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Habits, Scientists Say, Emerge Because The Brain Is Constantly Looking For Ways To Save Effort.

-Charles Duhigg

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Habits, Scientists Say, Emerge

Charles Duhigg

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Habits, Scientists Say, Emerge Because The Brain Is Constantly Looking For Ways To Save Effort.

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If You Want To Do Something That Requires Willpower - Like Going For A Run After Work - You Have To Conserve Your Willpower Muscle During The Day.

Change Might Not Be Fast And It Isn't Always Easy. But With Time And Effort, Almost Any Habit Can Be Reshaped.

Between Calculated Risk And Reckless Decision-making Lies The Dividing Line Between Profit And Loss.

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 Another Change. Belief Is Easier When It Occurs Within A Community.

There’s Something About It That Makes Other Good Habits Easier.

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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.

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.

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.

If You Believe You Can Change - If You Make It A Habit - The Change Becomes Real.

The Golden Rule Of Habit Change: You Can't Extinguish A Bad Habit, You Can Only Change It.

The Biggest Moment Of Flexibility In Our Shopping Habits Is When We Have A Child, Because When You Think About It, All Of Your Old Routines Sort Of Go Out The Window, And Suddenly A Marketer Can Come In And Sell You New Kinds Of Things.

For A Habit To Stay Changed, People Must Believe Change Is Possible.

This Is The Real Power Of Habit: The Insight That Your Habits Are What You Choose Them To Be.

When People Have A Willpower Failure, It's Because They Haven't Anticipated A Situation That's Going To Come Along.

The Problem Is That Your Brain Can't Tell The Difference Between Bad And Good Habits, And So If You Have A Bad One, It's Always Lurking There, Waiting For The Right Cues And Rewards.

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.

There's A Natural Instinct Embedded In Friendship, A Sympathy That Makes Us Willing To Fight For Someone We Like When They Are Treated Unjustly.

Natural Instinct

Habits Are Powerful, But Delicate. They Can Emerge Outside Our Consciousness, Or Can Be Deliberately Designed. They Often Occur Without Our Permission, But Can Be Reshaped By Fiddling With Their Parts. They Shape Our Lives Far More Than We Realize—they Are So Strong, In Fact, That They Cause Our Brains To Cling To Them At The Exclusion Of All Else, Including Common Sense.

However, To Modify A Habit, You Must Decide To Change It. You Must Consiously 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 -- And Every Chapter In This Book Is Devoted To Illustrating A Different Aspect Of Why That Control Is Real.

If You Tell People That They Have What It Takes To Succeed, They'll Prove You Right

Rather, To Change A Habit, You Must Keep The Old Cue, And Deliver The Old Reward, But Insert A New Routine.

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.

What Studies Say The Number One Best Way To Start An Exercise Habit Is To Give Yourself A Reward That You Genuinely Enjoy.

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.

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I Think I'm Smart, And I Know I Was A Good Mom. But There Wasn't A Lot I Could Point To And Say, That's Why I'm Special.

A Movement Starts Because Of The Social Habits Of Friendship And The Strong Ties Between Close Acquaintances. It Grows Because Of The Habits Of A Community, And The Weak Ties That Hold Neighborhoods And Clans Together. And It Endures Because A Movement's Leaders Give Participants New Habits That Create A Fresh Sense Of Identity And A Feeling Of Ownership.

Then One Day, We’ll Put The Reward In The Old Place, And Put In The Rat, And, By Golloy, The Old Habit Will Rememerge Right Away. Habits Never Really Disappear. They’re Encoded Into The Sturctures Of Our Brain, And That’s A Huge Advantage For Us, Because It Would Be Awful If We Had To Relearn How To Drive After Every Vacation. The Problem Is That Your Brain Can’t Tell The Difference Between Bad And Good Habits, And So If You Have A Bad One, It’s Always Lurking There, Waiting For The Right Cues And Rewards.

At Some Point, If You're Changing A Really Deep-seated Behavior, You're Going To Have A Moment Of Weakness.

Companies Aren’t Families. They’re Battlefields In A Civil War.

Habits Are Malleable Throughout Your Entire Life.

Habits, Scientists Say, Emerge Because The Brain Is Constantly Looking For Ways To Save Effort.

Cravings Are What Drive Habits. And Figuring Out How To Spark A Craving Makes Creating A New Habit Easier.

Making Your Bed Every Morning Is Correlated With Better Productivity, A Greater Sense Of Well-being, And Stronger Skills At Sticking With A Budget.

Some Say Because Music Is As Much About Personal Expression As Listening Pleasure, Sharing Is Integral To Why Songs Have Value In The First Place.

Hiding What You Know Is Sometimes As Important As Knowing It.

Champions Don’t Do Extraordinary Things. They Do Ordinary Things, But They Do Them Without Thinking, Too Fast For The Orther Team To React. They Follow The Habits They’ve Learned.

Small Wins Are A Steady Application Of A Small Advantage.

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.

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.

Belief Is Easier When It Occurs Within A Community.

The More You Focus, The More That Focus Becomes A Habit.

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.

The Best Agencies Understood The Importance Of Routines. The Worst Agencies Were Headed By People Who Never Thought About It, And Then Wondered Why No One Followed Their Orders.

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.

Self Understanding

Self-discipline Has A Bigger Effect On Academic Performance Than Does Intellectual Talent.

Willpower Isn’t Just A Skill. It’s A Muscle, Like The Muscles In Your Arms Or Legs, And It Gets Tired As It Works Harder, So There’s Less Power Left Over For Other Things.

Companies Aren’t Families. They’re Battlefields In A Civil War. Yet Despite This Capacity For Internecine Warfare, Most Companies Roll Along Relatively Peacefully, Year After Year, Because They Have Routines—habits—that Create Truces That Allow Everyone To Set Aside Their Rivalries Long Enough To Get A Day’s Work Done.

If You Dress A New Something In Old Habits, It’s Easier For The Public To Accept It.

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.

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.

The Cooperation Of Nascar - Or Any Other System, It Turns Out - Persists Only When Everyone Believes He Has The Opportunity To Win.

Most Of The Choices We Make Each Day May Feel Like The Products Of Well-considered Decision Making, But They’re Not. They’re Habits.

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