Overview

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe Wall Street Journal - Financial Times NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed. Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern--and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year. An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees--how they approach worker safety--and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones. What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives. They succeeded by transforming habits. In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation. Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation's largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. Habits aren't destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives. Praise for The Power of Habit Sharp, provocative, and useful. --Jim Collins Few [books] become essential manuals for business and living. The Power of Habit is an exception. Charles Duhigg not only explains how habits are formed but how to kick bad ones and hang on to the good. --Financial Times A flat-out great read. --David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity You'll never look at yourself, your organization, or your world quite the same way. --Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind Entertaining . . . enjoyable . . . fascinating . . . a serious look at the science of habit formation and change. --The New York Times Book Review

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Reviews

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NPR BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER Sharp, provocative, and useful. Jim Collins Few [books] become essential manuals for business and living. The Power of Habit is an exception. Charles Duhigg not only explains how habits are formed but how to kick bad ones and hang on to the good. Financial Times A flat-out great read. David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity You ll never look at yourself, your organization, or your world quite the same way. Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind Entertaining . . . enjoyable . . . fascinating . . . a serious look at the science of habit formation and change. The New York Times Book Review Cue: see cover. Routine: read book. Reward: fully comprehend the art of manipulation. Bloomberg Businessweek A fresh examination of how routine behaviors take hold and whether they are susceptible to change . . . The stories that Duhigg has knitted together are all fascinating in their own right, but take on an added dimension when wedded to his examination of habits. Associated Press There s been a lot of research over the past several years about how our habits shape us, and this work is beautifully described in the new book The Power of Habit. David Brooks, The New York Times A first-rate book based on an impressive mass of research, written in a lively style and providing just the right balance of intellectual seriousness with practical advice on how to break our bad habits. The Economist I have been spinning like a top since reading The Power of Habit, New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg s fascinating best-seller about how people, businesses and organizations develop the positive routines that make them productive and happy. The Washington Post An absolutely fascinating . . . book [that explores] a startling and sometimes dismaying collision between the increasingly sophisticated scientific understanding of habits how they re formed, how they can be disrupted and changed and, among other things, companies efforts to use that knowledge to steer your habits and money their way. Wired If Duhigg is right about the nature of habits, which I think he is, then trying to get rid of these bad habits won t work. Instead, what is needed is to teach the managers to identify the cues that lead to these bad habits and rewards, and then learn alternative routines that lead to similar rewards, i.e. business and personal success. Forbes The Power of Habit is chock-full of fascinating anecdotes . . . how an early twentieth century adman turned Pepsodent into the first bestselling toothpaste by creating the habit of brushing daily, how a team of marketing mavens at Procter & Gamble rescued Febreze from the scrapheap of failed products by recognizing that a fresh smell was a fine reward for a cleaning task, how Michael Phelps coach instilled habits that made him an Olympic champion many times over, and how Tony Dungy turned the Indianapolis Colts into a Super Bowl winning team. Los Angeles Times Duhigg clearly knows that people do not like, or even buy, the idea that we re not creatures of choice. He carefully explains each step of habit building, using science and the best part a slew of interesting anecdotes. The Seattle Times Duhigg argues that much of our lives is ruled by unconscious habits, good and bad, but that by becoming consciously aware of the cues that trigger our habits and the rewards they provide, we can change bad practices into good ones. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Duhigg s revelation that Target had developed a model to predict whether female customers were pregnant ignited a firestorm after an excerpt from his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, was published. USA Today

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NPR BESTSELLER - WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER - LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER - USA TODAY BESTSELLER - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER Sharp, provocative, and useful. --Jim Collins Few [books] become essential manuals for business and living. The Power of Habit is an exception. Charles Duhigg not only explains how habits are formed but how to kick bad ones and hang on to the good. -- Financial Times A flat-out great read. --David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity You'll never look at yourself, your organization, or your world quite the same way. --Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind Entertaining . . . enjoyable . . . fascinating . . . a serious look at the science of habit formation and change. -- The New York Times Book Review Cue: see cover. Routine: read book. Reward: fully comprehend the art of manipulation. -- Bloomberg Businessweek A fresh examination of how routine behaviors take hold and whether they are susceptible to change . . . The stories that Duhigg has knitted together are all fascinating in their own right, but take on an added dimension when wedded to his examination of habits. -- Associated Press There's been a lot of research over the past several years about how our habits shape us, and this work is beautifully described in the new book The Power of Habit. --David Brooks, The New York Times A first-rate book--based on an impressive mass of research, written in a lively style and providing just the right balance of intellectual seriousness with practical advice on how to break our bad habits. -- The Economist I have been spinning like a top since reading The Power of Habit, New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg's fascinating best-seller about how people, businesses and organizations develop the positive routine

Praise for The Power of Habit <br> Entertaining, an enjoyable book...a serious look at the science of habit formation and change. -- New York Times Book Review <br> Duhigg brings a heaping, much-needed dose of social science and psychology to the subject, explaining the promise and perils of habits via an entertaining ride that touches on everything from marketing to management studies to the civil-rights movement... a fascinating read. -- Newsweek Daily Beast <br> A fascinating exploration of our pathologically habitual society -- we smoke, we incessantly check our BlackBerrys, we chronically choose bad partners, we always (or never) make our beds. Duhigg digs into why we are this way, and how we can change, both as individuals and institutionally. -- The Daily <br> Charles Duhigg's thesis is powerful in its elegant simplicity: confront the root drivers of our behavior, accept them as intractable, and then channel those same cravings into productive patterns. His core insight is sharp, provocative, and useful. <br>--Jim Collins, #1 bestselling author of Good to Great and Built to Last <br> <br> The Power of Habit is not a magic pill but a thoroughly intriguing exploration of how habits function. Charles Duhigg expertly weaves fascinating new research and rich case studies into an intelligent model that is understandable, useful in a wide variety of contexts, and a flat-out great read. His chapter on 'keystone habits' alone would justify the book. <br>--David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity <br> Charles Duhigg masterfully combines cutting-edge research and captivating stories to reveal how habits shape our lives and how we can shape our habits. Once you read this book, you'll never look at yourself, your organization, or your world quite the same way. <br>--Daniel H. Pink, author of #1 New York Times bestselling Drive and A Whole New Mind <br> William James once obser

Author Information

CHARLES DUHIGG is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. He is a winner of the George Polk and National Academies of Science awards, and was part of a team of finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. He is a frequent contributor to NPR, This American Life, and Frontline. A gradaute of Harvard Business School and Yale College, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two children. From the Hardcover edition.

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