All habits can be broken down into a three - step process.

Habits are triggered by cues, which then lead into a routine and the routine ultimately culminates in a reward.

One of the key things to note in this lesson is that habits are delicate things.

They don't trigger unless the cue triggers them.

So if you don't expose yourself to a cue, you 're not going to do a habit.

Now this is important for both good habits and bad habits.

You need to build cues that trigger good habits and you want to try to avoid cues that trigger the bad ones.

Now speaking of cues that trigger habits, the second lesson I learned from this book that I want to share with you

is that almost all cues fall into one of five different categories.

They either fall into the category of location, time, emotional state,

actions of other people, or the immediately preceding action.

Knowing these five categories of cues is useful when you want to start changing bad habits,

because they 'll allow you to pick out the cues of each individual specific habit that you 're targeting.