SUBMARINE TRAINING CENTRE

BOOK REVIEW COMPETITION

RANK /NAME LK I BDI Abdul Rasid bin Abdul Gaffar

MILITARY NO 837967
COURSE Submarine Qualification Course Level 1 Batch 10
CATEGORY LLP
BOOK TITLE The Power of Habit
NO OF PAGE 383 Pages
 BOOK REVIEW : THE POWER OF HABIT
BY CHARLES DUHIGG
Book review by: 837967 Lk I BDI Abdul Rasid bin Abdul Gaffar
RMN Submarine Training Center

Introduction

In The Power of Habit, award-winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to

the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be
changed. This book also shows us why we do what we do in life and business. Producing
huge amounts of information into interesting stories that take us from the boardrooms of
Procter and Gamble to the sidelines of the NFL to the front lines of the right to vote, to free
speech, to fair and equal treatment movement. Duhigg also presents a whole new
understanding of how human are and its possible greatness or power. At its core, The Power
of Habit contains an exciting argument which are the key to exercising regularly, losing
weight, being more productive and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Review of the book

All our life, so far as it has definite form, but a mass of habits. Most of the choices we
make each day may feel like the products of well-believed decision making but they are not.
They are habits and though each habits means compared to other things little on its own, over
time, the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night, whether we save or spend, how
often we exercise, and the way we organize our thoughts and work routines have enormous
impacts on our health, productivity, financial security and happiness. One paper published by
a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people
performed each day were not actual decisions, but habits.

William James, like countless others, from Aristotle to Oprah, spent much of his life
trying to understand how habits exist. But only in the past two decades have scientists and
marketers really begun understanding how habits work and more important, how they
change.

This book is divided into three parts. The first section focuses on how habits emerge
within individuals lives. Its explores the neurology of habit formation, how to build new
habits and change old ones, and the methods, for instance, that one ad man used to push tooth
brushing from obscure practice into a national obsession. It shows how Procter and Gamble
turned a spray names Febreze into a billion-dollar business by taking advantage of
consumers’ habitual urges.

The second part examines the habits of successful companies and organizations. It
details how an executive named Paul O’ Neill, before he became treasury secretary, he
remade a struggling aluminum manufacturer into the top performer in the Dow Jones
Industrial Average by focusing on one keystone habit, and how Starbucks turned a high
school dropout into a top manager by instilling habits designed to strengthen his willpower. It
describes why even the most talented surgeons can make catastrophic mistakes when a
hospital’s organizational habits go away.

The third part looks at the habits of societies. It recounts how Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and the civil rights movement succeeded, in part, by changing the ingrained social habits of
Montgomery, Alabama, and why a similar focus helped a young pastor named Rick Warren
build the nation’s largest church in Saddleback Valley, California. Finally, it explores thorny
ethical questions, such as whether a murderer in Britain should go free if he can convincingly
argue that his habits led him to kill.

Each chapter revolves around a central argument: Habits can be changed, if we

understand how they work. This book draws on hundreds of academic studies, interviews
with more than three hundred scientists and executives, and research conducted at dozens of
companies. It focuses on habits as they are technically defined: the choices that all of us
deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every
day. At one point, we all consciously decided how much to eat and what to focus on when we
got to the office, how often we to have a drink or when to go for a jog. Then we stopped
making choice, and the behavior became automatic. It is a natural consequence of our
neurology. And by understanding how it happens, you can rebuild those patterns in
whichever way you choose.

The difficult thing about studying the science of habits is that most people, when they
hear about this field of research, want to know the secret formula for quickly changing any
habit. If scientists have discovered how these patterns work, then it stands to reason that they
must have also found a recipe for rapid change. If only it were that easy. It is not the formulas
do not exist. The problem is that there is not one formula for changing habits, there are
thousands. Individuals and habits are all different, and so the specifics of diagnosing and
changing the patterns in our lives differ from person to person and behavior to behavior.
Giving up cigarettes is different from curbing overeating, which is different from changing
how you communicate with your spouse, which is different from how you prioritize tasks
work. What is more, each person’s habits are driven by different cravings.

As a result, this book does not contain one prescription. Rather, I hope to deliver
something else, a framework for understanding how habits work and a guide to
experimenting with how they might change. Some habits yield easily to analysis and
influence. Others are more complex and obstinate, and require prolonged study. And for
others, change is a process that never fully concludes.

But that does not mean it cannot occur. Each chapter in this book explains a different
aspect of why habits exist and how they function. The framework described in this add on is
an attempt to show, in a very basic way, the strategies that researchers have found for
diagnosing and shaping habits within our own lives. This is not meant to be comprehensive.
This is a merely a practical guide, a place to start. And paired with deeper lessons from this
book’s chapters, it is a manual for where to go next.

Change might not be fast and it is not always easy. But with time and effort, almost
any habit can be reshaped. These are the solid basic structure on which bigger things that can
be built, firstly you identify the routine or commonly-done actions. Then, do experiment with
rewards. After that, isolate the cue or hint and lastly you must have a plan. This is a simple
nerve-based loop at the core of every habit. Obviously, changing some habits can be harder
but this framework is a place to start. Sometimes change takes a long time. Sometimes it
needed repeated experiments and failures. But once you understand how a habit operates, one
you identify its cause of the cue, the routine and the reward, you gain power it.

As an end result, I like this book so much as the writer has been success in delivering
the ways on how habits formed, how it is work and how we can manage and change the
habits by capturing and controlling this new science, we can change our businesses, our
communities and our lives. In the past decade, our understanding of the neurology and
psychology of habits and the way patterns work within our lives, societies, and organizations
had expanded in ways we could not have imagined fifty years ago. We now know why habits
come out, how they change, and the science behind their mechanics. We know how to break
them into parts and rebuild them to our detailed descriptions of exactly what is required. We
understand how to make people eat less, exercise more, work more efficiently, and live
healthier lives. Changing a habit is not necessarily easy or quick. It is not always simple. But
it is possible. And now we understand how.

( 1310 words )