OK, so I have to return the book today as it's already overdue. Some thoughts, in no particular order:
Clearly, from a personal habits perspective, a lot of the meat is in Part 1, and then also the Appendix. The "habit loop" information was new for me, so that was a helpful way to conceptualize how habits are formed and changed. It was also a new idea to me that, when one wants to change a habit, it's easier to keep the old cue-reward,
I think, however, that this stuff is going to be difficult to apply practically. For example, how do you figure out what the cue is for an existing habit, say biting one's nails? Also, how does one construct rewards if one wants to start a new habit - I certainly can't be rewarding myself with a chocolate chip cookie for every new thing I want to turn into a habit - my biking habit won't cover all of it. :-)
I have put it to some limited use recently, however. I use a computer based, interval learning flashcard program to study (called
Anki) and my studying habit was rather haphazard. However, the rewards of using it daily, instead of almost-daily, are pretty large - it significantly reduces my study time per day to under 4 minutes for a total study content deck of nearly 400 flash cards. So, I picked a new cue - it's now the first thing I do when I sit down at the computer in the morning, before I check email or anything else. It seems to be working.
From an organizational perspective, I also found Paul O'Neil's story at Alcoa, and Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, to be insightful.
From Paul O'Neil's story, I've been thinking a lot about keystone habits and quick/small wins. I work at a somewhat dysfunctional organization, and there have been several failed efforts here at culture change. I suspect they failed because of the following:
- there was no [sufficiently large] crisis to drive people to change their behaviors
- people had too many culture change initiatives going on, making them hard for the organization to digest
- they weren't able to make the change visible and concrete (e.g. improve our safety record)
- the changes that did happen didn't require fundamental changes in other areas, and so didn't spread
Also, I've often heard managers say "we need quick wins", but it's never been explained that we want quick wins to show that change is possible, and build momentum. In fact, I'm not sure all of the managers who talk about "quick wins" even have the snowball effect clearly in mind - if they did, they might choose different areas to target. I suspect many of them mean "show that we accomplished something so I can put it on my performance review at the end of the year."
The Saddleback Church discussion got me thinking about the idea of, "if you want to change the person, change their habits." In addition to the practicality of that approach, it also struck me that there may also be moral questions raised there. Is being a faithful Christian about what you do, or what you believe? Ideally, both would be in harmony, but if you need to start by changing one, which should it be? This could be a longer discussion, which I'd be happy to take up if other readers are interested.
