The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change Paperback – International Edition, 7 Feb. 2013

Great read

A thorough (and well researched) psychological romp through the subconscious machinations... tenuously held together by the vague term "habit".Whilst the title and tag-line implies it's akin to the saturated backlog of books promising to 'transform your [career / relationships / life / chronic nose hair]' that make you want to stab your eyes out with the nearest writing utensil... this is anything but. It makes no attempt to preach a 'model', but simply reports a vast swathe of psychology and decision-making which outline a curious framework for your understanding.The one (and only) bone I have to pick is that 'habit' feels like a slight misnomer with this book. It ends up being used as an umbrella term for "anything subconscious"... be it willpower, motivation or preferences. Truth be told, the core meat of how habits form, function and are malleable are covered within the first chapter or two. The rest is more social psychology, management and advertising. You hear how Target explored and perfected its data algorithms to identify pregnant women (and subtly masked this knowledge from them) - then get a "and from this we can see how habits can be formed" shoe-horned in to bring the topic back to the fore. Not that any of these other topics are disinteresting or poorly written, but it felt a bit directionless at times. More a compendium of fascinating psychological findings than a structured flow. It's thorough, but there's a few points I craved a bit more exploration of the idea (and its applications).But that is where the critique ends. If you disassociate the idea that this is a psychological guide on habit forming / breaking... but simply a broader, superbly researched journey through various aspects of the subconscious; how they work and how others try to tap into them... Then it's a superb read suitable for anyone craving a deeper understanding of psychology.It's well paced and warmly engaging, even if somewhat soul destroying reading about how companies abuse psychological quirks to take advantage of others.One thing to bear in mind is that this is written by a skilled reporter, not a doctor or life "coach". In other words, the tone isn't like a model/prescription to apply to make things better... but more a reporting of facts, outcomes and decisions for you to make of what you will. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you! The writing is also perfectly balanced to be scientific, yet approachable.So a pleasant surprise indeed. A welcome, though not quite astounding, entry to any psychological bookshelf.

Get to my age and you are an amalgam of bad and some good habits - you might like to think you make choices but in fact most of the decisions are habits. This book explores why habits exist and how they can be changed. It draws on a rich seam of individual accounts, of personal interviews and stories which bring the books to life.Charles Duhigg's book deals with personal habits, with the habits of organisations and the habits of society. It deals with excessive personal habits like alcoholism, obesity, obsessive- compulsive disorders. It deals with organisational habits like aggression in some organisations gets rewarded. Some habits are so strong that courts and justices have agreed that they overwhelm our capacity to make choices and thus we are not responsible for what we do. Murderers have been acquitted because they were not responsible for overcoming their habits.Habits are not destiny. They can be ignored, changed or replaced. But when a habit emerges the brain stops fully participating in decision making and so it can focus on other tasks. Therefore if you want to change a habit unless you find new routines the pattern will unfold automatically.By focussing on one habit - a keystone habit - you can teach yourself how to reprogram the other routines in your life.Duhigg analyses habits into cue, routine and reward. You can never extinguish bad habits but you can insert a new routine. Use the same cue, provide the same reward but change the routine.Willpower is an expendable resource. But giving employees in companies and organisations a sense of agency - a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority - can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs.There are no organisations without institutional habits. There are places where they are absolutely designed - Starbucks being a prime example- and places where they are created without forethought. They often grow from rivalry or fear.Firms are often guided by long held organisational habits patterns that emerge from thousands of employees independent decisions. But even destructive habits can be transformed by leaders who know how to seize the right opportunities, sometimes in the height of a crisis.In societies our weak-tie acquaintances are often as influential as our close-tie friends. Individuals with few weak link ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and ideas and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. The power of weak ties helps explain how a protest can expand from a group of friends into a broad social movement. It examines the force of peer pressure and the social habits that encourage people to conform to group expectations.A stimulating book.

The knowledge contained within these pages is nothing short of remarkable, it's not an exaggeration to say you might put this book down after reading the last page and walk away from it with a deeper understanding of yourself and everyone around you. A smoker could read this and quit, a fast food addict could read this and never take another bite of junk food, a couch potato could read this and become a gym rat.In the social media age, and maybe even long before it, there is an appetite for quotes that make us feel good, messages that give us temporary inspiration and overall for "other people" to give us the get-up-and-go we need to stand up, account for ourselves and make a change - refreshingly, this book is absolutely none of that.Whilst the title seems to lean towards an author ready to plumb the depths of self-help and provide a temporary kick up the backside there could be nothing further from the truth, a better title may well have been "The Importance of Habit".Duhigg demonstrates that the majority of our bad habits are little to do with necessity, laziness or attitude and instead are neurologically imprinted patterns of behaviour that can be modified at the drop of a hat and overcome with little more than consistency and the word "No".It would be tragic to dilute the lessons the book provides the reader here but Duhigg manages to break down the entire habit structure into a simple, 3-word equation that, once learned, will remain forever with you and grant untold power to change the way you act.The most intuitive and important lessons we learn in life are ones we end up never thinking about because we internalise them, read this once and discover The Power Of Habit becomes one of them.