Charles Duhigg Quotes

Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces.

You have to remember everything you've created. But then comes a moment when it's all automatic pilot, where it all comes together and you don't have to think about it any more.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

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.

The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don't get appreciably faster. That's because it's become automatic. You've moved it to the back of your mind's filing cabinet.

Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.

Guitar is just something I can do. So much of it now is muscle memory, just instinct.

When you're throwing the football the way you want to, you're not thinking about it. You're not thinking about your drop or your release point or the trajectory or where your feet are. It's just coming off your hand exactly the way you want it to, fluid and confident.

I'm so comfortable on my snowboard that I don't have to think about it very much; it's somewhat second nature.

The really top guys play within themselves 99 percent of the time.

I think the thing that I think about the most when I consider my father's philosophies is attaining that third stage of performance where you no longer have to think about what you're doing; you've worked long and hard enough to be able to have your body respond when you want it without your mind getting in the way.

It's very hard when you start working as a wrestler to try and stop doing things that are second nature. For me, when I take a move and start selling, that is second nature for me.

In any sport, you're at your best when you're playing without thinking too much.

Ideally, writing ought to be like riding a bicycle: something you know how to do without having to think consciously about exactly what it is that you are doing.

It's our job to make sure the players are ready to play at a high level. Part of that is making sure that the emotion is in check.

We do not think of life - we live it. We do not think of ourselves too much. We do not think of others too much... We just behave in a natural way.

You'll begin to act when you can forget your technique - when it is so securely inside you that you need not call upon it consciously.

People who excel at book learning tend to call up from memory what they have learned in order to follow stored instructions. Others who are better at internalized learning use the thoughts that flow from their subconscious. The experienced skier doesn't recite instructions on how to ski and then execute them; rather, he does it well "without thinking," in the same way he breathes without thinking. Understanding these differences is essential.

I think an actor is very like a sportsman. You have periods where you're in terrific form. Everything you touch seems to work, and come right. And other times, when you're working really hard, it's okay, but it isn't scintillating.

A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, but rather he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn't think but acts, and he feels how things must go more than he can explain it.

Practice your swing until it becomes a habit of mind and muscle.

Freed from the thoughts of winning, I instantly play better. I stop thinking, start feeling. My shots become a half-second quicker, my decisions become the product of instinct rather than logic.

I think I would have had an easier time of it if I had had training much earlier. Because when I got to the training, it was in my late 30s and I already probably had every bad habit a singer could have. In fact, it still goes on. It's un-training those habits and retraining new ones - the breathing, the relaxation, the tongue, the lungs, the everything.

If you ever want to be a decent player, you have to be able to use both feet without stopping to think about it.