I read the article earlier today and for me the most interesting part was the following. It lends credence to one of the fundamental ideas of LW, that deliberate study of biases can lead to good results.
In one project, 256 members of a health-insurance plan were invited to classes stressing the importance of exercise. Half the participants received an extra lesson on the theories of habit formation (the structure of the habit loop) and were asked to identify cues and rewards that might help them develop exercise routines.
The results were dramatic. Over the next four months, those participants who deliberately identified cues and rewards spent twice as much time exercising as their peers. Other studies have yielded similar results.
Btw., I think that was the "Lifestyle Intervention by Self-Regulation of Action (LISA)" study by Stadler, Oettinger and Gollwitzer 2005. The technique used was Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions.
I appreciate the summary, especially as it's such a long article. But I downvoted, because there was a discussion post on this exact article three days ago. If either this was written as a comment to that post, OR if that post was mentioned as being about the same article, then I would have upvoted.
Neither -- I missed a lot of posts starting Feb 18 because of a wave of sickness sweeping through my household. Things are just getting back to normal now.
The New York Times just recently ran an article titled "How Companies Learn Your Secrets", which was partially discussing data mining and partially discussing habits. I thought the bits on habits seemed to offer many valuable insights on how to improve our behavior, excerpts: