When one good habit triggers another, the speed of success doubles. I can hardly remember what my mornings look like these days. It's taken years and much trial and error, but I have a routine now that needs no thought to be completed. Each action, all morning long, is pre-scripted, memorized, and controlled by habit.

In my book New York Times bestselling book Atomic Habits, I explain that the process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The image below shows the habit loop and how these four factors work together to build new habits.

In 2007, researchers at Oxford University started peering into the brains of newborn babies. What they found was surprising. After comparing the newborn brains to the normal adult human, the researchers realized that the average adult had 41 percent fewer neurons than the average newborn. 1 At first glance, this discovery didn't make sense.