Book SummaryThe Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Power of Habit

In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg draws on extensive research to explore how habits develop into automatic behaviors that influence personal lives, businesses, and communities. He explains why unhealthy habits are notoriously difficult to break and provides a practical framework to help you understand and change any habit.

We’ll explore The Power of Habit in four parts: We’ll first explain how your brain’s tendency to rely on automatic routines encourages you to engage in habits unconsciously. In the second part, we’ll explore the individual components of habits and cravings. Then, we’ll discuss how advertisers play on your habits to sway your buying decisions and examine the impact of collective habits on businesses and communities. Finally, we’ll provide actionable steps you can take to take control of your habits.

Part 1: Habits Are Automatic Patterns of Behavior

Charles Duhigg argues that habits are unconscious decisions you make without actually thinking about them. While you may assume that you’re continually making conscious decisions, Duhigg claims that more than 40% of your daily behaviors are driven by habits that you automatically engage in without conscious thought. Since your habits inform such a large part of how you think and what you do, they have an enormous impact on your health, productivity, relationships, and overall happiness.

(Shortform note: In Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that more than 50% of your daily behaviors are driven by unconscious habits. Because your habits play such a significant role in your life, Clear suggests that you go beyond simple reflection to develop awareness around your unconscious behaviors and their effect on you. He recommends that you track all of the actions you take daily. Then, determine which of your habits are beneficial or harmful to your overall well-being.)

You Form Habits to Save Mental Energy

To explain why habits form and develop into automatic behaviors, Duhigg draws on neurological research that explores how your brain processes information and helps you function. According to this research, every time you attempt to learn or do something new, you have to apply conscious effort to do it right. This process takes up a lot of mental energy and restricts your ability to think about other things.

Duhigg explains that your brain is designed to save mental energy on the things you do most often to avoid information overload and function efficiently. It does this by learning the sequence of actions it takes to achieve something. It then converts this sequence into an automatic routine and stores it so that you can perform your daily tasks automatically (without conscious thought). This explains why, the more often you practice doing certain things, the easier it becomes for you to do them without thinking.

Automatic Routines Require Strong Neural Pathways

What Duhigg says here about the brain’s learning and automation processes isn’t new—

neuroscientists and psychologists agree that the brain relies on automation to avoid information overload. However, Duhigg doesn’t explain exactly how your brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine. We’ll explore the molecular activity that occurs inside your brain to clarify how your brain transitions from “learning” to “compartmentalizing as an automatic routine.”

Every time your brain creates a new automatic routine, it changes its physical structure by strengthening specific neural pathways. Here’s a very brief overview of neural pathways:

• The brain consists of a dense network of pathways consisting of neurons, or information messengers.

• Synapses transmit sensory information through this network of neurons.

• This sensory information is then stored in your short-term memory while your brain compares it to the memories you’ve stored in your long-term memory. This allows your brain to judge how relevant the new information is to your habitual behaviors (the processes stored in your long-term memory) and determines whether it should be kept or discarded.

Neuroscientists believe that your memory and recall rely upon the relationship that your neurons have with each other. Each time you learn something new or attempt to change your habitual routine, your brain applies conscious effort and attention to form new neural connections and pathways. The more you perform a certain sequence of actions, the stronger the relationship between the corresponding neurons in your brain, and the more likely your brain is to store it as an automatic routine.

Why Bad Habits Are Difficult to Break

Your brain creates automatic patterns based on the routines you engage in most often. While this process does offer many benefits such as not having to relearn everything you need to do on a daily basis, there is a significant drawback: Your brain permanently stores these patterns even if your habits are bad for you. According to Duhigg, this permanent storage explains why bad habits are notoriously difficult to break. Without deliberate intervention, you continue to automatically engage in these habits.

(Shortform note: Neuroscientists confirm that once your brain permanently stores your automatic patterns, it’s not possible to delete them. However, neuroplasticity research confirms that it’s possible to weaken these patterns so that your brain no longer relies on them for instructions about what to do in a given situation. This weakening...

The Power of Habit Summary Shortform Introduction

In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explores the components of habit formation. He helps readers understand why they have certain habits, just how much these habits influence their daily lives, and how they can stop or change bad habits.

About the Author

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, speaker, and bestselling author. He contributed to a number of award-winning series for The New York Times and currently writes for The New Yorker Magazine and other publications. He hosts the podcast How To! and has been featured on numerous TV programs including Frontline and PBS’s NewsHour. In tandem with his work as a reporter, he published his first book, The Power of Habit.

His subsequent book, Smarter Faster Better, draws on research in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics to explore how to dramatically increase productivity with less effort.

Connect with Charles Duhigg:

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The Power of Habit Summary Part 1: Habits Are Automatic Patterns of Behavior

In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg draws on extensive research to explore how habits develop into automatic behaviors that influence personal lives, businesses, and communities. He explains why unhealthy habits are notoriously difficult to break and provides a practical framework to help you understand and change any habit.

We’ll explore The Power of Habit in four parts: In this first part of the guide, we’ll explain how your brain’s tendency to rely on automatic routines encourages you to engage in actions without consciously thinking about them. In the second part, we’ll break habits down into their individual components and clarify how cravings reinforce your habits. In the third part, we’ll discuss how advertisers play on your habits to sway your buying decisions. We’ll also examine the influence of collective habits on businesses and communities. In the final part, we’ll provide actionable steps you can take to redesign your current habits or introduce entirely new habits.

What Are Habits?

Duhigg argues that habits are unconscious decisions you make about how to act, think, or feel without actually thinking about them....

The Power of Habit Summary Part 2: The Anatomy of Habits

Now that you understand your brain’s tendency to rely on automatic routines, we’ll break habits down into their individual components to understand their complex nature.

Duhigg argues that the main reason people fail to change their habits is that they don’t understand the nature of their habits and how to most effectively change them. They assume that they can simply apply their willpower to end the habit. However, according to Duhigg, applying willpower alone is ineffective as this method doesn’t address the elements that fuel and reinforce your habit. Let’s explore the elements underlying each of your habits and how they reinforce your automatic patterns of behavior in more detail.

(Shortform note: The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal offers insight into why relying solely on willpower to change habits is ineffective. She explains how applying willpower to change existing habits is often difficult because external factors such as stress, lack of sleep, or distractions compromise your ability to exercise self-control. Since most people...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Your Habit

Apply what you’ve learned about the components of a habit to develop awareness around the habits you want to break.

What is a bad habit that you want to stop? How often do you engage in this habit?

The Power of Habit Summary Part 3: How Habits Influence Individuals, Businesses, and Communities

So far in this guide, we’ve discussed how our habits form and the specific elements that fuel them. In this third part of the guide, we’ll explore the multiple ways that habits influence you. We’ll first reveal how advertisers play on your habits to sway your buying decisions. Then, we’ll explain how collective habits determine how a business operates. Finally, we’ll look at how successful social movements in any society rely on the convergence of social habits across various communities and social groups.

How Advertisers Exploit Your Habits

According to Duhigg, advertisers deliberately play on your brain’s reliance on automatic routines to influence your shopping decisions. They know that you’re more likely to buy things that you’re familiar with to avoid making conscious decisions every time you go shopping (because your brain wants to conserve energy.) This is why they try so hard to figure out your preferences—for example, by tracking website cookies when you shop online or your reward cards when you shop offline. These methods allow them to send you customized deals that appeal to your predictable nature and get you back in their stores.

**Retailers Trick You...

The Power of Habit Summary Part 4: How to Change Your Habits

In the second part of this guide, we discussed the three elements of a habit (cue, routine, and reward) and explained how cravings, coupled with your brain’s reliance on automatic routines, compel you to engage in your habits automatically. This information raises an important question: If habits are so strongly wired within you that you act automatically when confronted with a cue, are you responsible for your actions? According to Duhigg, if you’re aware of your habits, then you are responsible for them.

(Shortform note: Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) adds weight to Duhigg’s argument that you’re responsible for your habits by explaining how your level of accountability impacts your overall well-being. He claims that acknowledging your role in your behaviors (by recognizing that you’re always choosing your responses to your experiences) empowers you to make conscious choices that benefit your overall well-being. On the other hand, ignoring your role in your behaviors (by believing that your habits are too...

Shortform Exercise: Rewire Your Habit

Experimenting with rewards will help you to redesign the habits you want to change.

To review the previous exercise, write down the cue, routine, and reward for a habit you want to change.