In the book, Duhigg explores the impact our everyday habits have on our health, jobs, social lives and even our own finances. Once we begin eliminating a routine that triggers waste – whether it's indulging in junk food or chain smoking on lunch breaks – other areas of our life begin to shift for the better as well.

Here's how he explained it to Credit.com's Gerry Detweiler:

 "What’s totally fascinating to me about this is that when you start exercising in the morning you stop using your credit card quite as frequently. And the question would be ‘Why?’ And the reason why is because what we’ve learned from laboratory experiments is some habits are known as keystone habits. They have this kind of disproportionate influence where once you start changing that pattern, it makes all the other behaviors in someone’s life more open to change."

Duhigg's idea for the book came from his own bad habit: heading up to the Times' cafeteria for a gut-inflating chocolate chip cookie every afternoon.