Jeremy Dean is a psychologist and creator of PsyBlog, the popular and content-rich website that analyzes studies relevant to everyday life. In this fascinating book, he takes on a complex and difficult subject: the challenges we face in trying to make new habits and break old habits that are self-destructive and lead us down a dead-end street. All of us have experienced the exhilaration of setting up New Year's resolutions and then in a few weeks watching them putter out into oblivions.
Dean begins with research on how long it takes to form a habit. Most of us would answer three weeks, but the author has come up with another time frame which will shock you. Dean shares three characteristics about habits:
1. they allow us to zone out and think about something else,
2. the act of performing them is curiously emotionless, and
3. they are strongly rooted in the situations in which they occur.
Despite the important role habits play in our everyday lives, they are often viewed as minor players whose roles are boring and uninspired. Dean shows how our routines are seen as part of "the daily grind" or as part of "rats stuck in a maze." Next the author probes our social, work, travel, eating, and shopping habits. Every reader will find insights in these explorations of habitual behavior.
Whether writing about worrying, intentions, negativity, the social media, or the difference between habits and goals, Dean demonstrates a knack for cutting through generalities and cutting to the heart of the matter. Making Habits, Breaking Habits will shed new light on your own private and public behavior and the many quests for change that you undertake in your everyday life.
