From Joe: It’s counterintuitive. Attack a bad habit such overeating when you are on vacation? That’s when most of us put on the pounds! Yet this is exactly the kind of advice that New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg provided when he was recently interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
In his new book, “The Power of Habit,” Duhigg reviews up-to-the-minute information from the cognitive sciences about how habits are formed and broken. A key element in this process is the brain’s predisposition to conserve energy by automating behaviors which you perform with regularity. By turning these behaviors into automaticities, the brain conserves your decision-making resources for when they are needed to face novel challenges in life.