Source
My personal reason for exploring habits is because of a personal situation: for the last 6 years, I maintained my habit of waking up at 6am every single day in the morning. It did not matter what day it was, it was automatic for my brain to wake up by 6am. Sometimes, I would not even need an alarm! Sadly, it took only 2 days of my first year at university to break a habit which I had maintained for 6 years. All these years, I have wondered how is that possible?
This book was eye-opening since it provided valuable insight about how habits work, how to create new habits, significance of willpower and how habits get manipulated. Duhigg backs up the claims made in this book with scientific research, data, experiments and key members whom he interviewed such as scientists, psychologists etc.
Source
Book Review
We will be exploring the following things:
How Habits Work
Golden Rule of Habit Change
Significance of Will Power
How Habits Work
When it first comes to adopting a new habit, our brains mental activity increases since it is attempting to process all the new information in front of us. Once we introduce repetition of practicing the new habit, the brain gets used to the activity and the new habit becomes more automatic. This process is known as chunking where your brain transforms a habit into an automatic routine which you hardly need to put a lot of effort into doing (Duhigg, 2014, p.15-20) . Habit formation can be summed up using a 3-step loop. Cue → Routine → Reward (Duhigg,2014, p.33-35). Cue is a trigger which tells your brain to go into automatic mode. Routine can be physical, mental or emotional and reward helps your brain remember whether you need to remember that specific habit or not. There are 3 key things you need to know here:
When you are using a habit, your brain stops all decision making. This is why it can be hard to break a bad habit unless you fight it and replace it with a new routine. (Duhigg, 2014, p.20)
Our brains cannot always tell the difference between a good vs bad habit. Bad habits simply wait for the right cues and rewards. For example, let’s say Jimmy always smokes a cigar when he is stressed. A stressful event acts as a cue to push Jimmy into the bad habit of smoking in order to feel the reward of feeling less stressed out. (Duhigg, 2014, p.20)
We may not remember the experiences that have created our habits, but it does influence how we act and we don’t even realize it! (Duhigg, 2014, p.25)
Golden Rule
So what exactly is the Golden Rule for Habit Change? To simply put it, it states that you cannot break a bad habit but you can only change it by keeping the old cue and reward but creating a new routine (Duhigg, 2014, p.62)). This requires a lot of awareness. Let’s go back to the Jimmy example of smoking. Jimmy wanted the reward of feeling less stressed which is why he reached out to the cigar. He can replace this reward with an activity which will also lessen his stress but not negatively impact his health such as going on a walk when he is stressed.
Willpower
Lastly, lets get into the topic of willpower and how it can be used to form new habits. Duhigg argues that once you strengthen your willpower in one area of your life, it can trickle down to other areas of your life as well (Duhigg, 2014, p.139). Let me give you a personal example of my experience with willpower. I used the right routine, cue and reward process to clean one part of my house every day which is why I never feel overly exerted during weekends to complete my chores. This habit helped me form my willpower to meal prep and cook at home more often instead of ordering out. Once I exercised my willpower with cleaning one space everyday in my house, I began to form a new habit of meal prepping as well.
Final Thoughts
One thing I loved about this book is that it brings up the point that sometimes it can be excruciating for a person to change their habits but Duhigg recommends finding like minded people or groups who are working towards similar habits like the one you want to adopt. I have personally experienced this as well! For example, I have a medium sized collection of hard copy books which I have collected for the past two years. I was not too motivated to read any of them until I found a group of people who motivated me to read and discuss books with them. In fact, one of my major reasons for writing book reviews here at hive is to help readers who may interested in reading but don’t have access to books or don’t have enough time to read receive the benefit of reading a brief review and apply what they learn to their own lives. For all the people out there who love making New Year goals, I highly recommend you check this book out before you set out in your journey to accomplish your goals.
I would like to thank @stevenson7 for recommending a review of this book! Great choice.
Note: The author and the book as well as the one external source I used for this book review have all been cited using in-text citations. To read more about the author of this book, check this source out: Charles Duhigg. All images have been cited as well.
Good review, thanks! I've read bits of this book before and it helped me as well.
You said
and it made me realize i recently did that myself, by joining Hive and the Terminal!
The habits i was trying to adopt (or encourage/grow) were being more open with my content, sharing publicly more, interacting with others more, that sort of thing, and being here is definitely reinforcing that habit i want to encourage within myself.
Thanks again for the review, i like your good posting habits! ;3
Thank you so much @catword ! 🥰 I am glad that you joined the Terminal to test out your content and share it with others while interacting with them as well. It will grow you as a person and help improve a lot of skills! Hope to talk to you soon 💫. I will check out some of your music.
Excellent contribution friend, I really liked your publication, thank you very much for sharing with us, greetings! Here @Carlitazulay ❤️
Thank you! 🥰 I hope you have a great day! @carlitazulay
What a coincidence, I just started reading this book this week! I haven't made much progress but what little I've read has opened my mind and made me realize a lot of things, that's great.
I like that you share the lessons the book left you with, I also usually jot down some quotes as I read.:)
Wow that is quite a coincidence! 😆 I definitely learned few things myself as well. I am glad you liked it 😊
Thank you for this review! Looks like a very interesting book and this review gave me actually the motivation to read it! (It's one of them on my list that never gets the attention it deserves!)
I do struggle with time managing and the bad habits I have are far more than the good ones, and this is the right time to start replacing bad habits with good ones! (Because it's always the right time for such things 😁)
Problem is the dopamine, the laziness, the procrastination and the quick gratification we go after, you definitely know how our brain prefers being lazy and staying in the comfort zone (stuck in the bad habits) rather than going out of the comfort zone where the real change happens (good habits get instated and learned)!
Why struggle with our goals and dreams to get dopamine kicks when we can get one by simply scrolling a social media or turning on our console? Or doing other things that I should not mention here LOL
Thanks for reading and wish me luck in this crazy challenge 😜 LOL
Peace! 😎
Trippy I wish you all the best! I love all the points you brought up because it is the ultimate truth: there are a lot of challenges which come by when we are trying to fix our habits and it can be especially hard when social media bombards us with perfect routines and overused quotes etc but its a process and there will be ups and downs but I hope you have all the right support around you to help you out! If not, members of the terminal and myself included would love to help you out! 🥰
Thank you very much!🙏❤️ In moments of struggle I will definitely reach for help then! 😎 It's great to have support around!
Thanks again for your kind words!
Wish you all the best too! 😎
Excellent review and summary again @moon-city. I like the way you've broken down the information and your formatting. Your post looks really good and you have a footer now!
To see the habit, one has to slow things down and observe. Developing an awareness is key. It's so easy operate on auto-pilot without thinking and it often leads to problems, imo. Habits can be helpful or harmful.
Thank you so much! @nineclaws I was playing around a bit with formatting to make it as reader friendly as it can possibly be. Still have few things in mind which I can fix but I appreciate your comment! I definitely agree with you about slowing down and observing exactly what is triggering a habit. Often times I find that it can be easier to make bad habits automatic compared to good habits but it is definitely not impossible to make good habits more automatic!
You're welcome! It is much easier to make bad habits automatic, I agree. I'm not sure why that is, so you've given me something to explore, thank you.
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