Good Habits, Bad Habits

'Wendy Wood is the world's foremost expert in the field, and this book is essential' - Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit. What if you could harness the extraordinary power of your unconscious mind, which already determines so much of what you do, to achieve your goals? Shockingly, we spend nearly half our day repeating things we've done in the past without thinking about them. How we respond to the people around us; the way we conduct ourselves in meetings; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat and drink - a truly remarkable number of things we do every day, we do by habit. And yet, whenever we want to change something about ourselves, we rely on willpower alone. We hope that our determination and intention will be enough to effect positive change. And that is why almost all of us fail. Professor Wendy Wood is the world's foremost expert on habits. By drawing on three decades of original research, she explains the fascinating science of how we form habits and provides the key to unlocking our habitual mind in order to make the changes we seek. Combining a potent mix of neuroscience, case studies and experiments conducted in her lab, Good Habits, Bad Habits is a comprehensive, accessible and highly practical book that will change the way you think about almost every aspect of your life.

Wendy Wood was born in the UK and is provost professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California. Her research incorporates neuroscience, cognition and behavioral insights to understand habit persistence and change, and she has collaborated with many luminary psychologists, including Angela Duckworth and Adam Grant. Her research has been funded by the top granting agencies including NIH, NSF, Templeton Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Proctor & Gamble and the Radcliffe Advanced Study Institute at Harvard. She has written for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Time magazine, USA Today and NPR. She lectures widely for popular and academic audiences and recently launched a website to convey scientific insight on habit to the general public.

Unit - Part I: How We Really Are Chapter - 1: Persistence and Change Chapter - 2: The Depths Beneath Chapter - 3: Introducing Your Second Self Chapter - 4: What About Knowledge? Chapter - 5: What About Self Control? Unit - Part II: The Three Bases of Habit Formation Chapter - 6: Context Chapter - 7: Repetition Chapter - 8: Reward Chapter - 9: Consistency is for Closers Chapter - 10: Total Control Unit - Part III: Special Cases, Big opportunities, and the World Around Us Chapter - 11: Jump Through Windows Chapter - 12: The Special Resilience of Habit Chapter - 13: Contexts of Addiction Chapter - 14: Happy with Habit Chapter - 15: You Are Not Alone Section - i: Epilogue Section - ii: How to Stop Looking at Your Phone So Often Section - iii: Notes Section - iii: Bibliography Acknowledgements - iv: Acknowledgements Index - v: Index