</p><p>green, and the train pulled away. One woman jumped on the tracks,</p><p>running after the train as it moved into the tunnel. “Let me in!” she</p><p>screamed.</p><p>Silver walked down the platform, to where a policeman was</p><p>directing everyone away from the Piccadilly escalator and to another</p><p>stairway. There were crowds of panicked people waiting to get</p><p>upstairs. They could all smell the smoke, and everyone was packed</p><p>together. It felt hot—either from the fire or the crush of people, Silver</p><p>wasn’t sure. He finally got to the bottom of an escalator that had</p><p>been turned off. As he climbed toward the ticketing hall, he could feel</p><p>his legs burning from heat coming through a fifteen-foot wall</p><p>separating him from the Piccadilly shaft. “I looked up and saw the</p><p>walls and ceiling sizzling,” he later said.</p><p>At 7:45 P.M., an arriving train forced a large gust of air into the</p><p>station. As the oxygen fed the fire, the blaze in the Piccadilly</p><p>escalator roared. The superheated gases along the ceiling of the</p><p>shaft, fueled by fire below and sizzling paint above, reached a</p><p>combustion temperature, known as a “flashover point.” At that</p><p>moment, everything inside the shaft—the paint, the wooden</p><p>escalator stairs, and any other available fuel—ignited in a fiery blast.</p><p>The force of the sudden incineration acted the explosion of</p><p>gunpowder at the base of a rifle barrel. It began pushing the fire</p><p>upward through the long shaft, absorbing more heat and velocity as</p><p>the blaze expanded until it shot out of the tunnel and into the</p><p>ticketing hall in a wall of flames that set metal, tile, and flesh on fire.</p><p>The temperature inside the hall shot up 150 degrees in half a</p><p>second. A policeman riding one of the side escalators later told</p><p>investigators that he saw “a jet of flame that shot up and then</p><p>collected into a kind of ball.” There were nearly fifty people inside the</p><p>hall at the time.</p><p>Aboveground, on the street, a passerby felt heat explode from</p><p>one of the subway’s exits, saw a passenger stagger out, and ran to</p><p>help. “I got hold of his right hand with my right hand but as our hands</p><p>touched I could feel his was red hot and some of the skin came off in</p><p>my hand,” the rescuer said. A policeman who was entering the</p><p>ticketing hall as the explosion occurred later told reporters, from</p><p>a</p><p>hospital bed, that “a fireball hit me in the face and knocked me off my</p><p>feet. My hands caught fire. They were just melting.”</p><p>He was one of the last people to exit the hall alive.</p><p>Shortly after the explosion, dozens of fire trucks arrived. But</p><p>because the fire department’s rules instructed them to connect their</p><p>hoses to street-level hydrants, rather than those installed by the</p><p>Underground inside the station, and because none of the subway</p><p>employees had blueprints showing the station’s layout—all the plans</p><p>were in an office that was locked, and none of the ticketing agents or</p><p>the station manager had keys—it took hours to extinguish the</p><p>flames.</p><p>When the blaze was finally put out at 1:46 A.M.—six hours after</p><p>the burning tissue was noticed—the toll stood at thirty-one dead and</p><p>dozens injured.</p><p>“Why did they send me straight into the fire?” a twenty-year-old</p><p>music teacher asked the next day from a hospital bed. “I could see</p><p>them burning. I could hear them screaming. Why didn’t someone</p><p>take charge?”6.30</p><p>To answer those questions, consider a few of the truces the</p><p>London Underground relied upon to function:</p><p>Ticketing clerks were warned that their jurisdiction was strictly</p><p>limited to selling tickets, so if they saw a burning tissue, they didn’t</p><p>warn anyone for fear of overstepping their bounds.</p><p>Station employees weren’t trained how to use the sprinkler</p><p>system or extinguishers, because that equipment was overseen by a</p><p>different division.</p><p>The station’s safety inspector never saw a letter from the</p><p>London Fire Brigade warning about fire risks because it was sent to</p><p>the operations director, and information like that wasn’t shared</p><p>across divisions.</p><p>Employees were instructed only to contact the fire brigade as a</p><p>last resort, so as not to panic commuters unnecessarily.</p><p>The fire brigade insisted on using its own street-level hydrants,</p><p>ignoring pipes in the ticketing hall that could have delivered water,</p><p>because they had been ordered not to use equipment installed by</p><p>other agencies.</p><p>In some ways, each of these informal rules, on its own, makes a</p><p>certain amount of sense. For instance, the habits that kept ticketing</p><p>clerks focused on selling tickets instead of doing anything else—</p><p>including keeping an eye out for warning signs of fire—existed</p><p>because, years earlier, the Underground had problems with</p><p>understaffed kiosks. Clerks kept leaving their posts to pick up trash</p><p>or point tourists toward their trains, and as a result, long lines would</p><p>form. So clerks were ordered to stay in their booths, sell tickets, and</p><p>not worry about anything else. It worked. Lines disappeared. If clerks</p><p>saw something amiss outside their kiosks—beyond their scope of</p><p>responsibility—they minded their own business.</p><p>And the fire brigade’s habit of insisting on their own equipment?</p><p>That was a result of an incident, a decade earlier, when a fire had</p><p>raged in another station as firemen wasted precious minutes trying</p><p>to hook up their hoses to unfamiliar pipes. Afterward, everyone</p><p>decided it was best to stick with what they knew.</p><p>None of these routines, in other words, were arbitrary. Each was</p><p>designed for a reason. The Underground was so vast and</p><p>complicated that it could operate smoothly only if truces smoothed</p><p>over potential obstacles. Unlike at Rhode Island Hospital, each truce</p><p>created a genuine balance of power. No department had the upper</p><p>hand.</p><p>Yet thirty-one people died.</p><p>The London Underground’s routines and truces all seemed</p><p>logical until a fire erupted. At which point, an awful truth emerged: No</p><p>one person, department, or baron had ultimate responsibility for</p><p>passengers’ safety.6.31</p><p>Sometimes, one priority—or one department or one person or</p><p>one goal—needs to overshadow everything else, though it might be</p><p>unpopular or threaten the balance of power that keeps trains running</p><p>on time. Sometimes, a truce can create dangers that outweigh any</p><p>peace.</p><p>There’s a paradox in this observation, of course. How can an</p><p>organization implement habits that balance authority and, at the</p><p>same time, choose a person or goal that rises above everyone else?</p><p>How do nurses and doctors share authority while still making it clear</p><p>who is in charge? How does a subway system avoid becoming</p><p>bogged down in turf battles while making sure safety is still a priority,</p><p>even if that means lines of authority must be redrawn?</p><p>The answer lies in seizing the same advantage that Tony Dungy</p><p>encountered when he took over the woeful Bucs and Paul O’Neill</p><p>discovered when he became CEO of flailing Alcoa. It’s the same</p><p>opportunity Howard Schultz exploited when he returned to a flagging</p><p>Starbucks in 2007. All those leaders seized the possibilities created</p><p>by a crisis. During turmoil, organizational habits become malleable</p><p>enough to both assign responsibility and create a more equitable</p><p>balance of power. Crises are so valuable, in fact, that sometimes it’s</p><p>worth stirring up a sense of looming catastrophe rather than letting it</p><p>die down.</p><p>IV.</p><p>Four months after the elderly man with the botched skull</p><p>surgery died at Rhode Island Hospital, another surgeon at the</p><p>hospital committed a similar error, operating on the wrong section of</p><p>another patient’s head. The state’s health department reprimanded</p><p>the facility and fined it $50,000. Eighteen months later, a surgeon</p><p>operated on the wrong part of a child’s mouth during a cleft palate</p><p>surgery. Five months after that, a surgeon operated on a patient’s</p><p>wrong finger. Ten months after that, a drill bit was left inside a man’s</p><p>head. For these transgressions, the hospital was fined another</p><p>$450,000.6.32</p><p>Rhode Island Hospital is not the only medical institution where</p><p>such accidents happen, of course, but they were unlucky enough to</p><p>become the poster child for such mistakes. Local newspapers</p><p>printed detailed stories of each incident. Television stations set up</p><p>camp outside the hospital. The national media joined in, too. “The</p><p>problem’s not going away,” a vice president of the national hospital</p><p>accreditation organization told an Associated Press reporter.6.33</p><p>Rhode Island Hospital, the state’s medical authorities declared to</p><p>reporters, was a facility in chaos.</p><p>“It felt like working in a war zone,” a nurse told me. “There were</p><p>TV reporters ambushing doctors as they walked to their cars. One</p><p>little boy asked me to make sure the doctor wouldn’t accidentally cut</p><p>off his arm during surgery. It felt like everything was out of</p><p>control.”6.34</p><p>As critics and the media piled on, a sense of crisis emerged</p><p>within the hospital.6.35 Some administrators started worrying that the</p><p>facility would lose its accreditation. Others became defensive,</p><p>attacking the television stations for singling them out. “I found a</p><p>button that said ‘Scapegoat’ that I was going to wear to work,” one</p><p>doctor told me. “My wife said that was a bad idea.”</p><p>Then an administrator, Dr. Mary Reich Cooper, who had</p><p>become chief quality officer a few weeks before the eighty-six-year-</p><p>old man’s death, spoke up. In meetings with the hospital’s</p><p>administrators and staff, Cooper said that they were looking at the</p><p>situation all wrong.</p><p>All this criticism wasn’t a bad thing, she said. In fact, the hospital</p><p>had been given an opportunity that few organizations ever received.</p><p>“I saw this as an opening,” Dr. Cooper told me. “There’s a long</p><p>history of hospitals trying to attack these problems and failing.</p><p>Sometimes people need a jolt, and all the bad publicity was a</p><p>serious jolt. It gave us a chance to reexamine everything.”</p><p>Rhode Island Hospital shut down all elective surgery units for an</p><p>entire day—a huge expense—and put the entire staff through an</p><p>intensive training program that emphasized teamwork and stressed</p><p>the importance of empowering nurses and medical staff. The chief of</p><p>neurosurgery resigned and a new leader was selected. The hospital</p><p>invited the Center for Transforming Healthcare—a coalition of</p><p>leading medical institutions—to help redesign its surgical</p><p>safeguards. Administrators installed video cameras in operating</p><p>rooms to make sure time-outs occurred and checklists were</p><p>mandated</p><p>for every surgery.6.36 A computerized system allowed any</p><p>hospital employee to anonymously report problems that endangered</p><p>patient health.6.37</p><p>Some of those initiatives had been proposed at Rhode Island</p><p>Hospital in previous years, but they had always been struck down.</p><p>Doctors and nurses didn’t want people recording their surgeries or</p><p>other hospitals telling them how to do their jobs.</p><p>But once a sense of crisis gripped Rhode Island Hospital,</p><p>everyone became more open to change.6.38</p><p>Other hospitals have made similar shifts in the wake of mistakes</p><p>and have brought down error rates that just years earlier had</p><p>seemed immune to improvement.6.39 Like Rhode Island Hospital,</p><p>these institutions have found that reform is usually possible only</p><p>once a sense of crisis takes hold. For instance, one of Harvard</p><p>University’s teaching hospitals, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical</p><p>Center, went through a spate of errors and internal battles in the late</p><p>1990s that spilled into newspaper articles and ugly shouting matches</p><p>between nurses and administrators at public meetings. There was</p><p>talk among some state officials of forcing the hospital to close</p><p>departments until they could prove the mistakes would stop. Then</p><p>the hospital, under attack, coalesced around solutions to change its</p><p>culture. Part of the answer was “safety rounds,” in which, every three</p><p>months, a senior physician discussed a particular surgery or</p><p>diagnosis and described, in painstaking detail, a mistake or near</p><p>miss to an audience of hundreds of her or his peers.</p><p>“It’s excruciating to admit a mistake publicly,” said Dr. Donald</p><p>Moorman, until recently Beth Israel Deaconess’s associate surgeon</p><p>in chief. “Twenty years ago, doctors wouldn’t do it. But a real sense</p><p>of panic has spread through hospitals now, and even the best</p><p>surgeons are willing to talk about how close they came to a big error.</p><p>The culture of medicine is changing.”</p><p>Good leaders seize crises to remake organizational habits.</p><p>NASA administrators, for instance, tried for years to improve the</p><p>agency’s safety habits, but those efforts were unsuccessful until the</p><p>space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. In the wake of that</p><p>tragedy, the organization was able to overhaul how it enforced</p><p>quality standards.6.40 Airline pilots, too, spent years trying to</p><p>convince plane manufacturers and air traffic controllers to redesign</p><p>how cockpits were laid out and traffic controllers communicated.</p><p>Then, a runway error on the Spanish island of Tenerife in 1977 killed</p><p>583 people and, within five years, cockpit design, runway</p><p>procedures, and air traffic controller communication routines were</p><p>overhauled.6.41</p><p>In fact, crises are such valuable opportunities that a wise leader</p><p>often prolongs a sense of emergency on purpose. That’s exactly</p><p>what occurred after the King’s Cross station fire. Five days after the</p><p>blaze, the British secretary of state appointed a special investigator,</p><p>Desmond Fennell, to study the incident. Fennell began by</p><p>interviewing the Underground’s leadership, and quickly discovered</p><p>that everyone had known—for years—that fire safety was a serious</p><p>problem, and yet nothing had changed. Some administrators had</p><p>proposed new hierarchies that would have clarified responsibility for</p><p>fire prevention. Others had proposed giving station managers more</p><p>power so that they could bridge departmental divides. None of those</p><p>reforms had been implemented.</p><p>When Fennell began suggesting changes of his own, he saw</p><p>the same kinds of roadblocks—department chiefs refusing to take</p><p>responsibility or undercutting him with whispered threats to their</p><p>subordinates—start to emerge.</p><p>So he decided to turn his inquiry into a media circus.</p><p>He called for public hearings that lasted ninety-one days and</p><p>revealed an organization that had ignored multiple warnings of risks.</p><p>He implied to newspaper reporters that commuters were in grave</p><p>danger whenever they rode the subway. He cross-examined dozens</p><p>of witnesses who described an organization where turf battles</p><p>mattered more than commuter safety. His final report, released</p><p>almost a year after the fire, was a scathing, 250-page indictment of</p><p>the Underground portraying an organization crippled by bureaucratic</p><p>ineptitude. “Having set out as an Investigation into the events of one</p><p>night,” Fennell wrote, the report’s “scope was necessarily enlarged</p><p>into the examination of a system.” He concluded with pages and</p><p>pages of stinging criticisms and recommendations that, essentially,</p><p>suggested much of the organization was either incompetent or</p><p>corrupt.</p><p>The response was instantaneous and overwhelming.</p><p>Commuters picketed the Underground’s offices. The organization’s</p><p>leadership was fired. A slew of new laws were passed and the</p><p>culture of the Underground was overhauled. Today, every station has</p><p>a manager whose primary responsibility is passenger safety, and</p><p>every employee has an obligation to communicate at the smallest</p><p>hint of risk. All the trains still run on time. But the Underground’s</p><p>habits and truces have adjusted just enough to make it clear who</p><p>has ultimate responsibility for fire prevention, and everyone is</p><p>empowered to act, regardless of whose toes they might step on.</p><p>The same kinds of shifts are possible at any company where</p><p>institutional habits—through thoughtlessness or neglect—have</p><p>created toxic truces. A company with dysfunctional habits can’t turn</p><p>around simply because a leader orders it. Rather, wise executives</p><p>seek out moments of crisis—or create the perception of crisis—and</p><p>cultivate the sense that something must change, until everyone is</p><p>finally ready to overhaul the patterns they live with each day.</p><p>“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel</p><p>told a conference of chief executives in the wake of the 2008 global</p><p>financial meltdown, soon after he was appointed as President</p><p>Obama’s chief of staff. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to</p><p>do things that you could not do before.” Soon afterward, the Obama</p><p>administration convinced a once-reluctant Congress to pass the</p><p>president’s $787 billion stimulus plan. Congress also passed</p><p>Obama’s health care reform law, reworked consumer protection</p><p>laws, and approved dozens of other statutes, from expanding</p><p>children’s health insurance to giving women new opportunities to sue</p><p>over wage discrimination. It was one of the biggest policy overhauls</p><p>since the Great Society and the New Deal, and it happened</p><p>because, in the aftermath of a financial catastrophe, lawmakers saw</p><p>opportunity.</p><p>Something similar happened at Rhode Island Hospital in the</p><p>wake of the eighty-six-year-old man’s death and the other surgical</p><p>errors. Since the hospital’s new safety procedures were fully</p><p>implemented in 2009, no wrong-site errors have occurred. The</p><p>hospital recently earned a Beacon Award, the most prestigious</p><p>recognition of critical care nursing, and honors from the American</p><p>College of Surgeons for the quality of cancer care.</p><p>More important, say the nurses and doctors who work there,</p><p>Rhode Island Hospital feels like a completely different place.</p><p>In 2010, a young nurse named Allison Ward walked into an</p><p>operating room to assist on a routine surgery. She had started</p><p>working in the OR a year earlier. She was the youngest and least</p><p>experienced person in the room. Before the surgery began, the</p><p>entire surgical team gathered over the unconscious patient for a</p><p>time-out. The surgeon read from a checklist, posted on the wall,</p><p>which detailed every step of the operation.</p><p>“Okay, final step,” he said before he picked up his scalpel.</p><p>“Does anyone have any concerns before we start?”</p><p>The doctor had performed hundreds of these surgeries. He had</p><p>an office full of degrees and awards.</p><p>“Doctor,” the twenty-seven-year-old Ward said, “I want to remind</p><p>everyone that we have to pause before the first and second</p><p>procedures. You didn’t mention that, and I just want to make sure we</p><p>remember.”</p><p>It was the type of comment that, a few years ago, might have</p><p>earned her a rebuke. Or ended her career.</p><p>“Thanks for adding that,” the surgeon said. “I’ll remember to</p><p>mention it</p><p>next time.</p><p>“Okay,” he said, “let’s start.”</p><p>“I know this hospital has gone through some hard periods,”</p><p>Ward later told me. “But it’s really cooperative now. Our training, all</p><p>the role models—the whole culture of the hospital is focused on</p><p>teamwork. I feel like I can say anything. It’s an amazing place to</p><p>work.”</p><p>1 The reporting in this chapter is based upon interviews with</p><p>multiple people working at Rhode Island Hospital and involved in this</p><p>incident some of whom provided different accounts of events. For</p><p>details on responses from hospital representatives and the surgeon</p><p>involved, please see the notes.</p><p>HOW TARGET KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT BEFORE YOU DO</p><p>When Companies Predict (and Manipulate) Habits</p><p>I.</p><p>Andrew Pole had just started working as a data expert for</p><p>Target when a few colleagues from the marketing department</p><p>stopped by his desk one day and asked the kind of question Pole</p><p>had been born to answer:</p><p>“Can your computers figure out which customers are pregnant,</p><p>even if they don’t want us to know?”</p><p>Pole was a statistician. His entire life revolved around using</p><p>data to understand people. He had grown up in a small North Dakota</p><p>town, and while his friends were attending 4-H or building model</p><p>rockets, Pole was playing with computers. After college, he got a</p><p>graduate degree in statistics and then another in economics, and</p><p>while most of his classmates in the econ program at the University of</p><p>Missouri were headed to insurance companies or government</p><p>bureaucracies, Pole was on a different track. He’d become obsessed</p><p>with the ways economists were using pattern analysis to explain</p><p>human behavior. Pole, in fact, had tried his hand at a few informal</p><p>experiments himself. He once threw a party and polled everyone on</p><p>their favorite jokes, and then attempted to create a mathematical</p><p>model for the perfect one-liner. He had sought to calculate the exact</p><p>amount of beer he needed to drink in order to work up the</p><p>confidence to talk to women at parties, but not so much that he</p><p>would make a fool of himself. (That particular study never seemed to</p><p>come out right.)</p><p>But those experiments were child’s play, he knew, to how</p><p>corporate America was using data to scrutinize people’s lives. Pole</p><p>wanted in. So when he graduated and heard that Hallmark, the</p><p>greeting card company, was looking to hire statisticians in Kansas</p><p>City, he submitted an application and was soon spending his days</p><p>scouring sales data to determine if pictures of pandas or elephants</p><p>sold more birthday cards, and if “What Happens at Grandma’s Stays</p><p>at Grandma’s” is funnier in red or blue ink. It was heaven.</p><p>Six years later, in 2002, when Pole learned that Target was</p><p>looking for number crunchers, he made the jump. Target, he knew,</p><p>was a whole other magnitude when it came to data collection. Every</p><p>year, millions of shoppers walked into Target’s 1,147 stores and</p><p>handed over terabytes of information about themselves. Most had no</p><p>idea they were doing it. They used their customer loyalty cards,</p><p>redeemed coupons they had received in the mail, or used a credit</p><p>card, unaware that Target could then link their purchases to an</p><p>individualized demographic profile.</p><p>To a statistician, this data was a magic window for peering into</p><p>customers’ preferences. Target sold everything from groceries to</p><p>clothing, electronics and lawn furniture, and by closely tracking</p><p>people’s buying habits, the company’s analysts could predict what</p><p>was occurring within their homes. Someone’s buying new towels,</p><p>sheets, silverware, pans, and frozen dinners? They probably just</p><p>bought a new house—or are getting a divorce. A cart loaded up with</p><p>bug spray, kids’ underwear, a flashlight, lots of batteries, Real</p><p>Simple, and a bottle of Chardonnay? Summer camp is around the</p><p>corner and Mom can hardly wait.</p><p>Working at Target offered Pole a chance to study the most</p><p>complicated of creatures—the American shopper—in its natural</p><p>habitat. His job was to build mathematical models that could crawl</p><p>through data and determine which households contained kids and</p><p>which were dedicated bachelors; which shoppers loved the outdoors</p><p>and who was more interested in ice cream and romance novels.</p><p>Pole’s mandate was to become a mathematical mind reader,</p><p>deciphering shoppers’ habits in order to convince them to spend</p><p>more.</p><p>Then, one afternoon, a few of Pole’s colleagues from the</p><p>marketing department stopped by his desk. They were trying to</p><p>figure out which of Target’s customers were pregnant based on their</p><p>buying patterns, they said. Pregnant women and new parents, after</p><p>all, are the holy grail of retail. There is almost no more profitable,</p><p>product-hungry, price-insensitive group in existence. It’s not just</p><p>diapers and wipes. People with infants are so tired that they’ll buy</p><p>everything they need—juice and toilet paper, socks and magazines</p><p>—wherever they purchase their bottles and formula. What’s more, if</p><p>a new parent starts shopping at Target, they’ll keep coming back for</p><p>years.</p><p>Figuring out who was pregnant, in other words, could make</p><p>Target millions of dollars.</p><p>Pole was intrigued. What better challenge for a statistical</p><p>fortune-teller than not only getting inside shoppers’ minds, but their</p><p>bedrooms?</p><p>By the time the project was done, Pole would learn some</p><p>important lessons about the dangers of preying on people’s most</p><p>intimate habits. He would learn, for example, that hiding what you</p><p>know is sometimes as important as knowing it, and that not all</p><p>women are enthusiastic about a computer program scrutinizing their</p><p>reproductive plans.</p><p>Not everyone, it turns out, thinks mathematical mind reading is</p><p>cool.</p><p>“I guess outsiders could say this is a little bit like Big Brother,”</p><p>Pole told me. “That makes some people uncomfortable.”</p><p>Once upon a time, a company like Target would never have</p><p>hired a guy like Andrew Pole. As little as twenty years ago retailers</p><p>didn’t do this kind of intensely data-driven analysis. Instead, Target,</p><p>as well as grocery stores, shopping malls, greeting card sellers,</p><p>clothing retailers, and other firms, tried to peer inside consumers’</p><p>heads the old-fashioned way: by hiring psychologists who peddled</p><p>vaguely scientific tactics they claimed could make customers spend</p><p>more.</p><p>Some of those methods are still in use today. If you walk into a</p><p>Walmart, Home Depot, or your local shopping center and look</p><p>closely, you’ll see retailing tricks that have been around for decades,</p><p>each designed to exploit your shopping subconscious.</p><p>Take, for instance, how you buy food.</p><p>Chances are, the first things you see upon entering your</p><p>grocery store are fruits and vegetables arranged in attractive,</p><p>bountiful piles. If you think about it, positioning produce at the front of</p><p>a store doesn’t make much sense, because fruits and vegetables</p><p>bruise easily at the bottom of a shopping cart; logically, they should</p><p>be situated by the registers, so they come at the end of a trip. But as</p><p>marketers and psychologists figured out long ago, if we start our</p><p>shopping sprees by loading up on healthy stuff, we’re much more</p><p>likely to buy Doritos, Oreos, and frozen pizza when we encounter</p><p>them later on. The burst of subconscious virtuousness that comes</p><p>from first buying butternut squash makes it easier to put a pint of ice</p><p>cream in the cart later.</p><p>Or take the way most of us turn to the right after entering a</p><p>store. (Did you know you turn right? It’s almost certain you do. There</p><p>are thousands of hours of videotapes showing shoppers turning right</p><p>once they clear the front doors.) As a result of this tendency, retailers</p><p>fill the right side of the store with the most profitable products they’re</p><p>hoping you’ll buy right off the bat. Or consider cereal and soups:</p><p>When they’re shelved out of alphabetical order and seemingly at</p><p>random, our instinct is to linger a bit longer and look at a wider</p><p>selection. So you’ll rarely find Raisin Bran next to Rice Chex.</p><p>Instead, you’ll have to search the shelves for the cereal you want,</p><p>and maybe get tempted to grab an extra box of another brand.7.1</p><p>The problem with these tactics, however, is that they treat</p><p>each</p><p>shopper exactly the same. They’re fairly primitive, one-size-fits-all</p><p>solutions for triggering buying habits.</p><p>In the past two decades, however, as the retail marketplace has</p><p>become more and more competitive, chains such as Target began to</p><p>understand they couldn’t rely on the same old bag of tricks. The only</p><p>way to increase profits was to figure out each individual shopper’s</p><p>habits and to market to people one by one, with personalized pitches</p><p>designed to appeal to customers’ unique buying preferences.</p><p>In part, this realization came from a growing awareness of how</p><p>powerfully habits influence almost every shopping decision. A series</p><p>of experiments convinced marketers that if they managed to</p><p>understand a particular shopper’s habits, they could get them to buy</p><p>almost anything.7.2 One study tape-recorded consumers as they</p><p>walked through grocery stores. Researchers wanted to know how</p><p>people made buying decisions. In particular, they looked for</p><p>shoppers who had come with shopping lists—who, theoretically, had</p><p>decided ahead of time what they wanted to get.</p><p>What they discovered was that despite those lists, more than 50</p><p>percent of purchasing decisions occurred at the moment a customer</p><p>saw a product on the shelf, because, despite shoppers’ best</p><p>intentions, their habits were stronger than their written intentions.</p><p>“Let’s see,” one shopper muttered to himself as he walked through a</p><p>store. “Here are the chips. I will skip them. Wait a minute. Oh! The</p><p>Lay’s potato chips are on sale!” He put a bag in his cart.7.3 Some</p><p>shoppers bought the same brands, month after month, even if they</p><p>admitted they didn’t like the product very much (“I’m not crazy about</p><p>Folgers, but it’s what I buy, you know? What else is there?” one</p><p>woman said as she stood in front of a shelf containing dozens of</p><p>other coffee brands). Shoppers bought roughly the same amount of</p><p>food each time they went shopping, even if they had pledged to cut</p><p>back.</p><p>“Consumers sometimes act like creatures of habit, automatically</p><p>repeating past behavior with little regard to current goals,” two</p><p>psychologists at the University of Southern California wrote in</p><p>2009.7.4</p><p>The surprising aspect of these studies, however, was that even</p><p>though everyone relied on habits to guide their purchases, each</p><p>person’s habits were different. The guy who liked potato chips</p><p>bought a bag every time, but the Folgers woman never went down</p><p>the potato chip aisle. There were people who bought milk whenever</p><p>they shopped—even if they had plenty at home—and there were</p><p>people who always purchased desserts when they said they were</p><p>trying to lose weight. But the milk buyers and the dessert addicts</p><p>didn’t usually overlap.</p><p>The habits were unique to each person.</p><p>Target wanted to take advantage of those individual quirks. But</p><p>when millions of people walk through your doors every day, how do</p><p>you keep track of their preferences and shopping patterns?</p><p>You collect data. Enormous, almost inconceivably large</p><p>amounts of data.</p><p>Starting a little over a decade ago, Target began building a vast</p><p>data warehouse that assigned every shopper an identification code</p><p>—known internally as the “Guest ID number”—that kept tabs on how</p><p>each person shopped. When a customer used a Target-issued credit</p><p>card, handed over a frequent-buyer tag at the register, redeemed a</p><p>coupon that was mailed to their house, filled out a survey, mailed in a</p><p>refund, phoned the customer help line, opened an email from Target,</p><p>visited Target.com, or purchased anything online, the company’s</p><p>computers took note. A record of each purchase was linked to that</p><p>shopper’s Guest ID number along with information on everything</p><p>else they’d ever bought.</p><p>Also linked to that Guest ID number was demographic</p><p>information that Target collected or purchased from other firms,</p><p>including the shopper’s age, whether they were married and had</p><p>kids, which part of town they lived in, how long it took them to drive</p><p>to the store, an estimate of how much money they earned, if they’d</p><p>moved recently, which websites they visited, the credit cards they</p><p>carried in their wallet, and their home and mobile phone numbers.</p><p>Target can purchase data that indicates a shopper’s ethnicity, their</p><p>job history, what magazines they read, if they have ever declared</p><p>bankruptcy, the year they bought (or lost) their house, where they</p><p>went to college or graduate school, and whether they prefer certain</p><p>brands of coffee, toilet paper, cereal, or applesauce.</p><p>There are data peddlers such as InfiniGraph that “listen” to</p><p>shoppers’ online conversations on message boards and Internet</p><p>forums, and track which products people mention favorably. A firm</p><p>named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers’ political leanings,</p><p>reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and</p><p>whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes.7.5 Other</p><p>companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if</p><p>they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds</p><p>of products they might want to buy as a result. (Target, in a</p><p>statement, declined to indicate what demographic companies it does</p><p>business with and what kinds of information it studies.)</p><p>“It used to be that companies only knew what their customers</p><p>wanted them to know,” said Tom Davenport, one of the leading</p><p>researchers on how businesses use data and analytics. “That world</p><p>is far behind us. You’d be shocked how much information is out there</p><p>—and every company buys it, because it’s the only way to survive.”</p><p>If you use your Target credit card to purchase a box of</p><p>Popsicles once a week, usually around 6:30 p.m. on a weekday, and</p><p>megasized trash bags every July and October, Target’s statisticians</p><p>and computer programs will determine that you have kids at home,</p><p>tend to stop for groceries on your way back from work, and have a</p><p>lawn that needs mowing in the summer and trees that drop leaves in</p><p>the fall. It will look at your other shopping patterns and notice that</p><p>you sometimes buy cereal, but never purchase milk—which means</p><p>that you must be buying it somewhere else. So Target will mail you</p><p>coupons for 2 percent milk, as well as for chocolate sprinkles, school</p><p>supplies, lawn furniture, rakes, and—since it’s likely you’ll want to</p><p>relax after a long day at work—beer. The company will guess what</p><p>you habitually buy, and then try to convince you to get it at Target.</p><p>The firm has the capacity to personalize the ads and coupons it</p><p>sends to every customer, even though you’ll probably never realize</p><p>you’ve received a different flyer in the mail than your neighbors.</p><p>“With the Guest ID, we have your name, address, and tender,</p><p>we know you’ve got a Target Visa, a debit card, and we can tie that</p><p>to your store purchases,” Pole told an audience of retail statisticians</p><p>at a conference in 2010. The company can link about half of all in-</p><p>store sales to a specific person, almost all online sales, and about a</p><p>quarter of online browsing.</p><p>At that conference, Pole flashed a slide showing a sample of the</p><p>data Target collects, a diagram that caused someone in the audience</p><p>to whistle in wonder when it appeared on the screen:7.6</p><p>The problem with all this data, however, is that it’s meaningless</p><p>without statisticians to make sense of it. To a layperson, two</p><p>shoppers who both buy orange juice look the same. It requires a</p><p>special kind of mathematician to figure out that one of them is a</p><p>thirty-four-year-old woman purchasing juice for her kids (and thus</p><p>might appreciate a coupon for a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD) and</p><p>the other is a twenty-eight-year-old bachelor who drinks juice after</p><p>going for a run (and thus might respond to discounts on sneakers).</p><p>Pole and the fifty other members of Target’s Guest Data and</p><p>Analytical Services department were the ones who found the habits</p><p>hidden in the facts.</p><p>“We call it the ‘guest portrait,’ ” Pole told me. “The more I know</p><p>about someone, the better I can guess their buying patterns. I’m not</p><p>going to guess everything about you every time, but I’ll be right more</p><p>often than I’m wrong.”</p><p>By the time Pole joined Target</p><p>in 2002, the analytics department</p><p>had already built computer programs to identify households</p><p>containing children and, come each November, send their parents</p><p>catalogs of bicycles and scooters that would look perfect under the</p><p>Christmas tree, as well as coupons for school supplies in September</p><p>and advertisements for pool toys in June. The computers looked for</p><p>shoppers buying bikinis in April, and sent them coupons for</p><p>sunscreen in July and weight-loss books in December. If it wanted,</p><p>Target could send each customer a coupon book filled with discounts</p><p>for products they were fairly certain the shoppers were going to buy,</p><p>because they had already purchased those exact items before.</p><p>Target isn’t alone in its desire to predict consumers’ habits.</p><p>Almost every major retailer, including Amazon.com, Best Buy, Kroger</p><p>supermarkets, 1-800-Flowers, Olive Garden, Anheuser-Busch, the</p><p>U.S. Postal Service, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of</p><p>America, Capital One, and hundreds of others, have “predictive</p><p>analytics” departments devoted to figuring out consumers’</p><p>preferences. “But Target has always been one of the smartest at</p><p>this,” said Eric Siegel, who runs a conference called Predictive</p><p>Analytics World. “The data doesn’t mean anything on its own.</p><p>Target’s good at figuring out the really clever questions.”</p><p>It doesn’t take a genius to know that someone buying cereal</p><p>probably also needs milk. But there were other, much harder—and</p><p>more profitable—questions to be answered.</p><p>Which is why, a few weeks after Pole was hired, his colleagues</p><p>asked if it was possible to determine who was pregnant, even if that</p><p>woman didn’t want anyone to know.</p><p>In 1984, a visiting professor at UCLA named Alan Andreasen</p><p>published a paper that set out to answer a basic question: Why do</p><p>some people suddenly change their shopping routines?</p><p>Andreasen’s team had spent the previous year conducting</p><p>telephone surveys with consumers around Los Angeles,</p><p>interrogating them about their recent shopping trips. Whenever</p><p>someone answered the phone, the scientists would barrage them</p><p>with questions about which brands of toothpaste and soap they had</p><p>purchased and if their preferences had shifted. All told, they</p><p>interviewed almost three hundred people. Like other researchers,</p><p>they found that most people bought the same brands of cereal and</p><p>deodorant week after week. Habits reigned supreme.</p><p>Except when they didn’t.</p><p>For instance, 10.5 percent of the people Andreasen surveyed</p><p>had switched toothpaste brands in the previous six months. More</p><p>than 15 percent had started buying a new kind of laundry detergent.</p><p>Andreasen wanted to know why these people had deviated from</p><p>their usual patterns. What he discovered has become a pillar of</p><p>modern marketing theory: People’s buying habits are more likely to</p><p>change when they go through a major life event. When someone</p><p>gets married, for example, they’re more likely to start buying a new</p><p>type of coffee. When they move into a new house, they’re more apt</p><p>to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they get divorced,</p><p>there’s a higher chance they’ll start buying different brands of beer.7.7</p><p>Consumers going through major life events often don’t notice, or</p><p>care, that their shopping patterns have shifted. However, retailers</p><p>notice, and they care quite a bit.7.8</p><p>“Changing residence, getting married or divorced, losing or</p><p>changing a job, having someone enter or leave the household,”</p><p>Andreasen wrote, are life changes that make consumers more</p><p>“vulnerable to intervention by marketers.”</p><p>And what’s the biggest life event for most people? What causes</p><p>the greatest disruption and “vulnerability to marketing interventions”?</p><p>Having a baby. There’s almost no greater upheaval for most</p><p>customers than the arrival of a child. As a result, new parents’ habits</p><p>are more flexible at that moment than at almost any other period in</p><p>an adult’s life.</p><p>So for companies, pregnant women are gold mines.</p><p>New parents buy lots of stuff—diapers and wipes, cribs and</p><p>Onesies, blankets and bottles—that stores such as Target sell at a</p><p>significant profit. One survey conducted in 2010 estimated that the</p><p>average parent spends $6,800 on baby items before a child’s first</p><p>birthday.7.9</p><p>But that’s just the tip of the shopping iceberg. Those initial</p><p>expenditures are peanuts compared with the profits a store can earn</p><p>by taking advantage of a new parent’s shifting shopping habits. If</p><p>exhausted moms and sleep-deprived dads start purchasing baby</p><p>formula and diapers at Target, they’ll start buying their groceries,</p><p>cleaning supplies, towels, underwear, and—well, the sky’s the limit—</p><p>from Target as well. Because it’s easy. To a new parent, easy</p><p>matters most of all.</p><p>“As soon as we get them buying diapers from us, they’re going</p><p>to start buying everything else, too,” Pole told me. “If you’re rushing</p><p>through the store, looking for bottles, and you pass orange juice,</p><p>you’ll grab a carton. Oh, and there’s that new DVD I want. Soon,</p><p>you’ll be buying cereal and paper towels from us, and keep coming</p><p>back.”</p><p>New parents are so valuable that major retailers will do almost</p><p>anything to find them, including going inside maternity wards, even if</p><p>their products have nothing to do with infants. One New York</p><p>hospital, for instance, provides every new mother with a gift bag</p><p>containing samples of hair gel, face wash, shaving cream, an energy</p><p>bar, shampoo, and a soft-cotton T-shirt. Inside are coupons for an</p><p>online photo service, hand soap, and a local gym. There are also</p><p>samples of diapers and baby lotions, but they’re lost among the</p><p>nonbaby supplies. In 580 hospitals across the United States, new</p><p>mothers get gifts from the Walt Disney Company, which in 2010</p><p>started a division specifically aimed at marketing to the parents of</p><p>infants. Procter & Gamble, Fisher-Price, and other firms have similar</p><p>giveaway programs. Disney estimates the North American new baby</p><p>market is worth $36.3 billion a year.7.10</p><p>But for companies such as Target, approaching new moms in</p><p>the maternity ward is, in some senses, too late. By then, they’re</p><p>already on everyone else’s radar screen. Target didn’t want to</p><p>compete with Disney and Procter & Gamble; they wanted to beat</p><p>them. Target’s goal was to start marketing to parents before the baby</p><p>arrived—which is why Andrew Pole’s colleagues approached him</p><p>that day to ask about building a pregnancy-prediction algorithm. If</p><p>they could identify expecting mothers as early as their second</p><p>trimester, they could capture them before anyone else.</p><p>The only problem was that figuring out which customers are</p><p>pregnant is harder than it seems. Target had a baby shower registry,</p><p>and that helped identify some pregnant women—and what’s more,</p><p>all those soon-to-be mothers willingly handed over valuable</p><p>information, like their due dates, that let the company know when to</p><p>send them coupons for prenatal vitamins or diapers. But only a</p><p>fraction of Target’s pregnant customers used the registry.</p><p>Then there were other customers who executives suspected</p><p>were pregnant because they purchased maternity clothing, nursery</p><p>furniture, and boxes of diapers. Suspecting and knowing, however,</p><p>are two different things. How do you know whether someone buying</p><p>diapers is pregnant or buying a gift for a pregnant friend? What’s</p><p>more, timing matters. A coupon that’s useful a month before the due</p><p>date might get put in the trash a few weeks after the baby arrives.</p><p>Pole started working on the problem by scouring the information</p><p>in Target’s baby shower registry, which let him observe how the</p><p>average woman’s shopping habits changed as her due date</p><p>approached. The registry was like a laboratory where he could test</p><p>hunches. Each expectant mother handed over her name, her</p><p>spouse’s name, and her due date. Target’s data warehouse could</p><p>link that information to the family’s Guest IDs. As a result, whenever</p><p>one of these women purchased something in a store or online, Pole,</p><p>using the due date the woman provided, could plot the trimester in</p><p>which the purchase occurred. Before long, he was picking up</p><p>patterns.</p><p>Expectant</p><p>mothers, he discovered, shopped in fairly predictable</p><p>ways. Take, for example, lotions. Lots of people buy lotion, but a</p><p>Target data analyst noticed that women on the baby registry were</p><p>buying unusually large quantities of unscented lotion around the</p><p>beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that</p><p>sometime in the first twenty weeks, many pregnant women loaded</p><p>up on vitamins, such as calcium, magnesium, and zinc. Lots of</p><p>shoppers purchase soap and cotton balls every month, but when</p><p>someone suddenly starts buying lots of scent-free soap and cotton</p><p>balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and an astounding number of</p><p>washcloths, all at once, a few months after buying lotions and</p><p>magnesium and zinc, it signals they are getting close to their delivery</p><p>date.</p><p>As Pole’s computer program crawled through the data, he was</p><p>able to identify about twenty-five different products that, when</p><p>analyzed together, allowed him to, in a sense, peer inside a woman’s</p><p>womb. Most important, he could guess what trimester she was in—</p><p>and estimate her due date—so Target could send her coupons when</p><p>she was on the brink of making new purchases. By the time Pole</p><p>was done, his program could assign almost any regular shopper a</p><p>“pregnancy prediction” score.</p><p>Jenny Ward, a twenty-three-year-old in Atlanta who bought</p><p>cocoa butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag,</p><p>zinc, magnesium, and a bright blue rug? There’s an 87 percent</p><p>chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in</p><p>late August.7.11 Liz Alter in Brooklyn, a thirty-five-year-old who</p><p>purchased five packs of washcloths, a bottle of “sensitive skin”</p><p>laundry detergent, baggy jeans, vitamins containing DHA, and a slew</p><p>of moisturizers? She’s got a 96 percent chance of pregnancy, and</p><p>she’ll probably give birth in early May. Caitlin Pike, a thirty-nine-year-</p><p>old in San Francisco who purchased a $250 stroller, but nothing</p><p>else? She’s probably buying for a friend’s baby shower. Besides, her</p><p>demographic data shows she got divorced two years ago.</p><p>Pole applied his program to every shopper in Target’s database.</p><p>When it was done, he had a list of hundreds of thousands of women</p><p>who were likely to be pregnant that Target could inundate with</p><p>advertisements for diapers, lotions, cribs, wipes, and maternity</p><p>clothing at times when their shopping habits were particularly</p><p>flexible. If a fraction of those women or their husbands started doing</p><p>their shopping at Target, it would add millions to the company’s</p><p>bottom line.</p><p>Then, just as this advertising avalanche was about to begin,</p><p>someone within the marketing department asked a question: How</p><p>are women going to react when they figure out how much Target</p><p>knows?</p><p>“If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on</p><p>your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s</p><p>going to make some people uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are</p><p>very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if</p><p>you’re following the law, you can do things where people get</p><p>queasy.”</p><p>There’s good reason for such worries. About a year after Pole</p><p>created his pregnancy prediction model, a man walked into a</p><p>Minnesota Target and demanded to see the manager. He was</p><p>clutching an advertisement. He was very angry.</p><p>“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high</p><p>school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs?</p><p>Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”</p><p>The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking</p><p>about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the</p><p>man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing,</p><p>nursery furniture, and pictures of smiling infants gazing into their</p><p>mothers’ eyes.</p><p>The manager apologized profusely, and then called, a few days</p><p>later, to apologize again.</p><p>The father was somewhat abashed.</p><p>“I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s</p><p>been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware</p><p>of.” He took a deep breath. “She’s due in August. I owe you an</p><p>apology.”</p><p>Target is not the only firm to have raised concerns among</p><p>consumers. Other companies have been attacked for using data in</p><p>far less intrusive ways. In 2011, for instance, a New York resident</p><p>sued McDonald’s, CBS, Mazda, and Microsoft, alleging those</p><p>companies’ advertising agency monitored people’s Internet usage to</p><p>profile their buying habits.7.12 There are ongoing class action</p><p>lawsuits in California against Target, Walmart, Victoria’s Secret, and</p><p>other retail chains for asking customers to give their zip codes when</p><p>they use credit cards, and then using that information to ferret out</p><p>their mailing addresses.7.13</p><p>Using data to predict a woman’s pregnancy, Pole and his</p><p>colleagues knew, was a potential public relations disaster. So how</p><p>could they get their advertisements into expectant mothers’ hands</p><p>without making it appear they were spying on them? How do you</p><p>take advantage of someone’s habits without letting them know you’re</p><p>studying every detail of their lives?1</p><p>II.</p><p>In the summer of 2003, a promotion executive at Arista Records</p><p>named Steve Bartels began calling up radio DJs to tell them about a</p><p>new song he was certain they would love. It was called “Hey Ya!” by</p><p>the hip-hop group OutKast.</p><p>“Hey Ya!” was an upbeat fusion of funk, rock, and hip-hop with a</p><p>dollop of Big Band swing, from one of the most popular bands on</p><p>earth. It sounded like nothing else on the radio. “It made the hair on</p><p>my arms stand up the first time I heard it,” Bartels told me. “It</p><p>sounded like a hit, like the kind of song you’d be hearing at bar</p><p>mitzvahs and proms for years.” Around the Arista offices, executives</p><p>sang the chorus—“shake it like a Polaroid picture”—to one another</p><p>in the hallways. This song, they all agreed, is going to be huge.</p><p>That certainty wasn’t based solely on intuition. At the time, the</p><p>record business was undergoing a transformation similar to the data-</p><p>driven shifts occurring at Target and elsewhere. Just as retailers</p><p>were using computer algorithms to forecast shoppers’ habits, music</p><p>and radio executives were using computer programs to forecast</p><p>listeners’ habits. A company named Polyphonic HMI—a collection of</p><p>artificial intelligence experts and statisticians based in Spain—had</p><p>created a program called Hit Song Science that analyzed the</p><p>mathematical characteristics of a tune and predicted its popularity.</p><p>By comparing the tempo, pitch, melody, chord progression, and</p><p>other factors of a particular song against the thousands of hits stored</p><p>in Polyphonic HMI’s database, Hit Song Science could deliver a</p><p>score that forecasted if a tune was likely to succeed.7.14</p><p>The program had predicted that Norah Jones’s Come Away with</p><p>Me, for instance, would be a hit after most of the industry had</p><p>dismissed the album. (It went on to sell ten million copies and win</p><p>eight Grammys.) It had predicted that “Why Don’t You and I” by</p><p>Santana would be popular, despite DJs’ doubts. (It reached number</p><p>three on the Billboard Top 40 list.)</p><p>When executives at radio stations ran “Hey Ya!” through Hit</p><p>Song Science, it did well. In fact, it did better than well: The score</p><p>was among the highest anyone had ever seen.</p><p>“Hey Ya!,” according to the algorithm, was going to be a</p><p>monster hit.</p><p>On September 4, 2003, in the prominent slot of 7:15 p.m., the</p><p>Top 40 station WIOQ in Philadelphia started playing “Hey Ya!” on the</p><p>radio. It aired the song seven more times that week, and a total of</p><p>thirty-seven times throughout the month.7.15</p><p>At the time, a company named Arbitron was testing a new</p><p>technology that made it possible to figure out how many people were</p><p>listening to a particular radio station at a given moment, and how</p><p>many switched channels during a specific song. WIOQ was one of</p><p>the stations included in the test. The station’s executives were</p><p>certain “Hey Ya!” would keep listeners glued to their radios.</p><p>Then the data came back.</p><p>Listeners didn’t just dislike “Hey Ya!” They hated it according to</p><p>the data.7.16 They hated it so much that nearly a third</p><p>of them</p><p>changed the station within the first thirty seconds of the song. It</p><p>wasn’t only at WIOQ, either. Across the nation, at radio stations in</p><p>Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Seattle, whenever “Hey Ya!”</p><p>came on, huge numbers of listeners would click off.</p><p>“I thought it was a great song the first time I heard it,” said John</p><p>Garabedian, the host of a syndicated Top 40 radio show heard by</p><p>more than two million people each weekend. “But it didn’t sound like</p><p>other songs, and so some people went nuts when it came on. One</p><p>guy told me it was the worst thing he had ever heard.</p><p>“People listen to Top 40 because they want to hear their favorite</p><p>songs or songs that sound just like their favorite songs. When</p><p>something different comes on, they’re offended. They don’t want</p><p>anything unfamiliar.”</p><p>Arista had spent a lot of money promoting “Hey Ya!” The music</p><p>and radio industries needed it to be a success. Hit songs are worth a</p><p>fortune—not only because people buy the song itself, but also</p><p>because a hit can convince listeners to abandon video games and</p><p>the Internet for radio. A hit can sell sports cars on television and</p><p>clothing inside trendy stores. Hit songs are at the root of dozens of</p><p>spending habits that advertisers, TV stations, bars, dance clubs—</p><p>even technology firms such as Apple—rely on.</p><p>Now, one of the most highly anticipated songs—a tune that the</p><p>algorithms had predicted would become the song of the year—was</p><p>flailing. Radio executives were desperate to find something that</p><p>would make “Hey Ya!” into a hit.7.17</p><p>That question—how do you make a song into a hit?—has been</p><p>puzzling the music industry ever since it began, but it’s only in the</p><p>past few decades that people have tried to arrive at scientific</p><p>answers. One of the pioneers was a onetime station manager</p><p>named Rich Meyer who, in 1985, with his wife, Nancy, started a</p><p>company called Mediabase in the basement of their Chicago home.</p><p>They would wake up every morning, pick up a package of tapes of</p><p>stations that had been recorded the previous day in various cities,</p><p>and count and analyze every song that had been played. Meyer</p><p>would then publish a weekly newsletter tracking which tunes were</p><p>rising or declining in popularity.</p><p>In his first few years, the newsletter had only about a hundred</p><p>subscribers, and Meyer and his wife struggled to keep the company</p><p>afloat. However, as more and more stations began using Meyer’s</p><p>insights to increase their audiences—and, in particular, studying the</p><p>formulas he devised to explain listening trends—his newsletter, the</p><p>data sold by Mediabase, and then similar services provided by a</p><p>growing industry of data-focused consultants, overhauled how radio</p><p>stations were run.</p><p>One of the puzzles Meyer most loved was figuring out why,</p><p>during some songs, listeners never seemed to change the radio dial.</p><p>Among DJs, these songs are known as “sticky.” Meyer had tracked</p><p>hundreds of sticky songs over the years, trying to divine the</p><p>principles that made them popular. His office was filled with charts</p><p>and graphs plotting the characteristics of various sticky songs. Meyer</p><p>was always looking for new ways to measure stickiness, and about</p><p>the time “Hey Ya!” was released, he started experimenting with data</p><p>from the tests that Arbitron was conducting to see if it provided any</p><p>fresh insights.</p><p>Some of the stickiest songs at the time were sticky for obvious</p><p>reasons—“Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé and “Señorita” by Justin</p><p>Timberlake, for instance, had just been released and were already</p><p>hugely popular, but those were great songs by established stars, so</p><p>the stickiness made sense. Other songs, though, were sticky for</p><p>reasons no one could really understand. For instance, when stations</p><p>played “Breathe” by Blu Cantrell during the summer of 2003, almost</p><p>no one changed the dial. The song is an eminently forgettable, beat-</p><p>driven tune that DJs found so bland that most of them only played it</p><p>reluctantly, they told music publications. But for some reason,</p><p>whenever it came on the radio, people listened, even if, as pollsters</p><p>later discovered, those same listeners said they didn’t like the song</p><p>very much. Or consider “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down, or</p><p>almost any song by the group Maroon 5. Those bands are so</p><p>featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category</p><p>—“bath rock”—to describe their tepid sounds. Yet whenever they</p><p>came on the radio, almost no one changed the station.</p><p>Then there were songs that listeners said they actively disliked,</p><p>but were sticky nonetheless. Take Christina Aguilera or Celine Dion.</p><p>In survey after survey, male listeners said they hated Celine Dion</p><p>and couldn’t stand her songs. But whenever a Dion tune came on</p><p>the radio, men stayed tuned in. Within the Los Angeles market,</p><p>stations that regularly played Dion at the end of each hour—when</p><p>the number of listeners was measured—could reliably boost their</p><p>audience by as much as 3 percent, a huge figure in the radio world.</p><p>Male listeners may have thought they disliked Dion, but when her</p><p>songs played, they stayed glued.7.18</p><p>One night, Meyer sat down and started listening to a bunch of</p><p>sticky songs in a row, one right after the other, over and over again.</p><p>As he did, he started to notice a similarity among them. It wasn’t that</p><p>the songs sounded alike. Some of them were ballads, others were</p><p>pop tunes. However, they all seemed similar in that each sounded</p><p>exactly like what Meyer expected to hear from that particular genre.</p><p>They sounded familiar—like everything else on the radio—but a little</p><p>more polished, a bit closer to the golden mean of the perfect song.</p><p>“Sometimes stations will do research by calling listeners on the</p><p>phone, and play a snippet of a song, and listeners will say, ‘I’ve</p><p>heard that a million times. I’m totally tired of it,’ ” Meyer told me. “But</p><p>when it comes on the radio, your subconscious says, ‘I know this</p><p>song! I’ve heard it a million times! I can sing along!’ Sticky songs are</p><p>what you expect to hear on the radio. Your brain secretly wants that</p><p>song, because it’s so familiar to everything else you’ve already heard</p><p>and liked. It just sounds right.”</p><p>There is evidence that a preference for things that sound</p><p>“familiar” is a product of our neurology. Scientists have examined</p><p>people’s brains as they listen to music, and have tracked which</p><p>neural regions are involved in comprehending aural stimuli. Listening</p><p>to music activates numerous areas of the brain, including the</p><p>auditory cortex, the thalamus, and the superior parietal cortex.7.19</p><p>These same areas are also associated with pattern recognition and</p><p>helping the brain decide which inputs to pay attention to and which to</p><p>ignore. The areas that process music, in other words, are designed</p><p>to seek out patterns and look for familiarity. This makes sense.</p><p>Music, after all, is complicated. The numerous tones, pitches,</p><p>overlapping melodies, and competing sounds inside almost any song</p><p>—or anyone speaking on a busy street, for that matter—are so</p><p>overwhelming that, without our brain’s ability to focus on some</p><p>sounds and ignore others, everything would seem like a cacophony</p><p>of noise.7.20</p><p>Our brains crave familiarity in music because familiarity is how</p><p>we manage to hear without becoming distracted by all the sound.</p><p>Just as the scientists at MIT discovered that behavioral habits</p><p>prevent us from becoming overwhelmed by the endless decisions we</p><p>would otherwise have to make each day, listening habits exist</p><p>because, without them, it would be impossible to determine if we</p><p>should concentrate on our child’s voice, the coach’s whistle, or the</p><p>noise from a busy street during a Saturday soccer game. Listening</p><p>habits allow us to unconsciously separate important noises from</p><p>those that can be ignored.</p><p>That’s why songs that sound “familiar”—even if you’ve never</p><p>heard them before—are sticky. Our brains are designed to prefer</p><p>auditory patterns that seem similar to what we’ve already heard.</p><p>When Celine Dion releases a new song—and it sounds like every</p><p>other song she’s sung, as well as most of the other songs on the</p><p>radio—our brains unconsciously</p><p>crave its recognizability and the</p><p>song becomes sticky. You might never attend a Celine Dion concert,</p><p>but you’ll listen to her songs on the radio, because that’s what you</p><p>expect to hear as you drive to work. Those songs correspond</p><p>perfectly to your habits.</p><p>This insight helped explain why “Hey Ya!” was failing on the</p><p>radio, despite the fact that Hit Song Science and music executives</p><p>were sure it would be a hit. The problem wasn’t that “Hey Ya!” was</p><p>bad. The problem was that “Hey Ya!” wasn’t familiar. Radio listeners</p><p>didn’t want to make a conscious decision each time they were</p><p>presented with a new song. Instead, their brains wanted to follow a</p><p>habit. Much of the time, we don’t actually choose if we like or dislike</p><p>a song. It would take too much mental effort. Instead, we react to the</p><p>cues (“This sounds like all the other songs I’ve ever liked”) and</p><p>rewards (“It’s fun to hum along!”) and without thinking, we either start</p><p>singing, or reach over and change the station.</p><p>THE FAMILIARITY LOOP</p><p>In a sense, Arista and radio DJs faced a variation of the</p><p>problem Andrew Pole was confronting at Target. Listeners are happy</p><p>to sit through a song they might say they dislike, as long as it seems</p><p>like something they’ve heard before. Pregnant women are happy to</p><p>use coupons they receive in the mail, unless those coupons make it</p><p>obvious that Target is spying into their wombs, which is unfamiliar</p><p>and kind of creepy. Getting a coupon that makes it clear Target</p><p>knows you’re pregnant is at odds from what a customer expects. It’s</p><p>like telling a forty-two-year-old investment banker that he sang along</p><p>to Celine Dion. It just feels wrong.</p><p>So how do DJs convince listeners to stick with songs such as</p><p>“Hey Ya!” long enough for them to become familiar? How does</p><p>Target convince pregnant women to use diaper coupons without</p><p>creeping them out?</p><p>By dressing something new in old clothes, and making the</p><p>unfamiliar seem familiar.</p><p>III.</p><p>In the early 1940s, the U.S. government began shipping much</p><p>of the nation’s domestic meat supply to Europe and the Pacific</p><p>theater to support troops fighting in World War II. Back home, the</p><p>availability of steaks and pork chops began to dwindle. By the time</p><p>the United States entered the war in late 1941, New York restaurants</p><p>were using horse meat for hamburgers and a black market for</p><p>poultry had emerged.7.21 Federal officials became worried that a</p><p>lengthy war effort would leave the nation starved of protein. This</p><p>“problem will loom larger and larger in the United States as the war</p><p>goes on,” former president Herbert Hoover wrote to Americans in a</p><p>government pamphlet in 1943. “Our farms are short of labor to care</p><p>for livestock; and on top of it all we must furnish supplies to the</p><p>British and Russians. Meats and fats are just as much munitions in</p><p>this war as are tanks and aeroplanes.”</p><p>Concerned, the Department of Defense approached dozens of</p><p>the nation’s leading sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists</p><p>—including Margaret Mead and Kurt Lewin, who would go on to</p><p>become celebrity academics—and gave them an assignment: Figure</p><p>out how to convince Americans to eat organ meats. Get housewives</p><p>to serve their husbands and children the protein-rich livers, hearts,</p><p>kidneys, brains, stomachs, and intestines that were left behind after</p><p>the rib eyes and roast beef went overseas.</p><p>At the time, organ meat wasn’t popular in America. A middle-</p><p>class woman in 1940 would sooner starve than despoil her table with</p><p>tongue or tripe. So when the scientists recruited into the Committee</p><p>on Food Habits met for the first time in 1941, they set themselves a</p><p>goal of systematically identifying the cultural barriers that</p><p>discouraged Americans from eating organ meat. In all, more than</p><p>two hundred studies were eventually published, and at their core,</p><p>they all contained a similar finding: To change people’s diets, the</p><p>exotic must be made familiar. And to do that, you must camouflage it</p><p>in everyday garb.7.22</p><p>To convince Americans to eat livers and kidneys, housewives</p><p>had to know how to make the foods look, taste, and smell as similar</p><p>as possible to what their families expected to see on the dinner</p><p>table, the scientists concluded. For instance, when the Subsistence</p><p>Division of the Quartermaster Corps—the people in charge of</p><p>feeding soldiers—started serving fresh cabbage to troops in 1943, it</p><p>was rejected. So mess halls chopped and boiled the cabbage until it</p><p>looked like every other vegetable on a soldier’s tray—and the troops</p><p>ate it without complaint. “Soldiers were more likely to eat food,</p><p>whether familiar or unfamiliar, when it was prepared similar to their</p><p>prior experiences and served in a familiar fashion,” a present-day</p><p>researcher evaluating those studies wrote.7.23</p><p>The secret to changing the American diet, the Committee on</p><p>Food Habits concluded, was familiarity. Soon, housewives were</p><p>receiving mailers from the government telling them “every husband</p><p>will cheer for steak and kidney pie.”7.24 Butchers started handing out</p><p>recipes that explained how to slip liver into meatloaf.</p><p>A few years after World War II ended, the Committee on Food</p><p>Habits was dissolved. By then, however, organ meats had been fully</p><p>integrated into the American diet. One study indicated that offal</p><p>consumption rose by 33 percent during the war. By 1955, it was up</p><p>50 percent.7.25 Kidney had become a staple at dinner. Liver was for</p><p>special occasions. America’s dining patterns had shifted to such a</p><p>degree that organ meats had become emblems of comfort.</p><p>Since then, the U.S. government has launched dozens of other</p><p>efforts to improve our diets. For example, there was the “Five a Day”</p><p>campaign, intended to encourage people to eat five fruits or</p><p>vegetables, the USDA’s food pyramid, and a push for low-fat</p><p>cheeses and milks. None of them adhered to the committee’s</p><p>findings. None tried to camouflage their recommendations in existing</p><p>habits, and as a result, all of the campaigns failed. To date, the only</p><p>government program ever to cause a lasting change in the American</p><p>diet was the organ meat push of the 1940s.</p><p>However, radio stations and massive companies—including</p><p>Target—are a bit savvier.</p><p>To make “Hey Ya!” a hit, DJs soon realized, they needed to</p><p>make the song feel familiar. And to do that, something special was</p><p>required.</p><p>The problem was that computer programs such as Hit Song</p><p>Science were pretty good at predicting people’s habits. But</p><p>sometimes, those algorithms found habits that hadn’t actually</p><p>emerged yet, and when companies market to habits we haven’t</p><p>adopted or, even worse, are unwilling to admit to ourselves—like our</p><p>secret affection for sappy ballads—firms risk going out of business. If</p><p>a grocery store boasts “We have a huge selection of sugary cereals</p><p>and ice cream!” shoppers stay away. If a butcher says “Here’s a</p><p>piece of intestine for your dinner table,” a 1940s housewife serves</p><p>tuna casserole instead. When a radio station boasts “Celine Dion</p><p>every half hour!” no one tunes in. So instead, supermarket owners</p><p>tout their apples and tomatoes (while making sure you pass the</p><p>M&M’s and Häagen-Dazs on the way to the register), butchers in the</p><p>1940s call liver “the new steak,” and DJs quietly slip in the theme</p><p>song from Titanic.</p><p>“Hey Ya!” needed to become part of an established listening</p><p>habit to become a hit. And to become part of a habit, it had to be</p><p>slightly camouflaged at first, the same way housewives camouflaged</p><p>kidney by slipping it into meatloaf. So at WIOQ in Philadelphia—as</p><p>well as at other stations around the nation—DJs started making sure</p><p>that whenever “Hey Ya!” was played, it was sandwiched between</p><p>songs that were already popular. “It’s textbook playlist theory now,”</p><p>said Tom Webster, a radio consultant. “Play a new song between two</p><p>consensus popular hits.”</p><p>DJs, however, didn’t air “Hey Ya!” alongside just any kind of hit.</p><p>They sandwiched it between the types of songs that Rich Meyer had</p><p>discovered were uniquely sticky, from artists like Blu Cantrell, 3</p><p>Doors Down, Maroon 5, and Christina Aguilera. (Some stations, in</p><p>fact, were so eager they</p><p>used the same song twice.)</p><p>Consider, for instance, the WIOQ playlist for September 19,</p><p>2003:</p><p>11:43 “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down</p><p>11:54 “Breathe” by Blu Cantrell</p><p>11:58 “Hey Ya!” by OutKast</p><p>12:01 “Breathe” by Blu Cantrell</p><p>Or the playlist for October 16:</p><p>9:41 “Harder to Breathe” by Maroon 5</p><p>9:45 “Hey Ya!” by OutKast</p><p>9:49 “Can’t Hold Us Down” by Christina Aguilera</p><p>10:00 “Frontin’ ” by Pharrell</p><p>November 12:</p><p>9:58 “Here Without You” by 3 Doors Down</p><p>10:01 “Hey Ya!” by OutKast</p><p>10:05 “Like I Love You” by Justin Timberlake</p><p>10:09 “Baby Boy” by Beyoncé</p><p>“Managing a playlist is all about risk mitigation,” said Webster.</p><p>“Stations have to take risks on new songs, otherwise people stop</p><p>listening. But what listeners really want are songs they already like.</p><p>So you have to make new songs seem familiar as fast as possible.”</p><p>When WIOQ first started playing “Hey Ya!” in early September</p><p>—before the sandwiching started—26.6 percent of listeners changed</p><p>the station whenever it came on. By October, after playing it</p><p>alongside sticky hits, that “tune-out factor” dropped to 13.7 percent.</p><p>By December, it was 5.7 percent. Other major radio stations around</p><p>the nation used the same sandwiching technique, and the tune-out</p><p>rate followed the same pattern.</p><p>And as listeners heard “Hey Ya!” again and again, it became</p><p>familiar. Once the song had become popular, WIOQ was playing</p><p>“Hey Ya!” as many as fifteen times a day. People’s listening habits</p><p>had shifted to expect—crave, even—“Hey Ya!” A “Hey Ya!” habit</p><p>emerged. The song went on to win a Grammy, sell more than 5.5</p><p>million albums, and earn radio stations millions of dollars. “This</p><p>album cemented OutKast in the pantheon of superstars,” Bartels, the</p><p>promotion executive, told me. “This is what introduced them to</p><p>audiences outside of hip-hop. It’s so fulfilling now when a new artist</p><p>plays me their single and says, This is going to be the next ‘Hey Ya!’”</p><p>After Andrew Pole built his pregnancy-prediction machine, after</p><p>he identified hundreds of thousands of female shoppers who were</p><p>probably pregnant, after someone pointed out that some—in fact,</p><p>most—of those women might be a little upset if they received an</p><p>advertisement making it obvious Target knew their reproductive</p><p>status, everyone decided to take a step back and consider their</p><p>options.</p><p>The marketing department thought it might be wise to conduct a</p><p>few small experiments before rolling out a national campaign. They</p><p>had the ability to send specially designed mailers to small groups of</p><p>customers, so they randomly chose women from Pole’s pregnancy</p><p>list and started testing combinations of advertisements to see how</p><p>shoppers reacted.</p><p>“We have the capacity to send every customer an ad booklet,</p><p>specifically designed for them, that says, ‘Here’s everything you</p><p>bought last week, and a coupon for it,’ ” one Target executive with</p><p>firsthand knowledge of Pole’s pregnancy predictor told me. “We do</p><p>that for grocery products all the time.</p><p>“With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some</p><p>women react badly. Then we started mixing in all these ads for</p><p>things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads</p><p>looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawnmower next to diapers.</p><p>We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it</p><p>looked like all the products were chosen by chance.</p><p>“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she</p><p>hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that</p><p>everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and</p><p>cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”</p><p>The answer to Target and Pole’s question—how do you</p><p>advertise to a pregnant woman without revealing that you know</p><p>she’s pregnant?—was essentially the same one that DJs used to</p><p>hook listeners on “Hey Ya!” Target started sandwiching the diaper</p><p>coupons between nonpregnancy products that made the</p><p>advertisements seem anonymous, familiar, comfortable. They</p><p>camouflaged what they knew.</p><p>Soon, Target’s “Mom and Baby” sales exploded. The company</p><p>doesn’t break out sales figures for specific divisions, but between</p><p>2002—when Pole was hired—and 2009, Target’s revenues grew</p><p>from $44 billion to $65 billion. In 2005, the company’s president,</p><p>Gregg Steinhafel, boasted to a room full of investors about the</p><p>company’s “heightened focus on items and categories that appeal to</p><p>specific guest segments such as mom and baby.</p><p>“As our database tools grow increasingly sophisticated, Target</p><p>Mail has come into its own as a useful tool for promoting value and</p><p>convenience to specific guest segments such as new moms or</p><p>teens,” he said. “For example, Target Baby is able to track life stages</p><p>from prenatal care to car seats and strollers. In 2004, the Target</p><p>Baby Direct Mail Program drove sizable increases in trips and</p><p>sales.”7.26</p><p>Whether selling a new song, a new food, or a new crib, the</p><p>lesson is the same: If you dress a new something in old habits, it’s</p><p>easier for the public to accept it.</p><p>IV.</p><p>The usefulness of this lesson isn’t limited to large corporations,</p><p>government agencies, or radio companies hoping to manipulate our</p><p>tastes. These same insights can be used to change how we live.</p><p>In 2000, for instance, two statisticians were hired by the YMCA</p><p>—one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations—to use the</p><p>powers of data-driven fortune-telling to make the world a healthier</p><p>place. The YMCA has more than 2,600 branches in the United</p><p>States, most of them gyms and community centers. About a decade</p><p>ago, the organization’s leaders began worrying about how to stay</p><p>competitive. They asked a social scientist and a mathematician—Bill</p><p>Lazarus and Dean Abbott—for help.</p><p>The two men gathered data from more than 150,000 YMCA</p><p>member satisfaction surveys that had been collected over the years</p><p>and started looking for patterns. At that point, the accepted wisdom</p><p>among YMCA executives was that people wanted fancy exercise</p><p>equipment and sparkling, modern facilities. The YMCA had spent</p><p>millions of dollars building weight rooms and yoga studios. When the</p><p>surveys were analyzed, however, it turned out that while a facility’s</p><p>attractiveness and the availability of workout machines might have</p><p>caused people to join in the first place, what got them to stay was</p><p>something else.</p><p>Retention, the data said, was driven by emotional factors, such</p><p>as whether employees knew members’ names or said hello when</p><p>they walked in. People, it turns out, often go to the gym looking for a</p><p>human connection, not a treadmill. If a member made a friend at the</p><p>YMCA, they were much more likely to show up for workout sessions.</p><p>In other words, people who join the YMCA have certain social habits.</p><p>If the YMCA satisfied them, members were happy. So if the YMCA</p><p>wanted to encourage people to exercise, it needed to take</p><p>advantage of patterns that already existed, and teach employees to</p><p>remember visitors’ names. It’s a variation of the lesson learned by</p><p>Target and radio DJs: to sell a new habit—in this case exercise—</p><p>wrap it in something that people already know and like, such as the</p><p>instinct to go places where it’s easy to make friends.</p><p>“We’re cracking the code on how to keep people at the gym,”</p><p>Lazarus told me. “People want to visit places that satisfy their social</p><p>needs. Getting people to exercise in groups makes it more likely</p><p>they’ll stick with a workout. You can change the health of the nation</p><p>this way.”</p><p>Someday soon, say predictive analytics experts, it will be</p><p>possible for companies to know our tastes and predict our habits</p><p>better than we know ourselves. However, knowing that someone</p><p>might prefer a certain brand of peanut butter isn’t enough to get them</p><p>to act on that preference. To market a new habit—be it groceries or</p><p>aerobics—you must understand how to make the novel seem</p><p>familiar.</p><p>The last time I spoke to Andrew Pole, I mentioned that my wife</p><p>was seven months pregnant with our second child. Pole himself has</p><p>children, and so we talked a bit about kids. My wife and I shop at</p><p>Target on occasion, I said, and about a year earlier we</p><p>he had no idea who they were. When Squire asked if</p><p>he remembered getting sick, Eugene said he had no recollection of</p><p>his illness or the hospital stay. In fact, Eugene almost never recalled</p><p>that he was suffering from amnesia. His mental image of himself</p><p>didn’t include memory loss, and since he couldn’t remember the</p><p>injury, he couldn’t conceive of anything being wrong.</p><p>In the months after meeting Eugene, Squire conducted</p><p>experiments that tested the limits of his memory. By then, Eugene</p><p>and Beverly had moved from Playa del Rey to San Diego to be</p><p>closer to their daughter, and Squire often visited their home for his</p><p>exams. One day, Squire asked Eugene to sketch a layout of his</p><p>house. Eugene couldn’t draw a rudimentary map showing where the</p><p>kitchen or bedroom was located. “When you get out of bed in the</p><p>morning, how do you leave your room?” Squire asked.</p><p>“You know,” Eugene said, “I’m not really sure.”</p><p>Squire took notes on his laptop, and as the scientist typed,</p><p>Eugene became distracted. He glanced across the room and then</p><p>stood up, walked into a hallway, and opened the door to the</p><p>bathroom. A few minutes later, the toilet flushed, the faucet ran, and</p><p>Eugene, wiping his hands on his pants, walked back into the living</p><p>room and sat down again in his chair next to Squire. He waited</p><p>patiently for the next question.</p><p>At the time, no one wondered how a man who couldn’t draw a</p><p>map of his home was able to find the bathroom without hesitation.</p><p>But that question, and others like it, would eventually lead to a trail of</p><p>discoveries that has transformed our understanding of habits’</p><p>power.1.11 It would help spark a scientific revolution that today</p><p>involves hundreds of researchers who are learning, for the first time,</p><p>to understand all the habits that influence our lives.</p><p>As Eugene sat at the table, he looked at Squire’s laptop.</p><p>“That’s amazing,” he said, gesturing at the computer. “You</p><p>know, when I was in electronics, there would have been a couple of</p><p>six-foot racks holding that thing.”</p><p>In the first few weeks after they moved into their new house,</p><p>Beverly tried to take Eugene outside each day. The doctors had told</p><p>her that it was important for him to get exercise, and if Eugene was</p><p>inside too long he drove Beverly crazy, asking her the same</p><p>questions over and over in an endless loop. So each morning and</p><p>afternoon, she took him on a walk around the block, always together</p><p>and always along the same route.</p><p>The doctors had warned Beverly that she would need to monitor</p><p>Eugene constantly. If he ever got lost, they said, he would never be</p><p>able to find his way home. But one morning, while she was getting</p><p>dressed, Eugene slipped out the front door. He had a tendency to</p><p>wander from room to room, so it took her a while to notice he was</p><p>gone. When she did, she became frantic. She ran outside and</p><p>scanned the street. She couldn’t see him. She went to the neighbors’</p><p>house and pounded on the windows. Their homes looked similar—</p><p>maybe Eugene had become confused and had gone inside? She ran</p><p>to the door and rang the bell until someone answered. Eugene</p><p>wasn’t there. She sprinted back to the street, running up the block,</p><p>screaming Eugene’s name. She was crying. What if he had</p><p>wandered into traffic? How would he tell anyone where he lived?</p><p>She had been outside for fifteen minutes already, looking</p><p>everywhere. She ran home to call the police.</p><p>When she burst through the door, she found Eugene in the</p><p>living room, sitting in front of the television watching the History</p><p>Channel. Her tears confused him. He didn’t remember leaving, he</p><p>said, didn’t know where he’d been, and couldn’t understand why she</p><p>was so upset. Then Beverly saw a pile of pinecones on the table, like</p><p>the ones she’d seen in a neighbor’s yard down the street. She came</p><p>closer and looked at Eugene’s hands. His fingers were sticky with</p><p>sap. That’s when she realized that Eugene had gone for a walk by</p><p>himself. He had wandered down the street and collected some</p><p>souvenirs.</p><p>And he had found his way home.</p><p>Soon, Eugene was going for walks every morning. Beverly tried</p><p>to stop him, but it was pointless.</p><p>“Even if I told him to stay inside, he wouldn’t remember a few</p><p>minutes later,” she told me. “I followed him a few times to make sure</p><p>he wouldn’t get lost, but he always came back.” Sometimes he would</p><p>return with pinecones or rocks. Once he came back with a wallet;</p><p>another time with a puppy. He never remembered where they came</p><p>from.</p><p>When Squire and his assistants heard about these walks, they</p><p>started to suspect that something was happening inside Eugene’s</p><p>head that didn’t have anything to do with his conscious memory.</p><p>They designed an experiment. One of Squire’s assistants visited the</p><p>house one day and asked Eugene to draw a map of the block where</p><p>he lived. He couldn’t do it. How about where his house was located</p><p>on the street, she asked. He doodled a bit, then forgot the</p><p>assignment. She asked him to point out which doorway led to the</p><p>kitchen. Eugene looked around the room. He didn’t know, he said.</p><p>She asked Eugene what he would do if he were hungry. He stood</p><p>up, walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and took down a jar of</p><p>nuts.</p><p>Later that week, a visitor joined Eugene on his daily stroll. They</p><p>walked for about fifteen minutes through the perpetual spring of</p><p>Southern California, the scent of bougainvillea heavy in the air.</p><p>Eugene didn’t say much, but he always led the way and seemed to</p><p>know where he was going. He never asked for directions. As they</p><p>rounded the corner near his house, the visitor asked Eugene where</p><p>he lived. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said. Then he walked up his</p><p>sidewalk, opened his front door, went into the living room, and turned</p><p>on the television.</p><p>It was clear to Squire that Eugene was absorbing new</p><p>information. But where inside his brain was that information residing?</p><p>How could someone find a jar of nuts when he couldn’t say where</p><p>the kitchen was located? Or find his way home when he had no idea</p><p>which house was his? How, Squire wondered, were new patterns</p><p>forming inside Eugene’s damaged brain?</p><p>II.</p><p>Within the building that houses the Brain and Cognitive</p><p>Sciences department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology</p><p>are laboratories that contain what, to the casual observer, look like</p><p>dollhouse versions of surgical theaters. There are tiny scalpels, small</p><p>drills, and miniature saws less than a quarter inch wide attached to</p><p>robotic arms. Even the operating tables are tiny, as if prepared for</p><p>child-sized surgeons. The rooms are always kept at a chilly sixty</p><p>degrees because a slight nip in the air steadies researchers’ fingers</p><p>during delicate procedures. Inside these laboratories, neurologists</p><p>cut into the skulls of anesthetized rats, implanting tiny sensors that</p><p>can record the smallest changes inside their brains. When the rats</p><p>wake, they hardly seem to notice that there are now dozens of</p><p>microscopic wires arrayed, like neurological spider webs, inside their</p><p>heads.</p><p>These laboratories have become the epicenter for a quiet</p><p>revolution in the science of habit formation, and the experiments</p><p>unfolding here explain how Eugene—as well as you, me, and</p><p>everyone else—developed the behaviors necessary to make it</p><p>through each day. The rats in these labs have illuminated the</p><p>complexity that occurs inside our heads whenever we do something</p><p>as mundane as brush our teeth or back the car out of the driveway.</p><p>And for Squire, these laboratories helped explain how Eugene</p><p>managed to learn new habits.</p><p>When the MIT researchers started working on habits in the</p><p>1990s—at about the same time that Eugene came down with his</p><p>fever—they were curious about a nub of neurological tissue known</p><p>as the basal ganglia. If you picture the human brain as an onion,</p><p>composed of layer upon layer of cells, then the outside layers—</p><p>those closest to the scalp—are generally the most recent additions</p><p>from an evolutionary perspective. When you dream up a new</p><p>invention or laugh at a friend’s joke, it’s the outside parts of your</p><p>brain at work. That’s where the most complex thinking occurs.</p><p>Deeper</p><p>had given the</p><p>company our address, so we could start getting coupons in the mail.</p><p>Recently, as my wife’s pregnancy had progressed, I’d been noticing</p><p>a subtle upswing in the number of advertisements for diapers,</p><p>lotions, and baby clothes arriving at our house.</p><p>I was planning on using some of those coupons that very</p><p>weekend, I told him. I was also thinking of buying a crib, and some</p><p>drapes for the nursery, and maybe some Bob the Builder toys for my</p><p>toddler. It was really helpful that Target was sending me exactly the</p><p>right coupons for what I needed to buy.</p><p>“Just wait till the baby comes,” Pole said. “We’ll be sending you</p><p>coupons for things you want before you even know you want them.”</p><p>1The reporting in this chapter is based on interviews with more</p><p>than a dozen current and former Target employees, many of them</p><p>conducted on a not-for-attribution basis because sources feared</p><p>dismissal from the company or other retribution. Target was provided</p><p>with an opportunity to review and respond to the reporting in this</p><p>chapter, and was asked to make executives involved in the Guest</p><p>Analytics department available for on-the-record interviews. The</p><p>company declined to do so and declined to respond to fact-checking</p><p>questions except in two emails. The first said: “At Target, our mission</p><p>is to make Target the preferred shopping destination for our guests</p><p>by delivering outstanding value, continuous innovation and an</p><p>exceptional guest experience by consistently fulfilling our ‘Expect</p><p>More. Pay Less.’ brand promise. Because we are so intently focused</p><p>on this mission, we have made considerable investments in</p><p>understanding our guests’ preferences. To assist in this effort, we’ve</p><p>developed a number of research tools that allow us to gain insights</p><p>into trends and preferences within different demographic segments</p><p>of our guest population. We use data derived from these tools to</p><p>inform our store layouts, product selection, promotions and coupons.</p><p>This analysis allows Target to provide the most relevant shopping</p><p>experience to our guests. For example, during an in-store</p><p>transaction, our research tool can predict relevant offers for an</p><p>individual guest based on their purchases, which can be delivered</p><p>along with their receipt. Further, opt-in programs such as our baby</p><p>registry help Target understand how guests’ needs evolve over time,</p><p>enabling us to provide new mothers with money-saving coupons. We</p><p>believe these efforts directly benefit our guests by providing more of</p><p>what they need and want at Target—and have benefited Target by</p><p>building stronger guest loyalty, driving greater shopping frequency</p><p>and delivering increased sales and profitability.” A second email</p><p>read: “Almost all of your statements contain inaccurate information</p><p>and publishing them would be misleading to the public. We do not</p><p>intend to address each statement point by point. Target takes its</p><p>legal obligations seriously and is in compliance with all applicable</p><p>federal and state laws, including those related to protected health</p><p>information.”</p><p>SADDLEBACK CHURCH AND THE MONTGOMERY BUS</p><p>BOYCOTT</p><p>How Movements Happen</p><p>I.</p><p>The 6 P.M. Cleveland Avenue bus pulled to the curb and the</p><p>petite forty-two-year-old African American woman in rimless glasses</p><p>and a conservative brown jacket climbed on board, reached into her</p><p>purse, and dropped a ten-cent fare into the till.8.1</p><p>It was Thursday, December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama,</p><p>and she had just finished a long day at Montgomery Fair, the</p><p>department store where she worked as a seamstress. The bus was</p><p>crowded and, by law, the first four rows were reserved for white</p><p>passengers. The area where blacks were allowed to sit, in the back,</p><p>was already full and so the woman—Rosa Parks—sat in a center</p><p>row, right behind the white section, where either race could claim a</p><p>seat.</p><p>As the bus continued on its route, more people boarded. Soon,</p><p>all the rows were filled and some—including a white passenger—</p><p>were standing in the aisle, holding on to an overhead bar. The bus</p><p>driver, James F. Blake, seeing the white man on his feet, shouted at</p><p>the black passengers in Parks’s area to give up their seats, but no</p><p>one moved. It was noisy. They might not have heard. Blake pulled</p><p>over to a bus stop in front of the Empire Theater on Montgomery</p><p>Street and walked back.</p><p>“Y’all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those</p><p>seats,” he said. Three of the black passengers got up and moved to</p><p>the rear, but Parks stayed put. She wasn’t in the white section, she</p><p>told the driver, and besides, there was only one white rider standing.</p><p>“If you don’t stand up,” Blake said, “I’m going to call the police</p><p>and have you arrested.”</p><p>“You may do that,” Parks said.8.2</p><p>The driver left and found two policemen.</p><p>“Why don’t you stand up?” one of them asked Parks after they</p><p>boarded.</p><p>“Why do you push us around?” she said.</p><p>“I don’t know,” the officer answered. “But the law is the law and</p><p>you’re under arrest.”8.3</p><p>At that moment, though no one on that bus knew it, the civil</p><p>rights movement pivoted. That small refusal was the first in a series</p><p>of actions that shifted the battle over race relations from a struggle</p><p>fought by activists in courts and legislatures into a contest that would</p><p>draw its strength from entire communities and mass protests. Over</p><p>the next year, Montgomery’s black population would rise up and</p><p>boycott the city’s buses, ending their strike only once the law</p><p>segregating races on public transportation was stricken from the</p><p>books. The boycott would financially cripple the bus line, draw tens</p><p>of thousands of protesters to rallies, introduce the country to a</p><p>charismatic young leader named Martin Luther King, Jr., and spark a</p><p>movement that would spread to Little Rock, Greensboro, Raleigh,</p><p>Birmingham, and, eventually, to Congress. Parks would become a</p><p>hero, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a shining</p><p>example of how a single act of defiance can change the world.</p><p>But that isn’t the whole story. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery</p><p>bus boycott became the epicenter of the civil rights campaign not</p><p>only because of an individual act of defiance, but also because of</p><p>social patterns. Parks’s experiences offer a lesson in the power of</p><p>social habits—the behaviors that occur, unthinkingly, across dozens</p><p>or hundreds or thousands of people which are often hard to see as</p><p>they emerge, but which contain a power that can change the world.</p><p>Social habits are what fill streets with protesters who may not know</p><p>one another, who might be marching for different reasons, but who</p><p>are all moving in the same direction. Social habits are why some</p><p>initiatives become world-changing movements, while others fail to</p><p>ignite. And the reason why social habits have such influence is</p><p>because at the root of many movements—be they large-scale</p><p>revolutions or simple fluctuations in the churches people attend—is a</p><p>three-part process that historians and sociologists say shows up</p><p>again and again:8.4</p><p>A movement starts because of the social habits of friendship</p><p>and the strong ties between close acquaintances.</p><p>It grows because of the habits of a community, and the weak</p><p>ties that hold neighborhoods and clans together.</p><p>And it endures because a movement’s leaders give participants</p><p>new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of</p><p>ownership.</p><p>Usually, only when all three parts of this process are fulfilled can</p><p>a movement become self-propelling and reach a critical mass. There</p><p>are other recipes for successful social change and hundreds of</p><p>details that differ between eras and struggles. But understanding</p><p>how social habits work helps explain why Montgomery and Rosa</p><p>Parks became the catalyst for a civil rights crusade.</p><p>It wasn’t inevitable that Parks’s act of rebellion that winter day</p><p>would result in anything other than her arrest. Then habits</p><p>intervened, and something amazing occurred.</p><p>Rosa Parks wasn’t the first black passenger jailed for breaking</p><p>Montgomery’s bus segregation laws. She wasn’t even the first that</p><p>year. In 1946, Geneva Johnson had been arrested for talking</p><p>inside the brain and closer to the brain stem—where the</p><p>brain meets the spinal column—are older, more primitive structures.</p><p>They control our automatic behaviors, such as breathing and</p><p>swallowing, or the startle response we feel when someone leaps out</p><p>from behind a bush. Toward the center of the skull is a golf ball–</p><p>sized lump of tissue that is similar to what you might find inside the</p><p>head of a fish, reptile, or mammal.1.12 This is the basal ganglia, an</p><p>oval of cells that, for years, scientists didn’t understand very well,</p><p>except for suspicions that it played a role in diseases such as</p><p>Parkinson’s.1.13, 1.14</p><p>In the early 1990s, the MIT researchers began wondering if the</p><p>basal ganglia might be integral to habits as well. They noticed that</p><p>animals with injured basal ganglia suddenly developed problems</p><p>with tasks such as learning how to run through mazes or</p><p>remembering how to open food containers.1.15 They decided to</p><p>experiment by employing new micro-technologies that allowed them</p><p>to observe, in minute detail, what was occurring within the heads of</p><p>rats as they performed dozens of routines. In surgery, each rat had</p><p>what looked like a small joystick and dozens of tiny wires inserted</p><p>into its skull. Afterward, the animal was placed into a T-shaped maze</p><p>with chocolate at one end.</p><p>The maze was structured so that each rat was positioned</p><p>behind a partition that opened when a loud click sounded.1.16 Initially,</p><p>when a rat heard the click and saw the partition disappear, it would</p><p>usually wander up and down the center aisle, sniffing in corners and</p><p>scratching at walls. It appeared to smell the chocolate, but couldn’t</p><p>figure out how to find it. When it reached the top of the T, it often</p><p>turned to the right, away from the chocolate, and then wandered left,</p><p>sometimes pausing for no obvious reason. Eventually, most animals</p><p>discovered the reward. But there was no discernible pattern in their</p><p>meanderings. It seemed as if each rat was taking a leisurely,</p><p>unthinking stroll.</p><p>The probes in the rats’ heads, however, told a different story.</p><p>While each animal wandered through the maze, its brain—and in</p><p>particular, its basal ganglia—worked furiously. Each time a rat sniffed</p><p>the air or scratched a wall, its brain exploded with activity, as if</p><p>analyzing each new scent, sight, and sound. The rat was processing</p><p>information the entire time it meandered.</p><p>The scientists repeated their experiment, again and again,</p><p>watching how each rat’s brain activity changed as it moved through</p><p>the same route hundreds of times. A series of shifts slowly emerged.</p><p>The rats stopped sniffing corners and making wrong turns. Instead,</p><p>they zipped through the maze faster and faster. And within their</p><p>brains, something unexpected occurred: As each rat learned how to</p><p>navigate the maze, its mental activity decreased. As the route</p><p>became more and more automatic, each rat started thinking less and</p><p>less.</p><p>It was as if the first few times a rat explored the maze, its brain</p><p>had to work at full power to make sense of all the new information.</p><p>But after a few days of running the same route, the rat didn’t need to</p><p>scratch the walls or smell the air anymore, and so the brain activity</p><p>associated with scratching and smelling ceased. It didn’t need to</p><p>choose which direction to turn, and so decision-making centers of</p><p>the brain went quiet. All it had to do was recall the quickest path to</p><p>the chocolate. Within a week, even the brain structures related to</p><p>memory had quieted. The rat had internalized how to sprint through</p><p>the maze to such a degree that it hardly needed to think at all.</p><p>But that internalization—run straight, hang a left, eat the</p><p>chocolate—relied upon the basal ganglia, the brain probes indicated.</p><p>This tiny, ancient neurological structure seemed to take over as the</p><p>rat ran faster and faster and its brain worked less and less. The</p><p>basal ganglia was central to recalling patterns and acting on them.</p><p>The basal ganglia, in other words, stored habits even while the rest</p><p>of the brain went to sleep.</p><p>To see this capacity in action, consider this graph, which shows</p><p>activity within a rat’s skull as it encounters the maze for the first</p><p>time.1.17 Initially, the brain is working hard the entire time:</p><p>After a week, once the route is familiar and the scurrying has</p><p>become a habit, the rat’s brain settles down as it runs through the</p><p>maze:</p><p>This process—in which the brain converts a sequence of</p><p>actions into an automatic routine—is known as “chunking,” and it’s at</p><p>the root of how habits form.1.18 There are dozens—if not hundreds—</p><p>of behavioral chunks that we rely on every day. Some are simple:</p><p>You automatically put toothpaste on your toothbrush before sticking</p><p>it in your mouth. Some, such as getting dressed or making the kids’</p><p>lunch, are a little more complex.</p><p>Others are so complicated that it’s remarkable a small bit of</p><p>tissue that evolved millions of years ago can turn them into habits at</p><p>all. Take the act of backing your car out of the driveway. When you</p><p>first learned to drive, the driveway required a major dose of</p><p>concentration, and for good reason: It involves opening the garage,</p><p>unlocking the car door, adjusting the seat, inserting the key in the</p><p>ignition, turning it clockwise, moving the rearview and side mirrors</p><p>and checking for obstacles, putting your foot on the brake, moving</p><p>the gearshift into reverse, removing your foot from the brake,</p><p>mentally estimating the distance between the garage and the street</p><p>while keeping the wheels aligned and monitoring for oncoming</p><p>traffic, calculating how reflected images in the mirrors translate into</p><p>actual distances between the bumper, the garbage cans, and the</p><p>hedges, all while applying slight pressure to the gas pedal and</p><p>brake, and, most likely, telling your passenger to please stop fiddling</p><p>with the radio.</p><p>Nowadays, however, you do all of that every time you pull onto</p><p>the street with hardly any thought. The routine occurs by habit.</p><p>Millions of people perform this intricate ballet every morning,</p><p>unthinkingly, because as soon as we pull out the car keys, our basal</p><p>ganglia kicks in, identifying the habit we’ve stored in our brains</p><p>related to backing an automobile into the street. Once that habit</p><p>starts unfolding, our gray matter is free to quiet itself or chase other</p><p>thoughts, which is why we have enough mental capacity to realize</p><p>that Jimmy forgot his lunchbox inside.</p><p>Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly</p><p>looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will</p><p>try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our</p><p>minds to ramp down more often. This effort-saving instinct is a huge</p><p>advantage. An efficient brain requires less room, which makes for a</p><p>smaller head, which makes childbirth easier and therefore causes</p><p>fewer infant and mother deaths. An efficient brain also allows us to</p><p>stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors, such as walking and</p><p>choosing what to eat, so we can devote mental energy to inventing</p><p>spears, irrigation systems, and, eventually, airplanes and video</p><p>games.</p><p>But conserving mental effort is tricky, because if our brains</p><p>power down at the wrong moment, we might fail to notice something</p><p>important, such as a predator hiding in the bushes or a speeding car</p><p>as we pull onto the street. So our basal ganglia have devised a</p><p>clever system to determine when to let habits take over. It’s</p><p>something that happens whenever a chunk of behavior starts or</p><p>ends.</p><p>To see how it works, look closely at the graph of the rat’s</p><p>neurological habit again. Notice that brain activity spikes at the</p><p>beginning of the maze, when the rat hears the click before the</p><p>partition starts moving, and again at the end, when it finds the</p><p>chocolate.</p><p>Those spikes are the brain’s way of determining when to cede</p><p>control to a habit, and which habit to use. From behind a partition, for</p><p>instance, it’s difficult for a rat to know if it’s inside a familiar maze or</p><p>an unfamiliar cupboard with a cat lurking outside. To deal with this</p><p>uncertainty, the brain spends a lot of effort at</p><p>the beginning of a habit</p><p>looking for something—a cue—that offers a hint as to which pattern</p><p>to use. From behind a partition, if a rat hears a click, it knows to use</p><p>the maze habit. If it hears a meow, it chooses a different pattern. And</p><p>at the end of the activity, when the reward appears, the brain shakes</p><p>itself awake and makes sure everything unfolded as expected.</p><p>This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is</p><p>a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and</p><p>which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical</p><p>or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your</p><p>brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the</p><p>future:</p><p>THE HABIT LOOP</p><p>Over time, this loop—cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward</p><p>—becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become</p><p>intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving</p><p>emerges. Eventually, whether in a chilly MIT laboratory or your</p><p>driveway, a habit is born.1.19</p><p>Habits aren’t destiny. As the next two chapters explain, habits</p><p>can be ignored, changed, or replaced. But the reason the discovery</p><p>of the habit loop is so important is that it reveals a basic truth: When</p><p>a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision</p><p>making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So</p><p>unless you deliberately fight a habit—unless you find new routines—</p><p>the pattern will unfold automatically.</p><p>However, simply understanding how habits work—learning the</p><p>structure of the habit loop—makes them easier to control. Once you</p><p>break a habit into its components, you can fiddle with the gears.</p><p>“We’ve done experiments where we trained rats to run down a</p><p>maze until it was a habit, and then we extinguished the habit by</p><p>changing the placement of the reward,” Ann Graybiel, a scientist at</p><p>MIT who oversaw many of the basal ganglia experiments, told me.</p><p>“Then one day, we’ll put the reward in the old place, and put in the</p><p>rat, and, by golly, the old habit will reemerge right away. Habits never</p><p>really disappear. They’re encoded into the structures of our brain,</p><p>and that’s a huge advantage for us, because it would be awful if we</p><p>had to relearn how to drive after every vacation. The problem is that</p><p>your brain can’t tell the difference between bad and good habits, and</p><p>so if you have a bad one, it’s always lurking there, waiting for the</p><p>right cues and rewards.”1.20</p><p>This explains why it’s so hard to create exercise habits, for</p><p>instance, or change what we eat. Once we develop a routine of</p><p>sitting on the couch, rather than running, or snacking whenever we</p><p>pass a doughnut box, those patterns always remain inside our</p><p>heads. By the same rule, though, if we learn to create new</p><p>neurological routines that overpower those behaviors—if we take</p><p>control of the habit loop—we can force those bad tendencies into the</p><p>background, just as Lisa Allen did after her Cairo trip. And once</p><p>someone creates a new pattern, studies have demonstrated, going</p><p>for a jog or ignoring the doughnuts becomes as automatic as any</p><p>other habit.</p><p>Without habit loops, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed</p><p>by the minutiae of daily life. People whose basal ganglia are</p><p>damaged by injury or disease often become mentally paralyzed.</p><p>They have trouble performing basic activities, such as opening a</p><p>door or deciding what to eat. They lose the ability to ignore</p><p>insignificant details—one study, for example, found that patients with</p><p>basal ganglia injuries couldn’t recognize facial expressions, including</p><p>fear and disgust, because they were perpetually uncertain about</p><p>which part of the face to focus on. Without our basal ganglia, we lose</p><p>access to the hundreds of habits we rely on every day. Did you</p><p>pause this morning to decide whether to tie your left or right shoe</p><p>first? Did you have trouble figuring out if you should brush your teeth</p><p>before or after you showered?</p><p>Of course not. Those decisions are habitual, effortless. As long</p><p>as your basal ganglia is intact and the cues remain constant, the</p><p>behaviors will occur unthinkingly. (Though when you go on vacation,</p><p>you may get dressed in different ways or brush your teeth at a</p><p>different point in your morning routine without noticing it.)</p><p>At the same time, however, the brain’s dependence on</p><p>automatic routines can be dangerous. Habits are often as much a</p><p>curse as a benefit.</p><p>Take Eugene, for instance. Habits gave him his life back after</p><p>he lost his memory. Then they took everything away again.</p><p>III.</p><p>As Larry Squire, the memory specialist, spent more and more</p><p>time with Eugene, he became convinced his patient was somehow</p><p>learning new behaviors. Images of Eugene’s brain showed that his</p><p>basal ganglia had escaped injury from the viral encephalitis. Was it</p><p>possible, the scientist wondered, that Eugene, even with severe</p><p>brain damage, could still use the cue-routine-reward loop? Could this</p><p>ancient neurological process explain how Eugene was able to walk</p><p>around the block and find the jar of nuts in the kitchen?</p><p>To test if Eugene was forming new habits, Squire devised an</p><p>experiment. He took sixteen different objects—bits of plastic and</p><p>brightly colored pieces of toys—and glued them to cardboard</p><p>rectangles. He then divided them into eight pairs: choice A and</p><p>choice B. In each pairing, one piece of cardboard, chosen at</p><p>random, had a sticker placed on the bottom that read “correct.”1.21</p><p>Eugene was seated at a table, given a pair of objects, and</p><p>asked to choose one. Next, he was told to turn over his choice to see</p><p>if there was a “correct” sticker underneath. This is a common way to</p><p>measure memory. Since there are only sixteen objects, and they are</p><p>always presented in the same eight pairings, most people can</p><p>memorize which item is “correct” after a few rounds. Monkeys can</p><p>memorize all the “correct” items after eight to ten days.</p><p>Eugene couldn’t remember any of the “correct” items, no matter</p><p>how many times he did the test. He repeated the experiment twice a</p><p>week for months, looking at forty pairings each day.</p><p>“Do you know why you are here today?” a researcher asked at</p><p>the beginning of one session a few weeks into the experiment.</p><p>“I don’t think so,” Eugene said.</p><p>“I’m going to show you some objects. Do you know why?”</p><p>“Am I supposed to describe them to you, or tell you what they</p><p>are used for?” Eugene couldn’t recollect the previous sessions at all.</p><p>But as the weeks passed, Eugene’s performance improved.</p><p>After twenty-eight days of training, Eugene was choosing the</p><p>“correct” object 85 percent of the time. At thirty-six days, he was right</p><p>95 percent of the time. After one test, Eugene looked at the</p><p>researcher, bewildered by his success.</p><p>“How am I doing this?” he asked her.</p><p>“Tell me what is going on in your head,” the researcher said. “Do</p><p>you say to yourself, ‘I remember seeing that one’?”</p><p>“No,” Eugene said. “It’s here somehow or another”—he pointed</p><p>to his head—“and the hand goes for it.”</p><p>To Squire, however, it made perfect sense. Eugene was</p><p>exposed to a cue: a pair of objects always presented in the same</p><p>combination. There was a routine: He would choose one object and</p><p>look to see if there was a sticker underneath, even if he had no idea</p><p>why he felt compelled to turn the cardboard over. Then there was a</p><p>reward: the satisfaction he received after finding a sticker</p><p>proclaiming “correct.” Eventually, a habit loop emerged.</p><p>EUGENE’S HABIT LOOP</p><p>To make sure this pattern was, in fact, a habit, Squire conducted</p><p>one more experiment. He took all sixteen items and put them in front</p><p>of Eugene at the same time. He asked him to put all the “correct”</p><p>objects into one pile.</p><p>Eugene had no idea where to begin. “Gosh sakes, how to</p><p>remember this?” he asked. He reached for one object and started to</p><p>turn it over. The experimenter stopped him. No, she explained. The</p><p>task was to put the items in piles. Why was he trying to turn them</p><p>over?</p><p>“That’s just a habit, I think,” he said.</p><p>He couldn’t do it. The objects, when presented outside of the</p><p>context of the habit loop, made no sense to him.</p><p>Here was</p><p>the proof Squire was looking for. The experiments</p><p>demonstrated that Eugene had the ability to form new habits, even</p><p>when they involved tasks or objects he couldn’t remember for more</p><p>than a few seconds. This explained how Eugene managed to go for</p><p>a walk every morning. The cues—certain trees on corners or the</p><p>placement of particular mailboxes—were consistent every time he</p><p>went outside, so though he couldn’t recognize his house, his habits</p><p>always guided him back to his front door. It also explained why</p><p>Eugene would eat breakfast three or four times a day, even if he</p><p>wasn’t hungry. As long as the right cues were present—such as his</p><p>radio or the morning light through his windows—he automatically</p><p>followed the script dictated by his basal ganglia.</p><p>What’s more, there were dozens of other habits in Eugene’s life</p><p>that no one noticed until they started looking for them. Eugene’s</p><p>daughter, for instance, would often stop by his house to say hello.</p><p>She would talk to her father in the living room for a bit, then go into</p><p>the kitchen to visit with her mother, and then leave, waving good-bye</p><p>on her way out the door. Eugene, who had forgotten their earlier</p><p>conversation by the time she left, would get angry—why was she</p><p>leaving without chatting?—and then forget why he was upset. But</p><p>the emotional habit had already started, and so his anger would</p><p>persist, red hot and beyond his understanding, until it burned itself</p><p>out.</p><p>“Sometimes he would bang the table or curse, and if you asked</p><p>him why, he’d say ‘I don’t know, but I’m mad!’ ” Beverly told me. He</p><p>would kick his chair, or snap at whoever came into the room. Then, a</p><p>few minutes later, he would smile and talk about the weather. “It was</p><p>like, once it started, he had to finish the frustration,” she said.</p><p>Squire’s new experiment also showed something else: that</p><p>habits are surprisingly delicate. If Eugene’s cues changed the</p><p>slightest bit, his habits fell apart. The few times he walked around the</p><p>block, for instance, and something was different—the city was doing</p><p>street repairs or a windstorm had blown branches all over the</p><p>sidewalk—Eugene would get lost, no matter how close he was to</p><p>home, until a kind neighbor showed him the way to his door. If his</p><p>daughter stopped to chat with him for ten seconds before she walked</p><p>out, his anger habit never emerged.</p><p>Squire’s experiments with Eugene revolutionized the scientific</p><p>community’s understanding of how the brain works by proving, once</p><p>and for all, that it’s possible to learn and make unconscious choices</p><p>without remembering anything about the lesson or decision</p><p>making.1.22 Eugene showed that habits, as much as memory and</p><p>reason, are at the root of how we behave. We might not remember</p><p>the experiences that create our habits, but once they are lodged</p><p>within our brains they influence how we act—often without our</p><p>realization.</p><p>Since Squire’s first paper on Eugene’s habits was published,</p><p>the science of habit formation has exploded into a major field of</p><p>study. Researchers at Duke, Harvard, UCLA, Yale, USC, Princeton,</p><p>the University of Pennsylvania, and at schools in the United</p><p>Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands, as well as corporate</p><p>scientists working for Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Google, and</p><p>hundreds of other companies are focused on understanding the</p><p>neurology and psychology of habits, their strengths and</p><p>weaknesses, and why they emerge and how they can be changed.</p><p>Researchers have learned that cues can be almost anything,</p><p>from a visual trigger such as a candy bar or a television commercial</p><p>to a certain place, a time of day, an emotion, a sequence of</p><p>thoughts, or the company of particular people. Routines can be</p><p>incredibly complex or fantastically simple (some habits, such as</p><p>those related to emotions, are measured in milliseconds). Rewards</p><p>can range from food or drugs that cause physical sensations, to</p><p>emotional payoffs, such as the feelings of pride that accompany</p><p>praise or self-congratulation.</p><p>And in almost every experiment, researchers have seen echoes</p><p>of Squire’s discoveries with Eugene: Habits are powerful, but</p><p>delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be</p><p>deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but</p><p>can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far</p><p>more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause</p><p>our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including</p><p>common sense.</p><p>In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated</p><p>with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained</p><p>mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior</p><p>became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then,</p><p>the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently</p><p>ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their</p><p>reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage</p><p>were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a</p><p>bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they</p><p>saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and</p><p>ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or</p><p>jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice</p><p>couldn’t stop themselves.1.23</p><p>It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast</p><p>food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and</p><p>you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at</p><p>McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so</p><p>good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary</p><p>soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it</p><p>all the time.</p><p>But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that</p><p>families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What</p><p>happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a</p><p>week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a</p><p>habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of</p><p>hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North</p><p>Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased</p><p>their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards</p><p>that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24</p><p>They discovered the habit loop.</p><p>Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company</p><p>deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what</p><p>employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to</p><p>trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically</p><p>engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are</p><p>designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in</p><p>order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing</p><p>your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern.</p><p>All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25</p><p>However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food</p><p>restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will</p><p>often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative</p><p>location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often</p><p>don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our</p><p>ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards,</p><p>though, we can change the routines.</p><p>IV.</p><p>By 2000, seven years after Eugene’s illness, his life had</p><p>achieved a kind of equilibrium. He went for a walk every morning. He</p><p>ate what he wanted, sometimes five or six times a day. His wife</p><p>knew that as long as the television was tuned to the History Channel,</p><p>Eugene would settle into his plush chair and watch it regardless of</p><p>whether it was airing reruns or new programs. He couldn’t tell the</p><p>difference.</p><p>As he got older, however, Eugene’s habits started impacting his</p><p>life in negative ways. He was sedentary, sometimes watching</p><p>television for hours at a time because he never grew bored with the</p><p>shows. His physicians became worried about his heart. The doctors</p><p>told Beverly to keep him on a strict</p><p>diet of healthy foods. She tried,</p><p>but it was difficult to influence how frequently he ate or what he</p><p>consumed. He never recalled her admonitions. Even if the</p><p>refrigerator was stocked with fruits and vegetables, Eugene would</p><p>root around until he found the bacon and eggs. That was his routine.</p><p>And as Eugene aged and his bones became more brittle, the doctors</p><p>said he needed to be more careful walking around. In his mind,</p><p>however, Eugene was twenty years younger. He never remembered</p><p>to step carefully.</p><p>“All my life I was fascinated by memory,” Squire told me. “Then I</p><p>met E.P., and saw how rich life can be even if you can’t remember it.</p><p>The brain has this amazing ability to find happiness even when the</p><p>memories of it are gone.</p><p>“It’s hard to turn that off, though, which ultimately worked</p><p>against him.”</p><p>Beverly tried to use her understanding of habits to help Eugene</p><p>avoid problems as he aged. She discovered that she could short-</p><p>circuit some of his worst patterns by inserting new cues. If she didn’t</p><p>keep bacon in the fridge, Eugene wouldn’t eat multiple, unhealthy</p><p>breakfasts. When she put a salad next to his chair, he would</p><p>sometimes pick at it, and as the meal became a habit, he stopped</p><p>searching the kitchen for treats. His diet gradually improved.</p><p>Despite these efforts, however, Eugene’s health still declined.</p><p>One spring day, Eugene was watching television when he suddenly</p><p>shouted. Beverly ran in and saw him clutching his chest. She called</p><p>an ambulance. At the hospital, they diagnosed a minor heart attack.</p><p>By then the pain had passed and Eugene was fighting to get off his</p><p>gurney. That night, he kept pulling off the monitors attached to his</p><p>chest so he could roll over and sleep. Alarms would blare and nurses</p><p>would rush in. They tried to get him to quit fiddling with the sensors</p><p>by taping the leads in place and telling him they would use restraints</p><p>if he continued fussing. Nothing worked. He forgot the threats as</p><p>soon as they were issued.</p><p>Then his daughter told a nurse to try complimenting him on his</p><p>willingness to sit still, and to repeat the compliment, over and over,</p><p>each time she saw him. “We wanted to, you know, get his pride</p><p>involved,” his daughter, Carol Rayes, told me. “We’d say, ‘Oh, Dad,</p><p>you’re really doing something important for science by keeping these</p><p>doodads in place.’ ” The nurses started to dote on him. He loved it.</p><p>After a couple of days, he did whatever they asked. Eugene returned</p><p>home a week later.</p><p>Then, in the fall of 2008, while walking through his living room,</p><p>Eugene tripped on a ledge near the fireplace, fell, and broke his hip.</p><p>At the hospital, Squire and his team worried that he would have</p><p>panic attacks because he wouldn’t know where he was. So they left</p><p>notes by his bedside explaining what had happened and posted</p><p>photos of his children on the walls. His wife and kids came every</p><p>day.</p><p>Eugene, however, never grew worried. He never asked why he</p><p>was in the hospital. “He seemed at peace with all the uncertainty by</p><p>that point,” said Squire. “It had been fifteen years since he had lost</p><p>his memory. It was as if part of his brain knew there were some</p><p>things he would never understand and was okay with that.”</p><p>Beverly came to the hospital every day. “I spent a long time</p><p>talking to him,” she said. “I told him that I loved him, and about our</p><p>kids and what a good life we had. I pointed to the pictures and talked</p><p>about how much he was adored. We were married for fifty-seven</p><p>years, and forty-two of those were a real, normal marriage.</p><p>Sometimes it was hard, because I wanted my old husband back so</p><p>much. But at least I knew he was happy.”</p><p>A few weeks later, his daughter came to visit. “What’s the plan?”</p><p>Eugene asked when she arrived. She took him outside in a</p><p>wheelchair, onto the hospital’s lawn. “It’s a beautiful day,” Eugene</p><p>said. “Pretty nice weather, huh?” She told him about her kids and</p><p>they played with a dog. She thought he might be able to come home</p><p>soon. The sun was going down. She started to get ready to take him</p><p>inside.</p><p>Eugene looked at her.</p><p>“I’m lucky to have a daughter like you,” he said. She was caught</p><p>off-guard. She couldn’t remember the last time he had said</p><p>something so sweet.</p><p>“I’m lucky that you’re my dad,” she told him.</p><p>“Gosh, it’s a beautiful day,” he said. “What do you think about</p><p>the weather?”</p><p>That night, at one o’clock in the morning, Beverly’s phone rang.</p><p>The doctor said Eugene had suffered a massive heart attack and the</p><p>staff had done everything possible, but hadn’t been able to revive</p><p>him. He was gone. After his death, he would be celebrated by</p><p>researchers, the images of his brain studied in hundreds of labs and</p><p>medical schools.</p><p>“I know he would have been really proud to know how much he</p><p>contributed to science,” Beverly told me. “He told me once, pretty</p><p>soon after we got married, that he wanted to do something important</p><p>with his life, something that mattered. And he did. He just never</p><p>remembered any of it.”</p><p>THE CRAVING BRAIN</p><p>How to Create New Habits</p><p>I.</p><p>One day in the early 1900s, a prominent American executive</p><p>named Claude C. Hopkins was approached by an old friend with a</p><p>new business idea. The friend had discovered an amazing product,</p><p>he explained, that he was convinced would be a hit. It was a</p><p>toothpaste, a minty, frothy concoction he called “Pepsodent.” There</p><p>were some dicey investors involved—one of them had a string of</p><p>busted land deals; another, it was rumored, was connected to the</p><p>mob—but this venture, the friend promised, was going to be huge. If,</p><p>that is, Hopkins would consent to help design a national promotional</p><p>campaign.2.1</p><p>Hopkins, at the time, was at the top of a booming industry that</p><p>had hardly existed a few decades earlier: advertising. Hopkins was</p><p>the man who had convinced Americans to buy Schlitz beer by</p><p>boasting that the company cleaned their bottles “with live steam,”</p><p>while neglecting to mention that every other company used the exact</p><p>same method. He had seduced millions of women into purchasing</p><p>Palmolive soap by proclaiming that Cleopatra had washed with it,</p><p>despite the sputtering protests of outraged historians. He had made</p><p>Puffed Wheat famous by saying that it was “shot from guns” until the</p><p>grains puffed “to eight times normal size.” He had turned dozens of</p><p>previously unknown products—Quaker Oats, Goodyear tires, the</p><p>Bissell carpet sweeper, Van Camp’s pork and beans—into</p><p>household names. And in the process, he had made himself so rich</p><p>that his best-selling autobiography, My Life in Advertising, devoted</p><p>long passages to the difficulties of spending so much money.</p><p>Claude Hopkins was best known for a series of rules he coined</p><p>explaining how to create new habits among consumers. These rules</p><p>would transform industries and eventually became conventional</p><p>wisdom among marketers, educational reformers, public health</p><p>professionals, politicians, and CEOs. Even today, Hopkins’s rules</p><p>influence everything from how we buy cleaning supplies to the tools</p><p>governments use for eradicating disease. They are fundamental to</p><p>creating any new routine.</p><p>However, when his old friend approached Hopkins about</p><p>Pepsodent, the ad man expressed only mild interest. It was no</p><p>secret that the health of Americans’ teeth was in steep decline. As</p><p>the nation had become wealthier, people had started buying larger</p><p>amounts of sugary, processed foods.2.2 When the government</p><p>started drafting men for World War I, so many recruits had rotting</p><p>teeth that officials said poor dental hygiene was a national security</p><p>risk.</p><p>Yet as Hopkins knew, selling toothpaste was financial suicide.</p><p>There was already an army of door-to-door salesmen hawking</p><p>dubious tooth powders and elixirs, most of them going broke.</p><p>The problem was that hardly anyone bought toothpaste</p><p>because, despite the nation’s dental problems, hardly anyone</p><p>brushed their teeth.2.3</p><p>So Hopkins gave his friend’s proposal a bit of thought, and then</p><p>declined. He’d stick with soaps and cereals, he said. “I did not see a</p><p>way to educate the laity in technical tooth-paste theories,” Hopkins</p><p>explained in his autobiography.</p>
  • Avaliação da Disciplina Fundamentos do Texto em Língua Inglesa
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