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Habits are interesting. We all struggle with them. We want to improve the good ones and we try hard to lose the bad ones.

Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit examines the structure of habits and demonstrates how they can be changed. One thing I didn’t realize is that during habitual activity our “thinking” activity actually lowers. It makes some sense – habital activity becomes subconscious and therefore the level of conscious thought is lower.

In the case of non-habitual behaviors, participants were thinking about what they were doing for 70% of the reports.

For habitual responses, thought-action correspondence was significantly lower, and participants were thinking about what they were doing for only 40% of the reports.

Duke University - David T. Neal and Wendy Wood

The significance of this insight is that relying on habitual behavior in creative activity could be the reason your thinking is just not as effective as it could be. But there is good news.

Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power becomes easier to grasp, and the only option left is to get to work.

‘The Power of Habit’ reviewed by The New York Times

It’s understandable that the thought of working on your habits is not appealing. Before you get frightened off it may be easier than you think. Lets take a look at the structure of a habit.

… he presents a simple scheme called “the habit loop,” whereby an environmental cue automatically leads to a behavioral routine that results in a reward.

‘The Power of Habit’ reviewed by The New York Times

The three key parts to a habit as proposed the in the Power of Habit book are:

• the cue or trigger
• the routine or pattern (of behavior)
• and the reward

What is the value of knowing this in the context of creative thinking? What do we need to do?

The easiest way is to change some of our routines. Changing or interrupting  our patterns of behavior, even for a short time, can enable new thinking. Here are some suggestions on how to go about it.

So what can you do to fight the routine bug? You may be surprised how easy it is. Here are 10 easy-to-apply tips to help you break routine and constantly renew, refresh and recharge yourself to stay ahead.

Prabhjit Singh - Corporate and Workplace Creativity

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Great like article about letting go of a problem in order to solve it

but sometimes, and strangely, it was when they went to lunch that some of the best progress was made.

The creative world is familiar with this paradox. For some reason, it is when we are free to stop thinking about the problem that we sometimes manage our best work on the problem.

And it is especially when we are free to think about something unrelated to our problem that our problem stops being a problem.

via Harnessing the Innovation Paradox :: CultureBy – Grant McCracken.

It’s strange how the brain works isn’t it. It makes it worth finding ways to improved it’s power. Try taking a quick look at this brain optimindation program and see what you think…

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Here is a short and delightful telephone automated response message – allegedly from an Australian High School.

The reason for including it here (other than it being very amusing) is that it lists what might be perceived as problems – until the final option that summaries the actual problem. What it illustrates is that our first thoughts in a problem solving situation are often quite superficial and based on unchallenged assumptions. Pushing on and challenging the assumptions will ultimately get you to the real problem. And therefore a real solution.

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