I’ve just finished reading The Power of Habit , a book by Charles Duhigg.
As the subtitle of the book indicates (“why we do what we do and how to change it”), Duhigg does go into details of the intricacies of habits, how they are formed and how they can be transformed.
The books tells a series of stories that Duhigg researched to show the different facets of habits, from the very basics of how habits work to ways to create and modify habits we don’t like.
If you think this book may be of little use for you, think again; a revealing fact the books makes is enough to give attention to at least learn how habits work:
40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.
If that quote doesn’t awake any curiosity, then the other reason you may still want to read this book is for the bagful of stories packed inside the book. Everybody likes stories.
One of said stories is the tale of Eugene Pauly, a wildly know medical case. Eugene suffered from amnesia due to ecephalitis and even though he wasn’t able to recall or explain how he did it, he was able to feed himself and go for walks without assistance all thanks to habits.
Other stories in the book include NFL coach Tony Dungy, Fabreeze, Rosa Parks and Matin Luther King, AA, the London Subway and even Hospital malpractice.
All those stories are a nice wrapper for the insight into how habits are structured, made, modified; habits can be channeled for the good, bad habits overcome and marketers want to generate new consumer habits.
The basic structure of a habit, Duhigg explains, is the habit loop. Which — through repetition — becomes second nature and allows the brain to almost shut down during the execution of the habit.
This underlying structure of habits not only allows us to understand how they work and how they are created but also allows us to change them. With a little bit of discipline that is.
This loop consist of 3 parts: a cue triggers it, a routine is executed (what we normally consider the habit) and after it, we receive a physical of psychological reward.
Another interesting fact about habits is that even when you think you have overcome it. They are still there and usually come back during times of high stress.
Or in Duhigg’s words.
You Can’t Extinguish a Bad Habit, You Can Only Change It
One of the stories that Duhigg tells is that of coach Tony Dungy and how he trained his team to have a small set of tactics that they executed without thinking. But when in high stress times (like the Super Bowl) they would revert back to their old ways. It eventually took a tragedy to have the team come together and believe that their new habits would work.
This same belief ingredient is what makes AA work.
In the end, this book’s value is not in the theoretical but in the practical. Duhigg shows a simple framework for habit change:
If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted.
And the process for habit change is fleshed out in the only appendix of the book. A simple, almost scientific way of analyzing and changing habits.
All in all, this is a well rounded book that will walk you through the theoretical facts of habits.
You’ll learn how habits work at the personal level, even showing how to overcome unwanted habits; and at a group level which can prove very useful for people that want to establish the right culture in the organization they lead.
