The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

It is a great book, I highly recommend you to read it! Book everyone should read and apply to their life! “The Power of Habit” was written in 2012 by Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer Prize awarded New York Times business reporter, and since then it became bestseller of The New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and Amazon.com, to mention few. The book is about how people, businesses and organizations develop the positive habits that make them productive and happy. Duhigg examines the science of habit formation and change.

 This book draws on hundreds of academic studies, interviews with more than three hundred scientists and executives, and research conducted at dozens of companies. It focuses on habits as they are technically defined: the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day. At one point, we all consciously decided how much to eat and what to focus on when we got to the office, how often to have a drink or when to go for a jog. Then we stopped making a choice, and the behavior became automatic. It’s a natural consequence of our neurology. And by understanding how it happens, you can rebuild those patterns in whichever way you choose.”- Charles Duhigg

This book is divided into three sections each of them focusing on different audience- first on the individual, then companies, and finally society. Duhigg provides some fascinating stories and research about the subject. He looks at the habits of individual and how habits operate in the brain. The book also delivers very interesting insight to how companies operate by shaping habits and how retailers use habits to manipulate customers’ buying habits.

Few Quotes:

“Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often. This effort-saving instinct is a huge advantage. An efficient brain requires less room, which makes for a smaller head, which makes childbirth easier and therefore causes fewer infant and mother deaths. An efficient brain also allows us to stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors, such as walking and choosing what to eat, so we can devote mental energy to inventing spears, irrigation systems, and, eventually, airplanes and video games.”

“The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.”

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”

“This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.”

“This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future: THE HABIT LOOP”

“Once you know a habit exists, you have the responsibility to change it . . . others have done so . . . That, in some ways, is the point of this book. Perhaps a sleep-walking murderer can plausibly argue that he wasn’t aware of his habit, and so he doesn’t bear responsibility for his crime, but almost all of the other patterns that exist in most people’s lives — how we eat and sleep and talk to our kids, how we unthinkingly spend our time, attention and money — those are habits that we know exist. And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work.”

TITLE: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

AUTHOR: Charles Duhigg

PUBLISHED: 2014

COVER: paperback

PAGES: 371

BOOK PRICE: $9.31

KINDLE: $8.21

AUDIBLE: $16.15

AUDIO CD: $31.74

WHERE TO BUY: click here to buy

TAGS: success, personal transformation, personal development, habits, business