For our Fall 2012 Omniquest selection, the Michigan campus team evaluated several recent bestselling business books and selected The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Duhigg’s text explores the science of transforming patterns of behavior into habits. Duhigg uses a variety of real-world examples to illustrate that understanding how habits work can be transformational in the lives of people, companies and societies, and these ideas are important for all of us, regardless of our role, our age or our aspirations.
In his book, Mr. Duhigg “takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist, and how they can be changed. …..[W]e learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight.” Mr. Duhigg has been a reporter for The New York Times since 2006, studied history at Yale and received his MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great and Built to Last, commented, “Charles Duhigg’s thesis is powerful in its elegant simplicity: confront the root drivers of our behavior, accept them as intractable, and then channel those same cravings into productive patterns. His core insight is sharp, provocative, and useful.”
It’s been said the only constant in life is change, and The Power of Habit helps us all better understand how we can make positive changes, in our personal and business lives.