Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Power of Habit [Chapter 1]

Haley Scholars Spring 2013 Reading Groups

By Cindy Lyles

Chapter one of Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit focuses on what he calls the habit loop and establishes how to simply understand the cycle. A three-step sequence—cue, routine, and reward—forms the foundation of all habits. In instances of amnesia, as the author demonstrates, longstanding habits are powerful enough to dictate and direct people’s actions although they cannot retain new and recent facts.

Actions based on the three-step process become so programmed that they can be done without much actual thought. “The process—in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine," notes Duhigg, "is known as ‘chunking,’” (17). Chunking conserves the efforts of human brains, but chunking can also be detrimental.

Based on the reading, what is one key benefit of chunking for the formation of a productive habit? Or, what is one key detriment of chunking for the development of a productive habit? How so?

7 comments:

Jacquelene G said...

One key benefit of our brain chunking information is that without the formation of habits our brain would overload. In chapter 1, the author discusses how life would be without this process. Without chunking, we would have to relearn how to do everyday tasks such as backing a car out of the driveway. However, it is because of chunking we can do this without thinking, freeing our mind to think of more complex things.
Jac`quelene G.

Phillip Leatherman said...

I’ll speak to a potential detriment of “chunking”. Some people are considered “quick tempered”, quick to their own defense. This, I argue, could be considered a habit, a bad habit. I have seen normally composed and well behaved people lose their minds for seemingly no reason at all.

When asked what happened, they may say they just don’t know. I’ve listen to friends say they need to change their behavior only to repeat the same explosiveness without warning over something that could be seen as trivial.

I suspect it easy to see how this sort of “chunking” could have a negative impact on someone’s social and professional life.

Robyn R said...

I believe "chunking" poses no harm on the day to day lives of indivudals and in many cases makes things a lot easier. When it comes to some of the basic funtions of life like eating and hygeiene, we humans if not mentally of physically impaired just do them. We dont have to think about it we just do it. Repetition of these things everyday has made it so our brain doesn't have to critical think or work hard. These things are natural to us because of "chunking"

Ke'Asha jones said...

The Reading pretty much says that if we did not chunk our information many of the basic everyday life things that we do, we would do differently everyday because everyday it would be like relearning what how to do it. Without chunking life would be stressful and more complex than it already is because we would be having to think about things that we normally dont think about we just do out of natural habit. What if we had to think about how to brush out teeth every morning instead of just doing it, that would add extra stress on our brain.

Monique Williams said...

A positive advantage in terms of chunking is its ability to turn tasks that were once complex, into something that requires very little thought. The example used in the text was backing out the car. I can remember the first time I had to back up and how much effort I had to put into the task. Four years later, I can back out with very very little effort. Without chunking, the smallest tasks like brushing our teeth would be very difficult on a day to day basis. Imagine how much time and energy we would waste if we had to put a ton of effort in simple tasks like brushing ones teeth. Chunking allows more space within our brains; without it our brains would be very overwhelmed.

Yasmyn K. said...

Humans are creatures of habit. With any circumstance in life there are always pros and cons considering situation. A pro of "chunking" is that, as humans, we are reserving more energy to complete difficult tasks than wasting our brain power on thinking how to complete daily chores. If chunking did not exist we would tire rather quickly and become less sufficient.

Yasmyn K. said...

Humans are creatures of habit. With any circumstance in life there are always pros and cons considering situation. A pro of "chunking" is that, as humans, we are reserving more energy to complete difficult tasks than wasting our brain power on thinking how to complete daily chores. If chunking did not exist we would tire rather quickly and become less sufficient.