Top 25 growth books - XX

The Power Of Habit

Charles Duhigg

A few quotes from the book:

“Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” 

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”

“As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything.”

“Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.… Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

Charles Duhigg (1974) is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter at The New York Times, where he writes for the business section. Prior to joining the staff of the New York Times in 2006, he was a staff writer of the Los Angeles Times. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School. (Wikipedia).

This books deals with a difficult subject - changing habits. The credit goes fully to the author for making the otherwise educative subject, a highly interesting one. The author reels off one true to life stories after another to illustrate his points.

The book covers a wide spectrum from explaining how habits are formed, how the bad ones can be changed and to how information on habits can be used in marketing, management, and social movements.

Besides the compelling stories, Duhigg also provides the prescription for you to change a bad habit. He explains how habits are formed by a cycle of a cue that triggers some behavior (good or bad), then a reward, and then a craving develops to drive a loop of repetitive behavior.

To break a bad habit, you must keep the old cue and deliver the same reward, but insert a new routine. Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and the reward stay the same.

The author mentions that we tend to revert back to old habit at times of high stress and then we tend to continue with the old habit even after the stress passes. He has a prescription for this.

All action points mentioned by the author are actionable. I strongly recommend that everyone reads  this book. 

Namaste

Prabir