Like Tony Schwartz says in The Power of Full Engagement ( review), the key to building rituals (his catchphrase for habits) is being absolutely specific on what needs to happen, when, where and having a contingency plan when you aren’t executing the desired habit. You can really think it through and be specific on what needs to happen. The reason mind maps are great for building your habits is because you can visualize the different habit components in a mind map and visually see how you are going to work on each part. With help of mind maps you can plan ahead how you are going to adapt and incorporate any new habit with the knowledge of the aforementioned habit loop and its components. This of course is a blessing for anyone who is geeky (and a system thinker) like myself because once you know the different moving parts you can streamline everything.Īfter reading the book I identified right away how you can use mind maps to build new habits. The book is great because it explains how habits work with a lot of scientific research and the author has broken it down in several components. However, as the author found out, to effectively change a habit you need to experiment with different rewards. Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, we have habits to drive us to take action that leads to a (repeatable) outcome that we want. We have habits to save effort and predictably satisfy our cravings, and that’s why every habit has a reward attached. Typically this is the behavior that you want to change. The routine is the actual habit – what you do after you receive the cue.

The cue can be broken down further in five parts: This could be a smell, an emotional state, a visual cue or anything else that could start a habit. Every habit starts with a cue, followed by a routine and ends with a reward.Įach habit is started by a cue or another way of phrasing that is that a trigger is what will initiate a habit. This process gets repeated over and over again.

A habit starts with a cue, a routine or action takes place and at the end is a reward. In short, each habit consists of three components: In the book The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg writes how each habit can be broken down into different parts and I’m going to borrow his framework for this post.

Specify your plan of action and details in your mind map.

Each mind map will have a branch for each habit component.

Mind maps support you in planning your habit and effectively overseeing it.

Each habit consists of a cue, routine and a reward.

With help of mind maps building new habits has become even easier. What really stood out how the author was able to break down habits into different components that would make it much easier to adapt new habits and change old ones. Recently I had the opportunity to read a fantastic book on habits and how they really work backed with some scientific research.

The power of habit ted talk