Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Judging from the prologue of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, the first thing necessary in modifying one’s behavior is to note the actual components of that behavior. The author cites a visit with a military officer in charge of normalizing a village (Kufa) in Iraq. The officer started by observing video of how riots began and noticed that the trouble usually broke out after people had milled around for a while and food trucks and spectators arrived. He changed the
This was an interesting collection of research about habits and routines. The book felt Gladwellian in that it combined a variety of case studies while arguing a central theme, just as Malcolm Gladwell tends to do in his books. I think my favorite sections were the ones on Starbucks' training programs, Procter & Gamble's attempts to market Febreze, the safety record at Alcoa, the applications of Hit Song Science, and the historic Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. The overall theme is about how hab...
Expect a video about this marvelous book soon.
How do some of us wake up for 6 a.m. jogs every day? What leads people to develop gambling addictions? Why do people brush their teeth every day while never remembering to wear sunscreen? Charles Duhigg answers these questions and more in The Power of Habit, a well-researched book on what motivates us to make the decisions we do in everyday life and in business.Duhigg's background as a reporter shows in this book. He does a good job of stringing together a wide variety of topics to fit his thesi...
I just read Kelly McGonigal's "The Willpower Instinct", so I can't help but compare the two.Duhigg is an investigative reporter for the NY Times, while McGonigal is a research psychologist, and the differences come across in the writing. McGonigal has a much better grasp on the research and how to apply it, while Duhigg brings in stories that are entertaining but stretch his powers of interpretation. His most annoying stylistic problem is that he breaks his stories up, stopping one to start anot...
Read this because of fascinating NYT magazine excerpt on how Target tracks our buying habits. The rest of the book is not as compelling -- anecdotes sometimes don't support particular arguments he's attempting to illustrate (the Hey-Ya examples being the most egregious), and his section on how social movements occur is weak and unconvincing, and not really about habits, per se. Style and structure were often clunky, and the book seems a bit muddled as its ultimate purpose. I dunno, I guess I was...
This is great book, and you need to read it. How is that for a definitive opening line? The reason it’s such a good book is because it uses research to explain how habits are formed and changed. Everyone knows someone who was out of shape, or was a smoker, and then in what appeared as if almost overnight, changed themselves in a short period of time. How did they do that? They formed new habits and changed old ones, that’s how.Do something enough and it becomes a habit, good or bad. This is expl...
I was looking forward to a substantial, science and evidence based, compelling read, but just found many mixed up ego and self finding trips, business manager motivation yada, and some good points accidentally mixed in. Read Clear James` Atomic habits instead, it´s much better. What is really strange is that the chapters seem to follow a logical approach, if one orients her/himself as always first by the titles of the index, and it looks like they are dealing with the meta or concrete context, b...
The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business is a book by Charles Duhigg, a New York Times reporter, published in February 2012 by Random House. The Habit loop is a neurological pattern that governs any habit. It consists of three elements: a cue, a routine, and a reward. Understanding these components can help in understanding how to change bad habits or form good ones. The habit loop is always started with a cue, a trigger that transfers the
This may be a crappy review since its going up via iPhone. Sorry. First caveat: I work in research. A big part of my job is creating these habit loops and seeing if they can be altered or enhanced via medication. Second caveat: I'm a nerd and love journal articles, scientific writing, and technical reading, even off the job.Third caveat: I only got to chapter eight. I honestly don't know what I was expecting. By far and large, when there's big buzz about a book I inevitably dislike it with very
I need to start with the obvious – this guy is one of those writers. One of those writers that make you want to track him down and hurt him. And not just him, maybe even his pets too. He assumes you are as thick as dog-shit and that you won’t get what it is he is talking about unless he makes it painfully (PAINFULLY) clear. He has missed his calling. He really should have gone into the self-help book market – let’s face it, assuming your readers are dumb in that market is just ‘responding to rea...
This long-winded book explains how habits form in individuals, organizations, and social groups. Despite the intriguing premise, the verbose anecdotes left me screaming, “I get the point already!” A better book (or article) would have resulted from taking the appendix (a short, practical guide to changing a habit) and adding some of the psychological research and a few brief examples. (After I wrote this review, I discovered Charles Duhigg's New York Times article, which is basically what I desc...
Habits, both good and bad, govern our life. But it's very difficult for us to start a new one or break a bad one. If we are more aware of why and how habits are formed, then we'll be able to control them. That's exactly what "The Power of Habit" tries to accomplish!This well-researched book consults academic studies, interviews with many scientists and executives, and research conducted at various companies. I had heard some lessons from this book by watching a few YouTube videos, but reading it...
I feel like I’ve just climbed Mt. Rainier. Why you ask? I finished a non-fiction book!So, I started this climbing excursion because I have bad habits. We all do most of the time. My bad habits are eating unhealthy food, drinking too much wine, not getting enough exercise or procrastinating at work. My hubby and I thought, let’s figure out WHY since we both have bad habits we want to stop. We started this buddy read in February. February?! And you're just finishing it? Now don’t let that sway you...
Nothing Succeeds Like Success: A Case StudyHey. Have you heard of Thomas Baker? How about Carol Wright? Chris Cameron? Vineet Shaw? Let us discuss Baker.Thomas Baker was an average joe, but not without ambitions. A few years ago, acting on a tip, Tom, a competitive enough guy, decided to take his life into his own hands. What’s more, he decided to pick up one more Self-help book and this time follow up thoroughly on it. No holds barred. He asked around, looked in that wonderful site and finally
I remember reading a story by the famous Malayalam writer Padmarajan called Oru Sameepakala Durantham ("A Tragedy of Recent Times"). It tells of a housing colony in Kerala, bitten by the exercise bug in the early eighties. Someone gets up before sunrise and starts jogging. Soon, he is joined by more and more people until the whole colony is out running, every day. This leaves the houses unattended which comes to the notice of a group of thieves: and they conduct a spate of early morning robberie...
Our local book club read this a few years ago. I thought I had a review....perhaps it disappeared? Maybe it's still here? I saw a friend currently reading it. I thought this book explained some useful information: Talked about success through good habits - organizational skills ----addictions- habits hard to break and how to create new ones --lots of repetition. ( some basic common sense - but also good tidbits and even validation in some areas) The personal stories of people's lives were intere...
Enjoyable. The book presents a framework of understanding how habits work, and serves as a guide to show how to change habits. “Once you choose who you want to be, believe you want to change, and it becomes real.” “Visualize the kind of person you would like to become, focus on one habit you would potentially develop, and transform that into what would become natural; requiring no effort or thinking.” “To modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of...
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Chi Kung Ritual: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg(original review, 2012)I was just thinking earlier this week about the 4 dimensions of rituals that Mervin Verbit, a sociologist, wrote about: content, frequency, intensity and centrality. And, although he was talking more about religious rituals, I think they apply to most other kinds of rituals in our lives too. And, I think that if our ev...
This book claims to explain how new science can help us stop bad habits. The advice on habit change ultimately comes down to the appendix with the author's personal anecdote about trying to lose weight. The conclusion is obvious and it's not science; it's just some dude's story. People looking for books on using increased awareness of thought loops to change habits would be better served reading something about cognitive therapy or meditation. Managing Your Mind: The Mental Fitness Gui...