The Power of Habit

The entire first part of this book was completely fascinating. I was completely in love with the first significant chunk - about a man who loses his hippocampi in a traumatic accident, but still manages to go for walks around the block, make food and hold conversations about computers, all without being able to remember such details as where he lives or how old he is or what year it is. A Oliver Sacks-worthy story illustrating the power of habit in determining how we live.

Duhigg goes on from there to illustrate, using animal experiments in rodents and monkeys how habits are formed and how we can form good habits and extinguish bad ones. He perfectly balances practicality with intriguing science and anecdotes.

The latter two halves of the book spiral off in a multitude of directions. How is having willpower a habit? I'm not really sold. Some of his anecdotes read like they would belong better in Blink or the Tipping Point and it undermines the strong, consistent definition of a habit from the first third.

Also, some of my favorite parts of the book - the febreze model and the target/pregnancy story are available online on NPR & NYTimes magazine and excerpted on lifehacker. (I had read them prior to this and hoped that the rest of the book would be the same quality)

After a second read/listen to this one I really love the topics and support detail brought within this read. I love how he points out the psychology of how habits form and I love the variety of content. I believe this is a solid 4 star and will definitely apply some of the mentionable items to my own lifestyle.

Thanks to this book, I could understand how my body works every day and how to improve my productivity, mindset and of course, habits. I will remember this book my entire life.

Warto przeczytać. Naprawdę wiele można dowiedzieć się o naszych nawykach i jak wykorzystują to na przykład sklepy, reklamodawcy. Poza tym jak wyrobić sobie nawyki, lub ich się pozbyć. Trochę o sposobie działania mózgu. Niezbyt wszystko ścisłe, ale daje do myślenia. Polecam!

AUDIOBOOK

Great book on habits, highly recommend reading it after Atomic Habits. I feel like Atomic Habits was a great starter and this went deeper, in more depth on the same concepts. Tons of great examples to help remember the concepts.

A great guide to some of the basic science of habits, at least as far as I could tell as an absolute layperson in any of the relevant fields. An entertaining read with particularly good story-telling for the type of popular non-fiction book this is. If you want excellent and careful interpretation of the current state of science, I suspect this book isn't your best bet, but my impression was that this book was carefully researched and articulated enough for my purposes. I'm optimistic that the ideas in this book will help me with the constant challenge of crafting better habits!

A great book for learning about habits.
I recommend Atomic Habits for actually changing and creating habits.

I went into this book not really realising what it was about, so it is partly my fault that I didn't enjoy it, but: What I was hoping for was a book about personal habit forming, and trying to adjust habits at an individual level, with an aim towards helping people.

What I got was a book about the large-scale ways that sales people, marketers, data scientists and leaders of organisations have manipulated large groups of people out of their money or free will without them knowing.

The book approaches this from the lens of the organisation, framing it to talk about how fascinating and brilliant and clever and amazing all these innovations are, and it leaves me wanting to quit the internet, never interact with a store again, and live under a rock for the rest of my life.

But there is like a half a chapter at the end about how to change your own habits as an individual I guess.

There are some interesting things here and there and a lot of other things that are just common sense. The author tries so hard to make his examples conform to the framework he created, that that the tone of the book is too forced. Overall it is an easy read and it doesn't add much to your knowledge, if you already read a lot of self improvement books and regularly listen to popular podcasts.

Thought this was a great book to help me think about the various habits in life. How to analyze them and figure out ways to change them for the better. I loved the Appendix section in the back which gave a brief overview of the core concepts in the book which will help me apply what I learned directly.

This is less of a self-improvement read. It's less of the power of habit for yourself and more like well researched examples of how habits utilized have helped companies and have an impact of individuals. I will admit a couple of these are interesting, I think if this was abridged I would enjoy this even more.

Read the first couple of chapters and if you like it, then you'll probably like the whole book! I kept on reading hoping the chapters would have more personal advice but It never gave me what I was searching for.

Decent read!

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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In Part One, Duhigg sketches the science behind habit by looking at a case study of someone who made radical changes to their health and lifestyle by choice, and one who made similar changes as a result of a disease that damaged his brain and removed choice from the equation. It was simply fascinating as he both related the cases and explored the science behind it.

Part Two shifts to the habits of organizations—how some megacorporations changed from within because they intentionally created institutional habits, which then spill over (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) into the lives of their employees. Alcoholics Anonymous also serves as an example of intentional change here. The section's last chapter focuses on how companies can study the purchasing and browsing activities of customers to predict and manipulate spending habits. Some of this last chapter is truly disturbing and makes me want to read Qualityland again—and make more people read it.

In Part Three, his focus is on “Societies” and he shows how the Montgomery Bus Boycott illustrates the ideas he's been describing—and how Rick Warren's Saddleback Church is an intentional use of the same ideas (quick digression: I have less respect for Warren's ecclesiology now, although some of what bothered me could be an unbeliever's description of his actions and theory rather than Warren's). The last chapter discusses the case of someone with night terrors who commits a crime and a gambling addict's actions—are either responsible for what happens when their behaviors are mandated by habit rather than a conscious decision? I found this last chapter problematic and a bit simplistic in the way it dealt with the ethical questions. But it's still very thought-provoking.

As far as the audiobook-ness of this goes, it was okay. Chamberlin did a fine job with the material he was given. Yeah, occasionally, I felt like I was listening to a super-long podcast episode, but I'm not sure that's a flaw. And if it is, it's probably due to the text, not a problem on Chamberlin's part. Like with a lot of Non-Fiction audiobooks, it's hard to separate the authorial “I” from the voice saying “I,” so I have this cockamamie impression that I've gotten to know Duhigg a little bit. Am I the only one who has that problem?

The subtitle is “Why We Do What We Do...” and that's what this book is about. Somewhere along the line, I'd gotten the idea that there'd be a little more “here's what to do with this information” to the book. But that was wrong—Duhigg sketches it in an appendix, but it's just a sketch. Yes (as he says himself), it's not that difficult to use a lot of what's covered (particularly in Part One) on your own. I'd have preferred a little more application to go with the theory, but that wasn't his point, so I shouldn't quibble.

This is a fascinating book. That's all I have to say on that front. But I'm not sure what to do with the information. I'm not against learning things to learn them, but this seems to be begging for practical applications—in personal or business life. But I just don't know how. Maybe that's because I lack the imagination to apply it, or maybe it's a shortcoming from the book in not doing a better job in pointing to it. I'm leaning to the latter, but expect it's the former.

Must read to understand how habits are inculcated.
Many insights for Business as well.
Story of the Aluminium company trying to make it the safest company is amazing.

Overall, this is a good book to help you spend a few hours thinking about your habits and gives you a reasonably convincing method of changing them (cue-routine-reward, changing habits is just about changing the routine). Some of the stories in this book are great and interesting, others are lackluster. Luckily, I found that this was the kind of book that you could while you were reading others. Might be more enjoyable as an audiobook.

Much more than a self help book. Liked a lot the social and marketing examples. The Starbucks Chapter is really inspiring. Recommended for an individual looking to tune up or a Business.

A bit more insightful than the average pop-psych books, which always seemed to me to be saying “here's 300 pages explaining something obvious.” He did pick a few excellent examples of his thesis; I thought the strongest chapters were on unintentional actions of bureaucracy, like hospital protocols, aluminum plant safety standards, and a subway fire in London. Some of it felt a little more hokey to me, but the practical afterword was very concrete and helpful

A good introduction to the subject of habitual behavior and how we can go about changing it.

This was an interesting book that really focused on the importance of developing habits, but did very little in the way of giving you methods to use which would enable you to implement those habits. Basically a book of anecdotes of individuals who used the power of habit to transform themselves and/or their company, taking things to the next level.

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

Beyond the thrill of learning something new, I feel like I've learned something important. It's more than the easy promise of a quick fix (which this book does not give); I feel like I now have real and powerful tools to take control of the habits in my life.

I thought the book was really good at explaining the patterns that turn behaviors in to habits.

My only complaint is how the author interweaves the various examples throughout the book.

He will start one story and then move to another one before coming back to the first one. It took a few chapters to get used to the style.

Fascinating stories, and clear guidelines on how to the control of your habits.

One of the most interesting and useful books I've read this year. I really enjoyed the real world stories that were given, and how they all tied into the concepts that Duhigg was sharing. I've already begun implementing these concepts into my life and there's been a big change.

Update 4.05.2020: While I haven't re-read this book I want to note that my 5-star review remains the same as I've continued to implement the concepts outlined into my life and have had great results. The idea of recognizing triggers and replacing the unwanted habit with a desirable habit is simple and just as effective for me today as it was the day I read about it. Definitely not just a fluffy self-help book.

An interesting book. I enjoyed the stories and lessons learned. Near the end the author totally lost me when comparing a gambling habit with a parasomnia that caused a man to kill his wife. They are in no way comparable to me.

Really good book.
I would have liked more hands-on tips for actually breaking habits, but a really good book nonetheless.