Charles Duhigg Quotes

Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits.

If you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they'll prove you right

If you believe you can change - if you make it a habit - the change becomes real.

Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.

The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.

Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the orther team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.

This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.

The brain has this amazing ability to find happiness even when the memories of it are gone.

Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.

The problem is that your brain can't tell the difference between bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one, it's always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and rewards.

Hiding what you know is sometimes as important as knowing it.

Cravings are what drive habits. And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier.

Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget.

The more you focus, the more that focus becomes a habit.

Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.

Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage.

For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible.

What studies say the number one best way to start an exercise habit is to give yourself a reward that you genuinely enjoy.

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.

Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.

When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along.

Habits are malleable throughout your entire life.

If you dress a new something in old habits, it’s easier for the public to accept it.

The best agencies understood the importance of routines. The worst agencies were headed by people who never thought about it, and then wondered why no one followed their orders.

At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness.

I think I'm smart, and I know I was a good mom. But there wasn't a lot I could point to and say, that's why I'm special.

If you want to do something that requires willpower - like going for a run after work - you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day.

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.

Research suggests that investment bankers are more prone to commit fraud when they feel the competitor at their heels.

There's a natural instinct embedded in friendship, a sympathy that makes us willing to fight for someone we like when they are treated unjustly.

The cooperation of NASCAR - or any other system, it turns out - persists only when everyone believes he has the opportunity to win.

Some say because music is as much about personal expression as listening pleasure, sharing is integral to why songs have value in the first place.

Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk.

The waste from power plants is essentially what is left over when you burn coal. And as we all know, coal is a relatively dirty mineral.

There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.

America is the Saudi Arabia of coal.

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.

Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.

Many environmental advocates argue that agricultural pollution will be reduced only through stronger federal laws.

You're much better off creating positive rewards, complimenting people for acting correctly, rather than punishing them when they act incorrectly.

Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields.

A huge amount of success in life comes from learning as a child how to make good habits. It's good to help kids understand that when they do certain things habitually, they're reinforcing patterns.

Unlike other sports, which are largely determined by individual athletic ability or team strength, NASCAR requires its competitors to cooperate in order to win.

A five-year-old who can follow the ball for ten minutes becomes a sixth grader who can start his homework on time.

Reform is usually possible only once a sense of crisis takes hold.... In fact, crises are such valuable opportunities that a wise leader often prolongs a sense of emergency on purpose.

When we start a new task, or confront an unpleasant chore, we should take a moment to ask ourselves "why.

Grit, which they defined as the tendency to work strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.