A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed. Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern -- and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year. An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees -- how they approach worker safety -- and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer …
A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed. Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern -- and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year. An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees -- how they approach worker safety -- and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones. What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives. They succeeded by transforming habits. In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation. Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warrens Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nations largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. Habits arent destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives. - Publisher.
Aprendendo a lidar com hábitos e rotinas, nocivas ou não
5 stars
O livro é um verdadeiro guia de revolução em hábitos e rotinas e começa de forma despretensiosa, esmiuçando os hábitos das pessoas comuns, da gente como a gente e informando-nos como o cérebro armazena essas informações repetitivas em locais, como se fossem uma espécie de BIOS, que está pronta antes mesmo do seu computador ligar.
Depois vamos aos hábitos das grandes corporações e de como elas começaram a estudar seu público em busca deles. Da pra correlacionar tudo o que lemos nesse ponto com a publicidade direcionada de antes e o big data de agora.
Por fim, ao analisar os hábitos das sociedades, o autor fecha com o chave de ouro e esclarece seus conceitos, amarrando todas as pontas e dando dicas de como usar esses hábitos ao nosso favor.
It's a very well written book, replete with stories, anecdotes, helpful simple diagrams and interviews. Hundreds of interviews.
It's also a massive dumbing down of cognitive science. There were parts where I was simultaneously impressed and appalled at how much detail he was able to leave out while still keeping the bones of the idea in place.
Reading this book is also a great way to be amazed at the behaviors of some people; the woman who gambled away over 900K in particular doesn't make any sense to me. And yet... it's not hard to see how a series of rewards and failures will draw someone into behavior like that.
It is a solid piece of work (over a third of the book is bibilography and endnotes), but I'm impressed by it, but I can't bring myself to love it.
