If there is one thing I never seem to have enough of it is books. I love to learn and study a wide range of topics. When driving in my car, I listen to books on CD. I happened upon this book by chance when scanning the available books on CD at the library.
Habits
Habits are a huge part of our overall health and wellness. They can be both good and bad, but how they work is similar. So, when I saw the title The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business I was intrigued. It was a great listen and read (I checked out both the CD and book version). I don’t take notes when listening and driving as that would definitely not be wise.
New York Times investigative reporter Charles Duhigg wrote this book in 2012. This is not a self-help book to improve your habits. Duhigg has interviewed many scientists and delved over hundreds of scientific papers. Through his research, he shares interesting findings about habits; how they form and how to modify them from many fields of scientific study. Check out a previous post about habits.
There are many interesting stories such as
- Target can determine things like which female customers are pregnant.
- Tony Dungy used habits to build a Super Bowl winning team.
- Marketers at Procter & Gamble detect a “pattern” in a test market for Febreze, shift the advertising, and Febreze goes on to earn billions of dollars.
These and many more examples are given how habits affect our lives.
The book presents how our lives are full of habits, again both positive and negative. Duhigg uses studies from fields of science including social psychology, neuroscience, and clinical psychology to share the power of habits and how to modify them. He provides data to understand habits, how to build positive habits or strategies to change negative ones. He introduces “the habit loop” early on in chapter on, building on how the habit loop work. How to change habits, both individually and corporately.
Why read this book
The Power of Habit “presents an argument that 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.”
Would you like to change habits in your own life, your children, your company, or community? Duhigg shows that habits don’t have to be our destiny, and by evaluating the process, making some changes in “the habit loop”, we can transform ourselves, our businesses, and our communities. If you enjoy reading and learning about human nature, I think you will find this book fascinating.
Be blessed and be a blessing,
Heather
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