The Power of Habit

I started reading this book merely to get some tips on building better habits and destroying the bad ones. Now, my word of advice is just turn to the appendix and read the step-by-step guide. That appendix, however, only describes you what to do. The author has said that there is no one formula to create a habit, and that you should discover your own way to build your habits. That is what the rest of the book is for.

This book contain stories that stress the importance of habits and why and how you should care about it. True to his background as a journalist, Charles Duhigg is a great storyteller who seamlessly combines powerful narratives of people both extraordinary and ordinary with the results of scientific research. Once you have read all the chapters in the book, then the step-by-step guide will be much more meaningful and compelling for you. After all, telling the stories of people being able/unable to change their habits is just as important as the habit change guide itself. They provide readers with not only the knowledge, but also the motivation to actually take up to the challenge of transforming their habits. This also means that the book is a very slow read, though (that's why I gave it 1 less star). I myself needed 2 months to get to the end of this book, but that's partly because I haven't had a good grasp of what this book really is. I'm not that good at remembering stories, but it seems that the author did a really good job at delivering his tales of successes and failures at habit-building given that I can remember every single story very well now.

If you want to change yourself but don't know how, then this book will offer you many glimpses of enlightenment and the much-needed push to do so.