The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change

by Charles Duhigg

Esto es bastante simplista y deja fuera muchos hábitos. ¿Cómo aplicamos este modelo al ejemplo de sacar el coche del garaje?

Otra simplificación. Parecería como si la clave de vender fuera solamente crear un deseo y el producto fuera irrelevante.

From now on the author applies this “Golden Rule” to anything he considers causally relevant for a desired result. Anything can be called a habit.

There is a huge difference between an addiction, like alcoholism, and other habits in individuals’ lives. Let alone between people’s habits and the way a big organization (like a big finally) works. But anything that the author likes can be presented as a new habit—or better still, a keystone habit.

This story is full of causal leaps of faith. From improving work safety to improving productivity, sales, profits, etc., there is a long chain of supposed causal connections that goes completely unexplained. It simply suits the story well.

The following examples show that anything can be called a “keystone habit”.

Come on, give us a break! Willpower is a habit too?

The author confuses two things. One of the reasons good habits can be effective is that they make willpower unnecessary, and willpower is a scarce resource. But that doesn’t mean that willpower is a habit.

All these stories about successful companies and individuals are full of unproven causal connections and survivorship bias. Starbucks’s competitors did not have keystone habits and willpower? And what is willpower in an organization anyway?

So the reason for Starbucks success is that it has taught its employees willpower to put their emotions aside? Come on!

Exactly. It is like energy, a scarce resource. Not a habit, which is quite different.

So the reason of Starbuck’s success is that baristas mustered enough self-control and did not yell to customers when they were under pressure? What a simplification!

The footnote is yet another example of a act-checking email that refutes the author’s simplified and self-serving interpretation.

And yet another habit loop drawing. Is there any conceivable human act that cannot be presented as a habit?

This has been a common view in management studies for ages.

Now we have “truces” as a key element to success. What do truces have to do with habits?

The author only presents the nurses’ view about the alleged conflict at the hospital and applies it to a single case. What about doctors, management and other professionals’ view of the facts?

This is a questionable interpretation of the facts. A different interpretation is that at the end of the day the doctor bears responsibility, the buck stops with him, and it is the doctor who has to make difficult decisions in delicate situations and assume the consequences.

A “healthy” balance of power in an organization in the way the author suggests can be a recipe for chaos.

Another footnote that contradicts the author’s thesis.

Exactly.

These “crisis” were the result of extraordinary conditions. Changing the routines does not guarantee in any way that there will not be another crisis somewhere else.

A nurse again. The only statements are from nurses.

Again the fact-checking footnote contradicts the story. But the nurses’ self-serving narrative is too good for the journalist to let go.

Finally a doctor is quoted saying something. But only to reinforce the story.

Listening habits? Again, anything is a habit.

This is absurd. Most songs in the radio are very similar (sound familiar, in the author’s words) and often people like songs that stand out, that are different in something. This book is full of spurious causal connections and phony causal explanations.

Anything can be presented as a loop.

There is a better explanation in one of Cass Sunstein’s books.

Maybe, but the two situations are completely different. This is another example of the arbitrary associations the author bases his arguments on.

It is not dressing something new in old habits. It is attracting the listener’s attention (songs) and avoiding the consumer’s concerns (pregnant woman). This has nothing to do with habit, whatever that all-encompassing concept may be.

Political change is only “one explanation”?

Agreed, but is this a habit? Anything is a habit?

It may have happened for this reason or not. Who knows. And there were probably a dozen different causes, as with any complex social event.

Social peer pressure is a habit too?

Of course. There are many more weak ties than strong ties.

And, of course, peer pressure is a habit. We will soon see the loop drawing.

Social pressure and habits are completely different things. This analogy is more than far-fetched.

How can you speak of a social habit if it was the first time in the city’s history that a demonstration like this had taken place?

How can it be a habit if we almost never have to fight for our lives? An instinct is different from a habit.

If only it were that easy. Paradoxically, the previous chapter has finished with an exhortation that it is that easy, all we need is the will to change.