Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Usefulness in my own life:

Key Points:

The whole book can be summarised by the following quote -
"If you want people to change, you can provide clear direction (appeal to their reason) or boost their motivation and determination (appeal to their emotions). Alternatively, you can simply make the journey easier."

1. To change someone's behaviour you first need to change the situation. For example, if the person is a glutton and he just consumes a huge amount of food there is a chance that we can fix his problem by making him use smaller dishes and then automatically he will consume less. Don't try to attribute people's behaviour to the way they are because this is not productive.

2. Self-control (willpower) is exhaustible it is basically a mental muscle and this means that you can't rely solely on the willpower in breaking bad habits. 

3. Regardless of how problematic the situation in certain places might seem there are always bright spots" which means  that there are instances of success. For example, the author tells us how despite of the malnutrition problems in Vietnam certain families managed to keep their children full and healthy.  By copying this behaviour other families managed to do the same thing.

4. Learn to set black and white goals because they increase the chance of you following through.  For example, setting the goal such as "No wine ever" is more effective than setting a goal such as "Only one glass of wine a day"

5. People are more likely to pursue a goal once they realise that they are half way there. For instance, when the maids at the hotel were told that they are actually the beasts because during their working hours they burn a lot of calories the maids started working even harder and as a result all of them who were told that they are the beasts lost weight within couple of months after they were told that.

What I liked in the book.

1.  There are many references to the real life experiments which gives credibility to everything that the author says.

      

2. Metaphors used in the book add a certain amount of humour and help you to stay tuned. For instance the emotional part of our brain is compared to the wild elephant that is extremely hard to control.

 3. I really liked so called "clinics" when we are given a chance to step out of the textbook and think how we can apply our knowledge in real life.

What I didn't like

1. The book was too long and it felt that some ideas are repeated again and again so if it wasn't for the blog I could potentially stop reading it.

2. It felt at times that the authors are jumping from one topic to another. For example, they jumped from the idea that often what we think are problems caused by people are actually caused by the situation, to the new notion that self-control is exhaustible

If it is your first psychology related book I suggest not to read it since you are quite likely to give up.