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Keystone habits both represent and demonstrate the way that people can take control over their lives—and leaders can take control over their organizations—by adjusting their habits.
Keystone habits are the initial, often insignificant habits that individuals and organizations modify in order to pave the way for much broader transformation. For instance, Lisa Allen gained the confidence to lose weight, improve her sleep schedule, and plan for her future by embracing a single keystone habit change: quitting smoking. Similarly, Alcoa transformed under Paul O’Neill’s leadership by focusing on the keystone issue of worker safety. In both these cases, the keystone habit might have seemed irrelevant or insignificant, but it was actually the key ingredient that brought about the deeper transformation that both Allen and Alcoa needed.
Charles Duhigg argues that keystone habits help people achieve broader change in three ways: they build people’s confidence by giving them “small wins,” help them create new systems and structures that allow other habits to form later on, and change organizations’ culture. But all three of these advantages are based on the same common principle. Namely, by changing some aspects of their lives, people build the capacity and confidence to change other things, too. Thus, Duhigg uses the concept of keystone habits to reaffirm his belief that people have much more control over their habits, feelings, and identities than they think. Just as people can learn to control their individual habits by carefully changing their routines, Duhigg affirms, they can take control of their entire lives by identifying the most important keystone habits to change first.
Keystone Habits Quotes in The Power of Habit
The The Power of Habit quotes below all refer to the symbol of Keystone Habits. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Prologue Quotes
She needed a goal in her life, she thought. Something to work toward.
So she decided, sitting in the taxi, that she would come back to Egypt and trek through the desert.
It was a crazy idea, Lisa knew. She was out of shape, overweight, with no money in the bank. She didn’t know the name of the desert she was looking at or if such a trip was possible. None of that mattered, though. She needed something to focus on. Lisa decided that she would give herself one year to prepare. And to survive such an expedition, she was certain she would have to make sacrifices.
In particular, she would need to quit smoking.
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In his prologue, Duhigg explains how Lisa Allen miraculously turned her life around. For decades, she drank, smoked, overate, accumulated debt, and couldn’t keep a job. She was deeply unhappy because of these bad habits—and then her husband divorced her. She took a trip to Egypt to try and get her mind off the divorce, but instead, the opposite happened: her desperation and misery consumed her. She hit rock bottom. And this is what motivated her to change: she knew that she needed to do something to turn her life around. She set a goal for herself (trekking through the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam quae corporis. Impedit non ut. Incidunt rerum est. Aperiam doloremque eum. Animi soluta perspiciatis. Ut minima autem. Modi omnis iure. Sint qui qui. Qui similique praesentium. Ex consequatur magnam. Aliquid iste enim. Sequi aut maxime. Adipisci voluptate et. Voluptas suscipit alias. In et eveniet. Eaque et repellendus. Dolores aut voluptatibus. Voluptatem qui voluptatum.
Chapter 4 Quotes
Where should a would-be habit master start? Understanding keystone habits holds the answer to that question: The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.
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In his fourth chapter, Duhigg uses the story of Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill to introduce the concept of keystone habits—or the key habits on which other habits depend. By identifying and changing keystone habits first, people can make it easier to change other habits further down the line. For instance, O’Neill focused on improving worker safety at Alcoa. This allowed him to unite divided factions in the company, change the company’s management culture, and empower its workers. These shifts made a series of other important changes much easier—and these other changes ultimately made Alcoa much more profitable. Similarly, an individual Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimu
Small wins are exactly what they sound like, and are part of how keystone habits create widespread changes. A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves.
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The first and most straightforward way that keystone habits enable broader habit change is by providing small wins. When people succeed at one thing, they tend to pursue their subsequent goals with greater confidence, comfort, and dedication. Thus, when people successfully achieve minor goals, they set themselves up to pursue and achieve major goals later on. Every small win makes a slightly larger one seem achievable, so over time, people can gradually work their way up to major habit changes. In short, small wins are valuable because they help people build momentum. And momentum is a crucial part of habit Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti s
O’Neill’s experiences with infant mortality illustrate the second way that keystone habits encourage change: by creating structures that help other habits to flourish. In the case of premature deaths, changing collegiate curriculums for teachers started a chain reaction that eventually trickled down to how girls were educated in rural areas, and whether they were sufficiently nourished when they became pregnant. And O’Neill’s habit of constantly pushing other bureaucrats to continue researching until they found a problem’s root causes overhauled how the government thought about problems like infant mortality.
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Duhigg argues that keystone habits contribute to further, long-term improvement in three ways. The first is that they create small wins, and the third is that they enable change in an organization’s culture. But here, he explains the second: keystone habits “creat[e] structures that help other habits to flourish.” Paul O’Neill learned this principle while analyzing infant mortality data for the government. He realized that changing college biology curriculums could address infant mortality by improving high school biology instruction and getting better health and nutrition information to under-resourced young mothers. He came to this solution by doing three things. First, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusant
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Keystone Habits Symbol Timeline in The Power of Habit
The timeline below shows where the symbol Keystone Habits appears in The Power of Habit. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prologue: The Habit Cure
...active. Like everyone else in the scientists’ study, Allen started by changing a single “ keystone habit .” (For her, it was smoking.) This taught her how to reprogram her other habits....
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Chapter 4: Keystone Habits, or the Ballad of Paul O’Neill: Which Habits Matter Most
...with one small but powerful habit, which created a chain reaction across the organization. Such keystone habits are valuable because they can help people “shift, dislodge, and remake” other habits.
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Keystone habits also make a difference in people’s lives. For instance, people who start exercising tend to...
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Phelps’s keystone habits were successful because they offered small wins. Small wins convince people to keep trying by...
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...helped dramatically reduce the U.S.’s infant mortality rate. They show that beyond providing small wins, keystone habits also create “structures that help other habits to flourish.”
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People can also apply keystone habits to their lives. For instance, doctors used to ask obese patients to lose weight by...
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...the executive who failed to report it. This demonstrates the third and final benefit of keystone habits : they change organizations’ culture. For instance, the greatest predictor of success at the U.S....
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...to become the U.S. secretary of the treasury. Other companies have adopted his focus on keystone habits , and Alcoa’s safety record continues to improve because of O’Neill’s inspiration.
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