69 Brilliant Quotes from The Power of Habit By Charles Duhigg (2024)

The Power of Habit By Charles Duhigg is a very interesting and informative book.Before reading it,I knew that habits were powerful but did not know how to change them.Mr.Duhigg teaches so well how to replace bad habits with good ones.

If you have been struggling to change some of your bad habits without any success,i recommend this book.It's simply brilliant.

Here are the quotes I love:

''Mostof the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considereddecision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit meansrelatively little on its own, over time, the meals we order, what we say to ourkids each night, whether we save or spend, how often we exercise, and the waywe organize our thoughts and work routines have enormous impacts on our health,productivity, financial security, and happiness.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

‘’ Habits can be changed, if we understand how they work.’’

‘’Transforming a habit isn’t necessarily easy or quick. It isn’talways simple. But it is possible. And now we understand how.’’

‘’As each rat learned how to navigate the maze, its mental activity decreased.As the route became more and more automatic, each rat started thinking less andless….The rat had internalized how to sprint through the maze to such a degreethat it hardly needed to think at all.’’

‘’Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly lookingfor ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to makealmost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp downmore often. This effort-saving instinct is a huge advantage. An efficient brainrequires less room, which makes for a smaller head, which makes childbirtheasier and therefore causes fewer infant and mother deaths. An efficient brainalso allows us to stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors, such as walkingand choosing what to eat, so we can devote mental energy to inventing spears,irrigation systems, and, eventually, airplanes and video games.

First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to gointo automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, whichcan be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, whichhelps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering forthe future….Over time, this loop—cue, routine, reward; cue, routine,reward—becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become intertwineduntil a powerful sense of anticipation and craving emerges.

Eventually, whether in a chilly MIT laboratory or your driveway, ahabit is born.’’

''Habits never reallydisappear. They’re encoded into the structures of our brain, and that’s a hugeadvantage for us, because it would be awful if we had to relearn how to driveafter every vacation. The problem is that your brain can’t tell the differencebetween bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one, it’s always lurkingthere, waiting for the right cues and rewards.''

‘’Without habit loops, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed by theminutiae of daily life. People whose basal ganglia are damaged by injury ordisease often become mentally paralyzed. They have trouble performing basicactivities, such as opening a door or deciding what to eat. They lose theability to ignore insignificant details—one study, for example, found thatpatients with basal ganglia injuries couldn’t recognize facial expressions,including fear and disgust, because they were perpetually uncertain about whichpart of the face to focus on. Without our basal ganglia, we lose access to thehundreds of habits we rely on every day.’’

‘’Habits are often as much a curse as a benefit.’’

''Habits emerge without ourpermission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regularbasis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week,and then twice a week—as the cues andrewards create a habit—untilthe kids are consumingan unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries.''

''Habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, thefamilies that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home,rather than seek out an alternative location.Even small shifts can end thepattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, weare blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues andrewards, though, we can change the routines.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“ ‘I made for myself a million dollars on Pepsodent,’ Hopkins wrote afew years after the product appeared on shelves. The key, he said, was that hehad ‘learned the right human psychology.’ That psychology was grounded in twobasic rules:

First, find a simple and obvious cue.

Second, clearly define the rewards.

If you get those elements right, Hopkins promised, it was like magic.Look at Pepsodent: He had identified a cue—tooth film—and a reward—beautifulteeth—that had persuaded millions to start a daily ritual. Even today,Hopkins’s rules are a staple of marketing textbooks and the foundation ofmillions of ad campaigns. And those same principles have been used to createthousands of other habits—often without people realizing how closely they arehewing to Hopkins’s formula.’’

''There is nothingprogrammed into our brains that makes us see a box of doughnuts andautomatically want a sugary treat….But once our brain learns that a doughnutbox contains yummy sugar and other carbohydrates, it will start anticipatingthe sugar high. Our brains will push us toward the box. Then, if we don’t eat the doughnut, we’ll feel disappointed.''

reactions so that ‘wanting evolves into obsessive craving’ that canforce our brains into autopilot, ‘even in the face of strong disincentives, includingloss of reputation, job, home, and family.’ However, these cravings don’t have complete authority over us…., there are mechanisms that canhelp us ignore the temptations. But to overpower the habit, we must recognizewhich craving is driving the behavior.''

''To understand the power of cravings in creating habits, consider howexercise habits emerge. In 2002 researchers at New Mexico State Universitywanted to understand why people habitually exercise. They studied 266individuals, most of whom worked out at least three times a week. What theyfound was that many of them had started running or lifting weights almost on awhim, or because they suddenly had free time or wanted to deal with unexpectedstresses in their lives. However, the reason they continued—why itbecame a habit—wasbecause of a specific reward they started to crave. In one group, 92 percent ofpeople said they habitually exercised because it made them ‘feel good’—they grew to expect and crave the endorphins and other neurochemicalsa workout provided. In another group, 67 percent of people said that workingout gave them a sense of ‘accomplishment’—they had come to crave a regular sense of triumph from tracking theirperformances, and that self-reward was enough to make the physical activityinto a habit.''

''I work hard because I expect pride from a discovery. I exercisebecause I expect feeling good afterward. I just wish I could pick and choosebetter.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Only once they created a sense of craving—the desire to make everything smell as nice as it looked—did Febreze become a hit. That craving is an essential part of theformula for creating new habits.''

''After Pepsodent started dominating the marketplace, researchers at competingcompanies scrambled to figure out why. What they found was that customers saidthat if they forgot to use Pepsodent, they realized their mistake because theymissed that cool, tingling sensation in theirmouths. They expected—they craved—thatslight irritation. If it wasn’t there,their mouths didn’t feelclean. Claude Hopkins wasn’t sellingbeautiful teeth. He was selling a sensation. Once people craved that cooltingling—once they equated it with cleanliness—brushing became a habit.''

‘’ ‘Consumers need some kind of signal that a product is working,’ TracySinclair, who was a brand manager for Oral-B and Crest Kids Toothpaste, toldme. ‘We can make toothpaste taste like anything—blueberries, green tea—and aslong as it has a cool tingle, people feel like their mouth is clean. Thetingling doesn’t make thetoothpaste work any better. It just convinces people it’s doing the job.’ ‘’

''Want to craft a new eating habit? When researchers affiliated with theNational Weight Control Registry—a project involving more than six thousand people who have lost morethan thirty pounds—looked atthe habits of successful dieters, they found that 78 percent of them ate breakfastevery morning, a meal cued by a time of day. But most of the successful dietersalso envisioned a specific reward for sticking with their diet—a bikini they wanted to wear or the sense of pride they felt when theystepped on the scale each day—somethingthey chose carefully and really wanted. They focused on the craving for thatreward when temptations arose, cultivated the craving into a mild obsession.And their cravings for that reward, researchers found, crowded out the temptationto drop the diet. The craving drove the habit loop.''

Cravings are whatdrive habits. And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a newhabit easier. It’s as true now as itwas almost a century ago. Every night, millions of people scrub their teeth in orderto get a tingling feeling; every morning, millions put on their jogging shoesto capture an endorphin rush they’ve learned to crave.

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things….They do ordinary things, but they do themwithout thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habitsthey’ve learned.”

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

You Can’tExtinguish a Bad Habit, You Can Only Change It.

HOW IT WORKS: USE THE SAME CUE. PROVIDE THE SAME

REWARD. CHANGE THE ROUTINE.’’

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

‘’AA’s methodsseem to sidestep scientific and medical findings altogether, as well as thetypes of intervention many psychiatrists say alcoholics really need.What AAprovides instead is a method for attacking the habits that surroundalcohol use. AA, in essence, is a giant machine for changing habit loops. Andthough the habits associated with alcoholism are extreme, the lessons AAprovides demonstrate how almost any habit—even the most obstinate—can be changed….AA succeeds because it helps alcoholics use the samecues, and get the same reward, but it shifts the routine.’’

‘’AA asks alcoholics to search for the rewards they get from alcohol.What cravings, the program asks, are driving your habit loop?Often,intoxication itself doesn’t make thelist. Alcoholics crave a drink because it offers escape, relaxation,companionship, the blunting of anxieties, and an opportunity for emotionalrelease. They might crave a co*cktail to forget their worries. But they don’t necessarily crave feeling drunk. The physical effects of alcohol areoften one of the least rewarding parts of drinking for addicts.’’

‘’In order to offer alcoholics the same rewards they get at a bar, AA hasbuilt a system of meetings and companionship—the ‘sponsor’ each member works with—that strives to offer as much escape, distraction, and catharsis as aFriday night bender. If someone needs relief, they can get it from talking totheir sponsor or attending a group gathering, rather than toasting a drinkingbuddy.

‘’Most people’s habitshave occurred for so long they don’t pay attention to what causes it anymore.’’

‘’Often, we don’t reallyunderstand the cravings driving our behaviors until we look for them.’’

Alcoholics who practiced the techniques of habit replacement, the dataindicated, could often stay sober until there was a stressful event in theirlives—at which point, a certain number started drinkingagain, no matter how many new routines they had embraced. However, thosealcoholics who believed,…that some higher power had entered their lives weremore likely to make it through the stressful periods with their sobrietyintact.It wasn’t God thatmattered, the researchers figured out. It was belief itself that made adifference. Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill startedspilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing theycould change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into apermanent behavior.

''Even if you give people better habits, it doesn’t repair why they started drinking in the first place. Eventually they’ll have a bad day, and no new routine is going to make everything seemokay. What can make a difference is believing that they can cope withthat stress without alcohol.”

''We do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believethat change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effective—the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe—happens whenever people come together to help one anotherchange.Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''If you want to changea habit, you must find an alternative routine, and your odds of success go updramatically when you commit to changing as part of a group. Belief isessential, and it grows out of a communal experience, even if that community isonly as large as two people.''

‘’The line separating habits and addictions is often difficult to measure.For instance, the American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as ‘aprimary, chronic disease of brain reward,motivation, memory and relatedcircuitry.… Addiction is characterized by impairment inbehavioral control, craving, inability to consistently abstain, and diminishedrelationships.’ ‘’

''while addiction iscomplicated and still poorly understood, many of the behaviors that weassociate with it are often driven by habit.''

''It is important to note that though the process of habit change is easilydescribed, it does not necessarily follow that it is easily accomplished. It isfacile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrainedpatterns can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understandingof the cravings driving behaviors. Changing any habit requires determination.No one will quit smoking cigarettes simply because they sketch a habit loop. However,by understanding habits’mechanisms, we gain insights that make new behaviors easier to grasp.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Understanding the cuesand cravings driving your habits won’t make them suddenly disappear—but it will give you a way to plan how to change the pattern.''

''Some habits, in otherwords, matter more than others in remaking businesses and lives. These are “keystone habits,” and they can influence how people work, eat,play, live, spend, and communicate.Keystone habits start a process that, overtime, transforms everything.Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right,but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them intopowerful levers.''

‘’When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently asonce a week, they start changing

other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly.Typically,people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productiveat work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. Theyuse their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It’s not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystonehabit that triggers widespread change. ‘Exercise spills over,’said JamesProchaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. ‘There’s something about it that makes other good habits easier.’ ‘’

‘’If you focus on changing or cultivating keystone habits, you can causewidespread shifts. However, identifying keystone habits is tricky.To find them,you have to know where to look. Detecting keystone habits means searching outcertain characteristics. Keystone habits offer what is known within academicl*terature as ‘small wins.’ They help other habits to flourish by creating newstructures, and they establish cultures where change becomes contagious…... Ahuge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, aninfluence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves.’’

‘’Willpower is a learnable skill, something that can be taught thesame way kids learn to do math and say ‘thank you.’ ‘’

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms orlegs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''As people strengthenedtheir willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a moneymanagement program—that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hardthey worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“When you learn to force yourself to go to the gym or start your homeworkor eat a salad instead of a hamburger, part of what’s happening is that you’re changing how you think,….People get better at regulating theirimpulses. They learn how to distract themselves from temptations. And once you’ve gotten into that willpower groove, your brain is practiced athelping you focus on a goal.”

''Imagine unpleasantsituations, and write out a plan for responding….Throughout the training manuals[of starbucks] are dozens of blank pages where employees can write out plans thatanticipate how they will surmount inflection points[ such as an angry coworker or an overwhelmed customer] . Then they practice those plans, again andagain, until they become automatic. This is how willpower becomes a habit: bychoosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine whenan inflection point arrives.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Crises are such valuable opportunities that a wise leader oftenprolongs a sense of emergency on purpose. That’s exactly what occurred after the King’s Cross station fire. Five days after the blaze, the British secretaryof state appointed a special investigator, Desmond Fennell, to study theincident. Fennell began by interviewing the Underground’s leadership, and quickly discovered that everyone had known—for years—that firesafety was a serious problem, and yet nothing had changed. Some administratorshad proposed new hierarchies that would have clarified responsibility for fireprevention.Others had proposed giving station managers more power so that they couldbridge departmental divides. None of those reforms had been implemented.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''People’s buyinghabits are more likely to change when they go through a major life event. Whensomeone gets married, for example, they’re more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When they moveinto a new house, they’re moreapt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they get divorced, there’s a higher chance they’ll startbuying different brands of beer.Consumers going through majorn life eventsoften don’t notice, or care, that their shopping patternshave shifted. However, retailers notice, and they care quite a bit.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Changing residence, getting married or divorced, losing or changing ajob, having someone enter or leave the household,…. are life changes that makeconsumers more vulnerable to intervention by marketers.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Peer pressure, on its own, isn’t enough to sustain a movement. But when the strong ties of friendshipand the weak ties of peer pressure merge, they create incredible momentum. That’s when widespread social change can begin.''

‘’If you try to scare people into following Christ’s example, it’s notgoing to work for too long. The only way you get people to take responsibilityfor their spiritual maturity is toteach them habits of faith.’Once that happens, they becomeself-feeders. People follow Christnot because you’ve ledthem there, but because it’s who theyare.’ ‘’

''For an idea to grow beyond a community, it must becomeself-propelling. And the surest way to achieve that is to give people newhabits that help them figure out where to go on their own.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Protecting people from their bad habits—in fact, defining which habits should be considered ‘bad’ in the firstplace—is a prerogative lawmakers have eagerlyseized. Prostitution, gambling,liquor sales on the Sabbath, p*rnography,usurious loans, sexual relations outside of marriage (or, if your tastes areunusual, within marriage), are all habits that various legislatures haveregulated,outlawed, or tried to discourage with strict (and often ineffective)laws.''

‘’[When you are asleep] The part of your brain that monitors yourbehavior is asleep, but the partscapable of very complex activities are awake. The problem is thatthere’s nothing guiding the brain except for basicpatterns, your most basic habits. You follow what exists in your head, becauseyou’re not capable of making a choice.”

''Sleepwalkers can behave in complex ways—for instance, they can open their eyes, see, move around, and drive acar or cook a meal—all whileessentially unconscious, because the parts of their brain associated withseeing, walking, driving, and cooking can function while they are asleepwithout input from the brain’s moreadvanced regions, such as the prefrontal cortex. Sleepwalkers have been knownto boil water and make tea. One operated a motorboat.Another turned on anelectric saw and started feeding in pieces of wood before going back to bed.But in general, sleepwalkers will not do things that are dangerous tothemselves or others. Even asleep, there’s an instinct to avoid peril.''

''The behaviors thatoccur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Every habit, no matterits complexity, is malleable. The most addicted alcoholics can become sober.The most dysfunctional companies can transform themselves. A high schooldropout can become a successful manager. However, to modify a habit, you must decideto change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of identifying thecues and rewards that drive the habits’ routines, and find alternatives. You must know you have control andbe self-conscious enough to use it.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Perhaps a sleepwalking murderer can plausibly argue he wasn’t aware of his habit,and so he doesn’t bear responsibility for his crime. But almost all the other patternsthat exist in most people’s lives—how we eat and sleep and talk to our kids, how we unthinkingly spendour time, attention, and money—those arehabits that we know exist. And once you understand that habits can change,you have the freedom—and theresponsibility—to remakethem. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habitbecomes easier to grasp, and the only option left is to get to work.''

If you believe you can change—if you make it a habit—the changebecomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits arewhat you choose them to be. Once that choice occurs—and becomes automatic—it’s not only real, it starts to seem inevitable, the thing, … that bearsus irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meetan older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’…Andthe two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looksover at the other and goes ‘What the hellis water?’.The water is habits, the unthinking choicesand invisible decisions that surround us every day—and which, just by looking at them, become visible again.

''THE FRAMEWORK:

• Identify the routine

• Experiment with rewards

• Isolate the cue

• Have a plan ''

Location

Time

Emotional state

Other people

Immediately preceding action.''

''A habit is a formulaour brain automatically follows:

When I see CUE, I willdo ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD.''

''Once you’ve figuredout your habit loop—you’ve identified the reward driving your behavior, the cue triggering it,and the routine itself—you canbegin to shift the behavior. You can change to a better routine by planning forthe cue and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward you are craving. Whatyou need is a plan….

Take, for instance, my cookie-in-the-afternoon habit….I learned that mycue was roughly 3:30 in the afternoon. I knew that my routine was to go to thecafeteria, buy a cookie, and chat with friends. And, through experimentation, Ihad learned that it wasn’t reallythe cookie I craved—rather, itwas a moment of distraction and the opportunity to socialize.

So I wrote a plan:

At 3:30, every day, I will walk to a friend’s desk and talk for 10 minutes.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

''Sometimes change takesa long time.Sometimes it requires repeated experiments and failures. But onceyou understand how a habit operates—once you diagnose the cue, the routine and the reward—you gain power over it.''

― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business