Author Charles Duhigg joins Amna Nawaz for our 'Settle In' podcast

Amna Nawaz:

Well, we're just over two weeks into 2026, and for many of you, many of us, New Year's resolutions have probably started to fall by the wayside.

For our video podcast "Settle In," I spoke with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Charles Duhigg about the science of making new habits stick.

Here now is part of our conversation about his bestselling book "The Power of Habit."

So when you were researching it and writing it, you wanted to change your habits of, what, exercising every morning, resisting that doughnut? Were you able to? Did it work?

Charles Duhigg, Author, "The Power of Habit": Absolutely. Absolutely, yes.

And to explain how, I should explain the most fundamental thing that I learned when I was talking to experts, which is...

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Charles Duhigg:

... when we think about a habit, we tend to think of it as one thing, right? There's this behavior that I want to change.

But, actually, if we look at how a habit exists inside our brains, what we see is that every habit is made up of three parts. There's a cue, which is like a trigger for an automatic behavior to start. And then there's a routine, the behavior itself, what we think of as the habit.

And then, finally, there's a reward. Every habit you have in your life delivers a reward to you, whether you're aware of it or not. And a lot of our life is actually habits.

A researcher named Wendy Wood studied how much of what we do every day is a conscious decision and how much is a habit. She found that 40 to 45 percent of what we do every day is a habit. It's essentially our brain saying, oh, there's a cue and I'm going to do this automatic routine. I'm not even going to think about it.

I'm going to make it almost feel like it's effortless. And then there's going to be some reward that's delivered to me, whether I'm aware of that reward or not. And the reason why this is important...

Amna Nawaz:

Forty-five percent? That's incredible.

Charles Duhigg:

Forty-five, hey, almost half of what we do every day.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Charles Duhigg:

And the reason why this is so powerful is because what we have learned is that, if you can identify the cues and rewards that shape your behaviors, then you can change your habits much more easily, right?

It's those cues and those rewards that give us the leverage point to change how we behave.

Amna Nawaz:

How do we do that?

Charles Duhigg:

There's a saying that we have, I want to break a bad habit. And it's a misnomer, because it makes us think that we can extinguish a behavior very easily.

And the truth is, with willpower, you oftentimes can extinguish a behavior for a while, but that cue routine reward in your brain, that habit loop, it'll always exist. So the best thing to do is instead of saying, I want to extinguish a habit, is to say, I want to change a habit.

So how do we do that? The first thing we do is, we have to figure out what is the cue and the reward that is prompting this behavior? So a good example is that, when I was working at The New York Times and I was working on this book, every afternoon, I would go up and I would eat a cookie in the cafeteria.

And I started putting on a little bit of weight. So I put these notes on my computer that say, no cookies today. And somehow, every afternoon, I would manage to ignore that note and go up and get the cookie.

(Laughter)

Charles Duhigg:

And so I was talking to researchers and they were like, OK, if you want to change this habit, first you got to figure out what the cue is.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

Charles Duhigg:

And all cues in general fall into one of five categories. It's either a time of day, a particular place, the presence of certain other people, a specific emotion, or a preceding behavior that's become ritualized.

And they said, OK, whenever you have the cookie urge, just write down those five things. What time is it? Who's standing near you? Where are you? And I realized pretty quickly, it always hit between like 3:15 and 3:45 in the afternoon. It was clearly a time of day was the cue for my cookie habit.

Then I had to figure out what the reward was. And I told the researchers, I was like, oh, this is easy. The reward's the cookie. Like, I love eating cookies.

Amna Nawaz:

Clearly, right? Yes.

Charles Duhigg:

Yes. And they were like, no, no, no, you have to understand a cookie is like a bundle of like a dozen different rewards all in one tasty package. So, is...

Amna Nawaz:

What? Explain that to me?

Charles Duhigg:

Well, so is the reward for me eating the cookie, is it that -- the sugar, like the sugar gives me a burst of energy?

Amna Nawaz:

Oh, yes.

Charles Duhigg:

Or is it just the taste of the sugar, that I like it?

And so they said, look, next time you go up, instead of getting a cookie, to see if it's the sugar, take some Splenda and just rub it on your tongue and see if that satisfies the craving for a cookie. So I tried that one.

Amna Nawaz:

Did you do that in your office break room?

Charles Duhigg:

I did it. I did it. I did it. I did it in my...

Amna Nawaz:

Did anyone see you do this?

(Laughter)

Charles Duhigg:

Somebody looked at me and they're like, what's going on in there? That's a little weird. But I told them it was for science. So it was OK.

(Laughter)

Charles Duhigg:

But that didn't work. I still wanted the cookie. So the next day I thought maybe it's the energy I get from the sugar. So I drank an espresso, instead of having a cookie. And I still wanted the cookie. I experimented with these different rewards every day, doing different things to see if it satisfied the craving as well as a cookie did,until one day I realized when I went up to the cafeteria to get the cookie, I would see some friends in the cafeteria.

And I'd go and I'd get my cookie. And as I was eating it, I'd go over and I'd talk to them and we would like gossip for 10 minutes. And I realized it was the gossip. It was the socialization that was the reward for me. So I came up with a new habit loop.

What I said is, OK, I want to come up with a new behavior that corresponds to the old cue and they deliver something similar to the old reward. So I would set my alarm for 3:30. When my alarm went off at 3:30, I would stand up. I'd look for someone in the newsroom to go chat with and gossip with and just have a bit of socialization.

And then I would go over and I would do it. And for 10 or 15 minutes, I'd talk to them, and then I'd go back to my desk. And the cookie urge totally disappeared, because what...

Amna Nawaz:

After how long? How many times did you have to do that?

Charles Duhigg:

Really, I mean, it took like a week, a week-and-a-half.

Amna Nawaz:

Huh.

Charles Duhigg:

Like, it -- that's the thing, is that, these habits, they can feel very strong and durable when we're in the grip of them, but once we pull them into the light, habits prove to be very, very delicate and we can change them much more easily than we think we can, as long as we pay attention to the cues and rewards driving that behavior.