Book Notes #77: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Title: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change
Author: Charles Duhigg
Year: 2012
Pages: 400

Habits govern our daily lives, often without us even realizing it. But what if we could understand the mechanics behind these powerful forces and leverage them to transform our lives? 

Charles Duhigg’s groundbreaking book, The Power of Habit, delves deep into the psychology of habits, uncovering the science behind them and demonstrating how they can be harnessed to transform individuals, organizations, and societies. 

In this comprehensive blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the book, highlighting its key ideas, main lessons, and reasons why you should read it.

This is exactly my type of book: nice stories based on science that is connected with stories and cases that happened around the world and, everything connected, helps to prove a point and make something complex to be easy to understand.

As a result, I gave this book a rating of 9.5/10.

For me, a book with a note 10 is one I consider reading again every year. Among the books I rank with 10, for example, are How to Win Friends and Influence People and Factfulness.

3 Reasons to Read The Power of Habit

Book Overview

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed.

At the center of the book is a simple but powerful idea: the habit loop. Cue, routine, reward.

That’s the cycle running quietly in the background of our lives.

A cue triggers the behavior, the routine is the action, and the reward is what your brain craves. Over time, this loop becomes so automatic you barely notice it happening.

One of the most compelling stories Duhigg tells is about Eugene Pauly, a man who lost his memory but could still take a daily walk and find the snacks in his kitchen.

He had no idea why—his brain had just locked those habits in. The science here is eye-opening.

Habits don’t need memory or reasoning. They just need repetition and a reward.

But this isn’t just about neuroscience. The book takes us from lab rats to corporate boardrooms to the chaos of Saturday Night Live’s early days, weaving stories that show how habits shape everything—from personal routines to team performance.

One chapter walks us through how Starbucks trains baristas not just to make lattes, but to develop willpower as a habit.

Another looks at how Alcoa’s CEO transformed the entire company by focusing on just one keystone habit: safety.

That’s the beauty of this book—it doesn’t just explain habits, it shows how the right habit, in the right place, can unlock massive change.

And Duhigg doesn’t shy away from the darker side. Habits can also trap us. They’re hard to break because the brain clings to the reward, even if the routine is harmful. Smokers, gamblers, people stuck in toxic routines—they’re not broken or weak.

Their brains are just hooked on loops that haven’t been interrupted yet. But the encouraging part?

Change is possible. As long as you keep the cue and the reward the same, you can swap in a new routine.

It’s not always easy, but it’s doable—and the book shows that clearly.

One of my favorite parts isn’t about individual change, though.

It’s about how teams work. Google, for example, set out to discover what made some teams thrive while others fizzled out.

The answer wasn’t IQ or experience or structure—it was psychological safety. Teams where people felt safe to speak up, be vulnerable, and admit mistakes performed better.

The book connects this back to habits too: the unwritten rules, the team “norms,” that become habitual over time. Those invisible patterns shape whether a team collaborates—or collapses.

Duhigg also dives into decision-making, innovation, goal-setting, and how data only becomes useful when we work with it actively. But he does it without turning the book into a dense textbook.

Each chapter feels like a journey, filled with real people trying to figure things out—sometimes failing, sometimes winning, always learning.

By the time you reach the last page, the message is clear: we don’t have to be prisoners of our habits.

We can redesign them. We can reshape how we think, how we lead, how we parent, how we work.

But it starts with understanding that our brains crave efficiency. Habits are the brain’s way of saving energy.

So instead of fighting that, the key is to guide it.

The Cue

A habit cue might be anything that starts the behaviour.

Cues are most commonly classified as a place, a time of day, other people, an emotional state, or an immediately preceding action.

The aroma from the coffee shop downstairs may push someone to purchase a latte.

Another potent trigger is the music played by wandering ice cream vans.

The cue instructs the brain to enter automatic processing mode, and resisting the cue requires effort as opposed to gaining gratification from obeying the cue.

The Routine

The most visible aspect of a habit is its routine: it is the behaviour you want to modify (for example, smoking or nail-biting) or reinforce (like taking the stairs instead of the elevator or drinking water instead of snacking).

The Reward

The reward is the reason the brain determines the preceding actions are important enough to remember for the future. 

The reward reinforces the desired action, increasing the likelihood that you will repeat that behaviour in the future. 

The reward can be anything, from something physical (such as chocolate) to something intangible (such as a half-hour of television) to even anything with no inherent worth other than the fact that it is provided.

And everyone who wishes to alter a habit must first learn to adjust their own habit loop, change their cues, and train in new routines to acquire new rewards.

The Power of Habit delves into various captivating stories that illustrate the concepts and principles presented in The Power of Habit.

Some of the main stories include:

Lisa Allen and Alcoholics Anonymous: The Power of Habit starts with the story of Lisa Allen, a woman who transformed her life through the power of habit. Her journey highlights the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in helping individuals replace destructive habits with healthier ones.

The Transformation of Alcoa: Duhigg explores how Paul O’Neill, former CEO of Alcoa, transformed the company by focusing on a single keystone habit—safety. By prioritizing safety measures and fostering a culture of open communication, O’Neill not only improved employee well-being but also achieved remarkable financial success for the company.

Michael Phelps and Olympic Success: The author explores how Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps achieved extraordinary success by developing and leveraging positive habits. From his meticulous training routines to visualization techniques, Phelps exemplifies the power of disciplined habits in achieving peak performance.

The Marketing Power of Target: Duhigg delves into the story of how retail giant Target utilized customer data and predictive analytics to identify and exploit customers’ buying habits. This story sheds light on the influence of habits on consumer behavior and the ethics surrounding the use of personal data.

Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement: The Power of Habit examines the pivotal role Rosa Parks played in the Civil Rights Movement by refusing to give up her seat on a bus. Her act of defiance and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott demonstrate the power of collective habits and social change.

These stories, among others, serve as real-life examples that illustrate the principles and concepts explored in The Power of Habit, providing readers with a deeper understanding of how habits shape our lives and society.

Chapter by Chapter

Chapter 1 – The Habit Loop: How Habits Work

This chapter opens with the powerful story of Eugene Pauly, a man who lost the part of his brain responsible for memory due to a viral infection. Despite being unable to form new memories, Eugene somehow managed to develop new routines—like taking walks or finding snacks—without knowing how or why. That mystery led scientists to a deeper understanding of how habits form in the brain.

The story of Eugene

Eugene’s case showed that while his memory system was damaged, another part of his brain—the basal ganglia—remained intact. This structure, deep in the brain, was quietly creating new habits even though Eugene couldn’t remember forming them. For example, he couldn’t describe the layout of his house, but he could consistently find his way to the kitchen or bathroom when prompted by subtle cues.

Researchers noticed that when cues were consistent (like the same trees on his daily walk), Eugene’s brain could follow routines flawlessly. But when something changed—like construction blocking his path—he got completely lost. This proved that habits are fragile and closely tied to context.

What scientists learned from rats

The chapter shifts to a lab at MIT, where researchers implanted sensors in rats’ brains to study how habits form. They trained the rats to find chocolate in a maze. At first, the rats wandered aimlessly. But over time, they learned the route and zipped through it without hesitation. What’s fascinating is that brain activity was highest when the rat started and ended the maze—during the cue and reward—but dropped significantly in the middle once the routine was established.

This revealed the structure of what the author calls the habit loop: cue → routine → reward.

It’s how all habits work, whether it’s brushing your teeth, driving, or checking your phone.

The brain loves habits because they save energy. Once a behavior becomes automatic, we don’t have to think about it anymore. This process is called chunking.

It’s how we manage complex tasks like driving or making breakfast without using up mental space. Habits free up brainpower—but also make us vulnerable to falling into bad routines without noticing.

Habits are powerful… and stubborn

One of the key lessons here is that habits never really disappear. They’re encoded deep in the brain, just waiting for the right cue and reward to wake them up. That’s why it’s so hard to change them.

But the good news is that by understanding the habit loop, we can take control. We can keep the same cues and rewards, but swap in new routines.

For example, if someone snacks whenever they feel stressed, they might not need to eliminate the snack entirely—they could replace it with a healthier routine like taking a short walk or calling a friend. The structure stays the same, but the outcome changes.

This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by showing how habits shape nearly everything we do—without us even realizing it. From Eugene’s walks to rats in a maze to fast food cravings, the habit loop explains both our successes and our struggles. Understanding it is the first step to mastering it.

Chapter 2 – Teams: Psychological Safety at Google and Saturday Night Live

This chapter dives into one big question: What makes a team truly great? Is it the people on the team, or is it how they work together?

Google wanted to find out—and their journey led them to a surprising answer: the magic isn’t in who’s on the team, but in how the team behaves.

Julia’s story and the case of two very different teams

We start with Julia Rozovsky’s story. While at Yale’s business school, she experienced two very different team dynamics. Her official study group was full of smart, accomplished people—but it was a tense and awkward experience. Everyone wanted to lead, no one felt comfortable messing up, and the vibe was competitive and judgmental.

Then she joined a case competition team. This team was more diverse in background and experience, but they clicked. They encouraged each other’s wild ideas (even nap pods!), laughed, and genuinely collaborated. That team not only succeeded in competitions—they became lifelong friends.

What Google discovered with Project Aristotle

After joining Google’s People Analytics team, Julia helped run a major research project called Project Aristotle. The goal was to figure out why some teams thrive while others flounder. They looked at personality types, backgrounds, skills, social connections—you name it. And the result? None of that explained why some teams did better.

The turning point came when they looked at group norms—the unwritten rules that shape how team members interact. One norm, above all, stood out: psychological safety.

What psychological safety really means

Psychological safety is the sense that you can speak up, make mistakes, and share your thoughts without fear of being judged or punished. It’s about feeling safe to be vulnerable.

Google’s data showed that teams with psychological safety weren’t just happier—they performed better. People shared more ideas, took more creative risks, and worked more effectively.

This echoed earlier research from Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, who had found that hospital teams with more reported errors weren’t necessarily more mistake-prone—they were just more honest and open about problems, which made them better at fixing them.

Saturday Night Live as an unlikely example

The chapter then takes us to the chaotic early days of Saturday Night Live.

On the surface, that team was messy—full of big egos, rivalries, and clashing personalities. But despite the dysfunction, it worked.

Why?

Because there was an unspoken agreement: everyone had a voice.

People could be weird, wrong, even mean—but they were still heard and supported in their creativity.

Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator, nurtured that culture by making sure everyone was included and respected, even amid all the chaos.

The science behind great teams

Backed by MIT and Carnegie Mellon studies, the chapter reveals that two key behaviors consistently define successful teams:

1. Equal turn-taking in conversation – Everyone speaks roughly the same amount over time.
2. High social sensitivity – Team members are good at reading emotions and picking up on how others feel.

It’s not about having the smartest people.

It’s about having people who listen to each other and make space for one another to contribute.

Why this matters at work—and everywhere

Google now uses specific checklists to help leaders build psychological safety: don’t interrupt others, encourage everyone to speak, respond with empathy, and acknowledge your own mistakes.

It’s not about being soft. It’s about creating a space where people can do their best work without fear.

The big message here is this: if you want a team to thrive, make sure everyone feels heard and supported. Because when people feel safe, they share ideas, take risks, and grow together.

Chapter 3 – Focus: Cognitive Tunneling, Air France Flight 447, and the Power of Mental Models

This chapter takes us deep into how attention works—and what happens when it fails us in critical moments. It begins with the tragic story of Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, killing all 228 passengers and crew.

The investigation showed something shocking: it wasn’t equipment failure or bad weather that brought the plane down. It was a breakdown in attention. Despite having all the right data on their screens, the pilots couldn’t process it.

Their focus was scattered, and their mental models—the inner maps we use to understand the world—were either weak or missing entirely.

Cognitive tunneling: when focus turns into a trap

The junior pilot of Flight 447, suddenly faced with alarms and flashing lights, pulled the plane’s nose up instead of letting it descend—a fatal mistake. He didn’t mean to crash the plane. He was caught in what psychologists call cognitive tunneling—when our brain, forced to switch quickly from relaxed autopilot mode to high-stakes decision-making, locks onto the most obvious thing in front of us, even if it’s not the most important. In his case, that was a tilted icon on the flight screen.

The co-pilot, meanwhile, became fixated on reading the computer’s scrolling messages, instead of watching the instruments or correcting the mistake. Neither pilot could see the full picture because their attention was too narrowly focused.

Automation makes life easier—but riskier, too

One of the big ideas here is that modern systems (in planes, cars, or offices) are so automated that we often go into autopilot ourselves. And while this makes life easier most of the time, it also leaves us vulnerable.

When something unexpected happens, we’re less ready to act. Instead of responding thoughtfully, we react by grabbing the first familiar move we know—what the author calls reactive thinking. It’s fast and sometimes useful, but dangerous when it replaces actual judgment.

Mental models: the hidden superpower of attention

So how do we get better at focusing on the right things? The answer lies in building better mental models—those mental stories or images we create about how things should work.

We meet Darlene, a neonatal nurse who saved a baby’s life because, even though all the monitors said everything was fine, something about the baby didn’t match the mental picture she had of a healthy infant. That gut feeling came not from magic, but from habitually constructing detailed mental expectations of what she should see—and noticing when reality didn’t match.

People with strong mental models tend to do better under pressure. They daydream about future conversations, rehearse meetings, picture what a good day will look like. So when things go sideways, they spot the gap and know where to focus. It’s like they already have a map in their mind and can spot when they’re off track.

The Qantas Flight 32 story: contrast and success

The chapter closes with an inspiring counter-example—Captain Richard de Crespigny, who landed a severely damaged Qantas jet with 440 passengers after a massive engine explosion. What saved the flight wasn’t superhuman calm—it was mental preparation. De Crespigny trained his crew before takeoff by imagining possible emergencies.

During the crisis, he and his team ignored overwhelming alarms and instead focused on what still worked. At one key moment, he mentally reframed the sophisticated Airbus as a simple Cessna plane, allowing him to stay calm and focused. That shift in mental model saved everyone on board.

Why this matters in everyday life

You don’t have to be a pilot for this to be relevant. In work meetings, family conversations, or when juggling too many things at once, our attention can tunnel just as easily.

But if we train ourselves to narrate our day, imagine scenarios, and build mental models—small things like envisioning how a meeting might go or planning how you’ll handle interruptions—we’ll be better prepared to focus when it matters most.

The core message here is simple but powerful: you can’t outsource attention. Systems can fail. Alarms can overwhelm. But if you’re thinking—really thinking—you’re already ahead.

Chapter 4 – Goal Setting: SMART Goals, Stretch Goals, and the Yom Kippur War

This chapter weaves together two strikingly different stories—one about a near-catastrophic military failure, and the other about corporate innovation—to explore how the goals we set shape our decisions, our focus, and sometimes, our downfall.

The danger of needing closure

The story begins with Israeli intelligence officer Eli Zeira in the early 1970s. Zeira wanted to bring order and clarity to Israel’s chaotic system of military threat assessments. After years of false alarms and contradictory memos, he created a rigid formula—called “the concept”—to judge when an attack was truly likely. It gave leaders peace of mind, because it seemed to offer certainty. But it also made Zeira—and the nation—blind to real danger.

Even when there were clear signs that Egypt and Syria were preparing for war in 1973, Zeira stuck to his belief that they wouldn’t dare strike unless they had superior air power and missiles. He was wrong. The Yom Kippur War broke out, catching Israel off guard, and resulting in thousands of casualties. The problem wasn’t just bad data. It was the psychological trap of needing closure—of freezing on a decision and refusing to revisit it even when the facts change.

When SMART goals go sideways

The chapter then jumps to General Electric in the 1980s. GE was known for its highly structured approach to goal-setting, especially the use of SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. This system worked well in many areas, helping employees know exactly what to do and how to measure success.

But in some parts of the company, especially struggling divisions, employees became too focused on checking boxes. One factory had incredibly detailed goals—like building a fence or ordering office supplies—but none of them were tied to meaningful outcomes. People were busy, but not productive. They were chasing that satisfying feeling of finishing tasks, even if the tasks didn’t really matter. It was like mistaking movement for progress.

Stretch goals: Big thinking that changes everything

Enter the stretch goal—a concept Jack Welch introduced after hearing about Japan’s bullet train. The bullet train wasn’t created by tweaking existing trains; it was born by questioning every assumption. Welch wanted the same mindset at GE. So he challenged teams to set goals they didn’t yet know how to achieve.

At first, the idea terrified people. When Welch told GE’s jet engine division to cut defects by 70%, they panicked. But the stretch goal forced them to change everything—from who they hired to how teams were organized. And the result? Fewer errors, higher productivity, and transformation that no SMART goal alone could have sparked.

The balance between ambition and structure

The sweet spot, the author argues, is combining stretch goals with SMART plans. Stretch goals provide inspiration and ambition. SMART goals break those big dreams into doable steps. You need both. If you only set SMART goals, you risk playing it too safe. If you only set stretch goals, you might freeze in place, unsure of how to start.

This is true for companies, for teams, and for individuals. Writing a vague to-do list filled with easy tasks might feel good, but it’s often a trap. Real growth happens when we set bold goals and then create a concrete plan to move toward them.

The final lesson from Eli Zeira

At the end of the chapter, we return to Zeira. Decades after the war, he admitted that he had ignored his own warning system—a literal note in his pocket that said, “And if not?” It was a reminder to always question assumptions, to stay open to new information, and not get trapped by the desire to be right.

That’s the deeper point of this chapter: Goal setting is powerful, but only if we use it wisely. Ambition needs flexibility. Structure needs curiosity. And we must never stop asking ourselves if we’re aiming for the right things.

Chapter 5 – Managing Others: Solving a Kidnapping with Lean and Agile Thinking and a Culture of Trust

This chapter is an unexpected blend of action, tragedy, and management lessons—starting with a terrifying kidnapping and ending with a deep dive into what makes teams work better. It’s about what happens when people feel trusted, empowered, and committed to one another, even in the highest-stakes situations.

The kidnapping of Frank Janssen

The story opens like a crime thriller. Frank Janssen, a national security consultant, is violently abducted from his home in North Carolina. His wife finds blood on the doorstep and calls the police. Soon, the FBI gets involved. The kidnappers send chilling text messages referencing gang leader Kelvin Melton—sentenced to life by Janssen’s daughter, a prosecutor. The theory? This was retaliation. But things don’t add up. The messages are confusing. The kidnappers seem disorganized. It becomes clear that they might have intended to grab the daughter but got the father instead.

Investigators were drowning in clues but struggling to make sense of them. Then they turned to a powerful tool: Sentinel, the FBI’s new system for organizing and analyzing data. Sentinel was more than software—it was built using lean and agile principles, which turned out to be the real hero of the story.

The FBI learns to trust its people

Before Sentinel, the FBI had a reputation for being bureaucratic and resistant to change. Decisions came from the top, and agents were discouraged from acting on their own hunches. But when Chad Fulgham, a former Wall Street tech executive, came in to fix Sentinel, he brought a new mindset: decentralize authority, push decision-making to the front lines, and trust the people closest to the problem.

Fulgham’s team worked in small, fast-moving groups. They held daily “stand-up” meetings, took feedback seriously, and made quick decisions without going through layers of red tape. It was messy at times—but it worked. They built the new Sentinel in just over a year, and it quickly became a powerful crime-solving tool. In Janssen’s case, it found a tiny detail—a link to a gang safe house in Georgia—that led to his rescue.

But the real turning point came when junior agents were empowered to act on that lead. In the past, they might’ve waited for approval. This time, they trusted their instincts, followed the trail, and found the apartment where Janssen was being held. He was saved just in time.

NUMMI and the power of lean manufacturing

To show this kind of trust and empowerment wasn’t limited to the FBI, the chapter takes us to NUMMI, a car plant in California that was once considered the worst factory in America. Toyota took it over and introduced lean manufacturing, which gave assembly-line workers the power to stop production if they saw a problem.

At first, everyone was skeptical. American workers weren’t used to being trusted with that kind of responsibility. But slowly, a culture of mutual respect grew. One symbolic moment changed everything: a senior Toyota executive personally helped a worker pull the andon cord, stopping the line to fix a defect. It sent a clear message—you matter, and quality matters more than speed. From then on, people stepped up, pulled cords, and took pride in their work. NUMMI became one of the most productive car plants in the world—using the exact same workers GM had written off as hopeless.

Commitment cultures win—data proves it

The chapter also brings in fascinating research from Stanford professors who studied hundreds of Silicon Valley startups over 15 years. They found that the most successful companies didn’t just hire the smartest people. The winners were the ones that built commitment cultures—where employees felt trusted, valued, and part of something bigger. These companies didn’t just make more money—they had lower turnover, more loyal customers, and fewer internal battles.

Even though “star cultures” with elite talent seemed promising, they often fell apart due to ego clashes and lack of trust. Commitment cultures, on the other hand, made people stick around and work harder—not because they had to, but because they wanted to.

Why all this matters for managing others

The core message is simple but powerful: people perform better when they feel in control, trusted, and supported. You can’t micromanage your way to innovation. You have to build cultures where people feel safe to take initiative, where mistakes are part of the process, and where everyone believes they’re working toward a shared goal.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a car factory, a tech startup, or a federal investigation. When people are empowered to make decisions—and know that others have their back—they go from just doing a job to truly caring about the outcome.

Chapter 6 – Decision Making: Forecasting the Future (and Winning at Poker) with Bayesian Psychology

This chapter explores one of the most powerful tools in making better decisions: learning how to think probabilistically.

And to bring this concept to life, we follow the dramatic and deeply personal story of Annie Duke, a former academic turned poker champion.

From anxiety to the poker table

Annie Duke wasn’t always a card shark. In fact, she was a cognitive psychology PhD student who struggled with anxiety so severe she once checked herself into a hospital.

But she found surprising peace at the poker table. It combined her love for numbers, human behavior, and forecasting—something she had learned to do as a kid growing up with an alcoholic parent, always scanning for what might happen next.

What fascinated her about poker was the illusion of control in a game that’s really about managing uncertainty. She realized that the best players weren’t looking for certainty—they were comfortable not knowing. They didn’t just play hands—they used them to gather information, to ask questions through bets, and update their thinking based on what they observed.

Why probabilistic thinking matters

This is where Bayesian psychology comes in. It’s all about holding multiple possible futures in your mind, assigning probabilities to each, and updating those estimates as you gather more data. Annie mastered this on the poker table—but the skill applies far beyond cards.

She learned that intermediate players crave rules and certainty, while elite players thrive in ambiguity, using every hand, even the losing ones, to refine their predictions. It’s not about always being right—it’s about playing in a way that gives you the best long-term odds.

The science behind better forecasts

The chapter shifts to a research project called The Good Judgment Project, where regular people—students, housewives, lawyers—were trained to think probabilistically. The results were impressive. Even short lessons in how to weigh different variables and adjust for uncertainty helped people make more accurate predictions about global events.

What worked best? Encouraging people to treat the future as a set of possible outcomes—not a single, certain path. Just asking, “How likely is this on a scale from 0 to 100%?” forced people to slow down, think through their assumptions, and improve their judgment.

Bayesian thinking in real life

MIT professor Joshua Tenenbaum ran studies that showed how even with little information, people can make surprisingly accurate predictions about things like movie box office success or how long someone will live. It turns out our brains are pretty good at probabilistic thinking, even if we don’t always realize it.

But we’re only as good as the data we’ve seen. The problem? We often have biased experiences. We remember success more than failure. We notice thriving restaurants but forget the ones that closed. That’s why it’s so important to deliberately seek out a full range of outcomes—not just the wins, but the misses too.

Learning from failure, adjusting assumptions

This is one of the big lessons: to make better decisions, we have to consciously update our base rates—our starting assumptions—based on a broader view of reality. Successful people often do this by deliberately seeking out bad news, talking to those who failed, and analyzing their own mistakes instead of brushing them aside.

Annie learned to refine her assumptions constantly at the table. She wasn’t guessing blindly—she was forecasting based on patterns, adjusting her beliefs with every hand.

The Tournament of Champions

In a gripping moment at the 2004 poker tournament, Annie had to decide whether to bet it all against “the FossilMan.” She folded, unsure if it was the right move. Later, he told her he had a pair of kings—she made the right choice. That clarity gave her confidence, and she went on to win the entire tournament, beating even her brother, a poker legend, in the final stretch.

She used Bayesian thinking the entire time—not just to calculate odds, but to shape her opponent’s assumptions. Her final bluff was subtle and psychological: she revealed just one card after a big win, making her opponent misread her hand and shift his assumptions in her favor.

Making better decisions in life

This chapter isn’t about poker. It’s about how to navigate uncertainty, whether you’re choosing a college, making a career move, or deciding whether to propose to your partner. The trick is accepting that you’ll never have full certainty—but if you practice thinking in probabilities, explore multiple outcomes, and keep refining your assumptions, you’ll get better and better over time.

The big idea? The future is made of possibilities—not one guaranteed path. The better we get at imagining and updating those possibilities, the better our decisions will be.

Chapter 7 – Innovation: How Idea Brokers and Creative Desperation Saved Disney’s Frozen

This chapter reads like a behind-the-scenes drama—and also a masterclass in creativity. It tells the messy, panicked, emotional, and ultimately brilliant story of how Frozen went from a weak draft to one of the most successful animated films of all time. But it’s not just about Disney. It’s about how innovation actually happens when things feel like they’re falling apart.

When everything feels wrong

The early version of Frozen was a flop. Elsa was a bitter villain. Anna was uptight. Olaf was annoying. The plot didn’t connect emotionally. After a rough screening, no one clapped. No one cried. And at Disney, that’s a bad sign. The team knew the film wasn’t working, but they didn’t know how to fix it. Deadlines were tight, tension was high, and creative burnout was everywhere.

The power of brokering ideas

The chapter introduces the idea of “innovation brokers”—people who don’t invent entirely new ideas but recombine existing ones in surprising ways. This is how creativity often works. From West Side Story to behavioral economics, the most powerful breakthroughs tend to be mashups of things that already exist—just rearranged in fresh, thoughtful ways.

At Disney, this meant pulling ideas from their own lives. Jennifer Lee, one of the writers, talked about her relationship with her sister and how siblings don’t grow apart because one is good and the other is evil—but because life is messy. That insight changed everything. Suddenly, Elsa wasn’t a villain. She was someone trying to be good, who was overwhelmed by fear. Anna wasn’t whiny—she was hopeful and loyal. With that emotional core, the story started to click.

Creative desperation as a spark

Sometimes, pressure is what pushes people to get real. The team was out of time, exhausted, and unsure. That’s when songwriter Kristen Anderson-Lopez took a walk in the park and imagined how Elsa might feel: judged, isolated, tired of pretending. That raw feeling became “Let It Go.” It wasn’t just a song. It was a turning point. The whole story now revolved around Elsa’s inner struggle and Anna’s act of love—not around a prince or a classic fairytale rescue.

Small shifts can break creative logjams

Still, they didn’t have an ending. Everyone was spinning, stuck in their own ideas. So Disney made a subtle but powerful move: they promoted Jennifer Lee to co-director. It didn’t change who was in the room, but it changed the energy. Lee brought a new perspective and helped reframe the ending—not as good versus evil, but as love versus fear. That became the film’s heart.

This echoes a broader idea known as the intermediate disturbance hypothesis—a concept from biology that says ecosystems thrive best when they’re shaken up occasionally, but not too much. Too little disruption leads to stagnation; too much, and everything dies. Just enough change can make space for new things to grow. That’s what happened at Disney.

Innovation is personal—and emotional

The real lesson of this chapter is that innovation isn’t just about being smart or original. It’s about being human. The people behind Frozen succeeded because they looked inward, drew on their own stories, and had the courage to be vulnerable. Creativity isn’t magic—it’s connecting the dots in a new way. And often, it’s messier and scarier than we expect.

At the end, Lee summed it up perfectly: “Fear destroys us. Love heals us.” That became the soul of the film—and it’s also a pretty good motto for innovation.

Chapter 8 – Absorbing Data: Turning Information into Knowledge in Cincinnati’s Public Schools

This chapter is all about one powerful but often overlooked idea: having access to information isn’t the same as knowing what to do with it.

Whether we’re talking about teachers in classrooms, debt collectors on phone calls, or students navigating their future, data only becomes valuable when it’s transformed into something we can actually use.

And sometimes, that means doing things the hard way.

When high-tech tools don’t work

Cincinnati’s South Avondale Elementary School had every modern tool—online dashboards, real-time test data, fancy charts. But none of that helped much at first. Even with more funding and resources than other schools, performance stayed flat. Teachers admitted they didn’t even look at the dashboards most of the time. The data wasn’t the problem—it was how disconnected it felt from daily teaching.

Then came the Elementary Initiative (EI), which flipped the approach. No new tech. No extra money. Just one change: Teachers were asked to physically engage with the data. They wrote student scores on index cards, moved them into color-coded piles, tracked progress manually, and tested new teaching ideas based on those small experiments. It was tedious, yes—but it made the information real. They stopped just absorbing data and started thinking with it.

And the results? Huge improvements in test scores. South Avondale went from one of the worst schools in Cincinnati to one of the best. The same data became transformational—because teachers had to process it in a hands-on, reflective way.

The power of “disfluency”

The key idea here is disfluency—when something is a little harder to process, it actually helps us learn better. A fancy dashboard might look nice, but if it doesn’t force you to think deeply, it won’t stick. But when you write things out by hand, draw your own graphs, or physically move data around, your brain is forced to engage. That discomfort helps turn information into lasting knowledge.

This concept showed up in other places too. At Chase Bank, a manager named Charlotte Fludd turned a low-performing debt collection team into one of the best by doing something simple: her team ran daily experiments. They’d come up with hunches, test them, and keep detailed notes by hand. One day, they’d test calling women in the morning. Another day, they’d tweak who they called after dinner. They weren’t just taking in data—they were interacting with it. And that made all the difference.

Teaching students to think like engineers

This idea also shaped students’ lives—especially in the case of Delia Morris, a high schooler facing enormous personal challenges. In her engineering class, her teacher introduced her to the “engineering design process”—a step-by-step system for solving problems. It helped Delia break overwhelming choices (like whether to babysit her nephew or stay on the college track) into smaller, manageable pieces. Instead of asking “Should I help my sister or not?”, she learned to ask, “What happens if I do? What’s the long-term cost?” She reframed her decisions and found better answers.

The process didn’t magically fix her life. But it gave her a tool to think through complex situations. With the help of supportive teachers and a system that encouraged structured reflection, Delia not only graduated as valedictorian—she earned 17 scholarships and went to college.

Making learning stick

Research backs this up. One study showed students who took handwritten notes learned more than those who typed on laptops.

Writing by hand was less efficient—but it forced deeper processing.

And that’s the whole message of this chapter: to truly learn from data, we need to work with it, question it, shape it into something we can act on.

Whether it’s building index card systems, testing new call strategies, or walking through a flowchart, the most powerful learning happens when we stop passively receiving information and start doing something with it.

That’s how you go from simply knowing something to truly understanding it.

4 Key Ideas from The Power of Habit

6 Main Lessons from The Power of Habit

My Book Highlights & Quotes

Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped

Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change

The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it

Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things

Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine

If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real

This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental, or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future: THE HABIT LOOP

This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be

As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything

Simply giving employees a sense of agency- a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority – can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs

Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage

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

This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives

Conclusion

The Power of Habit visits laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. 

We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr.

We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

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