101 Business Ideas That Will Change the Way You Work

IDEA #61

Kick the habit

How individuals and organisations can break out of their bad habits.

What you need to know

Over the past ten years, an increasingly sophisticated body of research has built up around habits. According to studies led by Wendy Wood of the University of Southern California ‘approximately 45 per cent of everyday behaviours tend to be repeated in the same location every day’. These behaviours are, in other words, habits – undertaken largely unthinkingly by us, but they take up a tremendous amount of our lives. Charles DuHigg, a New York Times reporter has investigated the scientific research behind habits in considerable ...