Scientific Definition
An automatic action triggered by a stable cue — built through repetition.
Plain-English Definition
An automatic action triggered by a stable cue — built through repetition.
Feynman Explanation
Strategy is what you say. Habit is what actually runs the company.
Core Principle
An automatic action triggered by a stable cue — built through repetition.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
An automatic action triggered by a stable cue — built through repetition.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Culture is the set of habits that survive without you watching.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Strategy is what you say. Habit is what actually runs the company.
Examples
- Cue → routine → reward; brushing, checking email, opening the dashboard.
- Culture is the set of habits that survive without you watching.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Design the cue. Design the reward. The routine will form.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Design the cue. Design the reward. The routine will form.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
A present-bias kink (β) on top of exponential discounting (δ): immediate rewards get a bonus, all future rewards trade normally.
Our decisions are influenced by when events occur or when we evaluate them.
A single habit whose adoption cascades into many other behavior changes.
Start absurdly small, anchor to an existing routine, celebrate immediately.
Small advantages, applied consistently, become uncatchable.
How much we value the present over the future.
How vividly we connect to our future self predicts long-term decision quality.
Creative work needs blocks of hours; managerial work runs on 30-minute slices. They destroy each other when mixed.
Where you can go is constrained by where you've been.
People preferentially process experience visually, auditorily, or kinesthetically. Match the channel; match the mind.
We judge probability by how similar an event is to a prototype.
H1 (managing the present) + H2 (transition mechanisms) + H3 (transformative futures) held simultaneously.