The Power of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

mentioned in the notes, but I wanted to give additional thanks to Tom Andrews at SYPartners, Tony Dungy and DJ Snell, Paul O’Neill, Warren Bennis, Rick Warren, Anne Krumm, Paco Underhill, Larry Squire, Wolfram Schultz, Ann Graybiel, Todd Heatherton, J. Scott Tonigan, Taylor Branch, Bob Bowman, Travis Leach, Howard Schultz, Mark Muraven, Angela Duckworth, Jane Bruno, Reza Habib, Patrick Mulkey and Terry Noffsinger. I was aided enormously by researchers and fact checkers, including Dax Proctor, Josh Friedman, Cole Louison, Alexander Provan and Neela Saldanha.

I am forever thankful to Bob Sipchen, who gave me my first real job in journalism, and am sorry that I won’t be able to share this book with two friends lost too early, Brian Ching and L. K. Case.

Finally, my deepest thanks are to my family. Katy Duhigg, Jacquie Jenkusky, David Duhigg, Toni Martorelli, Daniel Duhigg, Alexandra Alter, and Jake Goldstein have been wonderful friends. My sons, Oliver and John Harry, have been sources of inspiration and sleeplessness. My parents, John and Doris, encouraged me from a young age to write, even as I was setting things on fire and giving them reason to figure that future correspondence might be on prison stationary.

And, of course, my wife, Liz, whose constant love, support, guidance, intelligence and friendship made this book possible.

– September, 2011

A NOTE ON SOURCES

The reporting in this book is based on hundreds of interviews, and thousands more papers and studies. Many of those sources are detailed in the text itself or the notes, along with guides to additional resources for interested readers.

In most situations, individuals who provided major sources of information or who published research that was integral to reporting were provided with an opportunity-after reporting was complete-to review facts and offer additional comments, address discrepancies, or register issues with how information is portrayed. Many of those comments are reproduced in the notes. (No source was given access to the book’s complete text-all comments are based on summaries provided to sources.)

In a very small number of cases, confidentiality was extended to sources who, for a variety of reasons, could not speak on a for-attribution basis. In a very tiny number of instances, some identifying characteristics have been withheld or slightly modified to conform with patient privacy laws or for other reasons.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHARLES DUHIGG is an investigative reporter for The New York Times, where he contributes to the newspaper and the magazine. He authored or contributed to Golden Opportunities (2007), a series of articles that examined how companies are trying to take advantage of aging Americans, The Reckoning (2008), which studied the causes and outcomes of the financial crisis, and Toxic Waters (2009), about the worsening pollution in American waters and regulators’ response.

For his work, Mr. Duhigg has received the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, George Polk, Gerald Loeb, and other awards, and he was part of a team of finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. He has appeared on This American Life, The Dr. Oz Show, NPR, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Frontline.

Mr. Duhigg is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale University. Before becoming a journalist, Mr. Duhigg worked in private equity and-for one terrifying day-was a bike messenger in San Francisco.

Mr. Duhigg can acquire bad habits-most notably regarding fried foods-within minutes, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, a marine biologist, and their two sons, whose habits include waking at 5:00 A.M., flinging food at dinnertime, and smiling perfectly.

CHARLES DUHIGG is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Random House Speakers Bureau at 212-572-2013 or [email protected].

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[1] So they measured subjects’ vital signs Reporting for Lisa Allen’s story is based on interviews with Allen. This research study is ongoing and unpublished, and thus researchers were not available for interviews. Basic outcomes, however, were confirmed by studies and interviews with scientists working on similar projects, including A. DelParigi et al., “Successful Dieters Have Increased Neural Activity in Cortical Areas Involved in the Control of Behavior,” International Journal of Obesity 31 (2007): 440-48; Duc Son NT Le et al., “Less Activation in the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in the Reanalysis of the Response to a Meal in Obese than in Lean Women and Its Association with Successful Weight Loss,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 86, no. 3 (2007): 573-79; A. DelParigi et al., “Persistence of Abnormal Neural Responses to a Meal in Postobese Individuals,” International Journal of Obesity 28 (2004): 370-77; E. Stice et al., “Relation of Reward from Food Intake and Anticipated Food Intake to Obesity: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 117, no. 4 (November 2008): 924-35; A. C. Janes et al., “Brain fMRI Reactivity to Smoking-Related Images Before and During Extended Smoking Abstinence,” Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 17 (December 2009): 365-73; D. McBride et al., “Effects of Expectancy and Abstinence on the Neural Response to Smoking Cues in Cigarette Smokers: An fMRI Study,” Neuropsychopharmacology 31 (December 2006): 2728-38; R. Sinha and C. S. Li, “Imaging Stress-and Cue-Induced Drug and Alcohol Craving: Association with Relapse and Clinical Implications,” Drug and Alcohol Review 26, no. 1 (January 2007): 25-31; E. Tricomi, B. W. Balleine, and J. P. O’doherty, “A Specific Role for Posterior Dorsolateral Striatum in Human Habit Learning,” European Journal of Neuroscience 29, no. 11 (June 2009): 2225-32; D. Knoch, P. Bugger, and M. Regard, “Suppressing Versus Releasing a Habit: Frequency-Dependent Effects of Prefrontal Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation,” Cerebral Cortex 15, no. 7 (July 2005): 885-87.

[2] “All our life, so far as it has” William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals, originally published in 1899.

[3] One paper published Bas Verplanken and Wendy Wood, “Interventions to Break and Create Consumer Habits,” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 25, no. 1 (2006): 90 -103; David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, and Jeffrey M. Quinn, “Habits-A Repeat Performance,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 15, no. 4 (2006): 198-202.

[4] The U.S. military, it occurred to me For my understanding of the fascinating topic of the military’s use of habit training, I am indebted to Dr. Peter Schifferle at the School of Advanced Military Studies, Dr. James Lussier, and the many commanders and soldiers who were generous with their time both in Iraq