Our September book: The Power of Habit

We will be meeting on Wednesday, September 18, 2013 at 7:00 pm to discuss The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

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.   (summary courtesy of Goodreads)

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Our discussion this evening of Extra Virginity

Our group discussed Tom Muller’s book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.   Stephanie very graciously provided us with some bread and a little bottle of olive oil, so we had a tasting to go with our discussion (thank you, Stephanie!!).

We had a pretty animated discussion, and although we occasionally veered a bit off topic (to talk about food), I’ll try to highlight some of the comments:

• We had some general discussion about the author’s writing style.  One person wondered if perhaps his very descriptive writing sometimes was a distraction, but others didn’t seem to mind this as much.    Another person brought up how she found that if the author was writing about someone he liked, he used very flattering descriptors; but if he didn’t like the person, then it was a lot of “beady eyes,” etc.     In fact, his writing is something that a few readers said was mentioned in the New York Times review of the book – which they agreed with.
• One person did comment that while she liked the book, she felt the author was unrealistic.  While she understood his passion, she didn’t feel that it was realistic to assume that all people would have access to the best olive oil (mostly due to the expense of it).   We talked about how for a lot of us, a bottle of really good quality olive oil is a treat — but to buy in a larger quantity, it’s a little too expensive.
• We also had some general discussion about the various business practices the author explores in the book.  As one person stated, “It’s a big business, but it sounds so dirty!”   The author’s explanation of some of the business practices was very eye-opening for some of us (especially the part about the pipe bombs in the olive groves).
• Readers liked that the author wrote about areas other than Italy, and enjoyed reading about the history of various places, along with the current issues facing places like Israel and Palestine.   One person stated that she found a lot of the book to be boring, but liked his writing about the ancient olive trees, and the Middle East.    We talked about how the author focused on olive oil, but didn’t discuss olives (and considering there are so many types, we had thought he would at least mention them).
• There were a few comparisons made to the previous book we read, Swim by Lynn Sherr.   People remarked that both books had a singular focus, and were passionately written.  As one person said, “This book is like Swim, but it makes you hungry.”   In response, another person said that the book also makes you question a lot — although she said she wished there were more answers.
• Overall, people found this a good read.   We did agree, though, that while the author raises many questions, we wished he had provide more answers, specifically about which brands of olive oil to avoid.  While we understood why he didn’t do this, we wished he had made it a little simpler.    Not everyone has access, or the money, to go into specialty stores for their oil.
• One more little note: someone brought up the yagh gures wrestling …. which led to some discussion about how this should be brought back, specifically to involve people like Hugh Jackman, Jason Statham and Vin Diesel.     Hey, this part of our discussion was related to the book ….. it’s just a tiny bit off topic.

We always welcome more discussion — feel free to leave a comment!

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More information for our discussion of Extra Virginity —

In anticipation of our upcoming discussing of Extra Virginity by Tom Mueller, I wanted to post some links that I got from his website, which I found really interesting reading :

author photo from his site

Tom Mueller’s site may be found here, at Truth in Olive Oil.   He has a blog, which has some very good posts, as well as a lot of other information.

This link is to his article for The New Yorker, which was the precursor to his book.

And this is a link to an article from today from The Pacific Northwest Inlander, about Mueller and his ongoing work to bring attention to the olive oil industry’s practices.

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