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The Power of Habit: Charles Duhigg at TEDxTeachersCollege — Transcript

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0:06My name is Charles Duhigg and I'm the
0:08author of this book The Power of Habit.
0:10So, imagine for a minute that
0:12you have this cookie problem. Okay, a
0:15cookie habit. Every day you go up in the
0:17afternoon, let's say you work in a
0:18building in Midtown that's called The
0:21New York Times and on the on the 14th
0:23floor is this cafeteria with this
0:24amazing amazing cookie selection. And
0:27you put this little note on your monitor
0:29that says do not eat the cookie and then
0:31every afternoon you manage to ignore
0:33that note and go upstairs and get a
0:35cookie. And imagine for a minute that
0:37this has caused you to put on a little
0:38bit of weight. Let's say roughly 8.7 lb.
0:43And when I say you, what I actually mean
0:44is me because I'm describing my life
0:48eating cookies. So, I I was really
0:50interested in why I, a successful human
0:52being, won a Pulitzer Prize last week. I
0:54think I'm a pretty smart guy. Why I have
0:56this difficulty resisting cookies,
0:59right? There's a lot of things I can do
1:00in my life. I began researching the
1:02science of habits, what how habits work
1:04and and what I learned is that we're
1:06actually living through this golden age
1:08of understanding the neurology of habit
1:09formation. I ended up writing this book
1:11out of it. And I want to tell you a
1:12little bit about what I learned and what
1:14it has to do with teaching kids and
1:16mindfulness, but in order to do that I
1:17first of all have to tell you a story
1:18about a rat.
1:19Um
1:20Anyone here ever experiment with rats
1:22before?
1:23Anyone ever ride the subway?
1:26Okay, then you've done a lot of
1:27experiments with rats. There's a woman
1:28named Dr. Ann Graybiel who has for years
1:31been doing experiments with rats. She's
1:32a neurologist and for years she was
1:33trying to get sensors into rats' cranium
1:35so she could measure what was going on
1:37inside their skulls.
1:38This took a long time and a lot of rats.
1:41But eventually she got to a point when
1:42she could get about 150 sensors inside a
1:44rat's skull and she could measure its
1:45neurological activity. What she do with
1:47each rat after it woke up from the
1:48surgery was the exact same thing. She
1:50would drop it in the world's simplest
1:51maze. We works the same way every single
1:53time. Click, a partition would move, the
1:55rat's free to run through the maze and
1:56find the chocolate.
1:57Every rat when you drop it in the maze
1:59the first time acts like the world's
2:00laziest animal. It'll like wander up and
2:03down. It'll get to the end. It'll see
2:04the chocolate. It'll go the other
2:05direction. It takes on average about 13
2:07minutes for it to find the chocolate.
2:09And for years people thought that this
2:11is because rats are unusually dumb. And
2:13then if a rat can learn something then
2:15any animal could learn it. But Dr.
2:17Graybiel could actually see inside the
2:18rat's head. And what she saw was kind of
2:20fascinating. This is a simplified
2:21neurological graph the first time a a
2:23rat's dropped in this maze. There's all
2:24these spikes in activity, right?
2:26Basically the rat would like scratch the
2:27walls and the scratching centers of its
2:28brain would light up. Or it'd find the
2:29chocolate and the pleasure centers would
2:31light up. This is what unmediated
2:33learning looks like. So Dr. Graybiel
2:35takes this rat. She drops each of them
2:36in the maze again and again, 150 times
2:38each.
2:39Over time unsurprisingly the rat learns
2:41how to run through the maze faster and
2:42faster and faster find the chocolate.
2:43But what's really interesting is what
2:45happens inside its head.
2:47As the rat learns to run faster and
2:48faster, as finding the chocolate becomes
2:50more of an automatic habit,
2:53the rat starts thinking less and less
2:54and less. This graph on the bottom is a
2:56simplified neurological graph of the
2:58150th iteration through that maze.
3:00What you'll notice is this deep valley
3:01there, right? That's the same valley you
3:03would see if the rat went to sleep.
3:06Now, all of us have habits, right?
3:08There's a There's a researcher named
3:09Wendy Wood who followed around a couple
3:10thousand people to see how much of our
3:12daily behaviors are habits. And what she
3:13found is about 40 to 45% of the
3:16decisions we make actually every day
3:17aren't actually decisions. They're
3:19habits. And if somehow I could get 150
3:22sensors into your head, this is exactly
3:24what I would see.
3:25Your mental activity dropping off in the
3:27middle of that habit. When you
3:29um you know, remember waking up in the
3:31morning and walking in the subway and
3:32now you're at your desk but you don't
3:33remember what happened in the middle. Or
3:35when you decided that morning to have a
3:37salad but you get to lunch and you order
3:38a hamburger just like you did yesterday.
3:41This is what's happening. Your brain is
3:42kind of turning off.
3:44With these two interesting exceptions.
3:46At the beginning of the habit when the
3:47rat would hear the click, there'd be
3:49this burst of activity. And then
3:50essentially the brain would power down.
3:52And then at the end when it found the
3:54chocolate, it's as if the rat would sort
3:55of shake itself awake again and notice
3:57what was going on.
3:58Within neurology, this is such an
4:00important idea and finding that has
4:02become known as what as the habit loop.
4:04And what it says is that every habit has
4:05three components. There's a cue, which
4:07is like an automatic trigger for a
4:08behavior to start. And then a routine,
4:11which is the behavior itself. And then
4:12finally a reward that helps your brain
4:15remember that pattern for the future.
4:17Every habit has cues and rewards. And
4:20for years everyone from Aristotle to
4:21Oprah, when they've talked about habits,
4:23they focused on the routine, on the
4:25behavior. But what we've learned the
4:26last decade is that it's the cue and the
4:28reward that influence how habits
4:31function.
4:32Uh
4:33just to give me an example of this. Does
4:34anyone here exercise?
4:36It's a young audience. Anyone here wish
4:38that they exercise? I realize this.
4:40Okay. So there was an experiment that
4:42was done in Germany where they took a
4:43audience like this and they said, "All
4:44of you should exercise." And then they
4:45took about a third of the audience and
4:47they said, "Okay, look, this is what I
4:48want you to do. Choose a cue, like
4:50always put your running shoes next to
4:52your bed, or go running with the same
4:53group of friends. And then when you get
4:55back from working out, give yourself a
4:58small piece of chocolate.
5:00Right? This is counterintuitive because
5:01not many people exercise in order to eat
5:03chocolate, or at least not quite that
5:05directly.
5:07And yet what the researchers suspected
5:08is that even though all of you
5:10think that you want to exercise, your
5:12brain thinks you're a liar and that you
5:14hate exercise. And the only way that I
5:16can trick you into exercise is to give
5:18yourself a reward you genuinely enjoy,
5:19like a small piece of chocolate. And in
5:21fact, six months after they did this,
5:23they found that 58% of those people were
5:25more likely to be exercising. And they'd
5:27stopped eating the chocolate. Cuz their
5:29head brain had learned there's
5:30endorphins and endocannabinoids, these
5:32neurotransmitters
5:33that reward us for physical activity.
5:36But you kind of have to bootstrap your
5:37brain into believing that those rewards
5:40are real with a reward that you
5:41genuinely enjoy, like chocolate.
5:44All of which brings me kind of
5:46improbably to Starbucks and what
5:48Starbucks can teach us about teaching
5:49and mindfulness.
5:51What does Starbucks sell?
5:54Coffee, right? No, wrong. That Starbucks
5:56doesn't sell coffee kind of Starbucks
5:58kind of sells coffee, right? They they
6:00give you coffee in exchange for your
6:01money. But if you talk to Starbucks,
6:04what they will tell you that they
6:05actually sell is customer service.
6:08This is why they can pay they can charge
6:10you $4.50 for a latte that cost about 13
6:12cents is because when you walk in
6:14there's wood paneling and soft music and
6:16there's someone who asks your name and
6:18they write it in big cursive letters,
6:20right? This Starbucks believes is the
6:23centerpiece of their entire business
6:25model is customer service.
6:28The problem for Starbucks is that most
6:29of their employees are high school
6:31graduates or high school students or
6:32recent high school graduates, people
6:34with no professional experience. And the
6:36problem is many of you know with being a
6:38high high school student or a recent
6:39high school graduate is that you act
6:41like a high schooler or a recent high
6:42school graduate. You act like a
6:44right? Like I acted like a for an
6:46entire decade after I graduated.
6:48And for Starbucks this is a problem
6:49because they had employees who couldn't
6:51deliver customer service. This became
6:53particularly a problem in the age of
6:55YouTube and I'm going to show you why.
6:57Before I show you something, imagine for
6:58a minute that you worked at Starbucks.
7:00You oversee 250 million dollars a year
7:03in advertising. You've had a long day,
7:05you come home from work, you sit on your
7:07couch and you open a beer, you turn on
7:09the TV and this is what you see.
7:11She was a loyal customer of Starbucks,
7:14loved the coffee, loved the service, but
7:16that changed a few weeks ago. This
7:17native New Yorker got steamed, not about
7:20what was inside her cup, but something
7:22written on the outside. That's what she
7:24called Nina Paneda and ordered a special
7:25brew of fully caffeinated 7 On Your
7:28Side.
7:29And then when you looked at it, what did
7:31you think?
7:31I was shocked. I didn't I didn't
7:33understand why. Why would they do that?
7:35Vicky Reveron is talking about this
7:37Starbucks cup. On the side a Starbucks
7:39employee wrote what she ordered, a
7:40caramel Frappuccino. But instead of
7:42scrolling her name on the side, she says
7:44he wrote the B-word. It says
7:48My name is not it's Vicky.
7:52So, if you've ever wondered idly what
7:53$250 million sounds like going up in
7:55flames all at once,
7:59turns out it sounds like my name is in
8:00beep, it's Vicky.
8:02Starbucks went and did an investigation
8:04to figure out what happened here. The
8:05Vicky was served by this kid named
8:06Eduardo, right? 19-year-old kid,
8:08employed for 8 months, he'd been doing a
8:09great job. The night before Vicky comes
8:11in, he had a fight with his mom. And
8:14he's hour seven into an 8-hour shift,
8:16and this woman comes in who orders this
8:18coffee with a bad word on it, drinks the
8:21entire cup of coffee,
8:23goes home, changes clothes into a nice
8:25blue blouse, comes back to the
8:27Starbucks, calls a TV camera, waits 45
8:31minutes for the TV camera to show up,
8:32and then gives this interview.
8:34Which is all a long way of saying,
8:36Eduardo might have been totally right,
8:37right?
8:40But it doesn't matter. For Starbucks,
8:41this is a disaster, right? Like, it
8:43doesn't matter how rude a
8:45customer is, Starbucks delivers customer
8:48service. This is their basic promise.
8:50They are going to treat you nicely
8:52regardless of who you are. So, Howard
8:54Schultz and his team, there's been
8:56incident after incident like this, and
8:57they have this meeting to try and figure
8:59out, how are we going to fix this?
9:01Because this keeps on happening. And
9:02what they discovered, they decide is, we
9:04need to increase our employees'
9:05willpower. What they notice is that
9:07about
9:0810 to 15% of their employees would do
9:10great. And then they would have this one
9:12shift where they would fall apart,
9:14usually about seven, six and a half to
9:16seven hours into a shift. And they
9:18figured what they needed to do is figure
9:19out how to give their employees
9:21willpower to make it through that 8-hour
9:22shift, so they don't do something stupid
9:24like write a bad word on a cup. Now,
9:26luckily for them, there had been a whole
9:27bunch of research that had been done
9:29into willpower. Most of you are probably
9:30familiar with this cuz since you come
9:31from a teaching background, the most
9:33famous of course being the marshmallow
9:34test. They I I you guys have heard of
9:35the marshmallow test?
9:37For anyone who hasn't, this is how it
9:38worked. There was this researcher in the
9:391960s at Stanford. He had a 4-year-old
9:41daughter. He took her and a whole bunch
9:43of her friends and he put them in a room
9:44one by one. He'd put a marshmallow in
9:46front of them and he would say, "Okay,
9:47look, here's the deal. You can eat that
9:49marshmallow.
9:50I'm going to leave the room for 10
9:51minutes. If when I come back, the
9:52marshmallow is still there, then you
9:54will get a second marshmallow."
9:56Now, I actually have myself a 4-year-old
9:58at home, and so I can tell you that
10:00putting a marshmallow in front of a
10:014-year-old is like putting crack cocaine
10:03in front of an addict. Like there's
10:05nothing more tempting. This experiment
10:07has been replicated. Let me show you
10:08some tape of what happens when you put a
10:09marshmallow in front of a 4-year-old.
10:11I'm going to go do something and then
10:12I'll come back.
10:13It smells yummy.
10:16Oh, it smells really good.
10:39Only one of these kids was able to make
10:42it the entire 10 minutes. Let me show
10:44you which one.
10:50How'd you do?
10:52Did you do good?
10:54You did?
10:55You wanted to eat it, didn't you?
10:57Yeah. So, did I tell you I'd give you
10:58another one?
10:59Okay. Now you can have them both.
11:01You need them.
11:07So, this guy, Mischel, he does his
11:08experiment, right? He finds that about
11:1010 to 15% of the 4-year-olds, they could
11:12resist the marshmallow. He writes his
11:14results in late 1960s, publishes it,
11:16nobody cares. Nobody pays any attention.
11:19And a couple years later, his daughter's
11:20in fifth grade, and remember she's one
11:21of the test subjects. He's talking to
11:22her and he's like trying, struggling to
11:24get her to tell him about her day.
11:26And he's asking about her friends, and
11:28she says, "Well, Susie keeps on getting
11:29into trouble, but Jimmy's doing well in
11:31class." And he realizes he's listening
11:33that the kids she says are doing well
11:35are the same kids who had managed to
11:36resist the marshmallow.
11:38So, he goes and he finds them in middle
11:40school. He finds them in high school. He
11:42finds them in college and post college.
11:43It's one of the largest longitudinal
11:44studies that's been done, as many of you
11:45know. And he finds that the kids who
11:48managed to resist the marshmallow were
11:50more successful than their peers by like
11:53a stick to a statistically significant
11:55amount. He finds that they were getting
11:57their homework done more frequently on
11:58time. They're showing up for class more
11:59time. They were more popular in high
12:01school. Not necessarily because they
12:02were like prettier or richer, but
12:04because they were just better at being
12:06friends. They got into better colleges.
12:08They got better jobs, higher paying
12:10jobs. They got married earlier and
12:11stayed married longer. It There's As
12:14many of you know, there's literally been
12:15hundreds of studies on willpower since
12:16then, most notably by Angela Duckworth
12:17at the University of Pennsylvania. And
12:19all of them have found that willpower
12:21seems to be the single greatest
12:23correlate with future success, right?
12:24More so than high IQ, more so than
12:26having rich parents with a lot of
12:27resources. Willpower seems to be this
12:30thing that prepares people for life.
12:33And for Starbucks, this is fantastic
12:34because this is exactly what they want.
12:35They want to teach their employees
12:37willpower. But the question is how do
12:39you teach people willpower? And the
12:41answer is
12:42through habits. By choosing a reaction
12:45ahead of time
12:46and by making people conscious of what
12:49they're going to do when they feel hot
12:50blooded in a cold blooded state. Within
12:52economics, this is known as the hot cold
12:54empathy gap. That basically, in the
12:56morning when you wake up and you've had
12:57a big breakfast, you are certain that
12:59you are going to eat healthy and have a
13:00salad that day. And as soon as you walk
13:02into the cafeteria and you're hot
13:03blooded, you decide the hamburger looks
13:06a lot better. So, how do you preserve
13:07that decision making from the morning
13:10into the moment of temptation? How do
13:12you create more willpower?
13:15What's really interesting is if you look
13:16at the tape, if turn off the sound on
13:17this one.
13:18The kids who fail at this are kids who
13:21constantly remind themselves about the
13:23marshmallow. Like watch this kid, even
13:25when he tries to ignore it, he hits the
13:27plate and he reminds himself These kids
13:29like they all do these things where they
13:30can't help not paying attention to the
13:33marshmallow.
13:34Now, contrast that with the kid that I
13:36showed you who actually resisted for 10
13:38minutes. When researchers asked him what
13:40he did, he said that halfway through he
13:42decided that he was not going to look at
13:45the marshmallow. That he was not going
13:47to pay any attention to it. That if he
13:49had to think about the marshmallow, he
13:50was going to imagine a frame around it.
13:53So that it reminded him of a photo.
13:56This is how we teach willpower.
13:58We teach people to make a decision ahead
14:00of time
14:02that they apply when they see a cue.
14:04And then we give them a reward. That kid
14:06who resisted the marshmallow, he said
14:07that he had decided ahead of time if he
14:09could make it the whole 10 minutes, he
14:10was going to shove both marshmallows
14:12into his mouth at the same time. And
14:13that's exactly what he did.
14:17So, how do you change a habit? How do I
14:18change my cookie habit?
14:20The answer is by premeditating the cues
14:23and rewards. By deciding ahead of time
14:25what you're going to see when you see
14:26that trigger, and then what your reward
14:29is going to be. And it has to be
14:30specific. Saying, "I'm going to lose
14:32weight." doesn't work. Saying, "I'm not
14:34going to eat a cookie today." does not
14:37bring you success.
14:38What you instead do is you say, "At 3:15
14:41in the afternoon, instead of going up to
14:43the cafeteria, I'm going to stand up and
14:45I'm going to walk over to someone's desk
14:47cuz I think part of the reason why I'm
14:48going up to the cafeteria is that it's
14:50fun to gossip with my friends and all my
14:52friends are in the cafeteria. So,
14:53instead of going up there, I'm going to
14:54look for someone else to go gossip
14:56with." And at 3:15 you stand up, that's
14:58your cue. You walk over to someone
15:00else's desk, in this case a guy named
15:01Michael Barbaro,
15:03and you gossip about whoever happens to
15:04be out of earshot for the next 20
15:06minutes.
15:07And you decide, "I'm going to gossip
15:09hard."
15:11That's your reward. And then you go back
15:13to your desk.
15:15And
15:16I don't really like to brag about these
15:17things, but since then I've lost about
15:1921 lb and it's worked out pretty well
15:21for me.
15:22Thanks.
15:24The point being,
15:26this is what we know about habits.
15:29They have cues and rewards.
15:31And if you decide ahead of time, if you
15:33engage in this mindfulness in your life
15:35where you're aware of what's driving
15:37these nearly subconscious behaviors
15:39where your brain actually turns off,
15:41if you indulge yourself to pay attention
15:44to the things that otherwise kind of
15:45happen at the peripheries of our
15:46consciousness, we know from study after
15:48study, you have the ability to change
15:51any habit in your life. Thank you very
15:53much.

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