Charles Duhigg Quotes

Nothing is stronger than habit.

The power of habit is very strong.

The discovery of the habit loop is important because it reveals a basic truth: When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks.

I'm doing a lot of speaking and talking about habits, which is this subject that obsesses me. That's a lot of fun.

It's an accompaniment to life. It's not something that I do to rap; I smoke when I open my eyes...I don't know any other feeling.

Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.

Visualizing, creative mental picturing, is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or worry about the future. Acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than deciding, then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning, instead of continuing to tie them in your old habitual way, without thought or decision.

Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.

What we know from lab studies is that it's never too late to break a habit. Habits are malleable throughout your entire life. But we also know that the best way to change a habit is to understand its structure - that once you tell people about the cue and the reward and you force them to recognize what those factors are in a behavior, it becomes much, much easier to change.

Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit.

How use doth breed a habit in a man.

It's so easy to be undisciplined. And to be disciplined is so against my character, my general nature anyway, that I have to strain a little bit to keep on the right track.

It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of both, but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water, I don't make love till almost obliged.

Habits are formed, not at one stroke, but gradually and insensibly; so that, unless vigilant care be employed, a great change may come over the character without our being conscious of any.

Once you learn to do something consciously, you can move it into the subconscious and do it well. Everything you do well will be done subconsciously.

Nobody understands that by the time the addiction has set in the alcoholic is mandated to drink ... he cannot not drink! Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, 'Jiminy Cricket, I feel sensational! My life is really in great shape! I think I'll become an alcoholic!' I firmly believe that when a shaking-to-pieces alcoholic says he needs a drink or he will die, he means it.

A dream becomes a reality as a result of your actions, and your actions are controlled, to a large extent, by your habits.

O, Begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises... Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days... Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer.

In reality, it's much easier not to smoke or eat chocolate than to do so. It's your mind that convinces you otherwise.

Lust indulged became habit, and habit unresisted became necessity.

How do most people live without any thought? There are many people in the world,--you must have noticed them in the street,--how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?

If men are given food, but no chastisement nor any work, they become insolent.

Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.

If you're going to be a writer you should sit down and write in the morning, and keep it up all day, every day. Charles Bukowski, no matter how drunk he got the night before or no matter how hungover he was, the next morning he was at his typewriter. Every morning. Holidays, too. He'd have a bottle of whiskey with him to wake up with, and that's what he believed. That's the way you became a writer: by writing. When you weren't writing, you weren't a writer.