Description "Are you a habit designer, or a chronic effort addict?" The definitive answer from cutting-edge brain science and psychology on the power of "staying the course" ★★★ Published and translated in 11 countries worldwide ★★★ ★★★ The one book endorsed by Cass Sunstein, author of Nudge ★★★ ★★★ The culmination of 30 years of research into human behavior, spanning neuroscience and psychology ★★★ "This book contains the one weapon that can replace GRIT!" — Angela Duckworth Many people push themselves through pain in pursuit of their goals. They skip meals to lose weight, stay up all night studying for exams, and force themselves out of bed with sleepy eyes to go running at dawn. Gritting their teeth, they repeatedly choose a life of "enduring." But is living this harshly and painfully really the best way? Wendy Wood, who has spent over 30 years researching the roots of human behavior, advises that instead of relying on willpower—which is quickly depleted—we should borrow the power of "habit science" by slightly adjusting the conditions around us so that we achieve our goals automatically. In Habit, Wood combines neuroscience and psychology to scientifically analyze how habits form and function, ultimately seeking to answer one question: "What makes human behavior persist?" Wendy Wood is currently one of the most closely watched researchers in the field of habit science worldwide, and a human behavior expert who has collaborated with world-renowned psychologists such as Angela Duckworth and Adam Grant. Cass Sunstein, who devised the "nudge strategy"—simple interventions within given conditions that guide people toward the best choices—described Wood's research as "a disruptive and groundbreaking discovery that allows anyone to easily enjoy the life they want." In a world that insists we can overcome our circumstances through effort and willpower alone, Habit instead focuses on the power of situations, offering an easy-to-understand explanation of the scientifically validated laws of habit design that let us achieve our goals automatically, without straining or struggling. "Before solving the problem, rearrange the 'situation' first!" Those who fixate on goals vs. those who focus on their environment Consider two groups of college students facing an assignment. One group relied solely on their own "willpower" to complete the task. The other group first organized their surrounding environment to create conditions favorable to studying, before beginning the assignment in earnest. A week later, when the two groups' results were compared, the group that had properly controlled their environment and situation in advance scored far higher than the group that relied on willpower alone. All they did was block Facebook, keep their smartphones in their bags, and study at the library instead of at home—yet the students who studied less but managed their environment significantly outperformed those who relied on sheer willpower. According to the results of this actual experiment conducted with students at the University of Pennsylvania, the students who put in less effort but achieved higher grades did so by identifying and removing the "friction" that interfered with their study habits, then simply continuing to study without straining or struggling. Wendy Wood, who has spent her career studying the power of situations over human behavior, argues that by deliberately manipulating small everyday conditions, we can design an entirely new life. She asserts that the reason we always try our best yet quickly become discouraged and slide back to where we started is that we fixate too much on "goals" and "motivation." There is a fascinating experiment that demonstrates this. Ordinary people were given the same task—"morning running"—and researchers analyzed the difference between those who formed a habit of running regularly, three or more times a week, and those who never managed to run even once a month. The first group responded sensitively to their environment—the running track, the park, and other physical locations. The second group, who never ran at all, obsessed excessively over reasons they had to run, such as "losing weight," "training for a marathon," or "getting in shape." They clung only to goals and rewards, as if motivation were an absolute prerequisite for going outside to run. "Your willpower cools faster than a freshly brewed cup of coffee!" The miraculous life changes created by the hidden 43% of your unconscious mind Wendy Wood's research team was the first in academia to discover that as much as 43% of our daily lives is governed by habit...