Smart Change: Five Tools to Create New and Sustainable Habits in Yourself and Others

An insightful guide that shows how habits of behavior are formed, and how we can transform bad habits into positive behaviors in ourselves and others.

Smart Change explores the psychological mechanisms that form and maintain habits in individuals and groups and offers real, accessible and actionable advice for changing habits. In an engaging narrative, Markman covers a wide range of habits, from individual behaviors like eating better and exercising regularly to work-related behaviors such as learning effectively and influencing customers’ purchases. He proposes that there are five effective tools to help individuals change behavior and to help people influence the habits of the people around them:

1. Tame the “Go” system: Identify the triggers of habits, replace old behaviors with new ones and generate specific plans to deal with obstacles.
2. Harness the “Stop” system: Learn to deal with stress and other factors that hinder the development of new and positive habits.
3. Optimize your goals. Determine the course of behavior change and how to successfully incorporate those changes for the long term.
4. Manage your environment: Change your surroundings to dramatically reduce poor behavior and habits.
5. Engage your Neighbors: To affect other people’s behavior, understand the shared culture that creates a mutual dependency, and allows neighbors and colleagues to have a profound positive influence on the behavior of other members of their community.

Art Markman, PhD, the author of Smart Thinking and Habits of Leadership, is the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas and founding director of the program in the Human Dimensions of Organizations.

Markman has published more than 150 articles and chapters and is the author of the scholarly work Knowledge Representation. He has been the editor of Cognitive Science since 2006.

As a consultant he has worked with large companies, including Procter & Gamble, for which he developed a number of training programs. He has worked with Drs Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen on two of their bestselling You books and contributes to their social networking website, YouBeauty. He is also on the scientific advisory boards for The Dr. Phil Show and The Dr. Oz Show.

Markman blogs regularly for Psychology Today, the Huffington Post, 99U, and Harvard Business Review online.