Charles Duhigg Quotes & Sayings

I am going to pick on 'Huffington Post.' A lot of its content is great. They are doing a lot of original content now, but historically, a lot of what they did was aggregation. Newspapers don't want to become that, and yet 'Huffington Post' is incredibly popular. It's incredibly successful. — Charles Duhigg

In general, insurers say criticisms of claims-handling are unfair because most policyholders are paid promptly, and some denials are necessary to root out fraud. — Charles Duhigg

The physical effects of alcohol are often one of the least rewarding parts of drinking for addicts. — Charles Duhigg

Small wins are exactly what they sound like, and are part of how keystone habits create widespread changes. A huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves. "Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage," one Cornell professor wrote in 1984. "Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win."4.14 Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach. — Charles Duhigg

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. — Charles Duhigg

The secret, the alcoholics said, was God. — Charles Duhigg

Andreasen wanted to know why these people had deviated from their usual patterns. What he discovered has become a pillar of modern marketing theory: People's buying habits are more likely to change when they go through a major life event. When someone gets married, for example, they're more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When they move into a new house, they're more apt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they get divorced, there's a higher chance they'll start buying different brands of beer.7.7 Consumers going through major life events often don't notice, or care, that their shopping patterns have shifted. However, retailers notice, and they care quite a bit. — Charles Duhigg

Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier. — Charles Duhigg

The company will guess what you habitually buy, and then try to convince you to get it at Target. The firm has the capacity to personalize the ads and coupons it sends to every customer, even though you'll probably never realize you've received a different flyer in the mail than your neighbors. — Charles Duhigg

The researchers eventually concluded that the good teams had succeeded not because of innate qualities of team members, but because of how they treated one another. Put differently, the most successful teams had norms that caused everyone to mesh particularly well. — Charles Duhigg

Fannie Mae has traditionally only bought and sold mortgages. But when a loan held by the company goes into foreclosure, Fannie Mae gains ownership of the underlying property until it is resold to new investors. — Charles Duhigg

Whether selling a new song, a new food, or a new crib, the lesson is the same: If you dress a new something in old habits, it's easier for the public to accept it. — Charles Duhigg

By the same rule, though, if we learn to create new neurological routines that overpower those behaviors - if we take control of the habit loop - we can force those bad tendencies into the background, — Charles Duhigg

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

Some of the tactics that are used by Foxconn and other companies throughout China is, if you are late, if you violate one of the small rules, some of the punishment is that you have to copy down quotations from the chairman of Foxconn: you have to write out confessions explaining why you were late and promising never to do it again. — Charles Duhigg

By focusing on one pattern - what is known as a "keystone habit" - Lisa had taught herself how to reprogram the other routines in her life, as well. It's not — Charles Duhigg

Timothy Pychyl, a psychologist at Carleton University, told me. "But when people say things like 'I sometimes write down easy items I can cross off right away, because it makes me feel good,' that's exactly the wrong way to create a to-do list. That signals you're using it for mood repair, rather than to become productive." The — Charles Duhigg

The basal ganglia, in other words, stored habits even while the rest of the brain went to sleep. — Charles Duhigg

As America becomes an older nation, it is also, by some measures, becoming sicker. — Charles Duhigg

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from banks and other lenders, providing those financial institutions with capital to make new loans. — Charles Duhigg

Travis's siblings had seen an overdose before and knew the drill. His brother rolled him onto his side. His sister opened his mouth to make sure he wouldn't choke on his tongue, and told Travis to run next door, ask to use the neighbor's phone, and dial 911. — Charles Duhigg

It's more like his habits have taken over. When the race arrives, he's more than halfway through his plan and he's been victorious at every step. All the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected. The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension. — Charles Duhigg

People who start habitually exercising tend on average to eat better. They also tend to use their credit cards less and procrastinate less. — Charles Duhigg

Even when alcoholics' brains were changed through surgery, it wasn't enough. The old cues and cravings for rewards were still there, waiting to pounce. The alcoholics only permanently changed once they learned new routines that drew on the old triggers and provided a familiar relief. — Charles Duhigg

As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives - in the gym, or a money management program - that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything. — Charles Duhigg

The Great Bailout is mostly over for the banks. But for those troubled behemoths of the nation's housing bust, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lifeline from Washington just keeps getting longer. — Charles Duhigg

In California, up to 15 percent of wells in agricultural areas exceed a federal contaminant threshold, according to studies. — Charles Duhigg

One survey conducted in 2010 estimated that the average parent spends $6,800 on baby items before a child's first birthday.7.9 — Charles Duhigg

After World War I, while France and other Allies were building military defenses modeled on trench warfare, German commanders were shaping a nimble fighting force. — Charles Duhigg

Someday soon, say predictive analytics experts, it will be possible for companies to know our tastes and predict our habits better than we know ourselves. — Charles Duhigg

Changing any habit requires determination. — Charles Duhigg

If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can cause widespread shifts. However, identifying keystone habits is tricky. To find them, you have to know where to look. Detecting keystone habits means searching out certain characteristics. Keystone habits offer what is known within academic literature as "small wins." They help other habits to flourish by creating new structures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious. But as O'Neill and countless others have found, crossing the gap between understanding those principles and using them requires a bit of ingenuity. — Charles Duhigg

We like songs that are familiar. — Charles Duhigg

Studies show that people have no problem ignoring strangers' injuries, but when a friend is insulted, our sense of outrage is enough to overcome the inertia that usually makes protests hard to organize. — Charles Duhigg

There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges. For companies like Target, the exhaustive rendering of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell. — Charles Duhigg

When people are asked to do something that takes self-control, if they think they are doing it for personal reasons - if they feel like it's a choice or something they enjoy because it helps someone else - it's much less taxing. If they feel like they have no autonomy, if they're just following orders, their willpower muscles get tired much faster. In both cases, people ignored the cookies. But when the students were treated like cogs, rather than people, it took a lot more willpower. — Charles Duhigg

Change occurs among other people, — Charles Duhigg

And the best way to strengthen willpower and give students a leg up, studies indicate, is to make it into a habit. — Charles Duhigg

Martyrs - those killed because of their Catholic faith - can be beatified even if they don't perform a miracle. However, all beatified individuals must stage a certifiable miracle before being made a saint. — Charles Duhigg

Without habit loops, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed by the minutiae of daily life. People whose basal ganglia are damaged by injury or disease often become mentally paralyzed. They have trouble performing basic activities, such as opening a door or deciding what to eat. — Charles Duhigg

Hiding what you know is sometimes as important as knowing it ... — Charles Duhigg

Rather, productivity is about making certain choices in certain ways. The way we choose to see ourselves and frame daily decisions; the stories we tell ourselves, and the easy goals we ignore; the sense of community we build among teammates; the creative cultures we establish as leaders: These are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive. — Charles Duhigg

Candy bar companies, through commercials, have tied their products to low-energy cues, transforming what was once a dessert into a pick-me-up for cubicle dwellers. — Charles Duhigg

Back when Detroit was the head of auto manufacturing, it was clear where profits were created. Right? A car was made in Detroit. There was little argument that you could make that some of the money from that should be sent overseas to Ireland. — Charles Duhigg

Fulgham told the bureau's director that if they gave him the authority to distribute control, he would cut the number of people needed from more than four hundred to just thirty employees and deliver Sentinel for $20 million in a bit over a year. — Charles Duhigg

Good leaders seize crises to remake organizational habits. — Charles Duhigg

Like solo sailors venturing into the Southern Ocean, climbers are seduced by risk. The desire to push to a summit or scale a rock face is so strong that they consciously or subconsciously minimize safety precautions drilled into their brains. — Charles Duhigg

Nelson and Winter had spent more than a decade examining how companies work, trudging through swamps of data before arriving at their central conclusion: "Much of firm behavior," they wrote, is best "understood as a reflection of general habits and strategic orientations coming from the firm's past," rather than "the result of a detailed survey of the remote twigs of the decision tree."6.15 — Charles Duhigg

Union leaders argue that pension shortfalls account for a proportionally tiny portion of governments' financial problems, and by all accounts, there are plenty of parties to blame for the growth in payrolls and obligations. — Charles Duhigg

So at most companies, an unspoken compact emerges: It's okay to be ambitious, but if you play too rough, your peers will unite against you. On the other hand, if you focus on boosting your own department, rather than undermining your rival, you'll probably get taken care of over time. — Charles Duhigg

Fulgham's team started by coming up with more than one thousand scenarios in which Sentinel could be useful, everything from inputting victims' statements to tracking evidence to interfacing with FBI databases that looked for patterns among clues. Then they started working backward to figure out what kind of software should accommodate each need. Every morning, the team conducted a "stand-up" - meetings where everyone stood to encourage brevity - and recounted the previous day's work and what they hoped to accomplish over the next twenty-four hours. — Charles Duhigg

Older Americans are perfect telemarketing customers, analysts say, because they are often at home, rely on delivery services, and are lonely for the companionship that telephone callers provide. — Charles Duhigg

Welch had given his aircraft manufacturing division a stretch goal of reducing errors by 70 percent, an objective so audacious the only way to go about it was to change nearly everything about (a) how workers were trained, (b) which workers were hired, and (c) how the factory ran. — Charles Duhigg

Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. — Charles Duhigg

Not so long ago, companies that borrowed lots of money were considered risky, appropriate only for daredevil stock pickers. Those with lots of cash on hand and few outstanding debts might be dull stocks, but they were at least safe bets for bondholders. — Charles Duhigg

This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future: THE HABIT LOOP — Charles Duhigg

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

In particular, objectives like SMART goals often unlock a potential that people don't even realize they possess. The reason, in part, is because goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans. The process of making a goal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires - or shifting that goal slightly, if your initial aims turn out to be unrealistic. Coming up with a timeline and a way to measure success forces a discipline onto the process that good intentions can't match. — Charles Duhigg

First, find a simple and obvious cue. Second, clearly define the rewards. If you — Charles Duhigg

Entrepreneurs do not try and create new types of smartphone technologies now because they know it's pointless: They're going to get sued almost immediately. — Charles Duhigg

Your brain will eventually enjoy exercise for exercise sake, right; endorphins and endocannabinoids will create a sense of reward, but it doesn't know that at first. — Charles Duhigg

The desire to collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. — Charles Duhigg

Simply giving employees a sense of agency- a feeling that they are in control, that they have genuine decision-making authority - can radically increase how much energy and focus they bring to their jobs. — Charles Duhigg

Foaming is a huge reward," said Sinclair, the brand manager. "Shampoo doesn't have to foam, but we add foaming chemicals because people expect it each time they wash their hair. Same thing with laundry detergent. And toothpaste - now every company adds sodium laureth sulfate to make toothpaste foam more. There's no cleaning benefit, but people feel better when there's a bunch of suds around their mouth. Once the customer starts expecting that foam, the habit starts growing. — Charles Duhigg

This process - in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine - is known as "chunking," and it's at the root of how habits form.1.18 There are dozens - if not hundreds - of behavioral chunks that we rely on every day. — Charles Duhigg

I think there's a lot of people who right now are worried that people are going down frivolous paths, like inventing new social networks or new games, instead of inventing the cures for cancer or fundamental technologies that will change the world. — Charles Duhigg

In a sense, habits never really disappear. Once formed, they always remain in our neurology. — Charles Duhigg

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

Companies are very, very good - better than consumers themselves - at knowing what consumers are actually craving. — Charles Duhigg

Someone will write a resolution that says, 'I want to exercise more,' or 'I want to lose 15 pounds' - which is great, that's a great goal to have - but every study tells us that if you pose things in abstract, goal-related terms, it's much less likely that you will accomplish it than if you structure it as an actual activity. — Charles Duhigg

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. — Charles Duhigg

Bureaucrats and politicians, rather than making decisions, were responding to cues with automatic routines in order to get rewards such as promotions or reelection. — Charles Duhigg

But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don't intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week - as the cues and rewards create a habit - until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. — Charles Duhigg

Prosecutors say it would be next to impossible to get one teen to testify in court that another had slipped him or her a copied disc at lunchtime. And besides, isn't sharing music a time-honored part of teen friendship? — Charles Duhigg

But to overpower the habit, we must recognize which craving is driving the behavior. If we're not conscious of the anticipation, then we're like the shoppers who wander, as if drawn by an unseen force, into Cinnabon. — Charles Duhigg

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community. — Charles Duhigg

And what's the biggest life event for most people? What causes the greatest disruption and "vulnerability to marketing interventions"? Having a baby. There's almost no greater upheaval for most customers than the arrival of a child. As a result, new parents' habits are more flexible at that moment than at almost any other period in an adult's life. So — Charles Duhigg

Companies aren't families. They're battlefields in a civil war. — Charles Duhigg

Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city's drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city's waterways pose serious health risks. — Charles Duhigg

While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, flash orders are currently allowed because of a loophole in securities regulations that allows for immediate trades. — Charles Duhigg

Firms are guided by long-held organizational habits, patterns that often emerge from thousands of employees' independent decisions.6.16 — Charles Duhigg

Our brain is essentially programmed to enjoy carbohydrates because they give us a sense of fullness and a rush of pleasure. When people go on low-carb diets, they start to almost subconsciously experience distress from eating carbohydrates. — Charles Duhigg

Lawmakers in both political parties have often acceded to unions' requests to avoid political confrontations or to curry favor. They have pushed difficult choices into the future. — Charles Duhigg

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

One of them told me the craving disappeared as soon as we turned the electricity on," Mueller said. "Then, we turned it off, and the craving came back immediately." Eradicating the alcoholics' neurological cravings, however, wasn't enough to stop their drinking habits. Four of them relapsed soon after the surgery, usually after a stressful event. They picked up a bottle because that's how they automatically dealt with anxiety. However, once they learned alternate routines for dealing with stress, the drinking stopped for good. One patient, for instance, attended AA meetings. Others went to therapy. And once they incorporated those new routines for coping with stress and anxiety into their lives, the successes were dramatic. The man who had gone to detox sixty times never had another drink. Two other patients had started drinking at twelve, were alcoholics by eighteen, drank every day, and now have been sober for four years. — Charles Duhigg

Stock exchanges say that more than half of all trades are now executed by just a handful of high-frequency traders, who use rapid-fire computers to essentially force slower investors to give up profits, then disappear before anyone knows what happened. — Charles Duhigg

People want to visit places that satisfy their social needs. — Charles Duhigg

In 1940, Germany toppled France in 20 days, and the panzerdivizion symbolized war's shift from drawn-out conflicts using massive fortifications to rapid-fire engagements built around manned, motorized armor. — Charles Duhigg

When the mortgage giant Fannie Mae recruited Daniel H. Mudd, he told a friend he wanted to work for an altruistic business. Already a decorated marine and a successful executive, he wanted to be a role model to his four children - just as his father, the television journalist Roger Mudd, had been to him. — Charles Duhigg

People who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities - sometimes of just one other person - who make change believable. One — Charles Duhigg

Charles Wyly was born Oct 13, 1933, in Lake Providence, La., and for a period lived with his family in a shack without electricity or plumbing. — Charles Duhigg

It almost goes without saying that when you are a startup, one of the first things you do is you start setting aside money to defend yourself from patent lawsuits, because any successful company, even moderately successful, is going to get hit by a patent lawsuit from someone who's just trying to look for a payout. — Charles Duhigg

There are supply chains that exist in China and Asia now which the U.S. simply can't replicate. — Charles Duhigg

If someone has trouble with self-discipline at work, they're probably also going to have trouble attending a program designed to strengthen their self-discipline after work," Muraven said. But — Charles Duhigg

Everything was a reaction - and eventually a habit - rather than a choice. — Charles Duhigg

Because of reasons they were just beginning to understand, that one small shift in Lisa's perception that day in Cairo -the conviction that she had to give up smoking to accomplish her goal- had touched off a series of changes that would ultimately radiate out to every part of her life.
When researchers began examining images of Lisa's brain, they saw something remarkable: One set of neurological patterns -her old habits- have been overridden by new patterns. They could still see the neural activity of her old behaviors, but those impulses were crowded out by new urges. As Lisa's habits changed, so had her brain. — Charles Duhigg

Calling out people for not voting, what experts term 'public shaming,' can prod someone to cast a ballot. — Charles Duhigg

Destructive organizational habits can be found within hundreds of industries and at thousands of firms. And almost always, they are the products of thoughtlessness, of leaders who avoid thinking about the culture and so let it develop without guidance. There are no organizations without institutional habits. There are only places where they are deliberately designed, and places where they are created without forethought, so they often grow from rivalries or fear. — Charles Duhigg

Credit default swap is basically just an agreement that I have with you, where I sell you insurance on some bond you own. If the bond goes belly up, I promise to pay you. And as long as the bond doesn't go belly up, you pay me for selling you insurance. — Charles Duhigg

Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water or policed at limits that still pose serious risks. — Charles Duhigg