Problem phase 1. Cue: You walk into a dark room.
2. Craving: You want to be able to see.
Solution phase 3. Response: You flip the light switch.
4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to see. Turning on the light switch becomes
associated with being in a dark room.
By the time we become adults, we rarely notice the habits that are
running our lives. Most of us never give a second thought to the fact that we
tie the same shoe first each morning, or unplug the toaster after each use, or
always change into comfortable clothes after getting home from work. After
decades of mental programming, we automatically slip into these patterns
of thinking and acting.
THE FOUR LAWS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE In the following chapters, we will see time and again how the four stages of
cue, craving, response, and reward influence nearly everything we do each
day. But before we do that, we need to transform these four steps into a
practical framework that we can use to design good habits and eliminate
bad ones.
I refer to this framework as the Four Laws of Behavior Change, and it
provides a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad
ones. You can think of each law as a lever that influences human behavior.
When the levers are in the right positions, creating good habits is effortless.
When they are in the wrong positions, it is nearly impossible.
How to Create a Good Habit The 1st law (Cue): Make it obvious.
The 2nd law (Craving): Make it attractive.
The 3rd law (Response): Make it easy.
The 4th law (Reward): Make it satisfying.
We can invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit.
How to Break a Bad Habit Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible.
