Making Change Happen: The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

This post is adapted from something I wrote about CPD for the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

Whether it’s a new year’s resolution or a Lenten fast, many of us try at various points in the year to make changes, but it’s easy for these to peter out over time. How can we stop our good intentions ending up as wishful thinking? Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit” includes some intriguing evidence about how we can move from good intentions to actions with three simple steps:

The Limits To Travel – David Metz

Alongside Barry Hutton’s excellent “Planning Sustainable Transport” (also by Routledge), this is in the small but important list of “books which changed how I think about transport” and worth reading several times over. The author, David Metz, has spent his career at the Department for Transport and in various academic research positions, so he is able to explain authoritatively what good transport policy looks like. 

From Good Housekeeping to Good Asset Management: what would Mrs Beeton think?

This week I’ve been rereading a favourite book of mine, Laura Vanderkam’s “168 Hours”, preparing for a family visit and wondering what would happen if we had Mrs Beeton, Laura Vanderkam and an engineer in the same room… Because the truth is, people don’t apply the same standards to their home lives as they do at work, and some regard the state of your home as a matter of moral failure (making the rest of us feel guilty).

So what would your house look like if you applied the principles of asset management rather than Good Housekeeping?

In Grief and Hope: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

The surgeon Dr Atul Gawande is one of our best medical writers alive today, and he is always looking for ways to share his experience in ways which inform both healthcare and other industries. For example, The Checklist Manifesto and Better both look for ways to instil a culture of high performance, sharing lessons from healthcare, aviation and civil engineering, while Complications explores how and why doctors make errors.