Want to learn the ideas in Making Habits, Breaking Habits better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Making Habits, Breaking Habits by Jeremy Dean here.

Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.

Video Summaries of Making Habits, Breaking Habits

We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on Making Habits, Breaking Habits, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Jeremy Dean.

1-Page Summary of Making Habits, Breaking Habits

Overview

We all have habits. These are good, bad and neutral. Some of these habits can be beneficial, like reading more or cooking at home. However, others such as smoking or eating junk food aren’t so good for us in the long run.

This book explains what habits are and how to take control of your own habits.

In this passage, you’ll learn about what happens when people try to quit smoking and why your family always sits in a certain order at dinner.

Big Idea #1: Habits are repeated behaviors with little to no conscious intention.

When someone throws a ball at you, it is likely that you catch it without thinking about what’s happening. This is because of habit – an action repeated so frequently that we do it unconsciously.

The first aspect of a habit is that it becomes unconscious. It’s not something you think about or are aware of doing, and it gets easier to do the more often you do it. Since habits can become automatic, they’re also emotionless.

Imagine your morning routine. Do you feel strongly about it? How about looking out at a mountain range from your office window every day? At first, the view is amazing and breathtaking, but after a while, the sight becomes mundane.

Habits are formed in two ways: automaticity and context. Automaticity is when you become accustomed to performing a certain action without thinking about it, so the action becomes ingrained into your behavior. Context has to do with how we associate our surroundings with specific behaviors or actions that we repeat over time. For example, if you were a student who enjoyed drinking beer while socializing with friends, then every time you drink beer now, it reminds of those old times as a student and makes you want to go out and socialize more often than before.

Habits are formed in two ways. First, when you have a specific intention to do something, you will eventually form the habit of doing it regularly. For example, if your goal is to get healthy teeth and you brush them every day after breakfast, then brushing your teeth daily will become a habit. Second, habits can be formed from random or accidental actions that we explain later on by adding an intention behind those actions. If you always sit at the same spot in someone’s kitchen because there was no other place available when you first visited her house but now that spot has become comfortable for you and makes sense as your favorite one, then this action can turn into a habit with an explanation behind it.

You can combine the two reasons behind your habits. You might have started biking to work due to dieting, but you continue doing it because you enjoy being outside.

Big Idea #2: Habits are omnipresent, and when they’re bad, they can be very bad.

What habits do you have? Perhaps dieting and smoking are at the top of your list. But we all have many different habits in our lives, even if we don’t realize it. When we’re awake, a minimum of one-third of our time is spent on autopilot without us being aware of what’s going on. It’s not surprising to find out that most people actually have more habits than they think they do.

Social habits, such as who sits where during family dinners and work routines that help us make decisions about food are just a few examples of how our brains deal with a multitude of everyday choices.

Do you ever find yourself checking your email over and over again, only to discover that nothing interesting has arrived? This is an example of the partial reinforcement extinction effect. You continue doing something without any reward because you’re used to it.