Book Report

The Power of Habit, written by Charles Duhigg is a novel that goes into deeper theory on how habit is formed,  how to create good and better habits and how people continue bad habits. The book contains open stories about Eugene Pauly, who was a man in his seventies who had part of his temporal lobe destroyed by encephalitis. The novel also goes into depth about what habits are and how they are formed. Lastly, the novel discusses the 'habit loop' which has three steps; The cue, the routine, and the reward. The main point of the novel was to change the bad habits into good habits. 

My favorite part of the novel was learning on how to create new habits. It is important to know that not all habits are bad, and it is important to learn good habits. This became my favorite part because it immediately got me engaged into the novel and was very education, so i was able to read and learn something new at the same time. I learned that you must find a cue to use to trigger the behavior you seek to make into the habit, this was also known as step one in the habit loop - the cue. Then, you must find a reward, known as step three - the reward. It was educational to learn about this, as well as i really enjoyed learning about the habit group. 

I feel that this book related to the class in many ways, however the topic rewards lecture stood out to me the most when relating this to the class. When creating a new habit, it is important to reward yourself - as well as when you are getting rid of a bad habit, it is important to reward yourself. In the reward lecture, it discusses reinforcers. The reinforcers are described as the increase of the likelihood of a behavior - as in when you are rewarding yourself when associated with a habit, it is increasing the likelihood of the habit continuing or discontinuing. 

I have realized habit comes in an everyday life whether we realize it or not, and unfortunately some of the habits are not good. Personally, I have realized one of my biggest habits is going on my phone before I go to bed, and I get sucked into many apps that cause me to stay up late. This habit has been affecting my sleep schedule and my tiredness level in the morning. To stop this habit, I have been deleting the apps on my phone after a certain time and i reward myself with an extra thirty minutes of sleep. 

Below is a video of a ted talk based on habits - it is very opening and has a lot of great information. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSZyzhi8C9o&t=404s