William James Quotes

One study says that 90 percent of our everyday behavior is based on our habits. . . That means how we treat people, how we spend our money, what we watch, what we listen to - 90 percent of the time, we're on autopilot. We do what we've always done.

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.

Habit rules the unreflecting herd.

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.

I have a lot of glass in my house, and I remember saying as a joke once that I clean my stuff with Windex while my friends are over, but then I found myself actually doing that the other day. It's horrible.

Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful, the formation of fixed habits of work.

I'm condemned by some inner compulsion to think about the daily rituals of my life. I have a low grade fever for improving myself in many ways, including everyday tasks.

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

If you type adeptly with 10 fingers, you're typing faster than your mind is working.

I do not understand why people want to control their minds. I want them to liberate their minds.

One of the major reasons why people are not doing well is because they keep trying to get through the day. A more worthy challenge is to try to get from the day.

Knowledge helps only when it descends into habits.

Every habit makes our hand more witty and our wit less handy.

Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.

Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services.

The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit -- unless you find new routines -- the pattern will unfold automatically.

Making an effort is in your hands. Giving 100% is in your hands.

We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

Happily for me, ninety-nine percent of all human life is spent simply repeating the same old actions, speaking the same tired clichés, moving like a zombie through the same steps of the dance we plodded through yesterday and the day before and the day before. It seems horribly dull and pointless-but it really makes a great deal of sense. After all, if you only have to follow the same path every day, you don't need to think at all. Considering how good humans are at any mental process more complicated than chewing, isn't that the best for everybody?

Habits eat good intentions for breakfast.

If I don't have anything to do all day, I might not even put my pants on.

Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first.

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.