Ialways found it very hard to get a routine to go to the gym and workout for mineown good, but now I understand that I have developed a habit on sitting on thecouch, watching Netflix and eating, unfortunately this pattern is stuck in myhead, but as Duhigg mentions if I learn to create a new neurological routine, Ican get rid of this bad habit and once I get a new pattern going to the gymwill be automatic as any other habit. Ihave learned from this book that whenever a habit emerges, decision making completelystops, and unless you fight your habit, the action will be automatic withoutthinking, it is almost like your brain does not participate in your actions. Hegives us a great story about Eugene, a man with dementia, in which he shows usthat habits never really disappear. His habits gave him back his life when helost his memory.
Thankfully this comes as an amazing advantage to us, as we don’thave to learn how to write if we don’t use a pen for a week, or we don’t haveto get driving lessons again after being away for a week. I also learned howthe brain cannot distinguish between what is a good habit and what is a badhabit, which means that the habit just waits for the right cue to make anappearance but once again by learning to trigger the cues and rewards, we canchange our habits. Iliked how the book uses diagrams, for example for the three-step loop which isa process within our brains; cue, routine and reward, a trigger that makes ourusual habit appear, routine which can be both physical and emotional and of coursethe reward helps us to decide whether specific loop is worth remembering forthe future.
He believes that to change a specific routine or habit you shouldkeep the cue and provide the same reward. It is very easy tounderstand what Duhigg tries to give out to his readers about habits, Hecompares the brain to an onion on page 13, to make it easier to explain whatgoes on in the brain, he mentions the layers and layers of the onion andexplains what is found in each layer. The basal ganglia, which is found towardsthe centre of the skull, which is a clever system to determine when to lethabits take over, as experiments noticed that when an animal injures theirbasal ganglia they had problems with learning and remembering how to walkaround the maze to get to where they wanted. This is the central to recallingpatterns and acting on them, which means it is also the part of the brain thatdeals with habits.In this book, Duhigg refersto day to day habits like smoking, brushing your teeth but also drinking andgambling. The positive habits are more mentioned in the beginning on the bookand the negative habits appear in the last few chapters.
I feel like this is onlybecause if I only read about the negative habits first it would turn me offreading, cause hearing about stuff like that might get people depressed. In this quick review I willbe talking about the book ‘Power of Habits, why we do what we do in life and business’. It is divided into three parts, an afterwordand appendix. This book has caught my attention as I myself would want tochange my daily habits.
Charles Duhigg talks about very interesting anecdoteshow individuals changed their habits, in life and in business, which I think isvery relatable and makes me understand their situation more.
