Habits

I have just finished reading, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. I know that this is not about economics but today I am just going to talk a bit about what I read and why I think it is important and how it relates to my goals for this blog.

To start off with, I highly recommend this book. It was recommended to me and actually given to me. Even with this though it took me around 6 months before I started reading it. The book is very clearly laid out and a very interesting, if at times disturbing, read. For example it talk about how companies are able to use information on us to gain insight into our habits and market stuff to us specifically. While this is probably no surprise at all to anyone who uses the internet, the amount of information and just how accurate they can be, is something that to me at least I found a bit surprising. The real point of this book though is that habits can be changed and he gives steps and examples of how you can go about changing them.

For me personally, there are some habits that I would like to get rid of as well as some habits that I would like to gain. Such as an increase in my amount of exercise. Exercise is something that I have struggled with since graduating high school. As well studying and procrastination has always been a big problem, something that I talked about at the beginning of this blog. While I think that this has done some good, I have also been struggling a lot with regularly studying and writing in this blog. Reading about habits has helped me in some ways to understand where to start from in terms of changing my behaviour to something that I will be happier with in my own life.

I think that having bad habits can sometimes be very frustrating. Habits are hard to control and having habits that we don’t want or would like to change can leave us feeling like we don’t have much control over our lives. At least I personally know that I feel that way sometimes. In the book Duhigg talks about how belief is one of the most important parts of changing habits. In order for us to be able to change our habits we need to believe that they can change. I know that this is a very hard thing for me, as I tend to be a pretty skeptical person about most things and at the same time, like most people from my generation probably, I crave immediate results. However, knowing that I can do something in a concrete way, might help me to find the belief that I need in order to change my behaviour.

I have often found that I reward myself through food and this is one of the major things that I feel I want to change. I have really struggled with finding other rewards that work for myself though and I think that will be one of the hardest parts of changing. Probably where I will start is where Duhigg recommends, which is to identify the routine. I need to find a routine that I do that that I would like to change. In an effort to do this I think I will start trying to write down more of what I do in a given day to see what habits I actually have. As well I need to figure out why food is such a good reward for me. This will help me figure out what exactly I crave in a reward and hopefully figure out a way to choose a different reward that gives me the same pleasure but that I am happier with myself.

I will leave with just a short piece on economics. One of the core components to Duhiggs book is on the behaviour on businesses and consumers, both of which are governed by habits. I think habits are something that would be very interesting to do a more in depth study of in terms of economic behaviour as we may find that it explains a lot of the behaviour that economists can often find puzzling. This is a book that I feel will have a big impact on my life and once again I highly recommend taking a look at it for yourself.