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I am of two minds about social science research (especially pop social science, of the kind Malcolm Gladwell has made famous). On the one hand, I think much of it simply ratifies, in a culturally acceptable form, what we already know, whether through ancient wisdom, biblical truth, or plain common sense. Thus, it is helpful in explaining why we do what we do, though it should not be earth-shattering. On the other hand (and this is less an issue with academic social science, with its rigor and on-the-one-hand, on-the-other style of argumentation*), so much of it annoys me when the whole world begins to enter the schema of whatever issue the writer has been studying, as if everything can be explained by this one simple truth.
*Hey, wait a minute…
I experienced both of these “minds” while reading (actually, listening to) Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (Random House). The books is well written and is an enjoyable read—Duhigg eases the reader into the academic literature through interesting stories which illustrate the point. Some of these stories work better than others, but, on the whole, they effectively make the author’s point.
And what is that point? That habits, to a large degree, run our lives. We don’t think our way through our drive home from work—we make it home out of habit. The same could be said for how we eat, dress, work, or clean. Much of what we do throughout our days, we do without much conscious thought at all. We simply do.
The book is at its most convincing in its earliest chapters, when Duhigg begins to make his case by outlining what he calls the habit loop. Basically, he argues, we don’t form habits only by really wanting to do something. There is a reason that so many resolutions to work out, lose weight, read more, pray more, (and on and on) peter out after a short while. This is because, as philosopher James K. A. Smith has argued in his books, Descartes was wrong. We are not “thinking things.” Instead, he argues, we are desiring beings. (As he titles his excellent book, condensing his larger thoughts at a more popular level, You Are What You Love.)
If we don’t form habits with our conscience minds, how, then, do we? Here, Duhigg is quite convincing and helpful. For every habit, there is a cue, a signal which sends one in a certain direction, and a reward, something which one receives when the thing is done. This is the habit loop: a cue sets up the routine which leads to the reward. When I sit at my desk, writing my sermon for the week, invariably my mind will begin to wander. (Deeply reading several Bible commentaries can do that to you.) Looking for something to distract me, and give me something of a break—the cue!—my eyes light on the jar of jelly beans sitting next to me. The reward is obvious. (Unless I unwittingly pick up banana-flavored jelly beans.) And there is my habit loop. The cue and reward don’t change: as long as I spend hours writing sermons each week, I will at times get bored and seek some kind of little distraction to enable me to keep slogging through my work. So, the habit—in my case, eating jelly beans—is actually not the most important part of the loop; or, rather, it is the part that is most changeable. Basically, if I want to stop eating jelly beans—and why would I, but that’s not the point of this…—I should not just think about not eating jelly beans, or keep a record of my daily weight next to my desk, or look forward in my mind’s eye to a lackluster future without jelly beans. Knowing my cue and reward, I should replace the jelly beans with something else. Maybe, when the familiar cue hits, I put pistachios next to my desk, which brings me my familiar reward. Regardless, the cue, the reward, and the routine will remain.
This is a helpful way of thinking through our habits. We all have habits, many which we don’t even know we have, and we won’t get rid of them—nor would we want to. But, from what we can glean here, the key to ridding ourselves of bad habits is discovering the cues and reward for those habits. When we discover those, we are far more likely to change our habits than we would otherwise.
This has a broad application. (In fact, I can see it having enormous benefits in my profession as a pastor, discipling people to follow Jesus.) This is Duhigg at his best. However, rather than settling for identifying habits in ways we can evidently see, he reaches for using habits to explain much about human life. This got annoying. Here are three examples.
First, he illustrates the habit loop by looking at Tony Dungy’s coaching style with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Indianapolis Colts. And, certainly, Dungy’s focus on building good habits was very successful. Yet, to appropriate Billy Beane, his stuff* didn’t work in the playoffs. Time and again the Bucs and Colts fell short, even when they were the better team. Until they didn’t. What does Duhigg chalk this up to? The difficulty of winning? The vicissitudes of life in the NFL? Random chance? All these would be better than what Duhigg says—he argues that the Colts finally won their Super Bowl because they finally believed they could win. Reader, I literally laughed out loud. Did the Colts not believe they could win before? Did Peyton Manning really doubt his abilities until that one season? (What happened after that season? Did he stop believing?) This is the NFL—there is no shortage of confidence and faith in one’s ability. To assert that belief made the difference is laughable—and to suggest that it would have a demonstrative effect on habits is folly. (It would be akin to asking someone, in the throes of agony over some bad habit, “Have you tried believing harder?”) As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 7:15, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
*This is the censored version. This is a family newsletter!
Second, the Montgomery bus boycott’s success is boiled down, essentially, to the way it utilized the people’s habits. (Insert Dr. Evil saying, “Right.”) Third, instincts, like acting out what one sees in night terrors, are referred to as habits. If instincts are habits, what are not habits? Just what is a habit, then? (This was similar to the feeling I had while watching Pixar’s Inside Out. What, we are driven solely by our emotions? Are we automatons, with either our unseen emotions or our unseen habits making all the decision for us? Where is our humanity?)
At bottom: the book is unsuccessful in truly connecting everything we do with habits—if this was the case, what is even the point of anything? Yet, if understood in a limited way, the book can be very helpful, especially if you are looking to quit eating jelly beans. (Wait, what?)