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This book has 15 recommendations

Cynthia Cleveland (CEO/Broadthink)

Q: What is one must-read book for business leaders?

A: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Business and Life by Charles Duhigg.

Joel Gascoigne (Co-founder/Buffer)

This book introduced me to the idea of 'keystone habits', which are ones where if you focus on them then they can transform your whole state and can trigger further healthy changes.

Blake Irving (CEO/GoDaddy)

You know, there's a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Simple read book about just how to build positive habits that can be I think I what I'd call you know whether in your personal life or whether in your business life to help you build you know, have a loop that can build your success and that's one I mean there are so many great books out there.

Joan Boixados (Founder/everydayCheck)

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg has been quite enlightening to understand more about habits, how we form them and how important they are in our daily lives and the way we think. Specifically, the cue-routine-reward cycle he inferred from several behavioural studies. Not only has it helped me to design a better habit tracker, but it also helps me take action into improving my behaviours and mentality. It’s a great personal growth resource.

Mehdi Kajbaf (Co-Founder/Matboard)

The Power of Habit is reminding of how many great habits I’ve slowly been letting go as my life gets busier and busier. It’s important to always do a self check and see if your day to day behaviors are setting you up for success.

Nicolas Jouvenceau (CEO/Pink Diamonds Boutique)

“The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg, because I tried many times to stop smoking and did not manage it, and am also interested to understand how we form habits. I am half way in this one and “Small is the new big” because I am looking for ideas, inspiration... business wise.

Sergey Sapelnyk (Co-Founder/Society Socks)

The most impactful book in recent memory is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. It was tremendously eye-opening to realize that our daily lives consist of habits (whether positive, or negative). After reading this book, I began thinking of most of my professional (and partially personal) life as a series of habits that I’ve built over years. Given that your career will likely span hundreds of years, creating and reinforcing positive habits will make a drastic difference over time (much like the principle of ‘compounding’ in finance). This book kick-started a different thinking process for me, centered around optimization of the time I have in a day.

Darren Chua (Co-Founder & CEO/Markedshot)

When asked what books he'd recommend to young people interested in the same career path, Darren Chua mentioned The Power of Habit.

David Kramaley (Co-Founder/Chessable)

When asked what books he would recommend to youngsters interested in his professional path, David mentioned The Power of Habit.

Armina Sirbu (Serial Entrepreneur)

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg - helped me understand how I could (for real) create a new habit or get rid of an unwanted one.

Chelsea Frank (Founder/Life and Limb Gel)

I read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness.

Naval Ravikant (CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList)

I also recently finished The Power of Habit, or close to finish as I get. That one was interesting, not because of its content necessarily, but because it’s good for me to always keep on top of mind how powerful my habits are. [...] I think learning how to break habits is a very important meta-skill that can serve you better in life than almost anything else. Although you can read tons of books on it, the reality is you’re never going to learn how to break bad habits until you just break them.

Santiago Basulto (Co-Founder/rmotr.com)

Another book with great impact was “The power of habit”. But to be honest, I read only a couple of pages. It’s a good book, with many interesting stories. But to be honest, the idea it tries to communicate is simple and after a couple of pages you’ve pretty much understood all of it. Happens the same thing with those types of books (Getting things done, crossing the chasm, etc.)

Bill Widmer (Freelance Content Marketing & SEO Expert)

There are hundreds of other books that have impacted me as well, but two other life-changing ones have been The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy. Habits are essential to creating a life you love, and you can't change them through willpower alone; these two books go hand-in-hand.

Alden Mills (CEO/Perfect Fitness, Navy SEAL, Author)

More recent books that have had a significant impact on me are The Power of Habit and The Diamond Cutter. Both represent different forces for me – the former helps me tactically with making incremental improvements in my life.

Amazon description

A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed. Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history.

Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year. An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones. What do all these people have in common?

They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives. They succeeded by transforming habits. In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover 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. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.

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See more books recommended by

Cynthia Cleveland, Joel Gascoigne, Blake Irving, Joan Boixados, Mehdi Kajbaf, Nicolas Jouvenceau, Sergey Sapelnyk, Darren Chua, David Kramaley, Armina Sirbu, Chelsea Frank, Naval Ravikant, Santiago Basulto, Bill Widmer, Alden Mills

See more books written by

Charles Duhigg

Sources

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