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The science behind small wins
00:55:36
So you want to change a habit — or maybe start something new. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Charles Duhigg's book, "The Power of Habit," explores how habits are made, and the cues and rewards that shape our behavior. He spoke with Amna...
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, everyone, it's Amna Nawaz. Welcome to our PBS podcast, Settle In. So it's the start of a new year. A lot of you probably set some New Year's resolutions, and I know a lot of you can feel frustrated when they end up falling by the wayside. Well, today we're going to talk to somebody who's going to help you stick to them. We're going to talk to a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, an author whose seminal book called the Power of Habit helps you to. To change your habits and keep good ones. His name is Charles Duhigg. His book has sold millions of copies worldwide. We talked about how to change your habits, the science of small wins, and how you can set reachable goals. We talked about how to get back on track when you fall off. And we also talked about his most recent book, which is called Super Communicators, and how you can have great conversations. So settle in and enjoy what I think is a great conversation with author Charles Duhi. Charles Duhigg, welcome to Settle In. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [01:01]
B
Thank you for having me.
- [01:04]
A
So we are talking at the beginning of this year, a time a lot of people are making resolutions, trying to set new habits. You know a lot about this from the book that most people know you from, which was the Power of Habit. You have another book I want to talk about called Super Communicators, which is your most recent book. And we will talk about this, but I want to jump into this book first, the Power of Habit, because, God, just when you step back for a second, it sold more than 3 million copies. Right. Spent years on the bestsellers list. Did that surprise you? Why do you think it resonated so much with people?
- [01:43]
B
I should explain why I wrote this book, which is that when I wrote it, I basically was having trouble controlling my own habits. You know, I was working as a reporter at the New York Times. I had won fancy awards, and I thought to myself, if I'm so smart and talented, why can't I get myself to wake up and go running in the morning, right? Why can't I resist eating a donut when I pass the break room? And so I thought to myself, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write a book about the science of habits. Because that way I can call up habit experts and I can say, you know, if I've got this friend who has this problem, how would you recommend he. He improves?
- [02:20]
A
Yeah.
- [02:21]
B
And I think that the same instinct that I had is an Instinct that many of us, which is that oftentimes there are small parts of our lives that we struggle with inexplicably. And it bothers us. It bothers us that we're not able to. To resist that donut or that we're not able to. To force ourselves to go running more easily in the morning. And I wanted to understand, is there a science behind this? That if you understand the science, makes it all easier? And the answer was yes, absolutely.
- [02:50]
A
In the years since it came out, I'm curious what kind of response you've gotten. Do you hear from people who read the book and give you feedback on how it changed their lives or didn't really? What do they tell you?
- [02:59]
B
Like, even now, I think it's where for 13 years after the book came out, I still get four to five emails a day from readers, a day off.
- [03:07]
A
What are they saying?
- [03:09]
B
Well, it's really interesting because oftentimes what they say is exactly the thing that I was struggling with is they say something like, you know, I'm really, I'm a great dad. I'm really successful at work, but I just have trouble like I avoiding that third cup of coffee. And it. And it keeps me up at night and it really bothers me. And of course, in the greater scheme of things, that doesn't matter that much. But we've all felt that frustration then. Sometimes I hear from folks who say things like, you know, I struggled with drinking for years, and it wasn't until I understood how a habit works, what the neuro. Neurological structure of a habit is that I was able to figure out how to change my behavior. And all of those are really, really satisfying and gratifying to receive. Because the truth is that we are not just the sum of the big decisions we make. We're not just the sum of the. The. The one day that we get the deal at work or the, the big workout that we had in the gym. We are the sum of the small choices that we make every single day. And the more control, the more power we have over those choices, the more we get to decide who we are and how happy we're gonna be.
- [04:14]
A
I love that idea. We are the sum of all the small choices we make. So when you were researching it and writing it, you wanted to change your habits. What? Exercising every morning, resisting that donut. Were you able to. Did it work?
- [04:25]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. And to explain how I should explain the most fundamental thing that I learned when I was talking to experts, which is when we think about a habit, we tend to think of it as. As one thing, right? There's this behavior that I want to change. But actually, if we look at how a habit exists inside our brains, what we see is that every habit is made up of three parts. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to start, and then there's a routine, the behavior itself, what we think of as the habit. And then finally, there's a reward. Every habit you have in your life delivers a reward to you, whether you're aware of it or not. And a lot of our life is actually habits. A researcher named Wendy Wood studied how much of what we do every day is a conscious decision and how much is a habit. And she found that 40 to 45% of what we do every day is a habit. It's essentially our brain saying, oh, there's a cue, and I'm going to do this automatic routine. I'm not even going to think about it. I'm going to make it almost feel like it's effortless, and then there's going to be some reward that's delivered to me, whether I'm aware of that reward or not. And the reason why this is so powerful.
- [05:30]
A
45%. That's incredible.
- [05:31]
B
45%, right? Almost half of what we do every day.
- [05:34]
A
Yeah.
- [05:35]
B
And the reason why this is so powerful is because what we have learned is that if you can identify the cues and rewards that shape your behaviors, then you can change your habits much more easily. Right. It's those cues and those rewards that give us the leverage point to change how we behave.
- [05:54]
A
There's a part in the book where you explain exactly what a habit is. You say each habit means relatively little on its own over time. The meals we order, what we say to our kids each night, whether we save or we spend, how often we exercise, the empathy we automatically show others, and the way we organize our thoughts and work routines have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, and financial happiness. What part of the brain, when you're talking about what part of the brain is actually in charge of all those little small decisions of making those habits?
- [06:25]
B
So there's a part of a brain, a part of our brain known as the basal ganglia that every animal on Earth has, and it's critical to evolution, because what the basal. Basal ganglia does is it just creates habits. That's its entire job. Your brain is what's known as a cognitive miser. It wants to avoid using energy as much as possible. And so what it tries to do is it tries to make any Consistent pattern in your life into a habit. It tries to make it happen automatically so that you don't have to think as hard about the behavior. And if you think about it, this makes sense, because if, when you were walking down the path, you had to decide each time whether to pick up a rock or pick up an apple and take a bite of it, it would be exhausting, Right? So what our brain does is it starts building these habits. Habits that allow us to walk, habits that allow us to back the car out of the driveway, Habits that allow us to decide what to eat when we walk into the cafeteria. Because even though we said this morning we were going to have a salad, when we walk in, all the cues are there, and we just get the same sandwich that we get every single day, even though we wanted to eat something more healthily. Our brain will try and make anything into a habit that it can because of the basal ganglia. And this is very, very important to how we succeed. But it also means that sometimes we fall prey to it, and then it can take over when we don't want it to.
- [07:43]
A
And is there an evolutionary aspect to this? Has the way that we form habits, or how quickly they form, how deeply they become embedded, has that changed?
- [07:53]
B
Absolutely. What we know is that the basal ganglia is one of the oldest structures within the brain, and it hasn't changed that much over the millennia. But what has changed is that as it's become more integrated into the other parts of the brain, Particularly the prefrontal cortex, which is where higher cognition occurs, what we've seen is that mental habits have become much more a part of the human repertoire. If you think about it, there's a number of. Of aspects of this. If you think about religion, for instance, Religion is oftentimes a codification of a set of cultural and mental habits that, as a society, we've decided we want to encourage or we want to discourage. And so one of the things that we know is that when I mentioned that 45% of what we do every day is a habit, a lot of those are physical behaviors, But a number of them are actually mental behaviors. Right. Do I get upset when someone cuts me off in traffic when I get to the. When I'm waiting in line to check out at the shopping market, Do I get bored and pull out my phone? Or do I let myself kind of, like, daydream and think about the meeting that's coming up tomorrow? Those habits have become much more important, those mental habits, in determining how successful we are.
- [09:05]
A
I mean, one of the Most important parts of your book is as you explain how habits are made, how they take over parts of our lives, you talk about the fact that we can change our habits. It is possible, right? How do we do that?
- [09:19]
B
So there's this. There's a saying that we have. I want to break a bad habit. And it's a misnomer because it makes us think that we can extinguish a behavior very easily. And the truth is, with willpower, you oftentimes can extinguish a behavior for a while. But that cue, routine, reward in your brain, that. That habit loop, it'll always exist. So the best thing to do is, instead of saying, I want to extinguish a habit, is to say, I want to change a habit. So how do we do that? Well, the first thing we do is we have to figure out what is the cue and the reward that is prompting this behavior. So a good example is that when I was working in the New York Times and I was working on this book, every afternoon, I would go up and I would eat a cookie in the cafeteria, and I started putting on a little bit of weight. So I put these notes on my computer that say, no cookies today. And somehow every afternoon, I would manage to ignore that note and go up and get a cookie. And so I was talking to researchers, and they were like, okay, if you want to change this habit, first you got to figure out what the cue is. And all cues, in general, fall into one of five categories. It's either a time of day, a particular place, the presence of certain other people, a specific emotion, or a preceding behavior that's become ritualized. And they said, okay, whenever you have the cookie urge, just write down those five things. What time is it? Who's standing near you? Where are you? And I realized pretty quickly, it always hit between, like, 3:15 and 3:45 in the afternoon. It was clearly a time of day, was the cue for my cookie habit. Then I had to figure out what the reward was. And I told the researchers. I was like, oh, this is easy. The reward's the cookie. Like, I love you.
- [10:50]
A
Clearly, right?
- [10:51]
B
Yeah. And they were like, no, no, no. You have to understand, a cookie is like a. A bundle of, like, a dozen different rewards all in one tasty package.
- [10:59]
A
What. Explain that to me.
- [11:01]
B
Well, so is the reward from eating the cookie, is it that. That. That the sugar. Like, the sugar gives me a burst of energy?
- [11:07]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [11:08]
B
Or is it just the taste of the sugar that I like it? And so they said, look, next time you Go up instead of getting a cookie to see if it's the sugar, take some Splenda and just rub it on your tongue and see if that satisfies the craving for a cookie. So I tried that.
- [11:21]
A
You do that in your office break room?
- [11:23]
B
I did it.
- [11:23]
A
Did anyone see you do this?
- [11:26]
B
Somebody looked at me and they're like, what's going on in there? That's a little weird. But I told them it was for science, so it's okay. But that, that didn't work. I still wanted the cookie. So the next day I thought maybe it's the, the energy I get from the sugar. So I, I drank a, A, an espresso instead of having a cookie, and I still wanted the cookie. I experimented with these different rewards every day, doing different things to see if it satisfied the craving as well as a cookie did. Until one day I realized when I went up to the cafeteria to get the cookie, I would see some friends in the cafeteria and I'd go and I'd get my cookie, and as I was eating it, I'd go over and I talk to them, and we would, like, gossip for 10 minutes. And I realized it was the gossip, it was the socialization that was the reward for me. So I came up with a new habit loop. What I said was, okay, I want to come up with a new behavior that corresponds to the old cue and then deliver something similar to the old reward. So I would set my alarm for 3:30. When my alarm went off at 3:30, I would stand up, I'd look for someone in the newsroom to go chat with and gossip with and just have a bit of socialization. And then I would go over and I would do it. And for 10 or 15 minutes, I talk to them. And then I'd go back to my desk and the cookie urge totally disappeared.
- [12:38]
A
Because after how long, how many times did you have to do that, really?
- [12:41]
B
I mean, it took like a week, a week and a half. Like it, huh? That's the thing is that, is that these habits, they feel really strong because when our basal ganglia is in charge of our brain kind of turns off, right? We're in the grip of a habit and we start behaving automatically, thoughtlessly. In fact, people who have nail biting habits, for instance, will tell you they didn't even realize they were biting their nails until they found their fingers in their mouth. So they can feel very strong and durable when we're in the grip of them. But once we pull them into the light, once we pull them into the prefrontal cortex. Once we start making decisions, habits prove to be very, very delicate, and we can change them much more easily than we think we can, as long as we pay attention to the cues and rewards driving that behavior and look for a new behavior that corresponds to the old cue and delivers something similar to the old reward.
- [13:31]
A
So knowing all this, once you've unpacked all of this and looked at the science and you understand why you're doing things the way you are and everyone around you is. I'm just curious, from your personal perspective, does it completely change the way you see the world around you and everyone around you? Is this just constantly how you're viewing people is through the system of habits?
- [13:52]
B
Well, my children would tell you that perhaps I do it a little bit too much, that they're a little.
- [13:58]
A
They're like, enough about the habit. Lord, dad.
- [14:00]
B
Yeah, but I think so. I mean, I think one of the things that, like, I realized writing. Writing. The power of habit was. And this is clear from the science, any habit can be changed. Right? Humans can make any change in their behavior that they want to. There is someone who today is listening to this. This interview is. And they've been a smoker, and they're going to. They're going to smoke their last cigarette today, or they've been trying to lose weight, and tomorrow they're going to go on a run and they're going to start exercising on a regular basis. We can change our behavior if we understand how our behavior works inside our brains. And so one of the things this has helped me realize is that there's so much opportunity around us to become the people that we want to be, to live the best life that we want to live. And at the same time, that we should also have great empathy and compassion for people who are struggling with that.
- [14:51]
A
Right.
- [14:51]
B
Because the truth of the matter is that, like, you can be really successful at work and you can be a great parent and a great spouse, but if you get home and you have that ice cream, you think to yourself, I don't want to have that ice cream. But whenever I get home, I just go on autopilot and I eat the ice cream, and then I feel bad about myself afterwards. That can be.
- [15:09]
A
You're in my head right now, by the way.
- [15:12]
B
It can be really hard. Right. You're a very successful journalist, and yet.
- [15:17]
A
I'm okay at what I do, but I want a cookie at the end of the day.
- [15:20]
B
Exactly. But. And that. That is. That is a challenge. But it's also an Opportunity. Because we can change that behavior. And it's not by saying, I'm just gonna, like, grit my teeth and use willpower to ignore having any ice cream. It's about finding something that's similar to the ice cream and a little bit healthier, that corresponds to that old cue, and that delivers a reward similar to what the ice cream used to deliver.
- [15:43]
A
Okay, so New Year's is a time when a lot of people sit back, take stock, and think about what they want to change for the next year. Right. First of all, knowing everything, you know now, do you make New Year's resolutions or are you like, that's a lost cause? Absolutely. Do you really?
- [15:58]
B
Yeah, Me and my wife do it together. Yeah. We have like a whole thing that we go and we sort of like, look at the previous year and we sort of figure out what our goals are for this year. We do it in a very specific way.
- [16:08]
A
How do you do it? What's the specific way?
- [16:10]
B
So the first thing that's important is science actually tells us that New Year's resolutions are really powerful. And it's because of something called the fresh start effect. And Katie Milkman at the University of Pennsylvania has done a lot of work on this. When we have a fresh start, there's something about that that gives us a little bit more motivation. But at that moment, what's important is not just to come up with resolutions or with goals, but rather to come up with a plan. And the plan is what matters. So if my New Year's resolution was, you know, this year I want to lose a lot of weight, that's a terrible New Year's resolution. Because it's not a plan. It's this giant aspiration. And even if I said, you know, this year I want to lose £25, that also is not great. Because £25 is so far off. Right. There's no short term rewards there. A much better thing to do is to say, okay, look, my goal this year is to lose some weight. And hopefully by the end of the year it's £25. But here's my plan. My plan is that in the morning, instead of eating some really heavy breakfast, I'm gonna drink a protein shake. Cause I know that protein makes me feel a little bit full. And then I'll wait a little bit longer to see if I still remain hungry. And my goal for the first month is just to do that. I'm not gonna stand on a scale. I'm not gonna care about whether I'm losing or gaining weight. I just Want to get in the habit of drinking a prote in the morning or of eating a. A bowl of oatmeal in the morning, if that's the thing that helps keep my. My hunger at bay for the day, then in the second month, here's what I'm gonna do. My goal in the second month is to lose half a pound. Right? And half a pound is the kind of thing that, like, we actually lose sometimes without even intending to. But that's my goal, is I want to lose half a pound, and I'm going to take these baby steps. And the third month, I'm going to do something a little bit different. I have a plan plan, and I have ways to measure whether I'm making progress against that plan or I'm not. This is known as the science of small wins. And it's particularly helpful for things like exercise. If you want to start an exercise habit, one of the best things you can do is you can say, tomorrow morning, I'm going to put on my exercise clothes. And at that point, I don't have to exercise. Like, that's all. That's all I'm going to do is I'm just going to put on exercise.
- [18:24]
A
Just get the clothes on.
- [18:25]
B
Yeah. And if I do that, I can cl. I can pat myself on the back and consider what this day has been a success. Because what's going to happen is on day two or day three, you're going to think to yourself, you know, I already have my exercise clothes on. Why don't I just go for a walk around the block? Like, it's so much easier to go for a walk around the block. And a week later you're going to say, like, you know, I keep on going for walks around the block. I'll bet you that I could probably jog two blocks. Those are the people who end up becoming marathoners. It's these small baby steps, it's the science of small wins that convinces us that we can change. And when we convince ourselves that we can change, the change becomes much more easy to achieve.
- [19:04]
A
You know, as you explain this, it's so clear what a huge role patience plays in all of this. Right. Because oftentimes we set goals. We are probably, it's fair to say, growing increasingly impatient as a culture. It's just immediate reward. You can get things delivered to your house in an hour. I want something, I get it. And if you say, I'm going to lose ten pounds this year, it's so easy in the first month to gain a pound to Fall off track to not hit your weekly goal and then fall off that plan. Right. So how does that fit into the system of changing a habit, of changing a behavior? When you run into a hurdle, when you experience a setback, that's more than just willpower to go through that, right?
- [19:47]
B
Yeah, no, absolutely. And you're exactly right. It's really important on a couple, to do a couple things. The first is you have to give yourself short term goals, right. You have to say, like, look, okay, if I put on my, my workout clothes and I go for a walk around the block, even though I feel like that's kind of lame, I'm going to give myself a smoothie or I'm going to take a nice long shower, I'm going to reward myself. Because what you're doing at that point is you're telling your brain, make this behavior easier. If I'm giving you a reward when I do this behavior, you, you, my brain are going to make it easier. So you're. Yeah, it's important to have these short term rewards, but you're exactly right. Sometimes we hit an obstacle and it's really, it's really disappointing. Right?
- [20:29]
A
Yeah. If you get dressed in your exercise clothes and three weeks later you're still not running that block, at some point you might be like, you know what? It's not going to happen.
- [20:37]
B
Yeah. Or what actually happens much more often is that I start putting my running clothes on, I start walking around the block, I start running around two or three blocks and then things get really busy at work, right. And, and all of a sudden I get thrown off my, my schedule. And I think to myself, I haven't, I haven't exercised in like a week and a half. And like, I don't want to. It feels hard now. I don't want to start again. So in those moments, what's important is two things. Number one is to come up with a new reward or an old reward to give yourself, focus on the reward and make that reward genuinely rewarding. Right. If you've fallen off the wagon and you say to yourself, look, I, I got, tomorrow I'm just going to wake up and put them on, put on my running clothes again and just walk around the block. Give yourself a really nice smoothie, right? Like one of those peanut butter and like chocolate smoothies that you really like.
- [21:25]
A
One that's like almost a milkshake.
- [21:26]
B
But it's not exactly, exactly because you want to, you want to reawaken that habit loop that's inside your head. The neural pathways but the second thing is to pay attention to when you fall down and come up with contingency plans for it. So if, for instance, if you give up smoking and you've successfully stopped smoking for three or four weeks, and then your mother in law comes to town and she's driving you crazy and you find yourself on the way from home being super stressed out and you, you stop the stop and you get some cigarettes and suddenly like you've, you've fallen back on it. That's okay. Relapse. Falling back, Falling out of habits is part of building a habit. But what's important is at that moment to say to yourself, okay, I just recognized something. When my mother in law comes to town, it stresses me out and it makes it harder for me to stick with these healthier habits. So I need a plan in place for the next time my mother in law comes to town. What I'm going to do is I know that she's going to stress me out. So I am going to purposely come home from work late so I can spend some time in the car, listen to that audiobook that I love and just taking deep breaths. And I know that this is a time when my habit sometimes falls down or I know that when I get really busy, it's really hard for me to, to exercise the way that I usually do. So what I'm going to do is when I start getting busy, I'm going to just create 15 minutes at night where all I have to do is I just have to do some stretches because I just want to keep in the habit of being physically active again. When we're in the grip of a habit, when our basal ganglia takes over, we tend to stop thinking. It's actually a way for our brain to save energy. And when we purposely force ourselves to think more, it gives us more control over those habits. And part of thinking more is recognizing the patterns and coming up with a plan. What's known within psychology as an implementation intention. When X happens, I know that sometimes I fall down, so I'm going to do Y instead.
- [23:26]
A
You know, I had a friend who had the same problem you were articulating, which was just sometimes work got so busy and exercise fell by the wayside and it became day after day after day, just I didn't have time, I didn't have time to have time. You feel worse about yourself. She realized she was so over scheduled, so she just started scheduling on her calendar 15 minutes of movement, just something. And she would hold herself accountable to that. Say if it's on the calendar. It has to get done. But just like any other meeting, she would schedule it, which she wasn't doing before. And it seems so simple as I'm saying it out loud, but we just, as you say, don't put those plans into place. Right. We don't think there has to be a system that I follow to get to the goal that I want to reach.
- [24:05]
B
That's exactly. And what I love about that is that when she wasn't so busy, she was probably running two or three miles, right? She was probably exercising for 30 or 45 minutes. And so it can feel like a failure to just stretch for 15 minutes, to just do 15 minutes, but it's not a failure. You need to give yourself a reward for that, because what you're actually doing is you're preserving the habit loop inside your head so that when you finally do get more time and you can go and run for 30 or 45 minutes, it's so much easier to do that you. Because you've kept that habit alive. We should never, ever feel bad about ourselves for doing a small portion of a habit that we think is important. If you go and you run just 10 minutes today, you are 10 minutes healthier than if you had not run. And not only that, but if you run 10 minutes today, next week, it's going to be a lot easier to run 15 minutes. So it's important to give ourselves the grace to find the small patterns in our life, because those small patterns compound what you had for breakfast today does not matter. Whether you go running today does not matter. But what you have for breakfast every day, whether you exercise on a regular basis, that pays huge dividends. And it's all about just preserving our capacity for that.
- [25:23]
A
You write also about something called keystone habits, which is fascinating. Tell me about that and why they matter.
- [25:31]
B
So what's interesting is that some habits seem to matter more than others, right? Some habits, when they start to change, they set off this chain reaction in our lives. Exercise is a great example of this. You know, when you go and you exercise in the morning, it's oftentimes easier to eat healthy that day. We've all felt this, but. But it doesn't make sense when you think about it, because, like, why would going running in the morning make it easier for me to eat a salad at lunch? And what's interesting is there's these two researchers, Odin and Chang, who have looked at other things that change when we exercise. And what they found is that on the days that you exercise, you tend to Use your credit cards less. You'll procrastinate less at work if, when you get home, you'll start doing chores like washing the dishes, like, on average, about 20 minutes earlier than on the days that you don't exercise. Now, none of us are even aware of this, right? None of us think to ourselves, oh, I'm going to go for a run in the morning, and then I'm going to keep my Amex in my pocket, right? But what we know is that for many people, when we start to exercise, it's a keystone habit. It sets off a chain reaction that changes our eating habits, our spending habits, the habits of how we use our time, our mental habits. And the reason why is because there's some part of our brain, it's that same part that pays attention to our behaviors, our revealed preferences. There's some part of our brain that when you go for an A run in the morning, it says to itself, you know what? I'm the kind of. I'm the kind of person who can go exercising in the morning. I have. I have some pretty good willpower. That kind of person doesn't eat like the Nacho Doritos that he finds at work. That person eats a salad instead, because that person is kind of virtuous. That person doesn't pull out their card and buy something. You don't really need that person. They have the willpower to make good choices.
- [27:16]
A
It's so crazy to hear you talk about this, because now I'm unpacking everything I do in my day through the lens of what you're saying. And I realize I'm. I'm a make your bed every morning kind of person. Every single morning, the first thing I do is make my bed. Even when I stay in hotel rooms, like my friends think I'm really. I get up. If I'm awake, the bed needs to be made, and I have to make the bed. And then the rest of the day flows from there. And I think it's this sense, as you're saying, of, okay, I got that thing done. I'm the kind of person who makes her bed every day. I can tackle this monstrous to do list in front of me for the day. Cause I got that one thing done.
- [27:53]
B
And what I love about this is.
- [27:53]
A
A story I'm telling myself.
- [27:55]
B
That's exactly right. And what I love about this is that you've just identified the cue and the reward, right? The cue is that you get up, you get out of bed. It's a certain time of day. It's A behavior that's become ritualized. When you get out of bed, you make the bed, and then you think to yourself, that feels so satisfying, right? You're.
- [28:11]
A
It really does.
- [28:12]
B
A reward.
- [28:13]
A
It's unnatural how good it feels to look at a maid. It's a sickness, really.
- [28:18]
B
But what's hilarious is, in a hotel, the bed's gonna get made whether you make it or not, right? You don't have to do that. And yet you give yourself a reward for doing it. And it's a keystone habit that helps remind you, I'm in control. I'm the person who determines how I spend my day.
- [28:36]
A
Make your bed every single day. Thank you, mom and dad, for teaching me that. I do want to be clear about one thing here. Do we need to talk about a line here? Because a lot of this is about what's within your control and what's not, right? You make up your mind. You can change your habit, loot. You set your intentions. You have your plan. How do all of these lessons apply to things like addiction?
- [28:58]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. And what's interesting is if you look at how addiction is defined in the research community right now, it's oftentimes defined as a habit dysfunction. Now, there are some types of addictions that have these physical components, right? We know that some people are more likely to become addicted to alcohol because for genetic reasons, we know that people on opioids, that there's a genuine physical addiction there, and that if you stop taking the opioid, you often go through withdrawal. Withdrawal pains that are very dangerous and very painful. That being said, oftentimes the way that we address an addiction and the way that we address a habit dysfunction is very, very similar, right? So if someone who is addicted to alcohol, there are pills that we can give them that will remove the physical craving for alcohol. But what researchers have found, particularly one re. One experiment that was done in Germany found that even if people no longer have a physical craving, even if they no longer can enjoy alcohol because of. Because of medication they're taking, if they don't have a structure in place to help them with the habits that are associated with drinking, they will return to drinking even though it brings them no physical pleasure or no physical relief. So when we think about addictions and we think about addictions, for instance, behavioral addictions to things like spending or pornography, when we think about those, we can treat them as addictions, as having physical components, but unless we also look at the psychological components. Components, unless we look at the habits associated with those behaviors, it's very, very hard for us to change that person's behavior and that to empower them to change their behavior and become the person they want to be. So they are different. But the way that we treat addictions and the way that we treat habits are often very much similar and very much in tandem.
- [30:56]
A
So you mentioned that you still make New Year's resolutions, which fascinates me. Do you want to share one of them with us and how it's going so far?
- [31:02]
B
Oh, yeah. So, okay, so I have this. So one of my resolutions for 2026 is that I want to build more muscle mass. I feel like I have, like, very specific. I'm in my 50s now, and every single thing that I read tells me that all of my muscles will atrophy immediately upon turning 50. So, but again, that's not saying I want to build more muscle mass. It's a great resolution. It's not a great plan. So now I have this plan, which is I downloaded an app, and three times a week I have to do at least 30 minutes of weights on this app. And in order to make this easier for me to do, we have. We have like, sort of like some machines to work out in, in the garage. I went and I bought, like, some new plates, the new weight plates to put on the machine so that I can get exactly the weight that I want. And so I have a plan. It's on my calendar. In fact, I just did it this morning. And every morning when I wake up, it says, weights 30 minutes for these three times a week. And. And it's. It's not. And to be honest, the weights I'm lifting right now, they are not very heavy. I don't think I'm holding any muscle mass yet.
- [32:10]
A
Every time I open the app, you're doing it. Yeah.
- [32:12]
B
Every time I open the app and it says lift a 15 pound dumbbell, I'm like, oh, this is great. I can definitely lift a 15 pound dumbbell.
- [32:19]
A
Here we go.
- [32:20]
B
But what I'm doing is I'm building that habit loop. I'm building the structure inside my brain so that when the app says, now let's go up to 20, now let's go up to 25. Now let's do a bench press of 95 or 105 or 115, which is what I did this morning, now it feels much easier to actually do that. And now I am challenging myself because I have the base in place, I have the habit in place, and that's when you can start layering in the.
- [32:47]
A
Actual achievements, Charles, we're going to start doing, like, an update podcast with you where each time you come back, you're more and more jacked. You're just going to be like this bodybuilder by the end of it. I love it.
- [32:58]
B
Yeah. From your lips to God's ears. I will also say, when I did the 115 this morning, I did give myself a peanut butter and chocolate smoothie afterwards as my reward because I wanted to make. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [33:12]
A
Because that is the right move. Listen, I want to ask about super communities communicators, too, because, listen, for a lot of our listeners out there, maybe making better connections is one of their resolutions. We live in a time of great isolation and disconnection. And I think for a lot of folks, what you have to write in here is incredibly helpful. So let's just introduce folks to it who are unfamiliar. You look at the habits of great communicators. Why did you want to look at this topic in the first place?
- [33:39]
B
Well, again, it was sort of out of a personal. A personal crisis, which is I felt like I wasn't communicating as well as I ought to be communicating, particularly with the people that matter the most to me. My kids, my wife. And I wanted to understand, like, why are some people so good at connecting with anyone? Why can they meet a stranger? And, like, everyone feels like they're their best friend? And so I started looking at it, and I realized that we were actually living through this golden age of understanding a lot about communication. And you're exactly right. It's a period of isolation and loneliness. But the other thing that we know is that having conversations with others, connecting with others, it's one of the healthiest things we can do. You know, the surgeon general in the previous administration said that being lonely is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
- [34:26]
A
Isn't that wild?
- [34:27]
B
Fifteen cigarettes is a lot of cigarettes, right? That's like, that's a real health risk. When we reach out to other people, when we become more social, when we try and connect with others, we're improving our health. We're oftentimes improving our longevity. We're definitely improving our happiness. And one of the. Some of the habits that we know that the best communicators have is, for one thing, they ask more questions. There are these folks who are super communicators, and we're all. We're all super communicators at one time or another. But there are some people who are consistent super communicators, and on average, they tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. That's a lot of questions, right? And some of those questions you hardly even register as questions, as things like, oh, what'd you think about that? Or, oh, did you like that movie? But some of the questions are what are known as deep questions. They're questions that ask people about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. They're questions that invite a real conversation. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what, What. What hospital do you work at? Asking them, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school?
- [35:36]
A
Right.
- [35:36]
B
That second question, what made you decide to go to medical school? That's asking someone to talk to me about where they come from, what their values are, the experiences that they had growing up. It's an invitation to a real conversation. And when we ask deep questions, which is much easier than we think it is, that is when we start to connect with other people. And even if that connection is only five minutes, even if it's someone on a bus or your Uber driver, it feels great. Our brains are wired to feel great, and it makes us healthier and happier.
- [36:10]
A
I love in the book, too, you again, base all this on science and research. All the data is there, and one of the findings was that this isn't just something we're born with. Right. This is something people can work on. You can improve on this. It's a skill that you can develop.
- [36:24]
B
Absolutely.
- [36:24]
A
So what did you learn when it comes to that? Like, what. What makes for a good conversation? And I realize the irony of asking that during a podcast in which we're having a conversation, but please continue.
- [36:36]
B
No, I love it. I love it. You're exactly right.
- [36:38]
A
Is this a good conversation?
- [36:39]
B
This is a great conversation. This is a fantastic conversation. So it's interesting when. When researchers ask the best communicators, have you always been good at communication? Inevitably, they say no. They say things like, you know, when I was in high school, I had real trouble making friends, and so I really had to study, like, how kids talk to each other or. Or my parents got divorced when I was young, and I had to be the peacemaker between them. What we know is that communication. Nobody is born with the gift of gab. Nobody is born a super communicator, rather. You're exactly right. It's a set of skills that we learn and we practice until they become habits. And we mentioned one of those skills, which is asking More questions, particularly asking deep questions. Right? Inviting other people to have a real conversation with us, to tell us something meaningful about who they are. Another important skill is recognizing what kind of conversation we're in. What researchers have found is that most discussions fall into one of three categories. There are these practical conversations where we're making plans or we're solving problems together. But then there's also emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we react to each other, how we relate the identities that are important to us. And what researchers have found is that all three of these different kinds of conversations are all equally important. And in a discussion, you might move between them, you might go from emotional to practical and back to emotional and then to social. But if you and the person you are talking to are not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, then it's very hard to hear each other. It's very hard to feel connected to each other. This is why, for instance, when you know, someone comes and they tell you about a problem they're having at work and you try and solve it, you say, oh, what you should do is X. And they don't appreciate your advice. Right. It's because they're having an emotional conversation, they're trying to tell you how they feel, something that bothers them, and you're having a practical conversation, you're trying to solve their problem for them. They're both important conversations, but that mismatch makes us feel like two ships passing in the night. So this is another important skill that super communicators have is they. They just take a step back and for half a second they try and figure out, what kind of conversation is this, what kind of mindset is this person in? And then they try and match them or they invite them to match themselves. It's the matching. What's known as the matching principle in psychology. Having the same kind of conversation at the same moment is what makes communication work.
- [39:15]
A
Now that you've studied this as deeply as you have, how does it infiltrate your. Your personal life? I mean, you mentioned it sparked because you thought you could be a better communicator, right?
- [39:25]
B
Yeah.
- [39:25]
A
Did it. Did it change?
- [39:27]
B
Oh, yes.
- [39:28]
A
Should we ask your wife? Is she around?
- [39:30]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will admit there are times at the dinner table when I start monologuing, and she will say something like, you know, there's this interesting book about communication. That you might want to read, but most of the time, most of the time it's okay. So, like now when I come home and I start complaining about my day, my wife will often say to me, okay, look, do you want me to help you figure out a solution for this or. Or do you just need to vent and get this off your chest?
- [39:56]
A
Oh, she'll ask that of you. She's like, clarifying, what kind of conversation are we in?
- [40:00]
B
She'll ask me, do you want to have a practical conversation or do you want to have emotional conversation? And I love it, right? I love when she asks me that because I say, like, oh, no, this isn't that important. I just, I just need to get off my chest. I need to tell you about it because it's been driving me crazy. I'm telling her I need an emotional conversation. Will you match me there? So we do this a lot. This is known as meta conversation. When you ask the other person kind of what they need. And sometimes, sometimes we can be explicit and just say, do you need me to have a practical conversation or emotional conversation? But sometimes it can be just about asking those deep questions and letting people tell you what they're seeking, what they're feeling, what they need right now. So I do a lot more of that. I ask a lot more questions than I used to, particularly with my kids. You know, it's so easy when, like a kid comes to you with a problem and they. Or something that's bothering them.
- [40:48]
A
We're their parents.
- [40:49]
B
We want to make it better, we want to solve it for them. It's so easy to move immediately into the practical mindset. But if we just take a step back and ask a couple questions and say, okay, so it sounds like this is bothering you. Like, why do you think this is bothering you so much? Because it's. Because it sounds like it's bothering you more than you think it should, right? Tell me why you think he said that. What do you think was happening there? When we ask more questions, what we're doing is we're asking our kids to bring us into their lives, to share with us who they are and how they see the world. And that's ultimately what any kid, and any parent for that matter, wants.
- [41:27]
A
Everything you just said just really hits home. I mean, it's so true. If any parent out there knows what that moment is like. But as you're talking about your kids, you know, our kids, the younger generation now, face to face conversations, even talking on the phone, all of that is dwindling. In terms of the quantity, right. They are online, they are texting more often with each other. A lot of that interaction, those conversations are unfolding in a completely different way. How does that, what does that mean for super communicators? Do the same skills and lessons apply, or is it just a completely different universe?
- [42:03]
B
No, absolutely, the same lessons apply. And what's interesting is if you go back 100 years to when telephones first became popular, the same concerns we have about online communication, all the parents had about telephone conversations. They said, look, if my kids are talking on the phone, they're never going to learn to have a real conversation. Right. If you. Because up till that point, all conversations had happened face to face. And they would say things like, look, if you can't see the person's expressions, if you can't hear the tone of their voice, with really good fidelity, you're never going to be able to have a real conversation. Now, by the time you were in high school, in middle school, and I was in middle school, and everyone listening was in middle school, we would have conversations for seven hours a night. And they were like the most important conversations of our life, right?
- [42:47]
A
They absolutely were. They absolutely were.
- [42:49]
B
Because we learned how to talk on telephones. In fact, there's rules that you follow on a telephone that you're not even aware of when you're on a phone. On average, you will over enunciate your words by about 15%.
- [43:03]
A
Is that true?
- [43:04]
B
Yeah. You'll show about 20% more emotion in your voice. Now, you're not doing this consciously. Right. You don't even know that you're doing it, but there's some part of your brain that says, look, if they can't see my face, then I need to put more emotion into my voice so that they understand what I'm feeling. So that brings us to all the online communication that's happening today.
- [43:22]
A
Yeah.
- [43:22]
B
Online communication is relatively young. Right. We're still learning the rules about it. But for anyone who has a teenager, if you dare, when you get home tonight, ask them to show you some of their texts on their phone, if they have a phone. And what you'll see is that there are some texts where. What? It's just a string of emojis. There's no words. They're just sending each other a string of emojis. They are learning how to have emotional conversations on their phones. Right. They are learning the rules of how to connect with someone even if you're not face to face. And the same way that our grandparents or our Great grandparents worried about telephones destroying our ability to connect with other people. We're worried today about social media destroying our ability to connect with other people. And there are real risks to social media that companies need to be better at policing themselves. But what I'm not scared of is that this generation won't learn how to connect with each other. They'll just connect with each other in different ways. As long as we encourage them to do so. As long as we tell them, look for the, look for the rules. Look for how a text conversation is different from an email, is different from talking face to face. Pay attention to that, learn from it a little bit and practice it. And then you'll end up having all the conversations you could possibly want.
- [44:45]
A
That is the first real message of optimism and hope that I've heard around the future of this new way that we know everyone will be communicating. You know, especially this younger generation. It's, it's, it's really, I have to say it's really comforting to hear that because it sounds like you're saying they're basically developing their own language. They will learn to communicate the same emotions and intentions using different tools.
- [45:09]
B
That's exactly right now, now what's important is that we're talking here about conversations. Right? So when someone's on TikTok and they're just watching video after video, that's not a conversation.
- [45:19]
A
That's not a conversation. Right. That's just information moving one way.
- [45:22]
B
And so what we should be doing, and I do this with my kids, you know, my kids use Snapchat to communicate with their friends almost exclusively. And I say that's fine, that's fine. Like if you want to be on your, if you, if you're talking to your friend and you want to do it on Snapchat and you guys send each other these like ridiculous photos every morning because you want to have a hundred day long streak. Sure, do whatever. It seems super boring to me, but do whatever you want. Yeah, but it's because it's a conversation. But if they're on their phone just watching videos, if they're on their phone looking at social media, if they're, if they're doing things where they're not actually connecting with another person, that's the behavior that I discourage. But we should never, ever worry that our kids are not going to be good at communication. Our brains literally evolved to be great at communication. If you think about it, Homo sapiens superpower is communication. It's the thing that sets us apart from every other species. We evolved to be great communicators. What we need to do is we just need to encourage our kids to communicate, to reach out to someone else to ask a question in whatever form they want to.
- [46:26]
A
So, Charles, it strikes me, I mean, hearing you speak and hearing your stories and everything you've pulled from the research and reporting and the science, there's real optimism, there's real hope behind everything you put forward, it seems. Because you're saying there's a way you can change your life. There's a way to be better. There's a way, as you said at the beginning of the conversation, to live that best life. And there's a through line through all of your books, right? The Power of Habit. Smarter, faster, better, super communicators. Let me be a little contrarian here and just ask, like, do we all have to keep trying to get better all the time?
- [47:05]
B
No, you are great. You are fantastic.
- [47:10]
A
But is there a danger in continuing to tell people, people, this is how you can be better at this. This is how you can be a better communicator. You can break habits or not break habits, change them. Is there. Is there something to that? Where we need a book that's just, like, you're good. Just sit back and relax on the couch and have a cookie.
- [47:28]
B
I think everyone listening to this is good, and they should. And they should sit back. By the way, tonight I'm gonna have a cookie. I like cookies. When I get home from work, I'm gonna have a cookie. I already bought the. They're sitting in my kitchen. It's okay. It's okay to be the person you want to be. You don't have to live up to some expectation or ideal of perfection. But at the same time, there are often times that we do want to change. You do not have to have a conversation with anyone you don't want to have a conversation with. Sometimes you get in the Uber and you just want to check your phone. You don't want to, like, have to talk to the driver. And that's totally okay. If you have a habit and someone says, oh, that's a bad habit, and you think to yourself, I like this habit, then you should keep that habit. It's not objectively bad or good. It's exactly what you think it is. But at the same time, there are moments that we do want to change. There are moments when I want. I really want to connect with that person, and I'm having trouble doing so, or I. I know I feel so good when I exercise in the morning. And I don't understand why it's so hard just to get myself to do 10 minutes of stretches in those moments when we do want to change out of a genuine desire to change, when we have the tools, the skills that explain to us how to make that change easier, that's incredibly rewarding, that's incredibly meaningful. But it does not mean that we have to change anything that we don't want to, and it doesn't mean we have to change in any way. We are living, and it's a tough time, Right. There's a lot going on politically, there's a lot going on economically. The world's confusing, but at the same time, we are living during one of the most incredible periods of history. You know, if. If you asked anyone if they wanted to trade living 300 years ago with today, no one would take that deal. Probably not even a hundred years ago. Right. People used to die of infections all the time. Childbirth was a serious, serious medical emergency for many women. We live in a world where there's enough food around us, where we have this amazing ability to talk to people who are thousands of miles away. It's very easy to get caught up in what's wrong with the world. And there is things that are wrong and that we want to improve, but it's also an amazing time to be alive. And every single person watching this is an amazing person. They. As long as you are living the life that you want to live, then you are doing everything right. And my only goal with these books is not to say that anyone should change or that they need to change or that they need to optimize themselves. It's only to say, if you do want to change, if you do want to live a slightly different life, it is within your grasp. Here are the skills and tools to make it become real. And you can be anything that you want to be.
- [50:27]
A
The work you do today, I think it's fair to say, is very different from the work you used to do as a journalist. Is that fair?
- [50:35]
B
Yeah. So I think.
- [50:36]
A
Well, I still write, in writing these books in this focus.
- [50:38]
B
Yeah. So I still write for the New Yorker, and I'm still an investigative reporter, and I do investigative work. But I think that the books that I write are different from the articles that I write.
- [50:50]
A
Yeah.
- [50:51]
B
And that feels very satisfying to me, you know.
- [50:54]
A
Does it? I wanted to ask, what is it you. What is it you enjoy about that kind of work? Because you mentioned, obviously there's personal reasons that you decide to look into a topic, but you continue to do it. So I'm assuming you like it. So I wonder what is satisfying about that for you?
- [51:10]
B
You know, what's satisfying is. So I wrote a lot of series for the New York Times, and one of them, one of them we figured out at some point, caused over a thousand state laws to be passed. It was about. It was about elder abuse. And another one was about apple in China. And we won the Pulitzer Prize for it. And I loved working on those pieces. I thought they were important. I thought they created social change. And what's interesting is that people would read it once and they'd say, like, oh, that's interesting. And they would never read it again. I can hardly even go back and read them. They're very much of their time and place. Yeah, but then you write a book. You write a book about how to change, how to become the person you want to be, how to connect with other people. And people read it for years. And I never got emails from my. For. For my work at the New York Times that said, you changed my life. And I still think that work is important. I still do do it for the New Yorker. I think that investigative reporting and exposing corruption and exposing what's wrong in the world, it's incredibly important because without that, the corruption goes unchecked. But I also want to write things that people just love to read, where afterwards they say, I'm so glad I read that thing. It makes me feel so hopeful about my. Myself and the world, and it gives me a way to become the person I want to become. So for me, having both of these things in my life, books that are about the best parts of being human and the best parts of who we are and investigative reporting that helps us understand where things have gone awry and what needs to change. For me, that feels incredibly satisfying.
- [52:49]
A
Well, I love your work. I love the way you talk about your work. More importantly, too, there's such hope and optimism and I think empowerment behind it for a lot of people, which is what so many folks. Folks need today. And I've just had such a good time, me talking to you. I think it's fair to say this has been a good conversation.
- [53:07]
B
Oh, good, good. I'm glad. I'm glad you think so. Can I ask you a question? Because usually I would have asked him a bunch more questions. Okay, so what about you? What are your New Year's resolutions? Do you set New Year's resolutions?
- [53:18]
A
I don't set resolutions, but largely because I may in the future, largely because I always felt like they were impossible. To reach because I think I set goals that were too big and too far down the line. And so I adopted my friend's habit last year of scheduling workouts and not making myself have to do five miles. But even if you get 15 minutes of stretches, that's good. I do one thing in addition to making my bed every day, and that's something I'm going to keep up for 2026. So the habit or the resolution is really just continuing to do this, which is, as you know, in this line of work, the day can go haywire very quickly, and you lose control of your schedule, and you have a hundred different people pulling you in different directions. Every single morning, I have the exact same thing before I eat or drink anything else, before any coffee or any breakfast of any kind. And that is. I'm not gonna say it's delicious, but it is. Spinach, cucumber, celery, lemon juice, and frozen fruit of some kind. And I make a batch of it, and I drink a cup of it every single day. And okay. If the whole rest of the day is terrible, I did one good thing for myself today.
- [54:27]
B
I love that.
- [54:29]
A
That is my bar. I started that in summer of 2025. I'm still doing it for 26. Honestly, I think that's the one goal.
- [54:36]
B
And every morning. You do it every morning.
- [54:39]
A
Every single morning. Not when I'm on the road. I'm not a crazy person. Every single morning when I'm home, it's gross. There's a big jug of green juice in the fridge, and everyone in my house knows not to touch it. And that's mama's juice. And I'm gonna start my day and. And it's going to be okay.
- [54:53]
B
Yeah. And what I love about it is that you're. Maybe the juice itself is not the reward. Maybe it doesn't taste so great, but you're giving word when you drink it, you're telling yourself, like, at least I got this done today. Like, I'm on top of it.
- [55:05]
A
I got that done. Yeah. And then maybe I'll have that cookie later, because it's going to be there, and I might. Exactly. But. But I did the gross green juice earlier.
- [55:13]
B
Exactly. They cancel each other out. If you drink. If you drink the gross green juice, you can eat the cookie and it just doesn't get. It doesn't count.
- [55:18]
A
I think that's right. Yeah. Doctors will agree. We won't.
- [55:20]
B
Exactly.
- [55:21]
A
Charles Duhigg, this has been such an absolute pleasure. Thank you for making the time to talk to us.
- [55:26]
B
Thank you so much for having me and have a great 2,020.