Mario Carrion
A cue. A routine. A reward.
Today I completed one of the books I meant to complete in July: The Power of Habit (affiliate link), written by Charles Duhigg and published by Random House in 2012.
"A cue, a routine and a reward" Just finished reading "The Power of Habit". Great long book! pic.twitter.com/hyW17c3sL1
— Mario Carrion (@mariocarrion) August 15, 2017
One of my goals this year is to nurture my non-technical side. That has driven me to read about theology, self-improvement and psychology in the recent months.
The Power of Habit does not sell you a unique idea for changing your habits or one-fits-all magic recipe you can follow to change the way you behave, instead it tries to explain your current behavior is caused by a combination cue->routine->reward, it does that by narrating different unrelated stories where habits made a significant impact on the way they eventually developed.
From a patient with memory loss, an alcoholic, an addicted gambler or a murderer, the stories in The Power of Habit explain you how one tiny thing eventually led to another huge thing.
What is important to take from those stories is not the actual story itself but how everything started to happen, because in the end whatever behavior you’re trying to change it did not start out of nowhere, something triggered it in first place, you did something next and then it became a routine, a habit.
Seeing things out of the box is such a cliche thing to say, but after completing The Power of Habit the way I see things changes significantly.
The Power of Habit is a long read, but I highly recommend it to anyone trying to become a better person, improve his/her life, overcome bad habits or create new healthy habits.