Previous
Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Power of Habit, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Habits, Human Behavior, and Success
Habit Change and Personal Growth
Social Habits and Cultural Influence
The Moral Consequences of Habits
Summary
Analysis
Tony Dungy, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ head coach, feels hopeful during the closing minutes of a game against the San Diego Chargers. Perhaps he shouldn’t—the Buccaneers are one of the worst football teams in the league, and they’re losing. For 17 years, Dungy had been trying and failing to get head coach jobs. Teams didn’t like his unusual coaching philosophy: that players have to change their habits in order to win. Specifically, he believes in the “Golden Rule of habit change,” which advocates for keeping the cue and reward the same while changing the routine. After Dungy got his job at the Buccaneers, he quickly turned the team into one of the NFL’s most successful teams. Other coaches quickly started imitating his methods.
The “Golden Rule of habit change” allows people to directly replace one habit with another by tapping into their existing habit loops (rather than developing a totally novel one). Tony Dungy’s coaching strategy shows how habit change can make organizations more successful by transforming the principles on which they operate. But it also suggests that many organizations are resistant to restructuring themselves around evidence-based habit change strategies. (Of course, Duhigg hopes that his book will help managers take these strategies more seriously in the future.)
Active
Themes
During the game against San Diego, the Buccaneers get into formation. Rather than teaching them hundreds of different formations, coach Dungy only taught them a few—he wanted his players to act so automatically that they would be faster than anyone else. And it works: unlike the Buccaneers, who have mastered their few strategies, the San Diego players briefly hesitate. The Buccaneers, in contrast, react reflexively, and their speediness wins them the game.
Dungy’s strategy is based on the insight that habits save time and energy over decisions. This enabled the Buccaneers to play faster and more efficiently, which gave them a significant edge in the game. While Dungy’s strategy restricted the Buccaneers’ range by limiting them to just a handful of possible plays, their success shows that efficiency was more important than flexibility. In other words, Dungy proved that football strategy is one of the many challenges better addressed through automation than creativity.
Active
Themes
In 1934 New York, Bill Wilson—who struggled with alcoholism—met an old drinking buddy in his basement. But his friend refused a drink: he was sober. He said that his secret was religion. When Wilson went to rehabilitation a month later, he started having terrible pain and hallucinations from the withdrawal. He called out to God, and he suddenly felt better. He never drank again. In fact, he went on to found Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which now helps millions of people quit drinking every year. Programs to change all sorts of destructive habits have copied its 12-step program—even though it’s not based on science. Rather than addressing people’s psychological and neurological motivations for drinking, AA focuses on habits.
Active
Themes
AA essentially ignores the science around alcoholism. Bill Wilson came up with the 12 steps during a flash of insight in a single night. AA focuses on spirituality, doesn’t include addiction professionals, and hasn’t adapted to new discoveries in addiction research. Academics long criticized it, but now some believe that it succeeds by using the Golden Rule of habit change. It teaches people to understand the cues and rewards that drive them to drink and then replace drinking with a different routine. AA members have to make a list of their triggers, admit their errors to others, and go to meetings that give them the same social rewards and release from anxiety as going to a bar.
Active
Themes
Get the entire The Power of Habit LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
The German neurologist Ulf Mueller implanted devices in the basal ganglia of five alcoholics who had repeatedly failed to quit drinking. By emitting electrical signals, these devices interrupted the habit loop and stopped the men’s alcohol cravings. They largely drank because it was their only tool for coping with stress, but they soon learned to switch drinking out for different routines like AA meetings and therapy. Again, new routines were key to changing habits.
Scientists have adapted AA’s techniques to address all sorts of other bad habits. For instance, Mandy, a chronic nail-biter, desperately wanted to stop. Brad Dufrene, a psychology PhD student, had her describe the cue for her behavior and then analyze the underlying reward. The cue was a feeling of tension in her hand. The reward was a feeling of physical stimulation. He told her to make a check mark on an index card every time she felt the cue, and another every time she overrode the nail-biting habit. In just a month, she stopped biting her nails, suggesting that habit reversal can be very simple—it’s just about identifying cues and rewards and then switching out the routine. This can work for any sort of habit, ranging from snacking to smoking.
After becoming the Buccaneers’ head coach, Tony Dungy made the team repeatedly practice their most important moves until those moves were automatic. He figured out what visual cues they were looking for at the beginning of every play and then changed their routines. For instance, instead of looking at all of the opposing players and trying to choose a formation, Dungy taught his defense to automatically adjust their formation by looking at the opposing players one at a time—a much quicker and more efficient technique.
Active
Themes
The Buccaneers gradually improved. After failing to make the playoffs for fifteen years, they made it three years straight. But they also fell apart in high-stakes playoff games—at key moments, the players abandoned Dungy’s method and went back to their old ways. Dungy got fired—and the next year, the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl using his techniques.
Active
Themes
At an AA meeting, a man named John explains how he quit drinking after injuring his son while driving drunk. He then relapsed two years later when his mother got cancer. He got into another, more severe car accident while drunk driving, and then he started going to AA, which has kept him sober for seven years. Duhigg explains that stories like John’s show the limits of habit replacement: when life gets too stressful, people often relapse into their former bad habits.
Active
Themes
Researchers have also repeatedly found that former alcoholics who believe in a higher power are more likely to stay sober during stressful periods. This is because “believ[ing] in something” helps people learn to believe in their own capacity for change. Similarly, AA can succeed because it teaches people to believe in the program itself and shows them that it has worked for others.
After leaving the Buccaneers, Tony Dungy moved to the Indianapolis Colts. He used the same techniques, and the Colts followed the same pattern: they were successful during the season but struggled in the playoffs. Then, Dungy’s son committed suicide. After the tragedy, the players felt like they owed it to him to play well. They started taking his techniques more seriously and bonding with one another. In other words, they started to believe in their own team. However, people don’t need a tragedy to learn to believe—more often, they just need to surround themselves with a community of new people. But the Colts had both.
Active
Themes
In 2006, the Colts had a strong season and won their first two playoff games. But during the third, against the Patriots, they started overthinking things in the first half, and they fell far behind. At halftime, Dungy reminded them to stick to their habits. They did, and they pulled ahead. In the final few seconds, the Patriots were positioned to score a game-winning touchdown, but the Colts’ cornerback intercepted a key pass by following Dungy’s rules. The Colts won the Super Bowl two weeks later, and many of the players credited their victory on believing in Dungy’s method.
Active
Themes
While there’s no automatic formula for changing habits, Duhigg concludes, this chapter has illustrated two key principles. The first is the Golden Rule: use the same cue and reward but change the routine. The second is that for new habits to stick, people have to believe they can change. One of the best ways to do this is by finding support from other people.
