The Habit Loop

I was recently reading The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins.  If you haven’t seen her TedxSF talk, “How to stop screwing yourself over” it’s worth a watch.  In the book she raises a concept introduced by Pulitzer-prize winning author, Charles Duhigg known as The Habit Loop.

The Habit Loop is a process we complete unconsciously that produces an outcome. It’s the equivalent of a mental macro you might have to perform a set of steps in a spreadsheet.

The three step process consists of a 1 – a cue or trigger that initiates the unconscious behaviour, 2 – a routine, the actual behaviour and 3 – a reward or what out mind gets out of the habit.¹

When we get up to go to work each day and week, we get into a habit.  What activities and tasks we do each day or each week and we repeat the process simply because that is the way we have always done it.

Sometimes habit is good, it provides framework and structure, but sometimes habits stop us from becoming better.  Working in a world that is so connected because of technology it’s easy to get into the habit of sending emails to people rather than changing habits, picking up the phone and going back to old fashioned communication.

For better or worse, technology is here to stay. 

Perhaps the key to getting better lies in changing our habits from time to time to see if we can get better results by simply doing something different?

#forbetterorworse #productivityspeaker #engagement #technologyspeaker #femaleconferencespeaker #melrobbins #charlesduhigg

Donna Hanson works with organisations and their teams to engage, communicate and turbo charge their productivity with everyday technology.  Her inhouse programs, conference sessions and workshops encourage audiences to get excited again about everyday technology.  Find out how Donna helps, visit www.donnahanson.com.au

1 The Habit Look – Stanford University – https://gdt.stanford.edu/the-habit-loop/