Author
Charles Duhigg
The Pulitzer-winning reporter who explained the habit loop to the general reader.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Charles Duhigg was an investigative reporter at The New York Times, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2013. The Power of Habit, published in 2012, brought a journalist's method to the science of habits: instead of a framework, he told the stories of the people and organizations in the research, from a patient with amnesia to Alcoa and Target.
The book made the cue, routine, reward loop common vocabulary and stayed on bestseller lists for years. He followed it with Smarter Faster Better on productivity and Supercommunicators on conversation, keeping the same approach of reporting on a science through the people who live it.
The signature
Duhigg thinks in narratives and scale. Where others describe habits as personal, he shows the same loop running in companies, movements and societies, and he is most interested in the keystone habits whose change drags others along. His writing persuades by evidence told as story rather than by instruction.