Details
Rent The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change It
Author:
Narrator: Chamberlain, Mike
Format: Unabridged-CD
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: Mar 2012
Genre: Social Science - General
Retail Price: $40.00
Synopsis
A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.
Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.
An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.
What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.
They succeeded by transforming habits.
In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.
Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation's largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: 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.
Habits aren't destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
From the Hardcover edition.
Reviews
For you self improvement types, this book isnt so much about changing your habits and improving yourself. Yes, thats in there a little bit, but not so much. The book relates a series of scenarios, from business success the most popular topic to addiction to a tragedy on the London underground and attempts to equate them all with the idea of habits.However, Im not convinced that every chapter addressed habits, unless you want to redefine a habit as anything the brain doesever. The chapter on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example, seemed much more sociological as described than as a habit.That doesnt mean that the book wasnt interesting. The idea of the little win found in the chapter about Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps was useful personally, as well as the part about replacing one habit with another until enforcing the habit is effortless and another positive behavior can be incorporated. Not only did it make sense within the writing, but I found it true for my own experience.Even the business information, not a genre I usually read, was enjoyable and interesting.The weakest part of the book came at the end. Perhaps the author was getting tired and punchy and just wanted the darn thing finished. He tells the long tale of a gamblers total life destruction and the loss of nearly $1 million dollars to the blackjack tables. She was a wife and mother looking for fulfillment and selfesteem. It was an incredible downer to end the book on, and I couldnt wait for the book to end after hearing about this womans lack of selfcontrol and the lack of intervention from anyone around her. Afterward, the author tries to make us feel compassion for her plight, arguing shes no more to blame and an unconscious murderer, right? Then, in the concluding chapter, the author pulls a 180degree turn and explains why, yes, she is to blame and its not at all like the murderer from an earlier chapter. Poorly done Duhigg. To sum up: Not really for the selfimprovement crowd, and while interesting in its own right, much more for the business leadership reader.