The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

For my first read in May, I read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.  It is a non-fiction book that explains how habits are created and also how they can be changed.

This book was quite interesting.  I consider myself to be a "creature of habit" and so I was intrigued to see how habits are formed and what can be done to change habits we don't like.  The book is broken up into three parts: Habits of Individuals, Habits of Successful Organizations and Habits of Societies.  Each part has a few chapters that give examples of real life people, companies, etc. and how they have managed to create and change habits.  Some of the habits are good and some were ones that needed to be changed.  I really enjoy these sort of "case studies" in non-fiction books, so I found the examples to be quite interesting.

My only complaint about this book is it got a little repetitive at times.  They kept going back and reminding you about things they had mentioned before such as patterns and case studies and it also bounced back and forth in time a bit.  I understand why the author did this, but I thought it made some parts longer than they needed to be.

Overall, I'd recommend this book.  If you have a habit you'd like to change, the appendix at the end of the book has a "readers guide" to using the information discussed in the book.  I thought it was a nice touch since it breaks down habit changing step by step for you in a short and easy to read format.