Charles Duhigg The Power Of Habit Spark Notes

Change? Habits can be the minds greatest asset, similarly it can also be its greatest downfall. In Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Duhigg begins with a brief introduction about habits. Through a experiment preformed on rats performed at Stanford University, researchers found rats would take extra time to run through a maze the first time, and subsequent time in the maze helped create a habit that allowed the rat to run the maze in record time. Habits are formed through chunking, which helps the brain process information and store it away for future use. Habits are unique because they are ingrained into the part of the brain called the basil ganglia, and will occur so long as the cue is …show more content…
Some of my class mates chose habits as easy as getting exercise daily or not eating out as much, others chose habits that were much more complicated in their nature such as procrastination and even smoking. At the end of the week it seemed a little more than half the class was able to change their bad habit, though I wonder how long their habit will stay changed before it regresses to its former state or becomes worse than the original habit. Yet, I am confident with more time we all could have changed our habits because, "Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. but with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped."(276) Unfortunately, that's all that can be done, the habit won't and can't disappear completely, the cue will still exist, and therefore so too will the habit loop. Instead, Duhigg says "To change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine."(71) We can't erase habits, but we can change our routine and re-write our habits, effectively changing them from something bad to something good. In my particular habit of procrastination, I attempted to change my routine of leaving work I had to do until the last minute, while leaving my cue, which was work, and reward , getting other things done, intact. At the beginning of the week, I started out pretty well, I had completed my work earlier than normal and still had time to …show more content…
In an article written by Carol Dweck entitled Brainology, Dweck describes two different mindsets. The first mindset is that of the growth mindset with the premise that intelligence isn't fixed and with enough work anything we want cam be achieved. Similarly our habits aren't fixed and while they aren't easy to get rid of, it we work hard enough, and we want to change, we are more than capable of doing so. However, there is also the fixed mindset, with the premise that intelligence is fixed and no matter how hard one works they will never get it, so most of the time they just stop, this is probably the most likely reason why habits don't change. It is because fixed minded people don't believe they are capable of change, and no matter how hard they try, they won't succeed, so why try. The kind of mindset we carry are the results of motivators; most of the time they stem from extrinsic rewards such as money, personal gain or things of monetary value. There are also intrinsic motivators, these are motivations that come from oneself, they are the result of our own interests and passions. Interestingly, the habits that are the result of the extrinsic motivators are the habits that are easier to get rid of with an extrinsic reward. Yet with habits that are the result of intrinsic motivators, they tend to be much more difficult to change even in the presence of an extrinsic reward; as opposed to those that occur as a