Charles Duhigg Quotes

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.

In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.

I look at it somewhat as a way - when you learn juggling, what you learn is how to feel with your eyes and see with your hands because you're not looking at your hands, you're looking at where the balls are, or you're looking at the audience.

I really love to drive. It's really hard for me to be a passenger, even though I get to look around a little bit more, but I've gotten really good at driving and looking.

I always seem to be reading several books at once.

Learning operatic roles is ongoing, and I find that I can learn on the train or subway, during a manicure, getting my hair done, and even while driving if I only look at the score at red lights.

Habits are safer than rules; you don't have to watch them. And you don't have to keep them either. They keep you.

When I'm in my car, I'm listening to books, audio books, always.

I'm a driver, and I love it.

When I'm in the car, if you didn't know my story and just saw me driving, you wouldn't know the difference between me and any of the other drivers. I'm just out there competing.

When I do something, I do it for the specified amount of time, and then I do something else.

The beautiful thing about driving was that it stole just enough of his attention - car parked on the side, maybe a cop, slow to speed limit, time to pass this sixteen-wheeler, turn signal, check rearview, crane neck to check blind spot and yes, okay, left lane.

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.

Like many, I am often in back-to-back meetings most of the day.

It is not easy to play two games, travel, and keep the same performance in 48 hours.

I often find out, once people have trained, you can never really re-train. When you get trained, you learn to lock up; you learn a wrist lock and, okay, onto the next thing, onto the next thing. You never really go back to the fundamentals.

I always carry a book with me to read on the bus, and I tend to arrive everywhere early.

He had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his method of “Zen” navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.

It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.

Knowledge helps only when it descends into habits.

Ten thousand years of civilization shed in an instant when you put a woman behind the wheel of a car.

Healthy habits are learned in the same way as unhealthy ones - through practice.

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.

I read everywhere. It's like a bodily function. I don't need quiet. I write and read with the TV on. I follow the TV show while I read. TV doesn't require a lot of brainpower.

A man used to riding in a car cannot understand a pedestrian.