نیروی عادت

This is such an eye-opening book. It digs very deeply into small details of our habits, what shapes them, how they work, and how they have an effect on our lives.Let's take gambling as an example. A person may start gambling and spending money on casino simply because she's a rich stay-at-home wife who has nothing to do but taking care of her kids. She then starts looking for an activity to fill her emptiness and slowly gets into the comfort zone. She becomes comfortable with casino as she often wins, and once she loses, she wouldn't mind playing again and again because there's this paradigm in her mind, like 'it is okay if I lose or almost win, I will win next time'. The more often she repeats the gamble, the deeper she gets trapped, and the less she realizes that she's been losing a lot.Apparently, this also applies to other habits such as nail-biting or delayed sleep, that in fact, can be categorized as a disorder when it starts to cause suffering. To explain how habit really works, Duhigg presents a simple scheme that consists of cue, routine and reward, and he argues that the key to changing one's habit is by changing the routine. The cue triggers your brain to perform an activity that results to reward from performing the routine. This means that even with different routine, you still can get the same reward. In the gambling case I wrote earlier, the cue is the person's emptiness; then her brain suggests gambling as a routine; and as a reward, she feels that she's completed her day. When applying cue-routine-reward law in changing this negative habit, the person should start shifting from gambling to other activities that could give her the same satisfaction. Think of smoking habit. People always recommend smokers have some candies with them to replace cigarettes in case they're triggered to smoke. However, we all realize how difficult it is to change habits, but understanding how they work will make it easier.I have a fondness for this book not only for its flair in explaining human behavior, but also for Duhigg's writing technique. I am always a fan of authors who put themselves in readers' shoes; authors who write in readable style and tell stories that we can emotionally engage in. There are many case studies in this book and Duhigg had successfully made them seem dramatic. I surely recommend this book to everybody.