The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business by
Charles Duhigg
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
This was a really interesting read! The book begins by going through the brain science behind what Duhigg refers to as the "Habit Loop." Our brains make thousands of decisions a day, so things that we routinely do become habits, so that our brains don't have to take up mental "bandwidth" thinking about them. Instead, when we are presented with a familiar cue, our brain goes into autopilot and completes the determined behavior without much thought to get the desired reward.
While nothing in the book was particularly mind-blowing, it was interesting to see behaviors broken down into a fairly simple model or process. Duhigg briefly talked about how to modify behaviors based on the "Habit Loop" and outlined some of his experiments with his own behaviors. The book goes on to explore how habit science has been used with business and other organizations with varying success.
If you are interested in how habits are formed and how they can be changed, I think this is a good book to start with. It is written in easy to understand language and there are several case studies included. It is certainly not the "be all, end all" of habit science, but even someone like me, who really had only a passing interest in the topic, enjoyed the book and found it informative.
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