Name: Fred Rivett's review of The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Item: The Power of Habit
Rating: 4.5
Author: Fred Rivett

Charles Duhigg

Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

The Power of Habit

Cassandra Tang

By dressing something new in old clothes, and making the unfamiliar seem familiar.

The brain can be reprogrammed. You just have to be deliberate about it.

Cravings are what drive habits. And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier.

Identifies the neurological processes behind behaviors, explaining how self-control and success are largely driven by habits and providing guidelines for achieving personal goals and overall well-being by adjusting specific habits.

Deatructive organisational habits can be found within hundreds of industries and at thousands of firms. And almost always, they are products of thoughtlessness, of leaders who avoid thinking about the culture and so let it develop without guidance. 

The hospital's routines weren't carefully thought out. Rather, they appeared by accident and spread through whispered warnings, until toxic patterns emerged. This can happen within any organisation where habits aren deliberately planned. Just as choosing the right keystone habits can create amazing change, the wrong ones can create disaster.

"We're not in the coffee business serving people... We're in the people business serving coffee."

Then again, all elite performers are obsessive.

I THINK THE GREATEST POWER IS BELIEF FOR WHAT IS A GOD WITHOUT IT

For some habits, however, there's one other ingredient that's necessary: belief.

Ayesha 

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community 

Habits can be changed, if we understand how they work 

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation. Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation's largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. Habits aren't destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

Why We Do what We Do and how to Change

nanafark

 to change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habits’ routines, and find alternatives. You must know you have control and be self-conscious enough to use it.»

Fred Rivett

Diverse, real life examples included to illustrate the concepts of habits - extremely interesting and well explained

The book is very interesting and well written, and strikes a good balance of providing evidence in the form of detailed case studies and also larger scientific studies on many subjects. Every point the author makes is illustrated with a story, which makes it easy to understand and more memorable.

That being said, I don't think the book is very practical. As someone who is already convinced that habits are the keystone for enacting change in your life, there wasn’t any useful information in this book for me. The strength of the writing meant that this book was still fun to read, but the only part that was “useful” for me was the short appendix at the end of the book. This is the only section where the author actually explains how to use habits to enact change in your life.

Ryan Ellison

The book is very interesting and well written, and strikes a good balance of providing evidence in the form of detailed case studies and also larger scientific studies on many subjects. Every point the author makes is illustrated with a story, which makes it easy to understand and more memorable.

That being said, I don't think the book is very practical. As someone who is already convinced that habits are the keystone for enacting change in your life, there wasn’t any useful information in this book for me. The strength of the writing meant that this book was still fun to read, but the only part that was “useful” for me was the short appendix at the end of the book. This is the only section where the author actually explains how to use habits to enact change in your life.

Christian Bager Bach Houmann

Amazing book on habits. A must read if you're looking to change something in your life.

It was a great read, deep insights and if you love Atomic Habits you'll find this much more helpful. Isn't very preachy like other self-help books.

Aamna

An example of how a lack of practical usefulness can be compensated for with good writing.

Suat ATAN

In Turkish:
https://suatatan.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Jaden Nelson

WOw, this took me almost a year to the day, but it could have (and probably should have) gone much much faster. I'm not sure exactly how I "rate" this book, but I did take a lot of notes and advice from this book. The audiobook version was wonderfully narrated, and I think it helped to keep me interested and overcome my initial hesitation at reading a book with "business" in the title. I was pleasantly surprised by how accessible, narratively-styled, and INTERESTING The Power of Habit was. A variety of sources recommended the book to me a few years back, and I am glad I just went ahead and bought the audiobook. The first section of the book is more focused on habits themselves: how they are formed and develop, the effects they have on the lives of everyone, etc; the second part of the book delves more into the business side of things and other narratives explaining how businesses and organizations use habits to their advantages, explaining consumer habits, etc (all in a very interesting, psychological, and "non-dry" way). There were a large plethora of studies mentioned (I assume the references page would be very long and meticulous if I were to see it in the paperback version) to support Duhigg's points and add interesting facts to the book. One fact that comes to mind is Dugigg details how researchers were able to use habits and behavioral science to reduce infant mortality rate. The "solution" was a seemingly unlikely one: giving high school teachers a stronger background in biology, especially in rural areas (because they go on to teach young girls to develop healthy eating habits and those girls will have stronger babies). Another section detailed how much information Target has access to for each "guest" and how they use it to subtly encourage you to buy their products. I normally avoid "business/self-help books" and this book was both of those. That being said, I really enjoyed it (probably because the business aspect had to do with consumer and worker psychology and the "self-help" was actually practical, explained well, and backed up by mounds of evidence. The book feels kind of friendly yet sophisticated and very "binge-worthy" (for lack of better words). I felt that it spent less time trying to "motivate you to become your best self" and more time giving you success stories, failure cases, etc and pointing out where they went wrong as well as giving insight into "why we do what we do" as the title says. I thought about giving this 5 stars because I think it does what it says and more and exceeded my expectations, but I want to reserve my 5-star rating for books that undeniably have that "it" factor, so to speak. Well, I don't have that much else to say, so now I will begin sorting through my audiobook notes and bookmarked locations (there must be upwards of 50 :/) and making them into an easy to read layout of notes for myself.

Hannah Yang

The Power of Habit is a good book because it is informative without being a bore to read through. There are lots of seemingly unrelated anecdotes that connect to make the main point of each chapter. There's a nice little section at the end that talks about how to apply the information in this book to your own life, so that readers can use the "cue-routine-reward" framework to build or change their own habits.

Overall, the information wasn't exactly surprising to me, but it was definitely interesting! There were some nice insights made, particularly in the last section about habits in society - the questions relating to the ethics and social perceptions of habits were especially thought-provoking (Why do we sympathize more with the murderer than the gambler? To what extent are we responsible for our behavior when habits are involved? Do habits, to some extent, take away free will?). 

I was not a fan of the organization of the writing. Although it was nice to see the connections between anecdotes, I thought splitting up anecdotes with other anecdotes was unnecessary and sometimes confusing. Although the stories in each section had the same main point, each story also had its own individual facts and sub-points. Jumping between anecdotes made it more difficult to remember those smaller points - which is a pity, since I'm sure they were good.

Otherwise, there's not much to complain about. It's an easy read, without any weird jargon, overly academic-sounding writing, or super abstract concepts. I know more about habits than I did before I read it. As a note, I would recommend this book to people who want to learn more about habits at a surface level. It's not any deep, riveting research; it really just explores the ways in which habits influence our lives and how we can influence our habits, using real-life examples.

Jenna

I remember reading this book when I first moved off campus in college. Really liked the section on Target psychology, would love to reread this again in the future!

Sarah Schumacher

Jackson Simionato

Surpreendeu demais, achei que teria muita conversa fiada do mundo corporativo, mas na verdade traz uma noção muito boa sobre teorias de comportamento humano e como isso é refletido na sociedade como um grupo maior. Perfeito para ler em conjunto com amigos ou colegas de trabalho.

Róbert Istók

One of the best books I've ever read. It is not only packed with a lot of information about habits, but the story is also told in a way which makes the book hard to put down.

I can highly recommend to anyone who wants to understand how the habits are formed, is interested in developing better routines or breaking old ones.

Lord Aragorn

Great insights into how habits form in individuals, organizations and communities. Third part of the book was a little creepy

______________________________ Why do we do develop habits? And how can we change them? We can always change. In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg translates cutting-edge behavioural science into practical self-improvement action, distilling advanced neuroscience into fascinating narratives of transformation. Why can some people and companies change overnight, and some stay stuck in their old ruts? The answer lies deep in the human brain, and The Power of Habits reveals the secret pressure points that can change a life. From Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps to Martin Luther King Jr., from the CEO of Starbucks to the locker rooms of the NFL, Duhigg explores the incredible results of keystone habits, and how they can make all the difference between billions and millions, failure and success – or even life and death. The Power of Habit makes an exhilarating case: the key to almost any door in life is instilling the right habit. From exercise to weight loss, childrearing to productivity, market disruption to social revolution, and above all success, the right habits can change everything. Habits aren't destiny. They’re science, one which can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives. ______________________________ 'Plenty of business books that try to tap into the scientific world manage to distil complicated research into readable prose. But few take the next step and become essential manuals for business and living. The Power of Habit is an exception.' ANDREW HILL, FINANCIAL TIMES

Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change

Abhishek

This is a fantastic read for someone who is trying to get to know the habits, how you make or break them and how they make or break you. 

Charles Duhigg wonderfully conveys the message through various stories or incidents but don't expect this to be a scientific research journal/book and how to apply it. 

In his variety of stories, Charles introduced me to various people and how they used their habits to make a change which gave a jumping off point to new reads. 

Overall a splendid book.

Kelly

This was a really good, insightful read. I felt like the end was a little abrupt, but I was able to take a lot away from this book. Definitely worth the read!

Matthew Royal

Great nuggets of information: 
 - Habits consist of a: cue, routine, reward
 - Habits are encoded in the brain in the basal ganglia
 - Habits are rewritten by figuring out a new cue/reward to replace an old one. Punishment does nothing to erase a habit.

Later in the book, it slid into tangential topics like addiction and the organization habits of companies. Would have liked it better if Duhigg spent more time on case studies of ways that different people successfully retrained bad habits in themselves. Or perhaps present an approach toward building more awareness of our habits and a greater reserve of the self-control needed to reprogram one's habits.

Madhuri jain

This book is a masterpiece. I heard it on audible. There are several pieces of advice, one can take and implement in their lives in order to be successful. One of the really important things that I have learnt from this is will power is really a limited resource hence you have to take advntage of habits to achieve what you really want in life. This is a kind of book i would like to read again and again.

Arohi parikh

A must read


“All our life,” William James told us in the prologue, “so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits—practical, emotional, and intellectual—systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.”

A potential life changer. The way this is written with stories abounding is so easy on the ear (I listened to it), one of the seminal books that make up who I’ve become.

Jowanza Joseph

I got quite a bit out of reading this book. I found the case studies to be applicable to my life and have been applying them since.

Obada Mu

"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."

this book was very interesting to read. i found the research included insightful and made me talk about this with quite a few people around me.

it was great at the beginning but it kind of had too many unnecessary examples towards the end i'd say. i wanted to move on to the actual point but it seemed as if it took ages.

after finishing it, i tried to implement what i read and i can definitely tell that it does tell you what to do (which is what we all need in these books). what i haven't found until today is the 

but i guess i need to experiment more in order to find them.

after this one, it will complete your knowledge.

this book was very interesting to read. i found the research included insightful and made me talk about this with quite a few people around me.

it was great at the beginning but it kind of had too many unnecessary examples towards the end i'd say. i wanted to move on to the actual point but it seemed as if it took ages.

after finishing it, i tried to implement what i read and i can definitely tell that it does tell you what to do (which is what we all need in these books). what i haven't found until today is the rewards but i guess i need to experiment more in order to find them.

UPDATE : read "Atomic habits"  by James Clear after this one, it will complete your knowledge.

Ben Radford

TPOH sublimely distilled a generous swath of behavioral psychology into digestible form, a mark of diligent authorship. The illustrative anecdotes were used well to flesh out the neurological research and compare implications of habits. A quick, thought-provoking read with vast implications at the individual, organizational, and societal level. Particularly interesting for leaders to grasp an appreciation for the centrality of habits.

Shahdan Yasser

Tbh the first part was so well written and very informative but the rest of the book was full of unnecessary details that kept me distracted for the main points he’s trying to prove!

Fred Rivett &
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

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