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- Author: Charles Duhigg
- Full Title: The Power of Habit
- Category: #books
- “When I started coming to meetings after the truck accident, someone asked for volunteers to help put away the chairs,” he told me. “I raised my hand. It wasn’t a big thing, it took like five minutes, but it felt good to do something that wasn’t all about me. I think that started me on a different path.
- But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. “Exercise spills over,” said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. “There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.”
- It’s not that a family meal or a tidy bed causes better grades or less frivolous spending. But somehow those initial shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits take hold.
- “Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage,” one Cornell professor wrote in 1984. “Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win.”4.14
- Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.4.15
- 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.”
- So we try to figure out how to give our employees the self-discipline they didn’t learn in high school.”
- the company developed new training materials that spelled out routines for employees to use when they hit rough patches.
- loops. When Travis started at Starbucks, for instance, his manager introduced him to the habits right away. “One of the hardest things about this job is dealing with an angry customer,” Travis’s manager told him. “When someone comes up and starts yelling at you because they got the wrong drink, what’s your first reaction?” “I don’t know,” Travis said. “I guess I feel kind of scared. Or angry.” “That’s natural,” his manager said. “But our job is to provide the best customer service, even when the pressure’s on.” The manager flipped open the Starbucks manual, and showed Travis a page that was largely blank. At the top, it read, “When a customer is unhappy, my plan is to … ” “This workbook is for you to imagine unpleasant situations, and write out a plan for responding,” the manager said. “One of the systems we use is called the LATTE method. We Listen to the customer, Acknowledge their complaint, Take action by solving the problem, Thank them, and then Explain why the problem occurred.