Book Report
This book illustrates the power of habits, as the title of the book conveys. Habits can be broken into a three-step process. First of all, there is the cue which is a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use, then there is a routine which is something done and it can be physical, mental, or emotional, and last of all there is a reward which is an incentive to keep doing the habit or not.
One of the first partakes of utilizing the power of habits according to the book was in the creation of the toothpaste Pepsodent. Back in the day, people didn't really brush their teeth. But when Hopkins used the habit loop to entice buyers to give in to this brushing teeth toothpaste, it became a nationwide thing to brush your teeth. The cue to entice people was mentioning that there was a certain film on your teeth and the reward after the routine of brushing them was beautiful teeth. There was a certain craving, a craving for that reward, that made Pepsodent so popular. This craving is a common theme amongst all the habits this book talks about. They are what drive habits.
Furthermore, the concept of changing an old habit into a new habit was in keeping the old cue and the old reward but now having a new routine. This Golden Rule has been used for treatments of alcoholism, obesity, obsessive-compulsive disorders and many more terrible behavioral patterns.
Some more of the topics the book covers is Alcohol Anonymous which utilized habit reversal therapy to treat its people. Another thing noted was that during high-stress moments usually the good habits would fall apart. The author uses the Buccaneers football team to illustrate how during crucial points in the game, everything would fall apart because the team members wanted to try something different that could possibly make them earn points faster. But when they ignored following the cues of the habit loop pattern their coach taught them, basically they would lose. This is where the topic of "belief" comes into play. Even when in crucial moments when they could just give in to the bad habit or not, belief was crucial because if they had a strong belief in the positive habits rather than the bad ones, they didn't as easily cave in to the bad habit.
Next are keystone habits. This topic focuses not on getting every single thing right, but instead uses a "key" factor and changes it that ultimately leverages everything else. An example of this was when Paul O'Neill became the CEO of the aluminum company Alcoa. He just focused on one thing - employee safety, and that alone leveraged the profits of Alcoa to an all-time high. He knew that was a "key" problem which affected every other part of the Alcoa company and he knew he had to fix it. That was one of the best decisions he had ever made. He used the power of habits, cue, routine, reward in order to fix safety habits within the workplace with a whole laid out system of reporting, replacing machinery if it broke down, redesigning of systems that weren't working, and more.
The book goes on to cover why Michael Phelps was so successful, to talking about how self-discipline and self-control means greater academic performance rather than IQ, to the power of willpower, and more. Actually, willpower is like a muscle that you have to strengthen each time you use it. For instance, in the instance of ignoring a bunch of warm cookies and eating vegetables instead. Good habits come from good willpower.
A cool thing that the book mentioned was planning for inflection points. Let's say you really need to lose weight. An inflection point would be the moment where the highest level of difficulty is there. Let's say, you're starving because you didn't have time to eat breakfast and you go to work and there's a big box of donuts right there for you to eat freely. This is an inflection point because you are starving and have to deny the temptation of eating those donuts for the sake of your goal of losing weight. So, when you prepare for this inflection point, like what you are going to do in that situation, you are more successful.
Starbucks is an excellent example of utilizing the power of habits to train their employees to handle difficult situations. One of the key things Starbucks did is make the employees feel like they have a sense of control. When employees feel like they are just robots controlled by their employer, the rates of productivity decrease. Self-discipline increased when the coworkers were given more of a sense of freedom and control over their workplace. The tactics Starbucks used made it the worldwide-known company we have today.
The next topic of the book is about the Civil Rights movement started by Rosa Parks when she refused to give up her seat in a bus. Her single act of defiance led to a movement that would completely change the world we live in, and it would not be this way without her. She is a hero. Along with Martin Luther King Jr. who also was a shining star in the movement. King led a set of behaviors that focused on forgiving their enemies and continue in peaceful protest. These good habits that spread like wildfire ultimately led to the federal judges ruling that the Montgomery's bus segregation law violated the Constitution. Then in 1964 the Civil Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson which outlawed all forms of segregation and discrimination against minorities and women.
The ending of the book focuses on how we must modify our habits and take responsibility for them. If it's truly out of our control, like something that happens when a sleep terror or sleepwalking occurs, we are not responsible. But when we continuously engage in something that is not beneficial for us with countless times to make amends, the author states we should be held accountable. There are plenty of opportunities to change our habits, and this book clearly shows them all. The question is: Are you ready to change your habits? That is a question we must all ask ourselves.
Critique
This book mainly uses the power of storytelling to get its points across. I found myself thoroughly engaged even from just the first page, which usually doesn't happen to me. The book reels you in like a fish on a hook, and it easily engages with the reader no matter what level of knowledge you have. So, out of 10 stars I give this book a solid 8/10. The reason it's not a 10/10 is that I think it could've been organized a bit better. However, that was muffled out by how well the content was displayed and how interesting the information was. Learning about how habits work and how it was applied to a variety of different situations was especially interesting. Seeing when they work and when they don't and the different factors such as belief and willpower was so good to know. This will be a definitely good book to have around when I am an undergraduate student at CSUMB. It will help me remember the cues, routines, and rewards I need to set up for myself to be a successful student. Using this psychology of how a human brain works, I can see what works best for me and what doesn't. Overall, I am so happy I read this book! I hope and aim to be as aspiring of a leader as some of the people were in this book, such as Rosa Parks, trailblazing the way to the future. And I think you should read it too.
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