A profoundly insightful and helpful book on the power of habit and how to change your behaviour for a lifetime.

‘The world's leading expert on habits’ – Matthew Syed, bestselling author of Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas

What if you could harness the extraordinary power of your unconscious mind to achieve your goals?

Shockingly, we spend nearly half our day repeating things we've done in the past without thinking about them. How we respond to the people around us; the way we conduct ourselves in meetings; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat and drink – a truly remarkable number of things we do every day, we do by habit.

And yet, whenever we want to change something about ourselves, we rely on willpower alone. We hope that our determination and intention will be enough to effect positive change. And that is why almost all of us fail.

Professor Wendy Wood is the world's foremost expert on habits. Drawing on three decades of original research, she explains the fascinating science of how we form habits and provides the key to unlocking our habitual mind in order to make the changes we seek.

Combining a potent mix of neuroscience, case studies and experiments conducted in her lab, Good Habits, Bad Habits is a comprehensive, accessible and highly practical book that will change the way you think about almost every aspect of your life.

‘Wendy Wood is the world’s foremost expert in the field, and this book is essential’ – Angela Duckworth, bestselling 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

"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 . . . seeks to give the general reader more realistic ideas for how to break habits. Drawing on her work in the field, she sees [that] . . . the path to breaking bad habits lies not in resolve but in restructuring our environment in ways that sustain good behaviors" - The New Yorker