THE POWER OF HABIT

Part two – The habits of successful organizations Chapter 4: Keystone Habits – which habits matter most 

Keystone Habits: Some habits have the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits as they move through an organization. Some habits, in other words, matter more than others in remaking businesses and lives. These are Keystone Habits, and they can influence how people work, eat, play, live, spend, and communicate. Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms everything. 

Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levels. 

The habits that matter the most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns. 

Families who habitually eat dinner together seem to raise children with better homework skills, higher grades, greater motional skills, and more confidence. 

Detecting keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics. Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as “small wins”. They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious. 

Chapter 5: The habit of success – when willpower becomes automatic. 

Willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success. 

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It is a muscle and it gets tired as it works harder, so there is less power left over for other things. 

If you want to do something that requires willpower – like going for a run after work – you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day. If you use it up too early on tedious tasks like writing emails or filling out boring forms, all the strength will be gone by the time you get home. 

The willpower experiment: 29 people were signed up for a 4 months money management program. The participants were to deny themselves luxury’s and asked to keep detailed logs of everything they bought. People finances improved as they progressed through the program, but there were also side effects. They smoked fewer cigarettes, drank less booze and coffee, ate les junk food and were more productive at work. As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives, that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything. 

This is why signing up kids for piano lessons or sports are so important. It has nothing to do with creating a good musician or a football star. When you learn to force yourself to practice for an hour or run fifteen laps, you start building self-regulatory strength. 

How willpower becomes a habit: By choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. 

When people are asked to do something that takes self-control, if they think they are doing it for personal reasons – if they feel like it ́s a choice or something they enjoy because it helps someone else – it’s much less taxing. If they feel like they have no autonomy, if they ́re just following orders, their willpower muscles get tired much faster.