“However, almost all 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.”
The Power of Habit
Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
by Charles Duhigg
Random House © 2012
Plot Summary:
Have you ever sat on the couch eating a bag of chips, but you do not remember heading to the pantry? Do you know why you often arrive at work but cannot recall details of how you got there? Habit.
In Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit”, he explains what habits are, why we create habits, and why they are so difficult to break. He divides the books into three parts:
- The first part looks at how individual people create habits for their every-day lives. Using the “cue ->Routine->Reward” cycle, what appear to be choices made from free will are actually a series of habits, which removes our choice from our behaviors. Driving awareness of our habits can insert choice into the equation and help individuals change their behaviors. Duhigg also reviews “keystone habits”, or the habits we instill in our lives that create an effect of helping establish and maintain other, related habits. Focusing on keystone habits can create widespread shifts in an individual’s behaviors. (i.e. creating a habit of heading to the gym can help create related wellness habits of eating better, getting more rest at night, etc.)
- Secondly, he expands the framework outward and walks readers through corporate habits that helped build or shape successful companies. Habits of corporate culture can be so ingrained that it takes the turmoil of a crisis to drive awareness to the bad habits and put the urgency of “something must change” to unite company stakeholders around the need to reinvent their corporate habits (which drive culture). “A company with dysfunctional habits can’t turn around simply because a leader orders it.”
- Lastly, he expands even further and takes on reviewing habits within societies. Do you know why Rosa Parks helped shape the Civil Rights Movement when Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith were arrested just months earlier for the same offense but their arrests did not spark civil unrest? Charles Duhigg believes it is because of who Rosa Parks was within her community that her arrest triggered a series of “social habits” which built into the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
As Duhigg asserts, it is not just a matter of finding and understanding the principles of these habits, but also about taking actions to use these principles to help form the habits we want to create. Throughout the book, the reader is reminded that the most important aspect to changing a habit is the decision to change it. Simply understanding the foundations of our habits is not enough. Though habits are usually processes undertaken thoughtlessly – on autopilot – we do have power over them. We must take ownership of these habits in order to change them.
“However, to modify a habit, you must decide 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…”
My Thoughts:
The information provided in this book is laid out in a very readable and easy to digest way. The material could have been dry, but Duhigg does a good job of continuing to captivate readers’ interest. The stories and examples used are relevant to conversations today.
As Duhigg reminds us throughout these pages, the real driver to lasting change of habits has to begin with the decision to change and the belief that change can happen. The instruction to driving change to individual habits and corporate, cultural habits is contained in this book. What you do with this information is up to you.