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The Importance of Habit

Rachel Soderberg on June 07, 2019

What Is A Habit? The University College London defines habits as "behaviours which are performed automatically because they have been performed fr...
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Jamie

Habits can be super useful if incredibly destructive. They can also expose information about yourself that you may not have even known. In The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg tells the tale of a 16 year old who had received coupons for "new Mom" products from Costco before she even knew that she was pregnant - they figured it out based on her spending habits.

It also tells the story of a person who was addicted to gambling, but managed to help themselves by changing some related habits related to how they communited to work. With the help of a professional, they were able to beat the addiction - but it was the initial work of beating some habits which helped get them in the road to recovery.

He also introduces something called the habit loop (Queue, Action, Reward), and postulates that you only need to change one of those steps for a few weeks in order to break the habit cycle.

I'd highly recommend reading it.

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Rachel Soderberg

I'm pretty sure The Power of Habit is already on my hold list from the library, looking forward to reading it even more now!

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Periklis Gkolias

Atomic habbits by James Clear is also very good. You can have a sneak peak to to his blog to see.

jamesclear.com/articles

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Rachel Soderberg

That's another one on my library hold list! It's actually due to be in my hands this week :)

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James Schleigher

Great post! Building a new habit is indeed not easy. For me, it's easier to break down my goal into smaller steps. This way, it's easier to reach each step, and I get a sense of achievement every time I reach one milestone. I use task management software to help me plan and organize. Tools like Todoist or Quire are great ones!