“The Power of Habit” does what it says on the cover: It shows you the power of habits (who would have though…). Through different real life case studies, Charles Duhigg shows how habits play a role not only in individuals, but in companies, organizations, and cultural movements.
Throughout the book, he builds up to his final argument: We are controlled by habits, and even if we are fully conscious, we might not be aware of the habits that control us in the background. He compares a gambling addict with a person who suffers from sleep terrors, both of whom are victim to habits deeply engrained in their brain. However, he argues that the distinguishing factor between these two is that the gambling addict always has the option to at least try and take back control, and is therefore fully responsible of whatever they do, even if dictated by habits, whereas the sleep terror patient has no way of taking control, since their prefrontal cortex is “turned off” during these events.
However, what Duhigg doesn’t do, or at least not very clearly, is how exactly we should go about applying the learnings from his book onto the real world. Only in the appendix does he start to go into depth about an actual strategy for applying these lessons, but does so very briefly.
As a result, Atomic Habits will be the book next up for learning how to actually change habits.