The Power of Habit

Charles Duhigg spent more than a decade as a New York Times reporter, shared a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting on Apple and the technology industry, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Here he builds a popular science book around one idea: much of what people and organizations do runs on automatic loops of cue, routine and reward stored in the basal ganglia. To change a habit, keep the cue and the reward and swap the routine. Belief, often supplied by a group, makes the change stick.

The book is built from stories, about individuals, companies and social movements. Kirkus judged it accessible and better supported than most self-improvement titles, backed by interviews, neurological studies and extensive notes, though it found the diagrams simplistic. The method is anecdote first, so readers wanting rigorous evidence should check the notes. It reached the New York Times, Amazon and USA Today bestseller lists and was longlisted for the 2012 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award.

For finance readers the value is in Part Two: how managers change culture through one keystone habit, and how retailers model customer behavior.

1. Cue, routine, reward. Habits run on a three-part loop. Identify the trigger and the payoff before trying to change the behavior in between.
2. Change the routine, keep the rest. Lasting change comes from substituting a new routine for the same cue and reward, not from willpower alone.
3. Find the keystone habit. At Alcoa, focusing on safety reshaped communication and operations across the company. One well-chosen priority can move an entire organization.
4. Willpower can be trained. Starbucks treats self-control as a learnable routine, with planned responses for stressful moments, a lesson that applies to trading discipline as well.
5. Data reveals habits. Retailers like Target predict customer behavior from purchase patterns, and companies that understand customers' routines can shape what they buy.

After a prologue on a woman who rebuilt her life by changing one habit, the book moves from the individual to the organization to society.

1. The habits of individuals. Duhigg explains the habit loop through brain science, including a patient who lost his memory but kept his habits. He then shows how craving drives new habits, with Pepsodent toothpaste and Febreze, and sets out his golden rule of change through Alcoholics Anonymous and NFL coach Tony Dungy.
2. Keystone habits at work. Paul O'Neill takes over Alcoa and tells investors that worker safety is his first priority. Fixing safety forces changes across the company, and performance follows.
3. Willpower and crisis. Starbucks trains employees to treat self-control as a routine. Chapters on a hospital and the London Underground show how dysfunctional institutional habits cause disasters and how a crisis can open the door to reform.
4. Prediction and manipulation. Target's analysts mine purchase data to spot life changes such as pregnancy, and radio programmers make an unfamiliar song feel familiar.
5. The habits of societies. The Montgomery bus boycott and Saddleback Church show how movements spread through social ties and new habits. A final chapter asks whether a compulsive gambler is responsible for her losses.

Groundbreaking new research shows that by grabbing hold of the three-step loop all habits form in our brains--cue, routine, reward--we can change them, giving us the power to take control over our lives. We are what we repeatedly do, said Aristotle. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. On the most basic level, a habit is a simple neurological loop: there is a cue (my mouth feels gross), a routine (hello, Crest), and a reward (ahhh, minty fresh). Understanding this loop is the key to exercising regularly or becoming more productive at work or tapping into reserves of creativity. Marketers, too, are learning how to exploit these loops to boost sales; CEOs and coaches are using them to change how employees work and athletes compete. As this book shows, tweaking even one habit, as long as it's the right one, can have staggering effects. In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes readers inside labs where brain scans record habits as they flourish and die; classrooms in which students learn to boost their willpower; and boardrooms where executives dream up products that tug on our deepest habitual urges. Full of compelling narratives that will appeal to fans of Michael Lewis, Jonah Lehrer, and Chip and Dan Heath, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: our most basic actions are not the product of well-considered decision making, but of habits we often do not realize exist. By harnessing this new science, we can transform our lives.