Can a Single Habit Change Your Life? The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
I’ve been putting off reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg for a while, not because I wasn’t interested but because I assumed I already know what was in it. That isn’t entirely untrue. I had heard some of the stories and ideas in the book and I still got a lot of value out of this book, because while the ideas in it are explained in many other places the book goes far deeper into the subject than a single chapter in a book on some other subject could and the tips on how to use habit to improve your life is worth reading it even if you’re already sold on the premise.
The Power of Habit is what the title says, a book about habits, what they are and how much impact they have on our lives. And the book begins by making that case exceptionally well. Pointing out how many things we do, not because we think about it but because it’s the way we have always done it.
Perhaps even more interesting is when Charles Duhigg talks about linchpin habits. Habits that if you change can affect a lot of other habits. For example, according to him, getting in the habit of exercising can also make people improve their eating habits and even smoke less. And it makes sense. If you go to the gym, you’re changing your routine and when you go to the gym and the habits you build around doing something healthy are likely to make other habits that are healthy.
The book doesn’t just focus on individual habits. Some of the most interesting chapters in The Power of Habit are on corporate and governmental cultures and how their habits can cause major problems. These stories range from factory work to hospitals and even touch on the metro system and churches. So someone could easily use The Power of Habit to improve their workplace.
More important that understanding that habits matter, something most of us already know, is the discussion of how to change them. From linchpin habits to easy ways to figure out the triggers for your habits, there is a lot of advice in this book on how to figure out what habits you have and how to change them.
The Power of Habit was a fun book to listen to, but beyond that there are a lot of interesting ideas in it and I plan to both try to use this and to read The Power of Habit again probably in a few months to reinforce some ideas. So if you haven’t picked this up because you assumed that you already knew that habits were important, then try it anyway. If nothing else, it’s at least fun.
