Duhigg Habit Quotes & Sayings

Moreover, the reward, as Hopkins envisioned it, was even more enticing. Who, after all, doesn't want to be more beautiful? Who doesn't want a prettier smile? Particularly when all it takes is a quick brush with Pepsodent? HOPKINS'S CONCEPTION OF THE PEPSODENT HABIT LOOP After the campaign launched, a quiet week passed. Then two. In the third week, demand exploded. There were so many orders for Pepsodent that the company couldn't keep up. In three years, the product went international, and Hopkins was crafting ads in Spanish, German, and Chinese. Within a decade, Pepsodent was one of the top-selling goods in the world, and remained America's best-selling toothpaste for more than thirty years.2.10,2.11 — 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

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

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

Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior. — 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

Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine. — 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

How do habits change? There is, unfortunately, no specific set of steps guaranteed to work for every person. We know that a habit cannot be eradicated - it must, instead, be replaced. And we know that habits are most malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applied: If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted. But that's not enough. For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible. And most often, that belief only emerges with the help of a group. — 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

What studies say the number one best way to start an exercise habit is to give yourself a reward that you genuinely enjoy. — Charles Duhigg

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: — Charles Duhigg

It wasn't the trip to Cairo that had caused the shift, scientists were convinced, or the divorce or desert trek. It was that Lisa had focused on changing just one habit - smoking - at first. Everyone in the study had gone through a similar process. 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. — 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

What we know from lab studies is that it's never too late to break a habit. Habits are malleable throughout your entire life. But we also know that the best way to change a habit is to understand its structure. That once you tell people about the cue and the reward and you force them to recognize what those factors are in a behavior, it becomes much, much easier to change. — 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

By developing a habit of telling ourselves stories about what's going on around us, we learn to sharpen where our attention goes. These — Charles Duhigg

And once you know a habit exists, you have the responsibility to change it. — Charles Duhigg

Changing any habit requires determination. — Charles Duhigg

You can't suddenly say, 'I want a brand new habit tomorrow,' and expect it to be easy and effortless. — Charles Duhigg

Even though it's hard to learn how to back your car out the driveway at first, once it becomes a habit, you can do it almost automatically and think about something else, like the meeting that you need to go to today or what's on the radio. — Charles Duhigg

But to change an old habit, you must address an old craving. You have to keep the same cues and rewards as before, and feed the craving by inserting a new routine. — Charles Duhigg

At the core of that education is an intense focus on an all-important habit: willpower. Dozens of studies show that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success. — 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

The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it. — Charles Duhigg

A habit cannot be eradicated - it must, instead, be replaced. — Charles Duhigg

In focusing on tooth film, Hopkins was ignoring the fact that this same film has always covered people's teeth and hadn't seemed to bother anyone. The film is a naturally occurring membrane that builds up on teeth regardless of what you eat or how often you brush.2.7 People had never paid much attention to it, and there was little reason why they should: You can get rid of the film by eating an apple, running your finger over your teeth, brushing, or vigorously swirling liquid around your mouth. Toothpaste didn't do anything to help remove the film. In fact, one of the leading dental researchers of the time said that all toothpastes - particularly Pepsodent - were worthless.2.8 That didn't stop Hopkins from exploiting his discovery. Here, he decided, was a cue that could trigger a habit. Soon, cities were plastered with Pepsodent ads. "Just run your tongue across your teeth," read one. "You'll feel a film - that's what makes your teeth look 'off color' and invites decay. — Charles Duhigg

This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. — Charles Duhigg

The specific steps for changing a specific habit differ from person to person and habit to habit, but the steps - the formula - is essentially the same, and once you learn it, you can do amazing things. — Charles Duhigg

Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped. — Charles Duhigg

For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible. — Charles Duhigg

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. However, — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asking patients to describe what triggers their habitual behavior is called awareness training, and like AA's insistence on forcing alcoholics to recognize their cues, it's the first step in habit reversal training. The tension that Mandy felt in her nails cued her nail biting habit. — Charles Duhigg

Habits aren't destiny. Habits can be ignored, changed, or replaced. But the reason the discovery of the habit loop is so important is that 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. So unless you deliberately fight a habit - unless you find new routines - the pattern will unfold automatically. — Charles Duhigg

There is a woman named Wendy Wood, who did a study when she was at Duke, and she followed around college students to try to figure out how much of their day was decision-making versus how much was habit. And what she found was that about 45 percent of all the behaviors that someone did in a day was habit. — Charles Duhigg

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

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. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. — Charles Duhigg

Every habit, no matter its complexity, is malleable...

...however, to modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habits' routines, and find alternatives. You must know you have control and be self-conscious enough to use it. — Charles Duhigg

He created a craving. And that craving, it turns out, is what makes cues and rewards work. That craving is what powers the habit loop. — Charles Duhigg

However, to modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habits' routines, and find alternatives. — Charles Duhigg

To understand the power of cravings in creating habits, consider how exercise habits emerge. In 2002 researchers at New Mexico State University wanted to understand why people habitually exercise.2.28 They studied 266 individuals, most of whom worked out at least three times a week. What they found was that many of them had started running or lifting weights almost on a whim, or because they suddenly had free time or wanted to deal with unexpected stresses in their lives. However, the reason they continued - why it became a habit - was because of a specific reward they started to crave. — Charles Duhigg

Alcoholism, of course, is more than a habit. It's a physical addiction with psychological and perhaps genetic roots. — Charles Duhigg

Once you break a habit into its components, you can fiddle with the gears. — Charles Duhigg

Typically, when there are corporate habits that undermine individuals, it has emerged without any sort of central planning. Nobody sits down and says, 'I'm going to create an evil habit for this corporation.' — Charles Duhigg

The more you focus, the more that focus becomes a habit. — Charles Duhigg