As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.Īt 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. 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 visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains.

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.Īlong the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. Just as people can learn to control their individual habits by carefully changing their routines, Duhigg affirms, they can take control of their entire lives by identifying the most important keystone habits to change first.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. Thus, Duhigg uses the concept of keystone habits to reaffirm his belief that people have much more control over their habits, feelings, and identities than they think. Namely, by changing some aspects of their lives, people build the capacity and confidence to change other things, too. But all three of these advantages are based on the same common principle. exercising can make you eat better, sleep better. In both these cases, the keystone habit might have seemed irrelevant or insignificant, but it was actually the key ingredient that brought about the deeper transformation that both Allen and Alcoa needed.Ĭharles Duhigg argues that keystone habits help people achieve broader change in three ways: they build people’s confidence by giving them “small wins,” help them create new systems and structures that allow other habits to form later on, and change organizations’ culture. Certain habits, keystone habits, can bring many other good ones with them. Similarly, Alcoa transformed under Paul O’Neill’s leadership by focusing on the keystone issue of worker safety. For instance, Lisa Allen gained the confidence to lose weight, improve her sleep schedule, and plan for her future by embracing a single keystone habit change: quitting smoking. Keystone habits are the initial, often insignificant habits that individuals and organizations modify in order to pave the way for much broader transformation. Keystone habits both represent and demonstrate the way that people can take control over their lives-and leaders can take control over their organizations-by adjusting their habits.

Charles duhigg keystone habits