Good Habits, Bad Habits

Critics Review

• If you’ve ever struggled to make or break a habit, this is the book you need to read. Wendy Wood is widely recognized as the authority on the science of habits

  Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

• Wendy Wood is the world’s foremost expert in the field, and this book is essential

  Angela Duckworth, author of Grit

• Enlightening and insightful . . . Wood’s research and perspective on the malleability of habits will bring hope to any reader looking to create long-term behavioural change

  Publishers Weekly

• Wendy Wood . . . is the most thoughtful, innovative person who understands the role of habits in human behaviour . . . I can’t imagine a better person writing this book

  Dan Ariely

• There is no one in all of psychology who could write a more compelling book on habits and behaviours

  James W. Pennebaker

• No one has studied how habits form and direct behaviour better than Professor Wendy Wood . . . She has described how to change negative habits into positive versions better than anybody. She’s the researcher best able to write the next big book on the topic

  Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion

• Fascinating and fun, this book will change a lot of lives . . . Wood brings state-of-the-art social science into contact with the most pressing issues in daily life. She’s a tremendous guide

  Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University, and author of How Change Happens

• A fascinating tour of the science of habits, and Wendy Wood is the consummate tour guide. One of the world’s leading habit researchers

  Professor Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Drunk Tank Pink and Irresistible

• A huge achievement. Wendy Wood manages to distil the science of habit formation, most of which emerges from her own lab, in a manner that is fascinating but also, above all, extremely useful for people looking to make positive change in their life

  David Kessler, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Overeating and Capture

• Many authors have written about habits . . . but Wood is also a premier scientist in psychology, working on how habits affect and are affected by the human mind. Top tip: Willpower isn’t enough. But through her original research, Wood explains what does work

  Washington Post

• In Good Habits, Bad Habits . . . the social psychologist Wendy Wood refutes both [William] James’s determinism and glib exhortations to be proactive, and seeks to give the general reader more realistic ideas for how to break habits. Drawing on her work in the field, she sees the task of sustaining positive behaviors and quelling negative ones as involving an interplay of decisions and unconscious factors . . . Even people who score high on self-control questionnaires may owe their apparent virtue to situational factors rather than to sheer fortitude . . . This observation leads to the crux of her book’s thesis: the path to breaking bad habits lies not in resolve but in restructuring our environment in ways that sustain good behaviors.

  The New Yorker