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.
Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive.
Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult.
Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying.
It would be irresponsible for me to claim that these four laws are an exhaustive framework for changing any human behavior, but I think they’re close. As you will soon see, the Four Laws of Behavior Change apply to nearly every field, from sports to politics, art to medicine, comedy to management. These laws can be used no matter what challenge you are facing. There is no need for completely different strategies for each habit.
Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself:
How can I make it obvious?
How can I make it attractive?
How can I make it easy?
How can I make it satisfying?
If you have ever wondered, “Why don’t I do what I say I’m going to do? Why don’t I lose the weight or stop smoking or save for retirement or start that side business? Why do I say something is important but never seem to make time for it?” The answers to those questions can be found somewhere in these four laws. The key to creating good habits and breaking bad ones is to understand these fundamental laws and how to alter them to your specifications. Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature.
Your habits are shaped by the systems in your life. In the chapters that follow, we will discuss these laws one by one and show how you can use them to create a system in which good habits emerge naturally and bad habits wither away.
Chapter Summary
A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.
The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.
THE 1ST LAW
Make It Obvious
4
The Man Who Didn’t Look Right
THE PSYCHOLOGIST GARY Klein once told me a story about a woman who attended a family gathering. She had spent years working as a paramedic and, upon arriving at the event, took one look at her father-in-law and got very concerned.
“I don’t like the way you look,” she said.
Her father-in-law, who was feeling perfectly fine, jokingly replied, “Well, I don’t like your looks, either.”
“No,” she insisted. “You need to go to the hospital now.”
A few hours later, the man was undergoing lifesaving surgery after an examination had revealed that he had a blockage to a major artery and was at immediate risk of a heart attack. Without his daughter-in-law’s intuition, he could have died.
What did the paramedic see? How did she predict his impending heart attack?
When major arteries are obstructed, the body focuses on sending blood to critical organs and away from peripheral locations near the surface of the skin. The result is a change in the pattern of distribution of blood in the face. After many years of working with people with heart failure, the woman had