Making Habits, Breaking Habits: How To Make Changes That Stick

Making Habits, Breaking Habits by Jeremy Dean is a popular science book based on psychological and cognitive-behavioral research on the formation and change of habits. The book explains how habits develop through repetition, environmental triggers, and a reward system that reinforces automatic behaviors, often beyond the individual’s conscious control.

The author shows how the brain uses “mental shortcuts” to reduce cognitive load, which makes habits resistant to change. Special attention is paid to the role of context, emotional states, and social influences in maintaining unwanted behavioral patterns, such as procrastination, poor diet, or smoking.

In the second part of the book, Dean offers practical, science-based strategies for changing habits: manipulating triggers, gradually replacing behaviors, creating new routines, and using “if-then” planning (implementation intentions). It emphasizes that changing habits is not a matter of willpower, but of structuring the environment and repeating new patterns.

The book connects psychology, neuroscience and behavioral economics, making complex processes understandable to a wider audience and applicable in everyday life.