Duhigg Quotes & Sayings

There's something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they're by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief. — Charles Duhigg

But one week later, when the researchers measured typing speeds again, they found that the workers, on average, were completing 103 lines per hour. Another week later: 112 lines. Most of the typists had blown past the goals they had set. — Charles Duhigg

Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage. — Charles Duhigg

If you can become more motivated, more focused, better at setting goals and making good decisions, then you're a long way down the path to becoming more productive. — Charles Duhigg

At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness. — Charles Duhigg

Take, for instance, studies from the past decade examining the impacts of exercise on daily routines.4.10 When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It's not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. "Exercise spills over," said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. "There's something about it that makes other good habits easier. — 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

The evidence is clear: If you want to change a habit, you must find an alternative routine, and your odds of success go up dramatically when you commit to changing as part of a group. Belief — 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

When we start a new task, or confront an unpleasant chore, we should take a moment to ask ourselves "why. — Charles Duhigg

Every habit is made of three parts ... a cue, a routine and a habit. Most people focus on the routine and behavior, but these cues and rewards are really the way you make something into a habit. — Charles Duhigg

This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. — Charles Duhigg

Wouldn't have said this a year ago - that's how fast our understanding is changing," said Tonigan, the University of New Mexico researcher, "but belief seems critical. You don't have to believe in God, but you do need the capacity to believe that things will get better. — Charles Duhigg

Equipment sellers can pocket more than $2,500 every time they send a powered wheelchair to a patient and bill Medicare. — 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

Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk. — Charles Duhigg

If we bring our injury rates down, it won't be because of cheerleading or the nonsense you sometimes hear from other CEOs. — 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 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. — Charles Duhigg

It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patters can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviours. — 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

If you look hard enough, you'll find that many of the products we use every day - chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, antiperspirants, colognes, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins - are results of manufactured habits. — Charles Duhigg

That psychology was grounded in two basic rules: First, find a simple and obvious cue. Second, clearly define the rewards. — 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

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

Later, he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change. And that one of the most important methods for creating that belief was habits. Habits, he noted, are what allow us to "do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all." Once we choose who we want to be, people grow "to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds. — Charles Duhigg

Self-motivation becomes easier when we see our choices as affirmations of our deeper values and goals. — 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 way we habitually think of our surroundings and ourselves create the worlds that each of us inhabit. — Charles Duhigg

Those inventors looked to their own lives as the raw materials for innovation. What's notable is that, in each case, they were often in an emotional state. We're more likely to recognize discoveries hidden in our own experiences when necessity pushes us, when panic or frustrations cause us to throw old ideas into new settings. Psychologists call this "creative desperation." Not all creativity relies on panic, of course. — Charles Duhigg

A five-year-old who can follow the ball for ten minutes becomes a sixth grader who can start his homework on time. — 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

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

Your brain secretly wants that song, because it's so familiar to everything else you've already heard and liked. It just sounds right." There is evidence that a preference for things that sound "familiar" is a product of our neurology. — Charles Duhigg

Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not. ... Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.5.2 — Charles Duhigg

Crises are so valuable, in fact, that sometimes it's worth stirring up a sense of looming catastrophe rather than letting it die down. — 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

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

As the United States has become an older nation, reverse mortgages have grown into a $20-billion-a-year industry, with elderly homeowners taking out more than 132,000 such loans in 2007, an increase of more than 270 percent from two years earlier. — Charles Duhigg

Cash from a reverse mortgage can be paid out in several ways, including a lump sum, a monthly payment, a line of credit, or a combination of those. If you do not need money right away, it is usually a bad idea to take all the money upfront, since it starts accumulating interest charges immediately. — Charles Duhigg

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

Bromates are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, but officials are required to test for them only when water leaves a treatment plant. — Charles Duhigg

Habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. When — Charles Duhigg

Say you want to stop snacking at work. Is the reward you're seeking to satisfy your hunger? Or is it to interrupt boredom? If you snack for a brief release, you can easily find another routine - such as taking a quick walk, or giving yourself three minutes on the Internet - that provides the same interruption without adding to your waistline. — Charles Duhigg

When the vast baby-boom generation exploded into adolescence in the 1960s, marketers exulted. Advertising consultants, always eager to coin a phrase, began happily explaining to corporations the difference between 'teenyboppers' and 'counterculture consumers.' — Charles Duhigg

When most individuals or most companies are talking about trying to create healthy habits, the key is to identify which habit or habits seem most important. — Charles Duhigg

Phelps, even at a young age, had a capacity for obsessiveness that made him an ideal athlete. Then again, all elite performers are obsessives. — Charles Duhigg

Consumer habits are key to understanding how to launch a product. — Charles Duhigg

As research on willpower has become a hot topic in scientific journals and newspaper articles, it has started to trickle into corporate America. Firms such as Starbucks - and the Gap, Walmart, restaurants, or any other business that relies on entry-level workers - all face a common problem: No matter how much their employees want to do a great job, many will fail because they lack self-discipline. They show up late. They snap at rude customers. They get distracted or drawn into workplace dramas. They quit for no reason. — Charles Duhigg

This is the final way that keystone habits encourage widespread change: by creating cultures where new values become ingrained. — Charles Duhigg

Choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. When the Scottish patients filled out their booklets, or Travis studied the LATTE method, they decided ahead of time how to react to a cue - a painful muscle or an angry customer. When the cue arrived, the routine occurred. — Charles Duhigg

But countless studies have shown that a cue and a reward, on their own, aren't enough for a new habit to last. Only when your brain starts expecting the reward
craving the endorphins or sense of accomplishment
will it become automatic to lace up your jogging shoes each morning. The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, must also trigger a craving for the reward to come. — Charles Duhigg

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

Cravings are what drive habits. And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier. — Charles Duhigg

For years, many public health campaigns that aimed at changing habits have been failures. — 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

Or consider "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down, or almost any song by the group Maroon 5. Those bands are so featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category - "bath rock" - to describe their tepid sounds. Yet whenever they came on the radio, almost no one changed the station. — Charles Duhigg

It's easy to forget, given her scandal-tinged life and tragic death, how incredibly talented Whitney Houston was. She holds the world record as the most-awarded female act of all time, with over 415 major recognitions during her career. She is the only artist to chart seven consecutive number one songs. — Charles Duhigg

As homeowners see the value of their homes decline, they become more likely to delay purchases of the big items - like automobiles, electronics and home appliances - that are ballasts of the American economy. When those purchases decline, large manufacturing firms, suddenly short on funds, could begin laying off employees. — Charles Duhigg

The Harvard researchers wrote.24 In 1985, Car and Driver magazine printed an issue with the cover line "Hell Freezes Over," announcing NUMMI's accomplishments. The worst auto factory on earth had become one of the most productive plants in existence, using the same workers as before. Then, — Charles Duhigg

Millions of people with respiratory diseases have relied on oxygen equipment, delivered to their homes, to help them breathe. — Charles Duhigg

Someone once described Ken Lewis to me as the most competitive person in the history of the United States, including the Union Army. — Charles Duhigg

Conditions in Chinese factories are harsh. They're much harsher than they are in, for instance, the United States or any Western nation. — Charles Duhigg

What's more, all that growth occurred while Alcoa became one of the safest companies in the world. — Charles Duhigg

Public employee unions, in their defense, say politicians have unfairly made them into simplistic bogeymen, responsible for problems that have myriad causes. Not all government workers receive generous pensions, they note. — Charles Duhigg

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

tenure at Treasury was not as successful as his career at Alcoa. Almost immediately after taking office he began focusing on a couple of key issues, including worker safety, job creation, executive accountability, and fighting African poverty, among other initiatives. However, O'Neill's politics did not line up with those of President Bush, and he launched an internal fight opposing Bush's proposed tax cuts. He was asked to resign at the end of 2002. "What I thought was the right thing for economic policy was the opposite of what the White House wanted," O'Neill told me. "That's not good for a treasury secretary, so I got fired. — Charles Duhigg

Fraudulent and improper payments have long bedeviled Medicare, a $466 billion program. In particular, payments for durable medical equipment, like power wheelchairs and diabetic test kits, are ripe for fraud. — Charles Duhigg

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

Willpower is a learnable skill, something that can be taught the same way kids learn to do math and say thank you. — 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

One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation's sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. — 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

You have to actually believe in your capacity to change for habits to permanently change. — Charles Duhigg

Productivity, put simply, is the name we give our attempts to figure out the best uses of our energy, intellect, and time as we try to seize the most meaningful rewards with the least wasted effort. It's a process of learning how to succeed with less stress and struggle. It — Charles Duhigg

Once you know a habit exists, you have the responsibility to change it ... others have done so ... That, in some ways, is the point of this book. Perhaps a sleep-walking murderer can plausibly argue that he wasn't aware of his habit, and so he doesn't bear responsibility for his crime, but almost all of the other patterns that exist in most people's lives - how we eat and sleep and talk to our kids, how we unthinkingly spend our time, attention and money - those are habits that we know exist. And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work. — Charles Duhigg

Target isn't alone in its desire to predict consumers' habits. Almost every major retailer, including Amazon, Best Buy, Kroger supermarkets, 1-800-Flowers, Olive Garden, Anheuser-Busch, the U.S. Postal Service, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, Capital One, and hundreds of others, have "predictive analytics" departments devoted to figuring out consumers' preferences. "But Target has always been one of the smartest at this," said Eric Siegel, who runs a conference called Predictive Analytics World. "The data doesn't mean anything on its own. Target's good at figuring out the really clever questions. — 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

The bureaucrats had gotten into a habit of solving every medical problem by building something so that a congressman could say, 'Here's what I did!' It didn't make any sense, but everybody did the same thing again and again. — Charles Duhigg

The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 after tests discovered carcinogens, lead and dangerous bacteria flowing from faucets in New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Boston and elsewhere. — Charles Duhigg

A culture of commitment and trust isn't a magic bullet. It doesn't guarantee that a product will sell or an idea will bear fruit. But it's the best bet for making sure the right conditions are in place when a great idea comes along. That — Charles Duhigg

Today, at twenty-five, Travis is the manager of two Starbucks where he oversees forty employees and is responsible for revenues exceeding $2 million per year. His salary is $44,000 and he has a 401(k) and no debt. He's never late to work. — Charles Duhigg

He got fired because he didn't report the incident, and so no one else had the opportunity to learn from it. Not sharing an opportunity to learn is a cardinal sin." Cultures — Charles Duhigg

Merrill Lynch is this hugely prestigious brand. — Charles Duhigg

Between 1857 and 1929, while regulators largely stood idle, the American economy swung through 19 national boom-and-bust gyrations that sometimes threatened to wipe out whole industries within months. — 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

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

Participants were more motivated to play simply because they believed they were in control.11 III. — Charles Duhigg

America has always had an apocalyptic strain. Yet it also seems to believe that if, or when, The End comes, it will still come out on top. — Charles Duhigg

Back in Beijing, it was 9:56 A.M. - four minutes before the race's start - and Phelps stood behind his starting block, bouncing slightly on his toes. When the announcer said his name, Phelps stepped onto the block, as he always did before a race, and then stepped down, as he always did. He swung his arms three times, as he had before every race since he was twelve years old. He stepped up on the blocks again, got into his stance, and, when the gun sounded, leapt. Phelps knew that something was wrong as soon as he hit the water. There was moisture inside his goggles. He couldn — Charles Duhigg

And I really, genuinely believe that if you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they'll prove you right. — Charles Duhigg

Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields. — Charles Duhigg

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk. Then you'll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night. Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you'll encode those experiences deeper in your brain. If you need to improve your focus and learn to avoid distractions, take a moment to visualize, with as much detail as possible, what you are about to do. It is easier to know what's ahead when there's a well-rounded script inside your head. — Charles Duhigg

By forcing a substantial elevation in collective aspirations, stretch goals can shift attention to possible new futures and perhaps spark increased energy in the organization. They thus can prompt exploratory learning through experimentation, innovation, broad search, or playfulness.38 There — Charles Duhigg