The Costco Connection - January 2014

By Charles Duhigg

EVERY NEW YEAR, small-business owners, multi-tasking executives and harried parents make resolutions. This year, they tell themselves, I’m going to organize my receipts every week! And exercise more! And keep the kids away from the iPad!

And then, come February—well, you know. The receipts are in a pile. The running shoes are deep in the closet. And the kids just reached level 134 on Angry Birds.

But this year can be different. When I was writing my book about the science of habit formation, The Power of Habit, I asked neurologists, psychologists and other researchers if there’s a right way to create New Year’s resolutions. In particular, I told them that I wanted to stop eating cookies in the afternoon, my brother-in-law wanted to exercise more and my sister wanted to stay on top of her receipts. What’s more, I said, my siblings had offered to pay for a Costco shopping spree if I helped them change their behaviors.

No problem, the scientists said. Any habit can be changed—as long as you know how.

The first step, they told me, is understanding that every habit has three parts: a cue, a routine and a reward.

For years, for instance, I had a habit of eating a chocolate chip cookie every afternoon. That was my routine. The scientists said I needed to figure out the cue. Cues can be a specific time of day, a particular emotional state or other triggers. And so I began paying close attention to my environment whenever I felt a cookie urge, and pretty quickly discovered that it always occurred at about 3: 30 in the afternoon. A time of day was my cue.

Next, I had to figure out the reward. Was it the cookie itself? Or the burst of energy that comes from a blast of sugar?

I started conducting experiments. One
day, when the cookie urge struck, I bought a cup of
coffee, to see if what I really needed was a pick-me-
up. The next day, I bought an apple to see if reduc-
ing hunger was the reward I craved. On day three,
I went for a walk around the block.

What I discovered was that the real reason I went to the cafeteria every afternoon was because it offered an opportunity to see my friends and gossip for half an hour. The reward I was really craving was socialization.

Once I understood my habit loop, the habit was easy to change. I resolved that every afternoon I would walk to a co-worker’s desk to gossip, rather than to the cafeteria.

That was a year ago, and today, I’m happy to report, I weigh 18 pounds less. And my sister and brother-in-law? At first, they were skeptical.

“Starting a big exercise plan seems kind of
intimidating,” my brother-in-law told me. “And I
look like an idiot in the gym.”
The scientists had told me that an important
component of creating a new habit—and keeping a
New Year’s resolution—is starting small. So I asked
my brother-in-law if, maybe, he could start by
focusing on his existing daily routines.

“What if, at work, you park in the farthest spot
from the door?” I asked him. “No one looks like an
idiot walking across a parking lot.”
My sister’s quest to stay on top of her receipts
was different. She knew her cue: She wanted to file
her receipts at the end of each day. But she needed a
reward to make that behavior into a habit.

“How about, whenever you file your receipts, you allow yourself 30 minutes to surf the Internet and watch dumb You Tube videos?” I asked her.

My sister loves dumb You Tube videos.

Since then, things have improved for them, as well. My brother-in-law not only walks across the parking lot every day, he also now habitually walks up the stairs and goes on a brisk stroll every night. My sister has an accordion file full of organized receipts, and an encyclopedic knowledge of videos of cats singing Broadway tunes.

And, I am now the proud owner of 216 rolls of paper towels from Costco, all stacked in the garage and paid for by my siblings. C

Costco member Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter at The New York Times.

NEUROLOGISTS SAY there are four basic steps to changing a habit.

1. Identify the habit loop. Every habit has three components: a cue, a routine and a reward.

2. Figure out the cue. Cues are almost always a specific location or time of day, a particular emotional state, the presence of certain other people or a behavior that’s become ritualized. Notice what’s going on when the habit strikes.

3. Experiment with different rewards. Are you hungry? (In which case an apple should work as well as a cookie.) Do you need a break? (So take a walk around the block, instead of to the cafeteria.)