Book Review : THE POWER OF HABIT

Name of the Book: The Power of Habit

Author : CHARLES DUHIGG

• About Author - winner of the prestigious Pulitzer prize, Charles Duhigg is an American journalist and non-fiction author who was born in 1974 in New Mexico. After graduating from Yale University , Duhigg earned an MBA from the esteemed Harvard University, he was a reporter for The New York Times, currently rights for The New Yorker magazine. It was during his stint at The New year times when Duhigg won 2013 Pulitzer prize for explanatory Reporting.

Language: English

Book Dimensions : 

• Pages: 370pages
• Length: 198mm
• Width: 129mm
• Depth:  28mm

Excerpt of the book :

         I just finished reading the book “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. I found this book revolving primarily around the concept of “Habit Loop”. What exactly is habit loop and why should we care to know it? It seems like Habit is something which controls our daily lives, we don’t normally recognize the extent of it. Habit Loop is a representation of how Habit works. Every habit either constructive, destructive or other-sorts all seems to follow this “Habit Loop”. The loop starts with a Cue or a trigger. When our brain recognizes the trigger, it switches to auto-pilot mode and starts performing the routine tasks. The same tasks, which we perform every-time we are in such a scenario. Why? Performing the routine, gives us some kind of a satisfaction or reward. We might have come across this scenario in our everyday lives, We are in our home, sitting bored. Something tells us to get to the fridge and check for some snack. We start munching the snack, and get back to normal. I do this all the time. This is also an Habit. ‘Getting Bored’ is the Cue/trigger here. Getting up, moving towards the fridge, checking out for some snack is the Routine. We do this without giving much of a task, as we would have performed this task hundreds of times. The satisfaction which we feel after we have some snack is the reward. This is an example for Habit Loop.

Learning Habit Loop can help us understand this answer to Million dollar question which several organizations and researchers have been searching for months, if not years. Can we forget our old Habits to create new ones? Short is, we cannot forget old Habits. Habits are so tightly coupled with our brain, so that it cannot be forgotten, period. But a Habit can be replaced with another Habit. The book suggests one such technique for Habit Replacement-”The Golden Rule of Habit Change”. The Golden Rule suggests that, to change a Habit — Don’t try to change the Cue or the reward, but change the routine. Our Habit loop activates when it senses or recognizes a Cue and starts performing the routine. This state is where we attack to replace an Habit. We Replace the routine with another routine, which will yield the same reward or sense of satisfaction to us. Say a person wants to change the habit of smoking, and the reward for him is the ‘sense of nicotine inside his system’. When the cue hits , his brain suggests him to pickup a cigarette —What he can do is replace the cigarette with coffee. Coffee can provide similar effects to Nicotine in the brain, so the reward is intact here.

[Fig: the power of habit]

From my view:

  This book — ‘The Power of Habit’ contains several case studies and research content, and explains how Habits affect the organization and societies, and how it can be used for better outcomes. But I felt, the book was re-emphasizing the Habit Loop very frequently, making it a bit of boring at some places. Efforts put into making this book is clearly visible, from the number of case-studies and references used to explain the core idea. I strongly recommended this book if you have not done so. it is bound to give you a fresh perspective on how you went about doing things and could trigger a lot of ideas. Overall a good read, I would rate this book 4.5/5.

        

           This book had been on my To Read list for a long time and I must state upfront that I made a mistake to have kept waiting for so long for no reason at all. But better late than never and I have already started to employ the basic premise of this book in my daily engagements.

#MAR_ACTIVITY

#MAKAUT

Name- SAYON SING

Roll No. - 15800320004

Activity- book review