If you want to lose weight, study your habits to determine why you really leave your desk for a snack each day, and then find someone else to take a walk with you, to gossip with at their desk rather than in the cafeteria, a group that tracks weight-loss goals together, or someone who also wants to keep a stock of apples, rather than chips, nearby.

AA succeeds because it helps alcoholics use the same cues, and get the same reward, but it shifts the routine.

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.”

This explains why habits are so powerful: They create neurological cravings.

THE FRAMEWORK: • Identify the routine • Experiment with rewards • Isolate the cue • Have a plan

Eugene showed that habits, as much as memory and reason, are at the root of how we behave. We might not remember the experiences that create our habits, but once they are lodged within our brains they influence how we act—often without our realization.

Movements don’t emerge because everyone suddenly decides to face the same direction at once. They rely on social patterns that begin as the habits of friendship, grow through the habits of communities, and are sustained by new habits that change participants’ sense of self.

He created a craving. And that craving, it turns out, is what makes cues and rewards work. That craving is what powers the habit loop.

You don’t have to believe in God, but you do need the capacity to believe that things will get better.