Today I wanted to give you five lessons that I learned

from reading the book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

Now, I read this book a little while ago.

I took a lot of notes on it and learned a ton from it

and it actually helped me start to change a lot of my habits

which led to some pretty drastic changes in my life.

So, I wanted to share some of the most important things

that I've learned from this book.

And the first lesson, is simply that all habits

can be broken down into a three-step process.

Habits are triggered by cues

which then lead into a routine

and the routine ultimately culminates in a reward.

One of the key things to note in this lesson

is that habits are delicate things.

They don't trigger unless the cue triggers them.

So if you don't expose yourself to a cue

you're not going to do a habit.

Now, this is important for both good habits and bad habits.

You need to build cues that trigger good habits

and you want to try to avoid cues that trigger the bad ones.

Now, speaking of cues that trigger habits

the second lesson I learned from this book

that I want to share with you is that almost all cues

fall into one of five different categories.

They either fall into the category of location

time, emotional state, actions of other people

or the immediately preceding action.

Knowing these five categories of cues

is useful when you wanna start changing bad habits

because they'll allow you to pick out the cues

of each individual, specific habit that you're targeting.

Now, the third lesson that I learned

from this book is that there's actually

a fourth component to the habit loop.

When I read the first chapter

it presented the first three parts of that loop

but then later on in the book you learn about the fourth one

which is craving.

Through an experiment done on a monkey

scientists have been able to figure out

that in the initial stages of building a habit

the brain receives a spike of activity.

Basically, a dopamine surge, when the actual reward

of the habit is achieved.

However, as time goes on and the habit is done over and over

and over again and becomes more ingrained

the spike of activity starts to come

before the routine has even gone through.

It comes when the cue happens.

Now what this means for you is that when you're exposed

to a cue for a habit that you've already had for a while

and have gone through many different times

your brain gets that spike of activity

before even going through the routine.

At that point you get this craving

this need to get the reward and it's self-perpetuating cycle

that keeps the habit going.

Now the book talks a lot about how to change your habits

how to actually break bad habits and start building new ones

but one of the most interesting parts of this

that I read about, which I wanna make the subject

of this fourth lesson, is that people who want to break

bad habits or who are trying to make a change in their life

are often more successful if they plan in advance

what they're going to do when there's a pain point

when something difficult comes up.

The example Duhigg gave in the book was of people

who had knee-replacement surgeries.

People who have this surgery have to go through

lots of painful rehabilitation and walking, exercising

to actually regain full functionality of their knees

but this rehabilitation is actually really painful

and a lot of patients just can't muster

the willpower to go through it.

Now what researchers found is patients

who actually wrote down a plan of what they were

going to do at specific times during the day

to rehabilitate their knee were much more likely

to go through that painful rehabilitation process

and were, in turn, much more likely to recover.

And finally, the last lesson that I wanna share

from this book is that some habits have a tendency

to spawn other habits and these habits are called

keystone habits.

The book mentions that for people trying to lose weight

one of the most successful methods that has been used

is simply having them keep a daily food journal.

By establishing this one little, easy-to-maintain habit

dieters were actually able to recognize patterns

in their life they hadn't noticed before

and that spurred them on to start making

more positive changes to tackle those patterns.

Essentially, keystone habits help to create small wins

which, in turn, boost your overall motivation

and give you some momentum to build

even more habits in your life.

To give you a personal example, I started

getting serious about building new habits back in 2014

and my keystone habit was simply waking up early everyday.

By establishing that habit, I was waking up early

and feeling really productive in the morning

and that gave me the motivation to start creating

a morning routine full of other good habits.

So, those are my five lessons, I wanted to share

with you from The Power of Habit.

Overall, I learned a lot from this book

and I highly recommend reading it.

And if you wanna find it, I've linked to it

down in the description below.

By the way, this video is the start of a new series

in this channel that I'm calling Five Lessons.

Essentially, when I finish a book that I really

wanna share lessons from with you guys

I'm gonna create a video that shares those lessons.

And I'm doing this because I'm not really

that good at criticizing books.

I'm not really a reviewer, of sorts

but I am a good curator and I do like

sharing the things that I learn.

Now these videos won't be replacing the weekly videos

that are already coming out on this channel

they'll actually be in addition to those videos

and they won't be weekly themselves

because I don't read a book every single week.

I actually take my time to read books

and I make sure to take really good notes on them

and I think that'll enable me to share

better lessons from them as well.

So, if you're already a subscriber to this channel

don't worry, the other content's not going away

this is simply in addition to it.

And if you're new here, this channel is actually all about

studying more effectively and being a better student.

So, if you enjoyed this video and you wanna learn

how to learn more effectively, try subscribing.

Also, if you've already read this book

or you're a voracious reader and just want

more book recommendations, I've got a whole list of books

that I've enjoyed and think are really good for students

on my site and you can click the card or the link

down in the description to find them right now.

That's all I got, so thanks so much for watching

and I'll see you on Thursday.

Hey guys, thanks so much for watching

this inaugural video of my Five Lessons series.

Now, if you enjoyed it, you can support

this channel by leaving a like.

And if you wanna get more videos on being

a more effective student every week

and more Five Lessons videos in the future

click the big red Subscribe button right there.

If you wanna read a book on earning better grades

I happen to write one and it's absolutely free.

So, if you want a copy, click the picture of the book

and I will send you one.

If you wanna read a summary for all five of these lessons

and get links to this book and others I recommend

click the orange logo right there

to go to the companion blog post.

You can click the thumbnail to see another video

of mine with book recommendations.

And if you wanna connect I'm on twitter

or you can leave a comment below

with any questions you have.

Thanks.