1: “You can’t order people to change. That’s not how the brain works,” Paul O’Neill reflected.

As the new CEO, his goal was audacious: to transform Alcoa, the Aluminum Corporation of America, a Fortune 500 company that has existed for more than 100 years.

His predecessor had tried to mandate improvements.  That didn’t go so well. Fifteen thousand associates had gone on strike, bringing dummies to company parking lots, dressing … continue reading

1: The telephone rang in the middle of the night.  Paul O’Neill awoke in an instant.  He was the new CEO of Alcoa, the largest…

A plant manager in Arizona was calling.  

“A young man who had joined the company a few weeks earlier, eager for the job because it offered health care for his pregnant wife—had tried a repair,” Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit.  “He … continue reading

1: A group of Wall Street investors and stock analysts gathered in the ballroom of a swanky New York City hotel.  “They were there to meet the new CEO of the Aluminum Company of America—or Alcoa, as it was known—a corporation that, for nearly a century, had manufactured everything from the foil that wraps Hershey’s Kisses and the metal in Coca-Cola cans to the bolts that hold satellites together,” writes … continue reading

1: The year was 1934.  One of the largest and most successful attempts at wide-scale habit change was about to begin.

Bill Wilson, a thirty-nine year old alcoholic, sat in a dreary basement on the Lower East Side of New York City.  He was drinking three bottles of booze a day.  His marriage was falling apart.  His career was at a dead end, Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit… continue reading

1: Mandy walked into the counselling center at Mississippi State University.  She was 24 years old.  For as long as she could remember, she had bitten her nails.  

“Lots of people bite their nails,” Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit.  “For chronic nail biters, however, it’s a problem of a different scale.  Mandy would often bite until her nails pulled away from the skin underneath.  Her fingertips … continue reading

1: In the year 2002, researchers at New Mexico State University set out to figure out why people exercise consistently.  

They studied 266 people who worked out at least three times a week.  Most started running or lifting weights “almost on a whim, or because they had free time or wanted to deal with unexpected stress in their lives,” writes Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit.

So, why … continue reading

1: Proctor & Gamble, one of the largest consumer goods firms in the world, was convinced their promising new product Febreze was going to be a big hit.

P&G should know.  They are the company behind Pringles, Oil of Olay, Bounty, CoverGirl, Dawn, Downy, Duracell, and dozens of other successful brands.

For Febreze, “they spent millions perfecting the formula, finally producing a colorless, odorless liquid that could wipe out almost any … continue reading

1: We think the choices we make each day are the result of well-considered decisions.  

The science tells us otherwise.  “A Duke University researcher found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits,” writes Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit.

“At one point, we all consciously decided how much to eat and what to focus on when we got to the … continue reading

1: It was the early 1990s.  Scientists surgically positioned what looked like “a small joystick and dozens of wires” into the skulls of a group of rats, writes Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit.

Their goal? To be able to observe in minute detail what was happening inside the brains of rodents.

Each animal was then placed in a T-shaped maze behind a partition with chocolate at one end.  … continue reading

1: The year was 2004, the early days of the Iraqi War.  Riots were occurring in Kufa, a small city 90 miles south of Baghdad.   

While meeting with Kufa’s mayor, a U.S. Army major made an odd request: “Could they keep the food vendors out of the plazas?” Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit.

The mayor agreed to the request.  A couple of weeks later, a crowd began … continue reading