habits

You can make a habit less likely if you change the environment so the bad habit requires more time.

The water is habits, the unthinking choices and invisible decisions that surround us every day—and which, just by looking at them, become visible again.

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.

First, find a simple and obvious cue. Second, clearly define the rewards.

If you dress a new something in old habits, it’s easier for the public to accept it.

If you believe you can change—if you make it a habit—the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.

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.

This is the third aspect of how social habits drive movements: For an idea to grow beyond a community, it must become self-propelling. And the surest way to achieve that is to give people new habits that help them figure out where to go on their own.

That’s why no one was using Febreze, Stimson realized. The product’s cue—the thing that was supposed to trigger daily use—was hidden from the people who needed it most. Bad scents simply weren’t noticed frequently enough to trigger a regular habit.