Hey Shoremates, Welcome back to Mind Your Helm. The podcast designed for those who who want the best books broken down into small, bite sized pieces. My name is JD Elliott, and today we are continuing our 5th book, the power of Habit: why we do what we do in life and business, by Charles Duhigg.
Chapter 6 is entitled The Power of a Crisis: how leaders create habits through accident and design.
Chapter 7 is called How Target knows what you want before you do. When companies predict (and manipulate) Habits. As a disclaimer, this chapter specifically mentions Target, but several other companies do the exact same and you can read Target's email to the author in this chapter.
Action Items from this week:
- What can you do to interrupt the habit loop for a habit you want to get rid of? A few ideas can be putting a phone into airplane mode, turning off wifi, removing cigarettes or alcohol from a house, putting running shoes by the door and gym clothes next to your bed to put on when you wake up.
- What is a habit you want to start doing? Think about something that will be a cue to remind you to do the habit, such as the earlier mentioned running shoes by the door. Then think about how you’re going to reward yourself. This will help start the craving process and help turn it into a habit faster.
- Knowing that the golden rule of habits is you’ve got to believe you can accomplish whatever you need to, do you honestly believe you can accomplish the new habit?
- If not, what would it take for you to believe. If you do genuinely think you can, why do you believe you can?
- If you are in a position of leadership, are there any areas that you can give more control to those under you? With the knowledge from these experiments, what changes can you make?
- If you personally struggle with self discipline or will power, then make yourself some prompts similar to the case studies. Identify areas you struggle with the most, then imagine yourself solving those issues when they come. Imagine what the difficulties will be, then how you’ll overcome them.
Shoremates, I hope that this episode was valuable to you. This is a life changing book, and I highly recommend adding it to your bookshelf for greater detail on each chapter.
Always, always remember. You’ve got this.
-J.D. Elliott