The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

I got this book out of the library because I wanted to know more about the things that drive habit--I am such a creature of habit, and I would so like to change some of mine--and leave others completely alone. What is it all about, and how can you master it for good? 

This is a great book to read, especially if you are struggling to change one of your habits that you are less than enamored with.  It is split into three major sections, and I found the first two sections were most compelling for me.  The first section is on personal habits.  He gives some examples of people who have made dramatic changes in their personal habits, and some of the key factors that go into making those changes successful.  The first is to recognize that all behavior has a cue, something that gets the ball rolling.  The cue triggers a behavior, and that behavior has its own specific reward.  Unfortunately the ‘reward’ is an apt description only of the short term rather than the long term.  One example that he gives is snacking at work.  The cue is something—that you are bored, that you need to get up and walk around because you are restless, that you need company, something—but not that you are hungry.  The ‘reward’ is that the thing that triggered the behavior is appeased.  The itch has been scratched.  The reward is unaffected by the fact that this snacking is in fact not at all good for your waistline.  The trick to braking the habit is to either head the cue off at the pass—by taking a walk without getting a snack, for example, or meeting someone for coffee.  Get the reward you are seeking without resorting to a behavior that is ultimately not good for you.

The second part of the book is about how to change the habits of corporations.  He gives two great examples.  The first is when the new CEO at Alcoa began to focus on worker safety as his top priority.  He never talked about profits, or the presumed negative consequences of prioritizing safety above all else.  The culture in the company was that making money was the top priority, and anything that slowed that down was a bad thing.  The widely held opinion was this guy would fail and fail big.  But on the contrary, he and Alcoa thrived.  It turned out that it was cheaper to do the right thing—not to mention that it saved lives and limbs in the process, and made workers happy and loyal.  These stories are great examples to counter attack when people automatically think that more regulations are anti-business.

This is a book that does not break new ground, but did leave me thinking a lot long after I had finished it.