---
product_id: 48377387
title: "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change from the Award-Winning Journalist"
price: "1167833₫"
currency: VND
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.vn/products/48377387-the-power-of-habit-why-we-do-what-we-do
store_origin: VN
region: Vietnam
---

# The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change from the Award-Winning Journalist

**Price:** 1167833₫
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change from the Award-Winning Journalist
- **How much does it cost?** 1167833₫ with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.vn](https://www.desertcart.vn/products/48377387-the-power-of-habit-why-we-do-what-we-do)

## Best For

- Customers looking for quality international products

## Why This Product

- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
- 15-day hassle-free returns

## Description

There's never been a better time to set new habits. This book will change your life. In The Power of Habit , award-winning journalist Charles Duhigg takes us into the thrilling and surprising world of the scientific study of habits. He examines why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. He visits laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. And he uncovers 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. The result is a compelling argument and an empowering discovery: the key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive or even building revolutionary companies is understanding how habits work. By harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives. ______________________________ '[An] essential manual for business and living.' Andrew Hill, Financial Times 'Once you read this book, you'll never look at yourself, your organisation, or your world quite the same way.' Daniel H. Pink 'This is a first-rate book - based on an impressive mass of research, written in a lively style and providing just the right balance of intellectual seriousness with practical advice on how to break our bad habits.' The Economist

Review: Insightful and cleverly written with some great revelations inside - Through the slow, incremental work of science we are diligently reverse engineering our aeon-old soft and hardware to arrive at deep insights into how we tick. In The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg uses his considerable journalistic skills of brevity and story-telling to take us inside how we build some of our most common psychological routines. Like a container ship ploughing the world's oceans can't help pick up a community of marine fauna, our minds, scything through an ocean of experience, get stuck with a seething mass of often chaotic, sometimes damaging, habits. Turns out the ones we often focus on, the bad ones, are simply a particular species of a panoply of simple cue-routine-reward cycles that means we can get from one complex task to the next without blowing mental gaskets. Which means, basically, much of our daily experience is constructed from habits, or, as the more-quoted business aphorism goes, we are indeed, '...what we repeatedly do.' We develop habits because we only have a limited strip of deep thinking neocortex wrapped around the outer edges of our brains and if this was constantly used for every response we would very soon run out of gigabytes to think with. Habits are small sub-routines downloaded into the deeper, more primitive parts of our brain when we have mastered a skill or process. They are initiated virtually automatically by a cue, involve a repeat behaviour - routine - and always finish up with a reward, which serves to reinforce them. Without habits, brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces would absorb your attention fully and there'd be no thinking space left to plan the day ahead. So, knowing that these automatic thinking routines stick in our brains like those barnacles on a ship, we need to attend very carefully to the ones we let stick around. Most habits are about simple efficiency, taking learnt things and clearing our mind space so new things can be taken on board and some are overwhelming good, like the habit of exercise or reading daily. It is the conscious choice to adapt your habits and look at your behaviours in a new light that this book provides which is so very helpful. Select any habit, good or bad, and you can forensically unpack it, unpicking its antecedents and understanding its triggers before, armed with this knowledge, you can go at the wild garden of your psychology with the pruning shears. Habits are everywhere and they can be tamed and beaten, even some of the really damaging ones, if we explore the cues and the rewards that drive them, replacing the unwanted routines they set us unthinkingly performing. And this is the most powerful insight of this book, the opportunity it gives us to gain a deep insight into our worst habits and bring them within the scope of our will through that awareness. The way to do this, break the cycle, involves using the cue and delivering the reward, but changing the routine in the middle. It also means using an experimental approach to your own psychological reactions and trying out solutions that might move you forward. The author uses an example of how he tried to tackle a new habit that arose whilst he was writing the book. The habit involved getting up mid-afternoon from his desk at work and wondering down to the cafeteria, having a chat with co-workers over a coffee and eating a chocolate cookie. These additional calories five times a week inevitably caused him to put on a few pounds, so he reverse-engineered the cycle and tried to understand this new and irritating habit from the inside out. He decided that the cue was the need to stretch his legs after a long afternoon of working and after some failed attempts to prevent the purchase of the cookie, that the reward wasn't actually the chocolatey snack, but the social connection he gained with his co-workers. Once the cue and reward were nailed, he just needed to amend the routine in the middle which he did by making sure he packed enough fruit to replace the biscuit as he went through the habit of going to the cafeteria and meeting up with co-workers. So, in a sense, the habit remained via the cue and the reward, but he'd just changed the automatic and slightly damaging routine in the middle of it. A book full of powerful insights into how our minds work and it also has sections dealing with the organisational habits of large businesses and how these can be maximised for the benefit of the company. It also goes onto the explore in its least convincing section how paradigm shifts in social values can be driven by processes as automatic as habits. Intelligent, readable and insightful and therefore highly recommended. ***** 5 stars
Review: Less 'habit' - but plenty of psychological goodness! - A thorough (and well researched) psychological romp through the subconscious machinations... tenuously held together by the vague term "habit". Whilst the title and tag-line implies it's akin to the saturated backlog of books promising to 'transform your [career / relationships / life / chronic nose hair]' that make you want to stab your eyes out with the nearest writing utensil... this is anything but. It makes no attempt to preach a 'model', but simply reports a vast swathe of psychology and decision-making which outline a curious framework for your understanding. The one (and only) bone I have to pick is that 'habit' feels like a slight misnomer with this book. It ends up being used as an umbrella term for "anything subconscious"... be it willpower, motivation or preferences. Truth be told, the core meat of how habits form, function and are malleable are covered within the first chapter or two. The rest is more social psychology, management and advertising. You hear how Target explored and perfected its data algorithms to identify pregnant women (and subtly masked this knowledge from them) - then get a "and from this we can see how habits can be formed" shoe-horned in to bring the topic back to the fore. Not that any of these other topics are disinteresting or poorly written, but it felt a bit directionless at times. More a compendium of fascinating psychological findings than a structured flow. It's thorough, but there's a few points I craved a bit more exploration of the idea (and its applications). But that is where the critique ends. If you disassociate the idea that this is a psychological guide on habit forming / breaking... but simply a broader, superbly researched journey through various aspects of the subconscious; how they work and how others try to tap into them... Then it's a superb read suitable for anyone craving a deeper understanding of psychology. It's well paced and warmly engaging, even if somewhat soul destroying reading about how companies abuse psychological quirks to take advantage of others. One thing to bear in mind is that this is written by a skilled reporter, not a doctor or life "coach". In other words, the tone isn't like a model/prescription to apply to make things better... but more a reporting of facts, outcomes and decisions for you to make of what you will. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you! The writing is also perfectly balanced to be scientific, yet approachable. So a pleasant surprise indeed. A welcome, though not quite astounding, entry to any psychological bookshelf.

## Features

- Warning:Not suitable for children over 36 months

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | 13,130 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 6 in Compulsive Behaviour 227 in Psychological Schools of Thought 259 in Popular Psychology |
| Customer reviews | 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (38,754) |
| Dimensions  | 12.8 x 2.4 x 19.7 cm |
| Edition  | 1st |
| ISBN-10  | 1847946240 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1847946249 |
| Item weight  | 281 g |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 400 pages |
| Publication date  | 7 Feb. 2013 |
| Publisher  | Random House Books |

## Images

![The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change from the Award-Winning Journalist - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71aMS2VSfeL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Insightful and cleverly written with some great revelations inside
*by A***T on 29 September 2013*

Through the slow, incremental work of science we are diligently reverse engineering our aeon-old soft and hardware to arrive at deep insights into how we tick. In The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg uses his considerable journalistic skills of brevity and story-telling to take us inside how we build some of our most common psychological routines. Like a container ship ploughing the world's oceans can't help pick up a community of marine fauna, our minds, scything through an ocean of experience, get stuck with a seething mass of often chaotic, sometimes damaging, habits. Turns out the ones we often focus on, the bad ones, are simply a particular species of a panoply of simple cue-routine-reward cycles that means we can get from one complex task to the next without blowing mental gaskets. Which means, basically, much of our daily experience is constructed from habits, or, as the more-quoted business aphorism goes, we are indeed, '...what we repeatedly do.' We develop habits because we only have a limited strip of deep thinking neocortex wrapped around the outer edges of our brains and if this was constantly used for every response we would very soon run out of gigabytes to think with. Habits are small sub-routines downloaded into the deeper, more primitive parts of our brain when we have mastered a skill or process. They are initiated virtually automatically by a cue, involve a repeat behaviour - routine - and always finish up with a reward, which serves to reinforce them. Without habits, brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces would absorb your attention fully and there'd be no thinking space left to plan the day ahead. So, knowing that these automatic thinking routines stick in our brains like those barnacles on a ship, we need to attend very carefully to the ones we let stick around. Most habits are about simple efficiency, taking learnt things and clearing our mind space so new things can be taken on board and some are overwhelming good, like the habit of exercise or reading daily. It is the conscious choice to adapt your habits and look at your behaviours in a new light that this book provides which is so very helpful. Select any habit, good or bad, and you can forensically unpack it, unpicking its antecedents and understanding its triggers before, armed with this knowledge, you can go at the wild garden of your psychology with the pruning shears. Habits are everywhere and they can be tamed and beaten, even some of the really damaging ones, if we explore the cues and the rewards that drive them, replacing the unwanted routines they set us unthinkingly performing. And this is the most powerful insight of this book, the opportunity it gives us to gain a deep insight into our worst habits and bring them within the scope of our will through that awareness. The way to do this, break the cycle, involves using the cue and delivering the reward, but changing the routine in the middle. It also means using an experimental approach to your own psychological reactions and trying out solutions that might move you forward. The author uses an example of how he tried to tackle a new habit that arose whilst he was writing the book. The habit involved getting up mid-afternoon from his desk at work and wondering down to the cafeteria, having a chat with co-workers over a coffee and eating a chocolate cookie. These additional calories five times a week inevitably caused him to put on a few pounds, so he reverse-engineered the cycle and tried to understand this new and irritating habit from the inside out. He decided that the cue was the need to stretch his legs after a long afternoon of working and after some failed attempts to prevent the purchase of the cookie, that the reward wasn't actually the chocolatey snack, but the social connection he gained with his co-workers. Once the cue and reward were nailed, he just needed to amend the routine in the middle which he did by making sure he packed enough fruit to replace the biscuit as he went through the habit of going to the cafeteria and meeting up with co-workers. So, in a sense, the habit remained via the cue and the reward, but he'd just changed the automatic and slightly damaging routine in the middle of it. A book full of powerful insights into how our minds work and it also has sections dealing with the organisational habits of large businesses and how these can be maximised for the benefit of the company. It also goes onto the explore in its least convincing section how paradigm shifts in social values can be driven by processes as automatic as habits. Intelligent, readable and insightful and therefore highly recommended. ***** 5 stars

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Less 'habit' - but plenty of psychological goodness!
*by P***E on 4 June 2017*

A thorough (and well researched) psychological romp through the subconscious machinations... tenuously held together by the vague term "habit". Whilst the title and tag-line implies it's akin to the saturated backlog of books promising to 'transform your [career / relationships / life / chronic nose hair]' that make you want to stab your eyes out with the nearest writing utensil... this is anything but. It makes no attempt to preach a 'model', but simply reports a vast swathe of psychology and decision-making which outline a curious framework for your understanding. The one (and only) bone I have to pick is that 'habit' feels like a slight misnomer with this book. It ends up being used as an umbrella term for "anything subconscious"... be it willpower, motivation or preferences. Truth be told, the core meat of how habits form, function and are malleable are covered within the first chapter or two. The rest is more social psychology, management and advertising. You hear how Target explored and perfected its data algorithms to identify pregnant women (and subtly masked this knowledge from them) - then get a "and from this we can see how habits can be formed" shoe-horned in to bring the topic back to the fore. Not that any of these other topics are disinteresting or poorly written, but it felt a bit directionless at times. More a compendium of fascinating psychological findings than a structured flow. It's thorough, but there's a few points I craved a bit more exploration of the idea (and its applications). But that is where the critique ends. If you disassociate the idea that this is a psychological guide on habit forming / breaking... but simply a broader, superbly researched journey through various aspects of the subconscious; how they work and how others try to tap into them... Then it's a superb read suitable for anyone craving a deeper understanding of psychology. It's well paced and warmly engaging, even if somewhat soul destroying reading about how companies abuse psychological quirks to take advantage of others. One thing to bear in mind is that this is written by a skilled reporter, not a doctor or life "coach". In other words, the tone isn't like a model/prescription to apply to make things better... but more a reporting of facts, outcomes and decisions for you to make of what you will. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you! The writing is also perfectly balanced to be scientific, yet approachable. So a pleasant surprise indeed. A welcome, though not quite astounding, entry to any psychological bookshelf.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Stimulating new take on choice and decision making
*by M***N on 8 June 2012*

Get to my age and you are an amalgam of bad and some good habits - you might like to think you make choices but in fact most of the decisions are habits. This book explores why habits exist and how they can be changed. It draws on a rich seam of individual accounts, of personal interviews and stories which bring the books to life. Charles Duhigg's book deals with personal habits, with the habits of organisations and the habits of society. It deals with excessive personal habits like alcoholism, obesity, obsessive- compulsive disorders. It deals with organisational habits like aggression in some organisations gets rewarded. Some habits are so strong that courts and justices have agreed that they overwhelm our capacity to make choices and thus we are not responsible for what we do. Murderers have been acquitted because they were not responsible for overcoming their habits. Habits are not destiny. They can be ignored, changed or replaced. But when a habit emerges the brain stops fully participating in decision making and so it can focus on other tasks. Therefore if you want to change a habit unless you find new routines the pattern will unfold automatically. By focussing on one habit - a keystone habit - you can teach yourself how to reprogram the other routines in your life. Duhigg analyses habits into cue, routine and reward. You can never extinguish bad habits but you can insert a new routine. Use the same cue, provide the same reward but change the routine. Willpower is an expendable resource. But giving employees in companies and organisations a sense of agency - a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority - can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs. There are no organisations without institutional habits. There are places where they are absolutely designed - Starbucks being a prime example- and places where they are created without forethought. They often grow from rivalry or fear. Firms are often guided by long held organisational habits patterns that emerge from thousands of employees independent decisions. But even destructive habits can be transformed by leaders who know how to seize the right opportunities, sometimes in the height of a crisis. In societies our weak-tie acquaintances are often as influential as our close-tie friends. Individuals with few weak link ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and ideas and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. The power of weak ties helps explain how a protest can expand from a group of friends into a broad social movement. It examines the force of peer pressure and the social habits that encourage people to conform to group expectations. A stimulating book.

## Frequently Bought Together

- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change
- Atomic Habits: The life-changing million-copy #1 bestseller
- Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

---

## Why Shop on Desertcart?

- 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016
- 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories
- 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price
- 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members)
- 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection
- ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews

**Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.vn/products/48377387-the-power-of-habit-why-we-do-what-we-do](https://www.desertcart.vn/products/48377387-the-power-of-habit-why-we-do-what-we-do)

---

*Product available on Desertcart Vietnam*
*Store origin: VN*
*Last updated: 2026-05-18*