Book Review: The Power of Habit (Part 1)

Hello guys! It's been a long time since i didn't write in this blog. Today, i'd like to make a book review from non-fiction book tittled The Power of Habit: Why do we do what we do in life and business which written by Charles Duhigg. 

Author: Charles Duhigg
Country: United States
Language: English
Publisher: Random House Trade
Publication date: 2012
Pages: 371
ISBN: 9781400069286

Book summary:
In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Timesbusiness 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. 

This book divided into 3 parts. Each parts have some chapters and what i will review today is the part one.

The part one of this book is talking about The Habits of Individuals. The chapters that are followed are The Habit Loop talking about how habits work, The Craving Brain talking about how to create new habits, and the last one is The Golden Rule of Habit Change talking about why transformation occurs.

Chapter 1: The Habit Loop (how habits work):

The author began with the story of Eugene Pauly or E.P.. E.P. was a patient who had problem with his basal galia. Basal ganglia is a part in our brain that saves many information about our habits. E.P. knew how to find his house when he walked out around in his blocks alone. But, when E.P. got a question where was his house? He would have no idea about where his house was.

In 1990s, the MIT researcher decided to do a research about basal ganglia by using the rats. The MIT researcher put a small chip inside rats' head. The rats put in the maze with the T shape. The researcher put a chocolate in the corner of the maze. The rats was positioned behind a partition that opened when a loud click sounded. At the first time, the rats found it difficult even just to go out from the partition. But, after the researcher made the rats doing it oftenly, finally the a loud click sounded. The rats didn't find it hard to put in the T shaped maze, it became rats routine.

This research finally made a result. The process in making habit created by loops of cue, routine, and reward. Cue is a trigger/urges to tell your brain into an automatic mode. Routine is the activity which could be physical, mental, or emotional. And the reward is a result that telling your brain if this activity is worth to memorize.

The book also tell the readers about how McDonalds trigger people by standardizing their shop architecture, the food, and what employees say to customers. This way is a cue to trigger eating routine, and the food's taste is the reward.

Chapter 2: The Craving Brain (how to create new habits):

The author uses several example of advertising businesss. One of them is the story about Charless Hopkins and toothpaste. Hopkins, at the time, was at the top of a booming industry that had hardly existed a few decades earlier: advertising. Hopkins' friend introduced his idea about toothpaste and asked Hopkins to make an advertisement for his product. The product was called Pepsodent. Ugh sounds familiar for us, doesn't it? Yet as Hopkins knew, selling toothpaste was financial suicide because Americans at that time hardly to brush their teeth. 

Hopkins' friend did not give up, he provoked his ego and visited Hopkins so many times that Hopkins finally gave up and agreed to handle the toothpaste sales campaign with the note that he was given a six-month option on the shares collected. That decision was the wisest financial decision in Hopkins' life. In the 5 years of the partnership, Hopkins turned Pepsodent into one of the most famous products in the world and Hopkins also created the habit of brushing teeth in America drastically and even globally.

How could this thing can be happened? Hopkins created a craving. And that craving, it turns out, is what makes cues and rewards work. That craving is what powers the habit loop. When there is craving, created habits will become easier. All other pastes at that time used similar approaches. What set pepsodent apart was they added chemicals to create a tingly sensation in mouth after use which consumers craved. No other paste at time had done this. “I want to feel beautiful” was not enough to form the habit – it had to be accompanied by a physical sensation that the consumer craved.

Hopkins said that the key was that he had "learned the right human psychology.” That psychology was grounded in two basic rules. The first was find a simple and obvious cue. The second was clearly define the rewards. If you get those elements right, Hopkins promised, it was like magic.

Chapter 3: The Golden Rule of Habit Change (why transformation occurs):

Things that i learned from the chapter 3 was about changing our habit. We can't erase our bad habit, but we can change our routine. As we have known that habit occurs from the three loops; cue, routine, and reward. We can only change the routine as long as the cue and the reward are still the same. Charles found this way by discussing American football coach Tony Dungy.

Dungy wanted to change the habits of his player, but want to do it quick and easy. The idea behind it is ingenious indeed. Instead of changing the whole habit, Dungy set out to change the habits by changing the routine between the cue and the reward. If there’s something familiar at the beginning and at the end, changing what really matters, the routine, becomes much easier.

There was a patient named Mandy who didn't want to stop biting her nails until they bled. This thing made social issues in Mandy's life. She was embarrassed by her nails, so she kept her fingers into her pocket.

One day, her therapist found out why Mandy biting her nails as her habits. Mandy bit her nails when she was bored. When she had worked through all of the nails, she felt a brief sense of completeness, she said. That was the habit’s reward: a physical stimulation she had come to crave.

Her therapist asked Mandy when she felt the tension comes, to keep her fingers into her pocket or Mandy can grab a pencil or pen on her hands to keep away her nails biting by her.

Charles also provide another example. The example was about a worker who always went to cafetaria for grabbing some snacks. The worker then found out that he grabbed some snacks just because of the boredom hit him, it supposed to be the cue. The routine of grabbing this snacks can be changed by doing a quick walk, or going to the internet. Then your energy will be charged again.

So, that's all the chapter report of this book. I find this book is interesting to read so far. Thank you for reading. I'll catch you later!