Power of Habit Readalong: Part 3

I'm getting this in just under the wire, but it is still Wednesday so I got it posted on the read-along day.

I finished The Power of Habit and overall I found it interesting and thought provoking. 

Chapter 8 explains how a social movement grows through strong social ties (friends and acquaintances), followed by weak social ties (friends of friends and neighbors), and finally by entering the social fabric of the community as a shared value. The examples that are used are the Montgomery bus boycott and the church of Rick Warren. I thought this was the best chapter in the book. The way Duhigg wove the two stories together made the ideas he was explaining really clear. I didn't know the details about how Martin Luther King's got involved in the boycott and I found that history very interesting.

Chapter 9 of The Power of Habit compares a compulsive gambler to a man who killed his wife during a sleep terror, asking us to think about how much personal responsibility we're willing to assign habitual behavior. I thought this chapter overdid the compare and contrast angle. Ultimately I agree with the conclusion that because the gambler knew about her habit and the husband didn't, she was responsible for her actions/choices. 

The Appendix of The Power of Habit presents a framework for changing habits. The author uses a daily cookie habit to illustrate how to break down a habit and figure out how to change it. I wanted this information, a practical application of the theory, when I read the first part of the book. I'm glad he finally got to it.
I found the book easy to read and I think the mix of anecdote, research, and self-help worked. I would have preferred to have the self-help bits mixed into the book more instead of all at the end. I thought the sections that looked at the bigger picture (about companies and communities) were more effective in illustrating the principles than the more personal sections were. If found the personal sections a bit of a muddle. Overall it was an interesting book and worth reading.


 Check out Joy's Book Blog for thoughts from other read-along readers.   

Power of Habit Read-along: Part 2

For the second week of the read-along we read part 2 of the book which focuses on habits in organizations.

I found this section of the book more interesting than the first part. The story of Alcoa's focus on safety as an illustration of the power of Keystone Habits was compelling. The idea that changing one aspect of an organization's dynamic (or a person changing one habit) can have a cascading effect on other aspects of the organization/life makes sense. As I was reading about Alcoa I was trying to figure out what keystone habit might be changed in my organization (a library) that would have a profound impact. I didn't come up with one yet, but am intrigued by the question.

The author also discusses the motivational value of a crisis, using Rhode Island Hospital as an example. I have worked in a couple of places that underwent huge changes as a result of economic downturns and I didn't see in any of them the kind of redesign that the author talks about. I think the kind of visionary leadership that it takes to use the opportunities a crisis presents to make real change in an organization is a rare thing. 

Chapter 7 covers theways that corporations, Target in particular, manipulate consumer habits. I knew this went on, but I did find the depth of the data mining somewhat surprising. I would have liked to know more about how the various activities, like what you buy in the store are linked to your "customer ID." The system design behind this process must be amazing. (I'm a bit of a computer geek, otherwise this probably wouldn't be of interest).  I will look at my Target circular more closely and how it compares to the one my Mom gets. I assumed, as Target expected me to, that the circulars were all the same.

 Check out Joy's Book Blog for thoughts from other read-along readers. 

Power of Habit Read-Along: Part 1

For this first week of the read-along we read the first 3 chapters of the book and were asked to consider, among others, the question of which "character's" story we liked most. I thought the story of Eugene Pauly was very compelling, but really sad. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been for his wife to go through the experience of him completely losing his present like that. As far as insights on habit I thought the experiences of Charles Hopkins, the advertising executive, were the most illuminating. The way that the advertising industry uses the habit loop to create a demand for a product where none really exists (Febreze, for example) is both powerful and alarming.

The concept of the habit loop -- there is something that acts as a trigger (the cue), then there is somthing you automatically do in response (the routine) because you know a reward will follow and you come to crave that reward was discussed in detail with several scientific examples (rats in mazes, for example). I didn't feel like Duhigg gave any solid real world examples though. People will exercise because they will feel good when they are done seems pretty vague to me as a motivation until you get to the point where the habit is already established. Similarly, the insertion of a new routine into an existing loop to change habits seemed to work best in examples, like AA, where there is a structure of support and self-examination to move you into the revised habit. The key to change appears to be examining what the triggers are that lead you to bad habits, but I'm not convinced that the true triggers could be identified for most habits.

I thought that the story of the football coach was interesting. The fact that the habit revisions didn't work in crisis situations until the team developed faith in their coach and their ability, seems to me to point to a tremendous problem with the applicability of the psychology to actual life. Faith, unconnected to any factual evidence, seems to be required for change to occur. The football team had learned all the skills and developed all the habits they needed, but until a crisis in the life of their coach inspired them to blindly believe in his methods, they couldn't use them to win. 

I am interested to see how the application of the habit loop model applies to companies in the next section. Is faith still a required component? If so, who has to believe?

Check out Joy's Book Blog for thoughts from other read-along readers. 

Read-along: The Power of Habit

Joy at Joy's Book Blog is hosting a read-along of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. This project is part of her New Year's Resolution Reading Challenge. I love the idea of reading books to support your resolutions, but as I am not making any resolutions for 2013 I will not be participating in the challenge. I do have quite a few projects lined up for the coming year, but no resolutions. This book has been on my to-read list for quite a while and I am excited to read it along with a group. If you want to join, the sign-up is here.

Here is the plan as outlined by Joy:

Join us as we read and discuss The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, seeing how it applies to our lives and communities across the country and the world. The Power of Habit is neatly divided into three parts, each containing 2 to 4 chapters.  We’ll discuss one part each week for three weeks. I will email discussion questions on Saturday to anyone who wants them. If you want to participate on your own blog, post and link up on Wednesday. If you don’t have a blog or don’t feel like writing a post, participate in the comments or join us for the Twitter chat each Wednesday evening.

Part One. Read between now and January 2nd (I know some of you have already started). Receive discussion questions e-mailed December 29. Link to discussion posted on January 2.

Part Two. Read January 2 – 9. Receive discussion questions e-mailed January 5. Link to discussion posted on January 9.

Part Three. Read January 9 – 16. Receive discussion questions e-mailed January 12. Link to concluding discussion posted on January 16.