My cousin was telling me about his cat.
At 4am, 10am, 4pm and 10pm every day, he feeds his cat. His cat seems to have picked up on this and will now, without fail, meow for food at those times. This critter might have been sleeping all day long, but somehow, when it chimes food O’clock, he’s all ruckus!
It’s not like cats can read clocks, so what makes this little guy tick?
Charles Duhigg has an explanation. In his book The Power of Habit, he tells us about an old man who gets a bit of his brain cut out during surgery, and subsequently loses his entire memory. This chap’s memory is so bad, he can’t even remember what he did a second ago.
Anyhow, something curious started to occur. Every morning this guy gets up and does his regular walk around the block. Instead of getting lost as we might expect, he manages to find his way back home! When he gets back people ask him “how was your walk?” and he’s like “what walk??”.
This is the power of habit. So powerful, it works without half a brain. It’s as if the repetition chisels out grooves in your mind, like programming a vinyl record. No wonder my cousin’s cat runs like a clock.
What’s even more interesting is that not only can we create habits for ourselves through these repetitive actions, we can program others too. If my cousin could program his cat so easily, how hard can it be to program humans?