With the monthly full money extra, I'm Chris Hill.

Everybody has habits, but we probably don't think about our habits as deeply as Charles

DuHig does.

Charles is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and in 2012 he wrote his first book, The Power

of Habit, Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

When we talk, he explained how every habit has three parts to it, and to demonstrate

he used one of the most common habits that we have, brushing our teeth.

Though it turns out that particular habit was not always so common.

So a hundred years ago, almost no one in the United States brushed their teeth.

It was basically something that like rich people did once a week.

It was such a big deal.

It was kind of a status thing, right?

And it was such a big deal that in World War I when they were recruiting troops, the

military actually said that dental hygiene was a national security risk because so

many soldiers had rotting teeth.

And nobody could solve this problem until this marketer named Claude C. Hopkins, who's

totally forgotten today, but was kind of famous a hundred years ago, until he decided that

he was going to take on Pepsidin in exchange for a bunch of stock in the company.

And what he did was he created a habit around it.

He created every habit has three parts.

There's a cue, a routine, and a reward.

He found this cue, the film on people's teeth, right?

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