Power Of Habit Chapter Summary

Book Review of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

According to the author, a habit is technically defined as “the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day.” After this, one of the first things discussed in the book is how a habit forms, and the process by which it occurs. The three elements of a habit that are a part of all habits are a cue, a routine, and a reward. A cue, can be a location, time of day, emotional state, other people, or pattern of behaviors that consistently trigger a specific routine. The routine, is the behavior itself. The reward is the most important part, as it is the reason the routine exists. Knowing these three

I felt as though I learned more about my own personal habits from reading this book. As it discussed “the routine and unconscious habits that control or lives,” in both good and bad ways, it shows the process behind this on different levels of our society. In the beginning, it deals with how habits emerge at an individual level in people’s lives. Then it moves onto the mostly successful habits of companies, and how they were able to maintain and set good habits to follow throughout the company. Finally, the book dealt with how habits impacted society at large, with different social rights movements. This last part discussed a lot about leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., and how he and other leaders in the civil rights movement succeeded, in part, by changing the grained social habits that were negatively impacting and holding back our society from cultural growth. However, on each of these levels, the goal was the same. By understanding how these unconscious processed form, and what is causing us to continuously complete them, you should be able to constructively “rebuild those patterns in whichever way you choose” as stated by Duhigg. At the end of the book, the author discusses how once we have identified the routine of our habit, experimented

Although it was not the most exciting book I read, it's one of the best ones I have ever had to read for a class. The book was filled with great lessons that were contained in the stories of the lives of various individuals. Some of these were stories are more well known, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycotts with Rosa Parks, whereas others told the story of prominent advertising executive Claude C. Hopkins, and his adventures promoting various products. Just a few that were discussed include Pepsodent (the first major toothpaste), Febreze, Marlboro, Quaker Oats, Goodyear tires, the Bissell carpet sweeper, Van Camp’s pork and beans, and others. This was one section that particularly interested me, as it had a lot of crossover with what I’ve learned about and enjoyed in my telecommunications sales and promotion classes, as I plan to go into advertising and demographics work. I would really like to connect what I have learned in my TCOM classes with what I have learned in my leadership classes, as it will hopefully lead towards earning leadership roles in my future employment. Another story that is contained in the book was that of a former treasury secretary, who was able to turn around a failing aluminum company by focusing on changing some ingrained company habits. Yet another discussed the life of one of Starbuck’s most successful employees, who went from a high school dropout to a manager by