What is The Power of Habit about?

Charles Duhigg was a reporter at The New York Times, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for explanatory reporting. His first book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, was published by Random House in February 2012, according to Wikipedia's article on the book, and spent years on bestseller lists. It is written like long-form journalism: each chapter builds an idea around vivid true stories.

The habit loop

Duhigg's core model has three parts:

• Cue: a trigger that tells your brain to switch to autopilot. A time of day, a place, a feeling, other people, a preceding action.
• Routine: the behaviour itself, physical, mental or emotional.
• Reward: the payoff that tells your brain this loop is worth remembering.

Repeat the loop often enough and, in Duhigg's account, the cue and reward become intertwined until a craving appears: you start wanting the reward as soon as you meet the cue. That is why habits feel automatic, and why willpower alone so often loses to them.

A simple everyday example: every afternoon at about four (cue), you walk to the café downstairs and buy a pastry (routine), and you come back chatting and refreshed (reward). Is the reward really the pastry, or the break and the company? Duhigg's method is to experiment until you know.

The golden rule of habit change

You can't simply delete a habit, Duhigg argues, but you can change it: keep the old cue, keep the old reward, and insert a new routine. In our example, at four o'clock you might go for a short walk with a colleague instead, and see if the craving is satisfied. He also stresses belief: change sticks better when people believe it is possible, often with the support of a group.

Keystone habits

Some habits matter more than others because they set off chains of other changes. Duhigg calls these keystone habits. His best-known example is the aluminium company Alcoa, where a new chief executive, Paul O'Neill, focused relentlessly on one thing, worker safety, and the habits built around it spread through the whole company. For individuals, the idea is to look for one small change that makes other good things easier.

The other stories

The book ranges widely, from individuals to businesses: one well-known chapter shows how Procter & Gamble built the market for Febreze, an odour-eliminating spray, by understanding cues, rewards and cravings. Some stories are more convincing than others, but they make the book a quick and entertaining read.

How it differs from Atomic Habits

James Clear's Atomic Habits (2018), which we cover in our guide to what Atomic Habits argues, builds on similar ideas but is organised differently. According to Wikipedia's summary of Atomic Habits, Clear describes habits in four stages, cue, craving, response and reward, and focuses on small, very easy improvements compounded over time and on the systems around you.

In practice:

• Duhigg explains; Clear instructs. The Power of Habit is mostly narrative and science journalism; Atomic Habits is a practical handbook with rules and checklists.
• Duhigg goes wider, into businesses and communities. Clear stays with individual daily life.
• If you want to understand habits, start with Duhigg. If you want a plan for Monday morning, Clear is more direct.

For the everyday side, see our pages on how long a habit really takes and the difference between discipline and habit.